Pine bluff variant x files wiki

Scully is frustrated that Haley escaped and questions Mulder as to how it happened, but he dodges her queries. Later, at a counter-terrorism task force led by Skinner and U. At this meeting, Scully also reveals that the man killed in the park was exposed to some sort of biological agent. Later, Scully follows Mulder and sees him meeting with Haley. When she tries to pursue them, she is surrounded by government agents and brought before Skinner and Leamus, who inform her that Mulder is infiltrating the group as an undercover agent.

Mulder is taken to the New Spartans' secluded hideout, where Haley accuses him of being a government mole. Mulder is tortured until he claims that the group has been infiltrated by a different spy.

Elsewhere, Bremer enters a movie theater in Middlefield, Ohio , and exposes its patrons to the biological agent, killing everyone inside. Investigating the scene, Scully becomes confused as to how the contagion was spread, as it is not airborne. Later, Scully meets Mulder at his apartment, where, unbeknownst to them, their conversation about the ongoing mission is recorded by Bremer. Meanwhile, Scully discovers that the biological weapon was engineered by the U.

She concludes that Haley wants to break into the bank, not to steal money, but rather to contaminate the money, thereby spreading it to millions of people across the country.

She also concludes that the entire scheme was a trap intended to kill Mulder. After the fake robbery , Bremer accuses Mulder of being the mole; Haley, however, counters that Bremer is the real mole.

To further his argument, Bremer plays back the tape of Mulder and Scully that he had made earlier. With power now consolidated, Bremer gives Haley a chance to peacefully leave the group by giving him a set of car keys.

Haley agrees to these terms and takes the key. Bremer, along with a muscleman from the group, takes Mulder into a desolate area, where it is implied he will be killed. However, Bremer instead kills the muscleman and lets Mulder go, telling him there's a car waiting for him over the ridge.

Mulder arrives at the bank to find that Scully has managed to have it quarantined , and the contaminated money taken away. They also confront Leamus, suggesting that this entire case was a covert government bioweapons test.

Leamus responds that it is part of his job to protect the public from the truth. In the final scene, Haley is revealed to have been killed by the contaminated car keys. This story appealed to him, and he later said: "It always seemed to fit to me—putting Mulder in a situation [where we] don't know his allegiance. In reality, he has gone undercover to infiltrate a terrorist organization that has gotten its hands on a deadly biological weapon. Its purpose: to catch Jacob Haley, a militia group member wanted on domestic terrorism charges.

As Skinner and Scully monitor events from a surveillance van, Mulder and several other undercover agents slowly close in on their suspect, who meets with a Goateed Man sitting on a park bench. Haley hands the Goatee Man an envelope, then suddenly runs off. Mulder gives chase, unaware that the skin on Goatee Man's face and hands is slowly being eaten away.

Scully jumps from the van, intending to warn her partner. But when she reaches Mulder, she is astounded to discover that the suspect eluded capture. Scully voices her concerns to her partner, looking for some explanation as to why he allowed Haley to escape. But Mulder sidesteps the issue.

Shortly thereafter, the agents attend a meeting of a counter-terrorism council, which is headed by Skinner and U. Attorney Leamus. During the meeting, Scully states that the Goatee Man was killed by some form of bioweapon. Skinner then shows those in attendance a photo of August Bremer, the militia group's mastermind. He notes that Bremer and Haley are reportedly vying for control.

Her curiosity piqued, Scully begins surveilling her partner's movements from afar. Mulder rents a room at a motel, where he has a heated telephone conversation with Haley, one that implies the pair are working together. Shortly thereafter, a BMW rolls into the motel parking lot, and Mulder climbs in. Scully tails the car, but her progress is halted when two sedans force her to stop.

Four large men then approach her vehicle. Scully is escorted to a government building where, to her surprise, she is met by Skinner and Leamus. They explain that Mulder is participating in a deep cover assignment, the existence of which is known only to Skinner and Leamus.

Someone in the militia group reached out to Mulder after he voiced his opinions about governmental conspiracies during a UFO conference. The BMW transports Mulder to a remote farmhouse.

There, Mulder is questioned by Haley, who accuses him of spying on the group. When Mulder fails to give acceptable answers, a Skin-Head Man pushes back on his finger, causing Mulder to scream in pain. The torture session continues until Mulder suggests a mole exists within the group. Suddenly, the Skin-Head man pulls back on the finger, snapping it like a piece of celery. When Mulder passes out, Haley turns to him and says, "I believe you. There is also another nice little bit of thematic continuity running through The Pine Bluff Variant.

Mulder and Scully have spent extended sections of the fifth season separated from one another. More than ever, The X-Files feels like two separate shows that occasionally overlap and intersect.

It began with Scully declining to accompany Mulder to the dig in Gethsemane , and only built through the sections of Redux I and Redux II that confined Scully to a hospital as Mulder delved deeper and deeper into the conspiracy.

