El Mundo Gira

Season 4, Episode 11, Aired
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Episode Summary

When a deadly yellow rain falls in a migrant workers camp and kills a young woman, Agents Mulder and Scully come to investigate what happened. After questioning the family the agents learn that they believe a mythical creature is responsible for the death and before long Mulder and Scully are on the trail of a mythical beast known as El Chupacabra. Mulder and Scully have to work out where the beast will go next before it can kill anyone else.
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Fan Episode Reviews (7)

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  • Mulder and Scully chase after a Chupacabra

    7.0
    "Good"
    By JaCkKbAuEr2424, Jan 21, 2011 Report Abuse
    I'm not a scholar on Mexican folklore, but I've only heard bits and pieces about Chupacabras and what they actually are. This episode was about half interesting and half confusing, as most episodes of this season have turned out to be. We get the promise of a cool "monster-of-the-week," but we never get enough explanation to make it a satisfying episode.

    Scully got it right when she described it as a Mexican soap opera. There was two brothers who wanted to kill each other, both of who seemed to love the same woman. The supernatural and mysterious idea of the episode comes from a thunderstorm that leaves the woman dead and one of the brothers infected with some kind of extraterrestial virus. For an episode that contains something involving alien-like bacteria, there's a surprising lack of focus on it. Instead, we focus on the brothers and their drama, along with characters that are never fleshed out enough to care about.

    Plus, the ending explanation for everything was so rushed and poorly written that it just about ruined everything that preceded it. For me, this was a promising enough episode that just had too many poorly written moments.moreless

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  • Mulder and Scully travel to the Central Valley of California where a yellow rain appears to have resulted in the death of a young woman and a goat. Rumors of El Chupacabra, a mythical creature along with issues with INS complicate the case.moreless

    6.5
    "Fair"
    By Tao2Zen, Oct 19, 2008 Report Abuse
    This is nowhere near a favorite episode of mine, however there are some things about it that I really like about the episode. Whenever, TV shows or movies are set somewhere you live or have lived I think we make a connection to them in some way. I lived in San Joaquin County, California for a year and Sacramento county for another two. Despite my preferance things set in my home state of Oregon, I enjoyed watching this episode for this reason alone. I think they are also proving a solid point, "Nobody cares". So often as people we simply ignore the things that we don't want to deal with; we pretend they are not there. In this time with immigration being a hot issue, it seems like this episode hits home in a very real way. As people we seem to want out politicans to deal with this for us and let us not worry about it. However, as a teacher I am unable to turn a blind eye to this very real issue. So to sum up, not a great episode, but maybe we can let it make up think.moreless

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  • Alien Fungal Nation

    5.5
    "Mediocre"
    By Anon67683, Mar 12, 2007 Report Abuse
    If I didn't hate "Sanguinarium" so much, this would be my pick for worst episode of Season Four.

    The storyline is confused - what in the heck was the thunder, lightning and yellow rain during the opening teaser? This event is never really explained and seems to have been included just to give an excuse for some cool effects at the beginning. And we are led to believe that one of the two brothers will have his vengeance against the other, but in the end they both decide to take it on the road as "Dos Chupacabras?" Huh? What happened to Soledad's "righteous need for revenge?"

    The socio-political "message" is too heavy-handed. Um, ok, the illegal aliens are invisible to us, so invisible that we won't even notice a couple of them when they grow giant fungus heads and hitchhike down to old Mexico. Riiight...

    I kept looking for irony but found very little. The scientist's comment that fungi might one day actually beat out the cockroach for world domination seemed like a sly reference to "Coprophages."

    About the only thing I did enjoy in this episode was the make-up work. The fungal victims were all very well done, excepting perhaps Maria, the first victim, who looked a bit fake.moreless

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  • Goat sucker!

    7.5
    "Good"
    By danideathstrike, Feb 12, 2007 Report Abuse
    El Mundo Gira sees Mulder and Skully on the trail of the mythical beast- El Chupacabra-AKA- the goat sucker, after a strange yellow rain occurs at a workers camp, followed by the death of a young woman and some goats. This episode goes through some twists and turns but failed to excite me. The special effects were very good and liked the way that we see the episode from various points of view. The major thing that stopped me from liking this episode was the ending. I couldn't believe that they got away with such a stupid ending. Overall it was an ok-ish episode.moreless

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  • The one with La Chupa Cabra

    9.8
    "Superb"
    By SleepTight, Jun 17, 2006 Report Abuse
    Yet another excellent episode The X-files, well written storyline and plain fun script. The best thing about this episode was the 'Chupa Cabra' storyline, I mean. Who hasn't heard of it?

    The goat sucker, when the sky flashes and it begins to rain yellow raindrops. The chupacabra comes to suck the face and eyes out the goats around.

