Red Museum

Season 2, Episode 10, Aired
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Episode Summary

While investigating the connection between the abduction of several teenagers and a rural religious cult, Mulder & Scully discover a secret test being performed on the children using the "Purity Control" alien DNA from 'The Erlenmeyer Flask' which leads Mulder to the Crew-Cut Man, Deep Throat's murderer.moreless
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Fan Episode Reviews (10)

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  • Season 2's nadir

    1.2
    "Abysmal"
    By RJNeb2, Jun 12, 2011 Report Abuse
    At one point, about halfway through this misbegotten episode, Mulder asks the local sheriff "Any clue what this is about?" And it's something we could well ask Chris Carter as he makes a complete shambles of a nonsensical hybrid between the pilot episode and "Genderbender".

    The fact of the matter is that "Red Museum" is just all over the place. Is it about the dangers of small town bigotry, and the fear of the outsider? If so, where does the possession theory come into it? What does the Red Museum sect actually do and stand for, seeing as they certainly don't seem to represent any earthly danger? What about the Peeping Tom/ child abuse angle? Is that just another red herring? Walk-ins, anyone? Take your pick. Why are the teenagers left alive? Sure, it's traumatic to be dumped half-naked in the woods with no memory and some magic marker scrawled on your back, but why? And while we're at it, why are Mulder and Scully even involved in this bogus case in the first place?

    About halfway through it transpires that the Red Museum aspect is a complete bum steer, as is the theory that bovine growth hormones are responsible for the strange goings on in town amongst the test subject teenagers. Instead this lamely turns out to be some kind of limp addendum to "The Erlenmeyer Flask", somehow expecting us to be able to pull all the disparate elements together and make some sense of what's going on. Hey, if even Mulder and Scully can't, what chance do we have? (Though admittedly the late addition of the alien DNA in the teenagers ups the ante for all of, what, 5 minutes.)

    And as if the list of questions about this episode wasn't enough, here's a few more. Why was the killer attempting to destroy the meat-packing plant? Was it just that it seemed like a cool place to have a climax? (It isn't.) And why was the Red Museum hangout a safe place for the teenagers?

    It's a bad show when the most interesting observations that you can make about an episode is that thankfully Scully's clothes sense seems to have improved no end since the first season, and that she'd better be careful, eating ribs whilst wearing a white suit.

    This season's "Space". Two strikes now against Chris Carter. 1/10moreless

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  • Not bad

    7.0
    "Good"
    By JaCkKbAuEr2424, Oct 22, 2010 Report Abuse
    I always hate it when a show such as X-Files, Supernatural or Fringe gives us a compelling over-arching plot to an entire season and then focuses on stand-alone episodes midway through that are exciting but do little to interest or carry the plot forward. Both X-Files and Supernatural have the tendency to fall victim to these things, and this episode (save for about five minutes) was about as dull and confusing as they come.

    Mulder and Scully investigate a town where people disappear and reappear hours later, disorientated and marked with the phrase "He/she is one" on their backs. The first place they look is a cult named the "red museum" These people believe that if you live the right lifestyle, you are able to transfer spirits with some other living thing... or leave your body.. or something like that. I never exactly got the gist of it.

    Things start getting confusing when you add in a group of people (doctors, farmers etc.) who are implanting an unknown substance into animals and humans. There's a sketchy guy who hides in the walls of a house of a family and films them. What reason? I never really figured that out. Maybe other people could, but it was lost to me.
    moreless

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  • Possession that turned into conspiracy

    7.5
    "Good"
    By OnePerCentClub, Dec 28, 2008 Report Abuse
    Not a great episode, but it's nice to see Mulder and Scully back to investigating cases. So the conspiracy is chasing our favorite duo. This one is in a way the continuation of what happened to Deep Throat, as Scully remembers his face and probably makes her remember her own abduction. Kids were being treated with a special hormone and they end up dead. They were being killed because they thought they were monsters. They were being injected the mysterious substance that got Deep Throat killed and almost killed Mulder.
    For all the shippers, nice moment when Mulder cleans up Scully's face in the restaurant.moreless

