The X-Files Week: "Detour"

I often insist that some of the best The X-Files episodes are those that ask viewers to reckon with monsters that are made by (or released by…) mankind himself. 

The fluke-man in “The Host” is a child of the Chernobyl Disaster. 

The Peacocks in “Home” are a product of traditional values in conflict with 1990s modernity.  

Frank Spotnitz’s  fifth season outing “Detour” is not only one of the scariest episodes of the series ever filmed -- right down to the presence of a fearsome monster hiding under the bed -- but one which very much perfects this overarching series leitmotif.

In short, in “Detour” Mulder and Scully intersect with monsters that have evolved in the forest on their own, but are suddenly on the warpath against civilization because of “encroaching development” or sprawl.

Sprawl might best be defined as the outward spread of civilization, especially suburbs, into virgin or heretofore natural territories.  This question of land-use raises many important questions.  Foremost among them may simply be: what happens to eco-systems de-stabilized by man’s sudden presence, and how do those eco-systems respond to that presence?

And secondly, how do humans react when suddenly reckoning with life on the edge, essentially, of a frontier? 

When your backyard leads into a dense, wild forest, what does that mean for everyday life, and issues like safety? 

My own neighborhood in Charlotte is on the edge of such a forest.  Not many weeks back, a fox and three fox cubs came up on our backyard deck to play, and to use our banana plant pots as toilets.  They were adorable, and my family enjoyed watching them (from behind the safety of windows), but the day they left I saw another, unexpected sign of their presence so close-by. When I mowed the lawn I found the remnants of a squirrel carcass.  All that was left of it were the legs and tail.  Everything else had been eaten…or dragged away. I see dead squirrels all the time in my neighborhood, but usually as road kill.  In this case, something out of the norm had occurred.  Every usable part of the squirrel had been…devoured by a predator.

With its trademark blend of witty humor, authentic thrills and chills, and cerebral speculation, The X-Files brilliantly explores this idea of the fringe -- the borderland between civilization and the wild -- in “Detour.”

On their way to a trust-building seminar in west Florida, Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) join an investigation already in progress.  A survey team and hunter have both disappeared without a trace in the Everglades. 

Mulder suspects a camouflaged creature may be responsible, one striking back because of human encroachment in the woods.  He even connects the creatures to the Mothman legends of West Virginia in the 1960s.

Armed with an infra-red scanner to detect their prey, Mulder, Scully and two others head into the woods to find out the truth, a truth that goes back to Ponce De Leon and his landing in America several centuries earlier…

In “Detour’s” prologue, a surveyor looks around him at the wild, natural land of the forest and notes, cynically “this is where they’re going to put the Blockbuster.”

This funny comment is not only a time capsule of the 1990s -- since today we all rent our entertainment via streaming or mail-in services, not brick-and-mortar shops -- but also a perfect reflection of the new homogenization of America.  Sprawl was occurring everywhere in the late 1990s, coinciding in large part with the wealth created by the dot.com bubble. 

And the constructions and edifices going up where nature had once thrived did not necessarily represent a fair exchange.  Who really needs another Pizza Hut or Blockbuster that badly?  A comment about paving paradise and putting up a parking lot seems completely appropriate here.

But what Mulder and Scully discover in the Everglades in “Detour” is a sign that certain long-lived creatures -- going as far back as Ponce De Leon (1474 – 1521) -- have dwelt in the forest.  These creatures consider it to be their home, and the rest of us are…invaders.  This fact exposes our human arrogance in a nuanced fashion.  We assume that unspoiled land is ours to do with as we please simply because we have drawn imaginary borders around it.  It rarely occurs to us that someone or something else might already live in such forests, and therefore feel possessive (or defensive) about it.

But there are two other things that make these creatures terrifying.

The first is that they are largely invisible, save for their red eyes.  Generations of adaptation have permitted these monsters to possess natural camouflage, meaning that they can’t be seen easily.  The episode is thus filled with authentically creepy moments during which we detect the monster only by its scarlet eyes. 

Indeed, this is the (horrifying) note we leave the episode on -- and just to further sear the terror deeper into our reptilian brain -- we see one of the monsters hiding in that archetypal, childhood realm of fear: underneath a bed.

Secondly, what’s so scary in “Detour” is the notion of a human intelligence and cunning existing in a creature of the wild.  Or as Mulder trenchantly notes: “Whatever it is, it’s smarter than us.  (At least) out here.” 

Because the Mothmen are descendants of humans, they act in a way contrary to the apparent natural order, and this is frightening.  These predators take out the strongest opponents first, after dividing and conquering enemy numbers.  Mulder even links these creatures to the Mothman legends of Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the 1960s, to help “generalize” the terror beyond the Everglades. 

Any episode of The X-Files that can meaningfully connect invisible monsters to the Mothman incident of November 1966 to Ponce De Leon and the Fountain of Youth is bound to be a rewarding viewing experience, but “Detour” goes beyond even that description.  It also boasts a self-reflexive quality by featuring clips of The Invisible Man (1932), a clear antecedent in the horror genre.  I’ve written about this before, but The X-Files can readily be viewed as a master’s thesis in horror, one which makes relevant for the 1990s all the old horrors and bogeymen of decades past.

But finally, like all the best X-Files episodes, “Detours” explicitly concerns the Mulder/Scully relationship, and that relationship’s very nature.

As the episode opens, Mulder and Scully are on their way to a trust-building seminar which is supposed to improve their communication skills.  Mulder ditches the conference at his first opportunity, but importantly, 

“Detour” ultimately lands him in a situation in which his communication skills are in question, and also, consequently balanced against the communication skills of the two Mothman hunters or predators. 

Once their police escorts are gone, Mulder and Scully must survive on their wits in the forest, trusting one another, just as – presumably -- the Mothmen have done for centuries.

Consider that there’s that old game for two people wherein you stand behind someone close to you and tell them to shut their eyes and fall backwards into your arms. If they don’t do so, or are reluctant to do so, you may have an issue of trust.

Here, Mulder and Scully “play” a life-and-death version of that game.  They can’t see their enemy, but when their partner says shoot, or run, or jump, they must trust that order and obey it…lest they both die.

The punch-line to this thematic through-line in “Detour” occurs inside the subterranean Mothman cave at the climax.  To escape from this death trap, Scully and Mulder must make a mountain of corpses so as to climb out together, a direct reflection of information the audience has received about the trust-building seminar.  There, two agents working together had to build the highest mountain of office furniture.

Of course, in that situation, it was easy to work together, because the stakes were not high.  There was no cost to giving your trust.

The point in “Detour” may very well be that effective communication is a natural byproduct of close relationships.  No seminar games can substitute for experience. Both Mulder and Scully -- and the Mothmen too -- have endured situations wherein they must depend on one another to succeed, and to survive.  Their communication “shorthand” is based on a level of trust that no corporate seminar can approximate.

For all these reasons -- for the embedded social critique regarding sprawl; for the scary monsters hiding in plain sight and under the bed; for its nod to horror history; and finally for its meaningful comment on the bonds of trust connecting Scully and Mulder -- I would nominate “Detour” as one of the ten best episodes of The X-Files.