"You're a damn good-lookin' man," acknowledges Eddie, right before he cold-cocks Mulder and locks him in a basement, stealing his identity. In every case, we see Fox Mulder in a new light, through Faux Mulder's eyes, as it were. His office is a waste of taxpayers' money, his friends are geeks, and his relationship with Scully unfulfilled--or so Eddie sees it. All the wish fulfillment fantasies he projects onto Mulder--the romantic G-man image, the tough guy, the man about town--tell us more and more about the humble, unpretentious, and plain Eddie. Who is, not too surprisingly, more romantic than Mulder.
Scully, who somehow has not noticed that her witty and intelligent partner is suddenly neither as glib nor as literate as he was yesterday, is surprised to find "Mulder" at her door with a bottle of wine. In a few hours, she is poring out her heart as he pours out the last of the wine, and sits mesmerized as this Faux Mulder moves in on her. It's not hard to imagine why--unlike Mulder, Eddie Van Blundht takes the time to actually listen to Scully, as his conversation illustrates. Half the time Fox Mulder hardly listens to Scully, but Faux Mulder hangs on her every word. Being the focus of that level of attention is in itself erotic.
Eddie's can't-blame-a-guy-for-trying look at Scully after his attempt at seduction is revealed is a classic. He is completely convincing as a nebbish on the order of Wallace Shawn or Woody Allen, and his timing is flawless. At the end of "Small Potatoes", he even lets us see a bit of the envy that drives Eddie, as he tells Mulder mockingly, "You should live a little...I would, if I were you." Deep irony, coming from a man who lives his entire life as other people.
Once Fox became Faux the comedy bar was raised several notches, and Duchovny topped it with ease. Not every actor can parody his own character so thoroughly, and yet retain the audience's goodwill.
This is one of the best scripts from this season. From the subtle tease of Eddie's leaf-blowing neighbor, who bears a very strong resemblance to Mark "Luke Skywalker" Hamill, to Eddie himself, we are constantly reminded that "we are not who we are", and that things are not always as they appear on the surface. This is also one of the gentlest X-Files—no one is killed in this story.
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Episode Summary
Five babies in the same town are all born with tails and the local OB-GYN is blamed for tampering with fertilised eggs. However, Mulder discovers the culprit to be a simple man with a genetic deformity who may have the ability to alter his appearance.
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David Duchovny
Special Agent Fox Mulder
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Gillian Anderson
Special Agent Dana Scully
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Dean Haglund
Langly (voice only)
Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions
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Trivia
ADD TRIVIA- Info from Mulder's driver's license: 42-2630 Hegal Place Alexandia, VA DOB: 10-13-61 Edit
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Notes
ADD NOTES- When Scully mentions using PCR showed that the 5 children have the same parental DNA, she actually means gel electrophoresis. Polymerase Chain Reaction, PCR, basically augments a small amount of DNA into a large amount while it is the electrophoresis that does the actual separation and shows the different bands of DNA we see in one scene. Edit
- Paul McGillion, who plays one of the husbands in this episode (Fred Neiman), and Mitch Pileggi would both later go on to play characters in the show Stargate Atlantis. Paul McGillion as Carson Beckett and Mitch Pileggi as Colonol Stephen Caldwell. Although they never share a scene in this episode. Edit
- On the front page of the mock World Weekly Informer newspaper read by Mulder and Scully at the beginning of the episode, there is a headline "ETAP BIGSHOT BUSTED" beneath a mugshot. This is a reference to an earlier Season Four episode, "Unruhe," in which Etap was the brand of film sold at the drugstore. The man pictured in the mugshot is Jim Pate, an assistant prop master for the show, whose last name spelled backward is Etap. Edit
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Quotes
ADD QUOTES- Mulder: (opens the closet and stuff falls out) I'm okay! Scully: (downstairs) What? Edit
- Mulder: Well, if you're waiting for my usual theory as to what's going on, I don't have one. Scully: I do. On behalf of all the women in the world, I seriously doubt this is anything to do with consensual sex. I think it involved some form of Rohypnol rape. Edit
- Scully: Looking like someone else, Mulder, and being someone else are completely different things. Mulder: Well, maybe it's not, I mean everybody else around you would treat you like you were somebody else, and ultimately maybe it's other people's reactions to us that make us who we are. Edit
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Allusions
ADD ALLUSIONS- Mulder: Birds do it, bees do it, even educated MDs do it. This is a 'play' on the opening of Cole Porter's Let's Fall in Love Edit
- Movie Reference: Taxi Driver The scene where Eddie is looking at himself as Mulder in the mirror, is an allusion to the 1976, Robert De Niro movie. Edit
- Cultural Reference: Sweet Babboo In the scene where Eddie van Blundht flees from Mulder and Scully and takes refuge in the guise of the husband of one of the tailed babies' mothers, the pet name the husband has for his wife is "Babboo". In the Peanuts comic strip, Sally Brown calls Linus her "Sweet Babboo". Edit
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