It was a pattern the would recur in Emily. It seemed like Mulder and Scully spent more and more time apart over the course of the season. Scully went on vacation away from Mulder in Christmas Carol and Chinga.

Scully began her own investigation into a mysterious case without Mulder in All Souls. Bad Blood emphasised their differences. It seemed like the episodes that featured Mulder and Scully working well as a team — like Detour — were relatively few and far between during the fifth season.

There are, of course, production realities at play here. Instead, it seems like David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were dealing with their own commitments and obligations. Some of those commitments involved work on post-production of Fight the Future , while other commitments took them outside the show. After all, Fight the Future would mine much dramatic gold from the idea of breaking up Mulder and Scully — not at the behest of either agent or as a result of simmering long-term differences, but because the FBI no longer wanted them together.

When the sixth season brought Mulder and Scully back without any link to the X-files, their relationship remained tighter than ever. There was no acknowledgement of any rift or distance between the two characters over the previous year or so. At a convention, writer Vince Gilligan was explicitly asked about the perception of a growing rift between Mulder and Scully over the course of the fifth season :. Uhh… That is not anything conscious on our part.

You know, sometimes, with the logistics of doing a tv show and also doing a movie just about simultaneously, sometimes its very hard for the show to get two stars, to schedule their time such that they can do the work in the week they need them to do. Sometimes, frankly, we have to endeavor to schedule one scene with just Mulder or just Scully. We do that as little as possible because, honestly, who wants to see Mulder and Scully together?

It should be noted that this is not the first time that fandom has perceived such a rift between the two lead characters. Examining the fan message boards during the third season, Kumail Nanjiani found similar issues. However, even though the perceived rift might not have been planned from the outset, the last two stand-alones of the fifth season capitalise on the idea quite well. The opening act of The Pine Bluff Variant is centred on the idea that Scully might not be able to trust Mulder as much as she had thought.

It is a set-up that could easily seem contrived and fake. After all, Mulder and Scully have been through a lot together. If Scully can still trust Mulder after his paranoid breakdown and subsequent accusations of betrayal in Anasazi , they are pretty solid. However, the fact that the two characters seem to have spent more and more time apart over the season helps to sell the idea that Scully could be locked out of this secret.

On the commentary, John Shiban acknowledges that it was fun to play with that classic dynamic in a cheeky and subversive way. As much as The Pine Bluff Variant might tease difficulties in the relationship between Mulder and Scully, the episode knows how far it can push things.

Scully is brought into the loop quite quickly, with that paranoia not overstaying its welcome or stretched beyond breaking point. The reveal that August Bremer is working for the Central Intelligence Agency is a brutal and shocking twist that really pulls the rug out from the audience — but it does leave a few unanswered questions.

There are a few suggestions scattered throughout the episode that things are not as they might seem. Then again, Skinner suggests to Scully that some of the bodies have been accurately identified. Similarly, there are some questions about just how long it takes the weapon to work.

The teaser suggests that the bacteria works very quickly — it is only a few moments before Jacob Haley claims his first victim. At the end of the episode, it seems to take a little while longer — Haley manages to drive a reasonable distance before succumbing to the effects of the bacteria. However, this relatively short incubation period does raise questions about how effective the plan to put it on money might be; if contact with a note only takes a few minutes to kill, how far can it spread?

The Pine Bluff Variant almost works best as a collection of tense scenes tied together by a common plot. The bank robbery sequence is suitably nail-biting, while there is something very effective about Scully being surrounded by black unmarked cars. David Duchovny does great as Mulder, presenting a character who is very clearly dancing on the edge of a razor blade.

On the commentary, John Shiban points out just how much Duchovny brings to the role:. David actually did a lot of that over the years. He came up with some great Mulder lines that we would use.

As played by Duchovny, Mulder seems like a character who would be interesting in just about any context. Duchovny does have a rare charm as a television leading man, which explains why he has worked so consistently in the medium. After five years, it is very easy to take the skill and care that goes into producing an episode of The X-Files for granted.

After all, this is a well-honed machine at this point. However, the production on The Pine Bluff Variant is absolutely superb. In particular, Mark Snow provides a deliciously understated score to the episode. The soundtrack would not seem out of place on one of the classic conspiracy thrillers that inspired the episode, a very solemn and stately and tense affair that helps to ramp up the tension.

The Pine Bluff Variant is a beautiful piece of work, and a demonstration of just how perfectly everything can come together. It proves that — even five years into its run — The X-Files can really be anything that it wants to be.

More than that, it can probably be whatever it wants to be rather well. You might be interested in our other reviews of the fifth season of The X-Files :. Filed under: The X-Files Tagged: Authority , biolgical weapons , biological warfare , cinemas , conspiracy , conspiracy thriller , david duchovny , experiments , Government , john shiban , paranoia , pine bluff variant , Rob Bowman , Sam Anderson , the pine bluff variant , the x-files , theatres , uncertainty.

Ok so it kills people on the next movies session not the one when he enters the theater. Thanks for the answer man. You are commenting using your WordPress.