    The best thing about this episode is that everyone believes it was the chupacabra while the entire storyline has a normal explanation. Well, sort of anyway.

    The episode begins with some Mexicans speaking in Spanish (They should do that more often in the X-files) and there are two brothers inlove with a young woman. Then when they leave after some escaped goats, the sky flashes and it rains yellow drops. When the village goes to find out what happened they find both the goat and the young woman dead and rotting.

    Mulder and Scully go to investigate it and soon find out about the story behind it, Scully thinks it's a fairy tale but Mulder acts like he's Mulder again, you know. Believing everything without questioning.

    So while Mulder tries to find the lost young brother, Scully investigates the body of the dead girl. It's completely under some mangos with an abnormality raise of some enzyme that made the mangos grow so much.

    When Mulder finally finds the guy, he says that he didn't kill his dead lover. When he's taken to someplace the driver next to him has the same effect that the young girl had and dies.

    The young chupacabra has some excessive body fluid that makes the mangos go off. Everything he touches makes it go off, he goes to work for a man and by a fraction of a second the man dies in it. Also when he goes to the store to get some food the same happens again, the food begins to rot and then a young man who works there touches it he dies from it.

    Meanwhile the brother of him wants to pay his revenge he has in his heart. He wants to kill him because he's certain that he killed his woman. The chupacabra wants to leave to Mexico but doesn't have enough money so he visits a girl who gives him all her money because she's afraid he will kill her too. There he sees his face swollen up like a monster. Now he has become the cupacabra.

    Meanwhile one of the sheriffs says that the brother has to revenge but he's the one standing between the two brothers. When he brings them to each other so that they can kill each other, something else happens and he winds up dead with a gunshot in his chest and that mangos on his face.

    What I loved the most from this episode were the two woman who told a different story. One said that some other chupacabras came for them and killed the sheriff. And the other girl says that the brothers couldn't kill each other and instead just killed the man and went to Mexico.

    But what really happened was that they killed the sheriff after they find out that both brothers had the same sickness. When Mulder and Scully arrived with the investigation crew it was already too late, the sheriff was dead and the two men disappeared. They went to live their own way with their big heads.

    'El Mundo Gira' was an excellent and well written episode that was fascinating throughout and very interesting. It turns out to be another excellent season 4 episode.
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Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions

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  • Trivia

    ADD TRIVIA
    • In the episode, Scully consults with a doctor. He says that the Athlete's Foot fungus had help with an enzyme. He then goes on to explain that it is a catalyst. Technically, all enzymes act as catalysts throughout our bodies. Edit
    • How is it that both brothers were able to carry a fatal enzyme across the border and slip away from the F.B.I. and everyone else, simply because 'nobody cares'. I find it hard to believe such a potentially massive outbreak would be left alone by the entire United States government. Edit

  • Notes

    ADD NOTES
    • This episode aired the same day as the Simpsons episode "The Springfield Files", featuring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. Edit
    • This episode had some delays during production. The migrant worker's camp was built from scratch in the middle of a large waste ground, unfortunately a storm dumped several inches of snow onto the sunbaked 'San Joaquin Valley'. Crew members had to scurry ahead of each camera setup, melting down the snow with hot water and blow dryers. Edit
    • 'El Mundo Gira' is Spanish for "The World Rotates" -- possibly a play on the soap opera title As the World Turns, since Scully described this case as a "Mexican soap opera." Edit

  • Quotes

    ADD QUOTES
    • Skinner: You would think that with the resources we have, we'd be able to find these men. I'm not hearing a good explanation why this hasn't happened. Scully: Well, Sir, they have a way of being almost invisible. Mulder: The truth is... nobody cares. Edit
    • Scully: Did he tell you what happened? Mulder: A flash of light, yellow rain, Maria! MARIA! Edit
    • Mexican Woman: (In Spanish) Two brothers. One woman. Trouble. Edit

  • Allusions

    ADD ALLUSIONS
    • Movie Reference "Maria ... Maria ... I just met a girl named Maria". This is a reference to the musical West Side Story, written by Arthur Laurents with music and lyrics by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. It is a modern day re-telling of Romeo and Juliet set in Manhattan's Upper West Side. Instead of rival families, it involves two rival gangs the Jets and the Sharks. Edit
    • Cultural Reference: El Chupacabra The references to El Chupacabra are based on urban legend, myth or true story, depending on which version of the tale you believe. First sightings were in Puerto Rico in the late 1980s and it seems to be a creature mostly confined to Latin American communities. Literally meaning 'goat sucker' it is supposed to be a creature that preys on livestock. Descriptions vary widely, from a doglike form to a lizardlike being with spines. Edit

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