Andrew Cook
Glen Morgan and James Wong return for “E.B.E.” Whereas previous episodes “Squeeze,” “Ice,” and (the masterful) “Beyond the Sea” offered up homages to Curtis’ The Night Strangler, Carpenter’s The Thing, and Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs, “E.B.E.” seeks to channel ’70s conspiracy thrillers such as The Conversation. Not only do Morgan and Wong kill it again, “E.B.E.” turns out to be an essential episode of The X-Files for multiple reasons, though it’s true intricacies don’t fully impress themselves until a later viewing. What at first seems to be an episode straining to justify its central conceit is later revealed as the beginning of something much larger and darker. What at first appears to be a contradiction in character motivation is later revealed as a sensitive character study, putting Deep Throat past the point of no return.
William Graham, director of Where the Lilies Bloom and Change of Habit (Elvis Presley’s final film) returns behind the camera. His previous episode was “Space,” perhaps the weakest episode of the first season, where he didn’t get the chance to do much of interest on a visual level because the overly ambitious script calls for Mulder to just explain and explain and explain what’s going on in every scene. With “E.B.E.,” Graham demonstrates powerful formal sensibility, at once impressionistic and precise.
The teaser begins in the forests of Kurdistan, above the 37th parallel in Iraq. An Iraqi jet fighter on patrol comes into contact with a UFO and, with a lucky shot, brings it down. It lands near a surveillance station on the border of Iraq and Turkey and is retrieved by NATO forces.
After the credits, a trucker listens to reports of strange sightings in the sky over his CB. Apparently the police have gotten word as well, because several squad cars zip past him. His truck suddenly loses power. He manages to pull over without crashing and gets out with a loaded gun. He sees a massive saucer-shaped craft overhead and suddenly the door of his trailer swings open. He shoots, but at what? Could he be transporting the wreckage recovered by NATO?
Mulder and Scully get wind of the reports and investigate. Mulder runs a lot of the same tests he ran in the pilot, and the results are extremely positive, more conclusive than anything he’s seen before. They interview the trucker, Ranheim (Peter LaCroix), in a wonderfully moody interrogation room. He must have attracted some attention with his shotgun as he’s been arrested for firing a weapon on a county road. He isn’t happy about being detained, and he doesn’t look so good, either. He’s developed a cough and a nasty rash. Scully notes he’s a veteran and says his symptoms look like Gulf War Syndrome, but he says he never served in the Gulf and his symptoms only began last night. His trustworthiness is in question, however, as he’s already given multiple descriptions of what he saw last night. The police chief bursts in and immediately frees the trucker, telling Mulder and Scully he’ll no longer cooperate with their investigation, practically begging them to leave.
As they turn in their rental car, Mulder says he believes someone leaned on the local police while Scully lets someone borrow her pen. Mulder decides he needs more information, so they speak with a government watchdog group called The Lone Gunmen. The Lone Gunmen (Byers, Langly, and Frohike) are fellow conspiracists. They annoy Scully with theories about CIA coups and electronic surveillance, much to Mulder’s amusement. He asks them about Gulf War Syndrome which they believe to be caused by artillery shells coated with depleted uranium and classified planes being flown during the war. He asks them about UFO activity during the Gulf War and now it’s their turn to be amused, laughing at the idea of UFOs being responsible for the illness.
Later, Scully predictably dismisses the validity of their ideas, poking fun at their paranoia and saying they probably assume every communication they have is bugged. She goes to change the ink in the pen she lent the lady at the car rental and finds it has, in fact, been bugged. Mulder, convinced now he’s on to something big, meets with Deep Throat, who (in a sumptuous bokeh shot suggesting surveillance) hands him a transcript of the NATO base the night of the UFO crash and warns him he’s onto something dangerous.
The next day, Scully learns Ranheim’s story was bogus—he was special ops in the Gulf War, his name is actually Frank Druce, and he’s been to the VA hospital three times in the last year. Further, she discovers his truck’s manifest was bogus as well. It was carrying something 2,000 pounds heavier than the auto parts listed. Mulder assumes he must have been transporting whatever was shot down in Iraq. He tells her he got his information from Deep Throat. She isn’t sure she trusts him, but Mulder insists he’s okay. They decide to track down the truck, and Mulder runs to his apartment to get a few things. He finds Deep Throat inside, who gives him a picture of a UFO sighting at Fort Benning.
Mulder takes the picture to Scully, claiming it is the proof he’s been looking for all this time, and the truck was just a decoy. Scully isn’t convinced, however. She points out several potential faults with the photograph, calling it a fake. Mulder is upset with her continued skepticism of Deep Throat’s credibility, throwing a particularly delightful tantrum, but he’s convinced to have the picture analyzed. Sure enough, it’s a fake. Deep Throat lied to them. If even he can’t be trusted, exactly what are they onto?
