Thanks a lot, X-Files, you've now made me wonder if my entire life is a hallucination while I'm slowly being digested by a giant fungal colony.
Holy crap was this episode freaky. I don't know what's real any more. Well, I'm pretty sure the scene where Mulder introduced Scully to the alien in his bedroom (and wow, does that sound dirty) didn't actually happen.
Once I realised we were mostly seeing Mulder's and Scully's hallucinations, it occurred to me that we didn't really know where the story started. What if we were thrown in at the very beginning of the episode with them already hallucinating? What if the couple never even existed?
I think by the end it's pretty well confirmed that Mulder and Scully did discuss the case at the FBI and they did travel to North Carolina, which is when all hell broke loose. The rest I'm a little unclear on, because it's not entirely obvious when Mulder experienced his initial reality shift. Was it the moment he released the spores or was there a time when he was still lucid after that?
The episode was slightly deconstructive, too, which I enjoyed. When Mulder asked Scully how often he'd been right, I'd say that could be read as a kind of lampshading response to criticism that he so often did turn out to be right and that Scully's skepticism frequently led down a dead-end path. The show has never really been fair to Scully in that regard. I think there are definitely episodes where it would be better to have Mulder have some wild theory that's just completely off the rails and let Scully's scientific inquiry actually irrefutably prove him wrong.
Well, they were both wrong here. No ritual murders and no aliens, but something far worse and far more terrifying than either.
'Field Trip', whose title I figured out the real meaning of once I realised what was happening in the episode, is certainly reminiscent of many other episodes in various science fiction and fantasy shows. Pretty much anything with a recurring dream sequence or hallucination. But this one did it very well.
The misdirection wasn't at all hackish in that I totally fell for it every time and didn't feel like I was being jerked around by the writers. It added a ton of tension to the episode, and once I realised both Mulder and Scully had been captured by the fungus, I wondered how the hell they were going to be able to escape.
But I also totally fell for the alien plot at first. I thought it was a breakthrough revelation in the series, and then it turned out to be completely not what I expected. The setup was brilliant. The repeated lines by different characters, saying the same thing word-for-word, were really the first major clue that something was off. That and everything being covered in yellow goo. Then it got unnerving fast.
And even realising they were hallucinating didn't save them. Mulder was right - what chemical could possibly lose its effectiveness just because a person under its effects realises it? Yes, I suppose if you're intentionally taking hallucinogenic drugs and become aware of the fact that you are tripping, it may become easier to separate the hallucinations from reality, but it doesn't stop until the drug wears off. Obviously in the case of this episode, the intent is that the hallucinations will continue to be effective until the victims are completely digested.
It's horrifying enough to think about the idea of being slowly digested by fungus. It's even worse - or I don't know, maybe it's actually better - to be completely unaware of it and think everything is basically fine because you're hallucinating an entire alternate reality. I think I'd actually prefer that. Actually being aware of being hopelessly trapped while being eaten away by digestive acid seems like it would be scarier than everything seeming basically normal (well, and maybe a bit strange) and then suddenly ceasing to exist.
Obviously I hope never to experience either.
There's one major plot hole here, though, which is how the hell did Skinner manage to rescue them? How could he have possibly known to protect himself and everyone from the hallucinogen when there was no way for anyone to report to him what would have happened? I assume that Mulder and Scully just went missing and they sent a search party, but without any other knowledge, that entire search party would come in contact with the mushrooms, too, and suffer a similar fate.
Not that I'm unhappy that Mulder and Scully were saved by the end, assuming they even were. I mean, this calls into question the reality of the entire rest of the series, doesn't it? Remember that Buffy episode, 'Normal Again'? If it weren't for the ending, it would be pretty clear what happened, but with that thirty second addition, it's suddenly not obvious any more.
What if the entire series has been a hallucination? I should have saved this discussion for now, having already covered much of the same ground in 'Milagro'.
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