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Remember, kids, when checking on your partner’s wellbeing, it is always boobs first. It is imperative to determine whether those puppies are okay before anything else.

I like The X-Files best when it is dark and weird. “Field Trip” fits the bill on both counts. How can you not love an episode in which mulder and scully are sharing an hallucination underground brought on by a giant mushroom that is slowly devouring them? Yes, mushrooms can apparently cause hallucinations by eating you instead of the other way around. Someone should have told Aaron Sorkin about this. Maybe he could have stuck around for the final two seasons of The West Wing if he had known an hallucinogenic mushroom eating him could induce the same effect as the reverse.

The agents head to Brown Mountain, North Carolina, to investigate the mysterious deaths of two hitchhikers. They were found as skeletons six months after they went missing. Scully suspects ritualistic murder by boiling or acid. Mulder suspects alien involvement because of local legend. Battle lines are quickly drawn.

Speaking of lines being drawn, When Mulder is describing Brown Mountain, North Carolina, the map beside him is actually South Carolina. The map has a line pointing specifically to Newberry, South Carolina. The area is home to Newberry college and the Newberry Opera House, but is otherwise flat as a pancake and devoid of any alien legends. The rest of the episode makes it clear the agents are in North Carolina, so the powers that be really should have gotten the right map.

The agents split up, with Scully giving the skeletons the once over and mulder hiking out to the site where they were discovered. Scully identifies plant digestive enzymes on the skeletons and begins fretting for Mulder’s safety. She and the coroner go looking for him. It is not entirely clear what happens when, or when mulder is hallucinating or they bother are, but at some point, they are both trapped underground hallucinating while being noshed by a mushroom. The best I can tell is the split features Mulder’s fantasy scenario, then scully’s nightmare.

Mulder finds the hitchhikers alive. They tell him everything he wants to hear about their abduction by aliens, down to the skeletons being placed as decoys. He takes them back to his apartment. When Scully shows up, he happily shows her the two and another surprise--a grey alien. You can be reasonably sure with everyone chilling at the Mulder bachelor pad, we have all gone to Oz.To further prove this is Mulder’s fantasy, Scully lays it on thick that he has been right all along about absolutely everything. So Mulder’s secret wish is to hear Scully admit she was wrong. Why he does not want her to do this in a string bikini makes one question his lack of imagination.

This sequence fades away back to Scully and the coroner searching for Mulder on the hiking trail. They eventually find his skeleton in the same condition as the hitchhikers’, sans digestive fluids. Everyone from the coroner to Skinner to the Lobe Gunmen decide he was murdered in a ritualistic killing. Only scully suspects differently, and is frustrated no one else cares.

Faux Mulder

Yeah, I know. that was a bad joke.

What I find interesting about these two scenarios is that it is established towards the end the mushroom is fulfilling fantasies to keep the agents calm and still. They are only able to escape when they realize the trauma of what is really happening to them. Their stirring then attracts the attention of the search parties who rescue them. Mullder’s makes sense. He gets to hear everything he wants about the existence of aliens and Scully admitting she was wrong. But scully imagines Mulder dying horribly, but no one caring how or why. What an emotionally damaged person she must be if her biggest fantasy is to torture herself in such a manner.

‘Field Trip” has a definite modern Star Trek reset button feel to it. It does not take long for you to realize we are not dealing with reality, so something is going to have to snap things back to reality. The journey is pretty cool, however. The ending does not feel like a cop out as many trek variations of the reset button do. Maybe because it is because of the trippy idea of a mushroom eating an hallucinating human that raises the episode up a notch or two. Whatever the case, “Field Trip’ is a weirdly amusing, but often dark, look inside the agents’ minds. They are two strange, strange souls.

Rating; *** (out of 5)