The X-Files/Recap/S01/E24 The Erlenmeyer Flask

n Ardis, Maryland, a high-speed police chase unfolds at a waterfront. The driver of the car, Dr. William Secare, is cornered by officers but fights them off with surprising ease. Secare is shot as he runs up a gangplank and leaps off a ship into the water. The police fail to locate him but discover that his blood is green.

Soon afterwards, Deep Throat approaches Fox Mulder with Secare's case, saying he is of major importance to revealing the truth. When investigating the case, Mulder and Dana Scully visit Dr. Terrance Berube (Ken Kramer), a scientist working in Gaithersburg, Maryland, whose car was being driven by Secare. That night, Deep Throat meets a second time with Mulder and insists he continue, despite Mulder's uncertainty on what he should be looking for. That night, Berube is confronted by the "Crew Cut Man", who kills him and makes the death look like a suicide.

While investigating the crime scene, Mulder finds an Erlenmeyer flask labeled "Purity Control". Scully takes the flask to Georgetown University, where Dr. Anne Carpenter (Anne De Salvo) helps her analyze its contents. Meanwhile, Mulder heads to Berube's home and finds keys for a storage facility. Secare calls Berube's home office and Mulder answers, pretending to be Berube. Secare tells whom he believes to be Berube that he's been in the water for three days, and is hurt. Meanwhile, the Crew Cut Man eavesdrops on the conversation. Secare collapses due to blood loss before he can tell Mulder where he is. While he is driven away in an ambulance, a poisonous gas is emitted from Secare's body when the paramedics perform a needle decompression. Secare recovers and flees from the ambulance.

Mulder arrives at the storage facility and finds five men suspended in tanks, as well as a sixth empty tank. Mulder is pursued when he leaves the facility but escapes. Carpenter reveals that the "Purity Control" flask contains a sample of bacteria that doesn't exist anywhere in nature and can only be described as extraterrestrial. Upon revisiting the storage facility the next day with Scully, Mulder discovers the room to be completely empty. Deep Throat arrives, revealing that Berube was experimenting on humans with extraterrestrial viruses. Six terminally ill volunteers were experimented on, and all had begun recovering. When it was ordered that they be destroyed, Berube helped Secare escape.

Scully learns that Carpenter and her entire family have been killed in an automobile accident. Mulder returns to Berube's home and finds Secare in the attic. Secare is shot to death by the Crew Cut Man, and Mulder passes out from exposure to the gas escaping from Secare's wound and is captured. Deep Throat meets Scully outside of Mulder's apartment and says that he may be able to make a deal with Mulder's captors. He gives Scully the credentials necessary to enter the High Containment Facility at Fort Marlene, where Scully finds an alien fetus contained within liquid nitrogen. At an exchange on a freeway overpass, Deep Throat presents the fetus to the Crew Cut Man, who shoots him seconds later. Mulder is thrown out of the Crew Cut Man's van as he drives off. Scully tends to Deep Throat, whose last words before dying are, "Trust no one".

Several weeks later, a despondent Mulder calls Scully to inform her that the X-Files have been shut down. Meanwhile, in a scene mirroring the conclusion to the pilot, the Smoking Man stores the alien fetus in the massive evidence room within the Pentagon.


 * Captain Obvious: A microbiology expert explains the rudiments of genetics — material taught in any high school's freshman biology class — to Agent Scully, a fully qualified doctor.
 * An early case of mansplaining?


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