It's 'Red Museum' Part II. Well, not exactly, but close enough.
'Our Town' is about isolation and secret keeping, and oh yeah, freaking cannibalism. And a woman being killed and then sinking into a vat of half-processed chicken bits. Because that's something I've always wanted to see.
Chicken? Chicken! Chicken chicken chicken chicken. Chicken chicken. CHICKEN chicken CHICKEN chicken chicken!
OK, that's quite enough of that. But there are an awful lot of chickens in this episode. An AWFUL awful lot. Jesus. Chickens everywhere.
Chicken is a really funny word.
This is a really not funny episode. We initially got the familiar themes of tainted meat infecting the population of a small town, just like in 'Red Museum', but then it developed into something far more sinister. And apparently something not related chicken. In fact, the chickens are pretty much a red herring, since the USDA determines at the end that they weren't actually contaminated. Because they were actually eating people directly, rather than eating chicken meat mixed with human meat. Which is actually worse. Because cannibalism.
Cannibalism and a really creepy sheriff. Played by an actor who apparently plays a lot of law enforcement and authority figures. And Roger Burkle on Angel. I mean, he starts out OK, all friendly and southern and charming, then progresses throughout the episode into a malicious villain. Well, the whole town, really.
The first hint is his immediate willingness to search the river for bodies as soon as Mulder suggests bringing in more FBI people to help searching. Clearly he is interested in keeping outside authorities out as much as possible. He's in on the conspiracy with Mr Chaco, and tries to behead Scully. I do not understand how all the shit that's happened to Scully this season has not caused her to be completely traumatised for life. Just the thought alone of being tied up on the chopping block like that would be horrifying enough. Never mind the other three times she's been kidnapped, or having to watch someone else get beheaded.
I'm assuming all the residents of the town knew what they were eating, and it wasn't some big secret like, "Oh, hey, eat this, it's good for you. It's got MAGIC in it!" It seems they were all in on it. I'm not really sure if that makes it better or worse. I guess I can sort of accept the idea that there might be one or maybe two sick individuals who think eating people is a good idea and decide to force it on unsuspecting residents of the town? But everyone? I suppose it worked so well at keeping them young that most of them would have bought into it without too much consideration. And anyone who disagreed would surely be disposed of quickly.
Gross.
There are also some truly unfortunate cultural implications in this episode, mostly because of where Chaco supposedly acquired both his taste for human flesh and the belief that it would extend his life beyond what would normally be expected. (Except that actually worked, which is bad enough in itself.)
The tension and darkness otherwise seem pretty typical of some of the more frightening episodes of The X-Files, though I realised after watching this that there's only one more episode left in the season, so it's perhaps a bit of a letdown that they didn't try to build to the finale a little more.
Either way, that finale is coming up next, and I'm pretty excited about it.
Chicken.
No comments:
Post a Comment