Gender Bender

Episode summary:
Mulder and Scully investigate a suspicious death, leading them into rural Massachusetts and a pre-technology collective that calls itself The Kindred and is totally not the Amish, we swear. Sex-change, resurrection, and hot sexy pheremonal hijinks ensue, and Mulder gets kicked in the face.

Out Clubbin’

We see an eyeball!

And then a disco ball!

And then an eyeball! Again! It’s madness!

And then a whole bunch of party people!

A guy in the club is getting his robo-horoscope when some not overtly clubber-looking woman comes up to him and grabs his hand and then he’s all like instantly moony and follows her yonder.

Cut to them gettin’ it on and clasping hands in color negative. Dude declares that the sex was incredible, and then proceeds to freakin’ DIE, coughing up some gross foam stuff too. Cut to the sexy sex lady in the shadows, who doesn’t seem to be too concerned about the guy dying since she’s busy TURNING INTO A MAN.

Crime scene

Mulder scrapes some pink death vomit off the victim’s mouth while a detective explains the crime scene to Scully using the word “chippy” to describe the woman.

Sez the detective, the guy died of a blown artery, ergo “it must have been some roll in the hay.”

Scully glances at Mulder. Mulder glances at Scully. They’re both thinking the same thing:

And, okay, look:

Which, okay. 1993. We’re still in like the tail end of prime-time AIDS concern, so in that day and age I guess it was a little harder to imagine. But I also wonder if this is maybe a comment on Scully’s own lack of imagination here.

Mulder in the mean time is actively imagining having sex with the detective, the corpse, and several chippies.

Slideshow of Death

Mulder, slides at the ready, has projectioneered evidence of a whole string of these sexy-scratches-plus-death-foam killings. Scully asks if it’s a new drug on the streets, but Mulder says au contraire: the corpses are lousy with pheremones.

Also: The Kindred, a kind of Amish knock-off religious sect. They make pottery from clay from the hills around their sect — and some of that clay was on a victim! OMG!

Steveston

Our agents head out to Massachusetts and start poking around town. There’s a budding mystery of some pictures that are allegedly being reframed, which, wow, that’s got to be a low water mark in plot points so let’s see what this store has on sale instead:

A bunch of Kindred pull into town to do some shopping at Ye Olde Feed Store, conveniently enough, and Mulder goes in to try and FBIize them while Scully makes small talk with one guy who stayed out with the carriage.

The horse’s name is Alice.

She shakes dude’s hand. Dude rubs his thumb on her hand a little. She totally SPACES OUT.

Into the woods

Mulder and Scully hike up into Kindred forest and we’re treated to Mulder having trouble reading a map:

And just when they’re map-crumplingly lost, the Kindred show up out of nowhere and flank them and tell ‘em to hand over the guns. Then: a swampy walk into what passes for a rustic, pre-technology town for a nice big dinner. There’s some saying of grace, an old guy coughing, and Scully and Mr. My-Horse’s-Name-Is-Alice making eyes briefly at each other.

The agents ask some questions, and then there’s some weird folksy drama, and then old coughing guy starts choking and they totally cockblock Scully from doctorin’ him up.

Back at the Bronze

Sex machine is back in action in dude form, and hand-rubs some blond into dancing. Aaaaand scene!

Fine then, back in the woods

The Kindred give M&S lanterns and point ‘em in the direction of their car.

They stomp through the rain and Mulder basically calls the Kindred a bunch of dissembling secret-pantses. Also, he thinks they’re over a hundred years old (and don’t look it, neither), on account of some very familiar faces in some reaaallly old photographs he saw in town. Photos which were being reframed.

Scully’s theory is that they just have sex with each other a lot and hence, you know, resemblance.

Back to Ye Barne

So suspicious are our agents that they double back to the village to see what’s up–

–and find that everyone in town has wandered, muttering and cult-like, into the barn, which is now glowing a creepy red color.

Mulder and Scully peek through a gap in the wood planks of the barn wall, but a horse starts whinnying! It’s blowing their cover!

Or not?

Anyway, Mulder follows a bunch of the cultists down into the cellar of the barn while Scully hangs out and gets snuck up on by her Amish Sexy Friend.

Meanwhile, Mulder descends into a…tunnel type place? Which opens on a cave, where there is more culty muttering.

Meanwhiler, Fella leads Scully into a…bedroom type place.

It turns out the killer is named Brother Martin.

Back in the cave, the Kindred are bathing a body in what could reasonably be mistaken for Cream of Wheat.

Back in the Luv Room:

Cave! a dozen Kindred shove the be-creamowheated corpse into a hole, and leave. Mulder checks it out.

Bedroom! Dude shows off some secret contraband magazine pages he and Marty found back in the day. Marty LIKED the magazines! OMG!

Cave! Mulder is sticking his hands in the cream of wheat, now? And now he’s…pressing on a weird glowing membrane.

And then when flanked by approaching cultists, he jumps into a random hole in the wall of the cave. And overhears that they know that Scully is in the bedroom with Brother Andrew!

Also, there’s that dead body. BUT HE’S NOT DEAD AFTER ALL!

Bedroom: Scully pries into the whole Marty thing, while hunka hunka rustic love starts rubbing sex juice on her hands.

Cave! Mulder, who has snuck back out of the cave, approaches the house and whispers Scully’s name from fifty yards away, because he is an IDIOT.

Bedroom! More hand rubbing, and then some face stroking, and then some kissing and some Scully moanery and wow is it looking like there’s going to be some action here boy howdy–

–but then MULDER KICKS THE DOOR IN. They get out of the house, and, boom, thirty cult types staring them down menacingly! And then, uh, letting ‘em leave anyway.

Yet another goddam nightclub

And now Sister Martina is putting the murderous sex moves on yet another mark, who HOLY SHIT THAT’S ALEX KRYCEK.

In the mean time, Mulder and Scully catch up in the car.

Fox’s quaint accusations aside, we also find out that Mulder thinks they go through regenerative sex changes. Which makes…sense?

Oh, and Krycek is making out with Martina in his car when a cop interrupts them. Krycek starts writhing in pain, Martina decks the cop and turns into Martin and runs off, and then: hospital time.

Nice.

Scully thinks it’s just a dude who crossdresses. How banal.

Martina monologues to YET ANOTHER corpse in a bed, mentioning that “the day will come” and “they won’t leave without me”.

And then Mulder and Scully kick in the door of the apartment; Scully finds the body; Martina clocks Scully and bolts; and Mulder gives chase. Martina clocks MULDER.

And then we get what was probably a really impressive morph-from-woman-to-man effect in 1993, and Martin proceeds to KICK Mulder in the face for good measure and then bolts again. Scully tags in and following a hot tip from her partner–

–gives chase in turn. She ends up out in an alley, where she confronts Martin in his underwear, and she shouts:

While we get this visual:

And then, hey, a whole bunch of Kindred show up out of nowhere, including Prince Charming himself, who stares down gun-pointin’ Scully before KNOCKING THE GUN out of her hand and BACKHANDING HER ACROSS THE FACE.

And the Kindred run off and disappear. Literally. Like fading away.

Back to the farm

So everybody heads back up to the village, but nobody is there! And the cellar that Mulder was spelunking? Sealed up at the entrance! But an FBI agent found something in the hay field!

And Scully is all like

And what’s that in the hay field? Why, it’s a–