In one of the single best scenes of the season, Mulder confronts Deep Throat at an aquarium. Deep Throat owns up to his deception, confirming his support for Mulder and distaste with the deceit that comes with his position. He says he needed to divert Mulder in this instance because he’s onto something simply too big, something people wouldn’t be able to handle if they knew. Mulder asks him if the original transcript was true, and if so, why even show it to him? Deep Throat says he knew if he started with the truth, the inevitable lie would be that much easier for Mulder to accept. As Mulder leaves in anger, Deep Throat lets him know he’s still being bugged. The deep blue hue in the scene contrasts beautifully with their heated conversation, the sharks providing a striking abstract element in the frame.
Mulder gets home and finds the bug. He and Scully pretend to drop the case within earshot before rushing out. They devise a convoluted routine to slip their tails and meet up in Las Vegas to find the truck. They track it down in Washington state, finding it empty after being hit by electrical interference and a flash of light. In the back of the truck, they find a small stretcher hooked up to some medical equipment. Mulder runs tests to see if it really was an extraterrestrial rescue mission and finds it’s yet another con.
They track a spate of UFO sightings to a power plant which is in fact a front for the military. They ask the Lone Gunmen to fabricate some credentials to get them inside. They get in but are quickly found out. Lucky for them the base administrator, Deep Throat himself, comes to the rescue. He tells Mulder in the aftermath of the Roswell Incident, world leaders met and agreed to exterminate any future extraterrestrial visitors they should apprehend. Deep Throat claims to be one of three men to have killed one, while serving with the CIA in Vietnam, presumably with the Phoenix program. He says he’s been haunted by this act ever since, and it’s what motivates him to feed Mulder information. Mulder and Scully watch him walk off into the night, still not sure what to believe.
At first glance, “E.B.E.” comes across as flawed, even if it has a fun, freewheeling sense of momentum and introduces us to some of the show’s most iconic characters. It seems to fail to justify the paranoia it seeks to evoke. How is the evidence they find here any different than what they’ve seen so far? For that matter, Deep Throat’s characterization here seems to run counter to what we’ve seen from him in some other episodes, especially “Fallen Angel.”
When rewatching “E.B.E.” after having seen what’s to come, however, everything clicks. “E.B.E.” is important for charting the progression of Mulder and Scully’s journey into the unknown over the course of the season. They aren’t just poking around in the dark anymore, looking for something continually around the corner, reaching for something perpetually outside their grasp. Mulder kept his ear to the ground and he found something this time, something big, and Scully is there to keep him on track, chasing the truth instead of misdirection and dead ends. What he’s tracking won’t truly begin to reveal itself until the season finale, and the full extent of the crimes committed won’t be revealed until the “My Struggle” arc in Seasons 10 and 11, but it more than justifies the measures we see here.
With “E.B.E.” we learn Depp Throat isn’t just a mentor, sharing insight with Mulder, but rather a troubled man, a man on a journey toward redemption. “E.B.E.” shows the first of his final steps. For a second time (the first time being the episode “Deep Throat“) he wards Mulder away from investigating UFO technology. When his warning again fails to work, he this time attempts a lie. Lying to Mulder clearly troubles him, however, and perhaps it isn’t something he’s keen to repeat. This and his presence at the base suggests Deep Throat is heavily involved with the reclamation, study, and application of alien technology. He doesn’t want himself implicated, and seems to want the larger project he’s involved in kept secret as well, even though in “Fallen Angel” he tips Mulder off to the crash of an alien spacecraft. Comparing the events of “Fallen Angel” with Deep Throat’s other appearances (especially in episodes such as “Eve” and “Young at Heart”) as well as considering the mention of his time spent with the CIA in Vietnam suggests Deep Throat’s true motivation is shining a light on the vulgar and brutish actions of the US government, exemplified in “Fallen Angel” by Col. Henderson, who was given control over that operation instead of Deep Throat.
These realizations make the episode much more enjoyable to watch as a whole. You can more easily appreciate the creativity of its smaller moments: Scully paying cash for her secret flight to Las Vegas; the woman with the pen at the car rental asking the kids she’s roped into the surveillance op to sit still while she keeps an eye on Mulder and Scully.
The true legacy of “E.B.E.” is the introduction of The Lone Gunmen, recurring characters who will appear regularly all the way up until the end of Season 9 and get their own short-lived spinoff series. They’re great from the jump, funny, lively, and kooky, and it’s easy to see why they were so immensely popular. Tom Braidwood, Dean Haglund, and Bruce Harwood are perfectly cast. Morgan and Wong supposedly introduced them to make Mulder seem more credible, but at the end of the day mass surveillance and CIA coups are all far more believable than extraterrestrials. Ultimately, the Lone Gunmen discredit Scully as much as anything. Coups, puppet regimes, and political assets are all well-reported and widely acknowledged tools at the CIA’s disposal, her refusal to even consider such possibilities highlights the naive credulity which sits alongside her skepticism.
“E.B.E.” is another great example of Glen Morgan and James Wong using The X-Files as a way to pay homage to their favorite pieces of genre cinema. It’s also a great example of the developing interplay between the pair and series creator Chris Carter. Carter tends to lay foundations for the series Morgan and Wong will later prod, strengthening and deepening the show as a whole, resulting in a series where the creators are always willing to challenge themselves and their audience.
