As soon as I saw the description of this episode, I had a feeling it would go nowhere good. The killings did not at all resemble anything that has reportedly been related to the legend of the Chupacabra, and I'm not sure the depiction of undocumented immigrants was necessarily the fairest, either, but this turned out to be a better episode than previous cultural appropriation episodes like 'Teso dos Bichos' and 'Teliko' and 'Fresh Bones'.
So, this episode was plenty problematic, but the story itself really wasn't too horrible. I did enjoy the reveal near the end that the story we were watching was being narrated separately by Flakita and Gabrielle, two obviously unreliable narrators, as their stories aren't really that close to being the same.
They were clearly attempting a similar framing mechanism to 'Jose Chung's "From Outer Space"' only they decided to hold off on the reveal until very close to the end of the episode. And like in that episode, there may or may not have been aliens - though I think in this case it's much clearer that the perceived aliens were simply the hazmat crew coming to clean up the fungus.
And speaking of the fungus, wow, nightmare fuel again. Shades of 'Darkness Falls', and the Fringe episode, 'Alone in the World'. Granted, the cocoon-like structures in 'Darkness Falls' didn't seem to kill as quickly, which made them a little more horrifying. At least the fungus in this episode seemed to be pretty quickly fatal. Not that it seems a pleasant way to go, regardless.
I did like that Mulder and Scully, despite the former's belief in anything paranormal and the latter's skepticism of the same, do try to treat the immigrants fairly. They know these people are in a shitty situation already, and on top of that, something bizarre has killed one of them. And of course there's a love triangle story going on, because it just wouldn't be the same without that.
Though a lot of the time, I kind of kept expecting Mulder to return to his not-quite-Spanish, "Nojo on the rojo" from 'Little Green Men', but thankfully, he employs much better Spanish, though certainly is still very limited in his vocabulary.
So, yeah, there was a plot? I think.
It really appears that while Eladio is the cause of much of the death in this episode, it's fear and paranoia, once again, that lead everyone down a very different path. Obviously he, like anyone in a situation like his in the course of The X-Files, cannot simply state what the problem is, so it escalates and people just don't trust him. as a result.
There really isn't that much more to say about this. The resolution was a non-resolution, since Mulder and Scully may have figured out the answer, but they were never able to act on it. Eladio and Soledad escape, meaning they're free to spread the fungus in other places, which sounded really really pleasant, except that it's now deformed them both so much that no one will come near them.
That's probably for the best.
Oh, and I guess I should mention that the use of false names of famous people was both hilarious and sad. Hilarious, because, well, it just was. Every name was fake. But sad because it just further illustrates how broken our immigration system is that people feel they have to be so terrified of INS that they have to give obviously fake names.
Yeah, not so good, America.
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