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  • The Dangers of Beef in the Wrong Hands

    6.8
    "Fair"
    By ilovemulder, Dec 28, 2007 Report Abuse
    There wasn't really anything unique here, anything to get excited about. There wasn't any interesting character development, there weren't any particularly innovative plot points, and the story's involvement in the mytharc was interesting, but there was something about the way it was presented that made me go, huh, instead of WHOA!!!! I think the episode was just tangled: You have the government, you have that farmer guy, you have the pedophile guy, you have the guy Scully recognizes on the road, you have kids, you have the Red Museum. It was convoluted and thus failed to have an impact. Also, I don't appreciate the making fun of vegetarianism. It is a valid position for political, medical, and moral reasons. I haven't eaten meat in seven years. Go Red Museum!!! However, twas precious when that teenager reffered to Scully as Mulder's "little wife." And I always love it when Mulder does stupid things like run off to catch the bad guy on his own and Scully has to save him. So there were good points. :)moreless

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  • Beef, It's What's For Dinner

    7.5
    "Good"
    By Anon67683, Feb 08, 2007 Report Abuse
    This felt like a 2 hour movie stuffed into a 45 minute episode; too many unresolved threads. I really enjoyed the setup for the first 2/3 of the episode. There was some real suspense as to what exactly was happening to the teenagers. Reminded me of the pilot episode, in a good way. Then we find out that a local pedo has been kidnapping the kids. Waaaa? So why were the kids all freaked out? What scared them? What about the scopalamine? I mean, it didn't feel like a satisfactory payoff for all the buildup. The red turbans are basically thrown away at the end and we don't gain any special insight into them. The mythology "hook" felt tacked on at the end and I remained confused as to what exactly had happened to the kids or why they were chosen or what would become of them. It just seemed like the writers had all these great ideas but not enough time to flesh everything out.moreless

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Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions

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  • Trivia

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    • The cult leader in this episode that is set in 1994 speaks of a final judgment eighteen years in the future. This would set the cult's apocalypse in 2012, the year given in "The Truth" for the the final alien colonization of Earth. Edit
    • When Mulder walks out the restaurant, he pulls off his bib and tosses it aside. The camera cuts to the ruffian and then back to Mulder who tosses the bib aside a second time. Edit

  • Notes

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    • This episode was originally supposed to take place in Rome, Wisconsin, when Chris Carter and David Kelley flirted with the notion of an X-Files/Picket Fences crossover. Although the networks (FOX and CBS) did not allow the crossover to go ahead, the corresponding episode of Picket Fences did feature two FBI agents conducting an investigation. Edit

  • Quotes

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    • Mulder: (about the doctor who crashed in a plane holding a briefcase with millions of dollars) Well, wherever he was coming from, I'd say that was one hell of a house call. Edit
    • Mulder: You know, for a holy man, you've got quite a knack for pissing people off. Edit
    • Scully: File number XWC060361. The identity of the man shot in the slaughterhouse has yet to be determined. His name, any record or artifact of his past, present or immigration status have yet to be found. His fingerprints are not on file in either the F.B.I. or National System of Records. At this time, it remains doubtful that anyone will come forward to I.D. or claim the body... Under further analysis, the inoculant found in the broken vials was isolated and determined to be an unstable antibody of no known biological origin. After three weeks of study, the components of the serum, probably synthetic, have broken down structurally and, in this retrograde state, cannot be analyzed further. This coincides with the development of a severe and undiagnosed flu-like ailment affecting the children who were believed to be inoculated and some of the local families.... To date, none of the congregants or members of the Church of the Red Museum have contracted this illness. I suspect whoever was doing this may have been using them as a control group. The F.B.I. investigation into this case is currently at a standstill. The case remains open and unsolved. Edit

  • Allusions

    ADD ALLUSIONS
    • Mulder: I think the Spur Posse just rode into town. The Spur Posse were a group of high school boys from Lakewood, California who kept a score system to compare their sexual conquests. Edit

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