Well, dear readers, we have reached the lowest point of the first season. “Gender-bender” set out to do two things. One, to sex up the show. Other than a brief glimpse of Scully in her underwear in the pilot, the series has been remarkably chaste up until this point. Two, to offer a surprise ending which would really shock the audience. It fails on both attempts.Someone with abnormally high pheromone has been picking up both men and women in several large cities in the mid-Atlantic area and literally…uh…sexing them to death. The thing is, the murderer appears to be able to assume both male and female form. There is nothing sexy about any of it. The scenes are dark, grimy, and brutal . It is true the victims are supposed to have an inability to resist his or her sexual urges on a biological level, but this is television. The murderer needs some sex appeal if s/he is supposed to seduce victims.
The story starts to go way out there when some clay on the latest victim is traced to an Amish-like group in Massachusetts called the Kindred who make their living mining the stuff. Mulder and Scully visit. There are some photographic clues the Kindred do not age. There are also clues they are some sort of demonic cult, as the agents discover them performing some kind of ritual over a member who has suffered a heart attack. But mostly, they are just walking aphrodisiacs. A good, that, because they are all quite plain.
The killer, Martin, is one of them. One day, he found some nudie magazines someone had thrown out and decided he was all about that sort of thing. So he left the Kindred to screw people to death. In the end, the Kindred catches up with Martin first. They take him away, presumably back to their community. When the Fbi arrives, they find no trace of the Kindred. Just a big crop circle. Roll credits.
Yeah, that is it. They Kindred sex crazed, shape shifting aliens posing as the Amish. If that does not explain to you why the episode is awful, nothing will. There is no foreshadowing of any kind. It looks like the writers were running out of time, so they needed an abrupt ending. But the ending comes from so far out of left fielf--pardon the pun--it feels like a crop out--er, I mean cop out.
I advise even the most dedicated of X-phile to steer clear. There is nothing worth seeing here. In fact, since Nicholas Lea makes a brief appearance before joining the cast as Alexander Krycek next season, you should skip it just so his “reappearance” does not come across as implausible.
Rating: * (out of 5)
