The agents descend into a dilapidated, underground lair-pausing a moment to pull out their flashlights and proffer some fan service to the legions of press photos built around X-shaped beams of light-to confront a Banksy-esque street artist who admits he basically conjured the Lurch-sized creature from the palpable ire and outrage he felt in watching so many of PhiladelphiaвЂ™s homeless population treated like garbage. Which is when the episodeвЂ™s investigation kicks into high gear, rushing to some sort of conclusion to essentially get the subplot out of the way. So the partners return to Philadelphia where Scully, as always, is impressively on point under pressure, and where MulderвЂ™s eased back on the smarmy quips, sobered by all the sad shit happening to his best friend.

In shock, and pretty shaken over her motherвЂ™s last words referencing the child she and Mulder gave up, Scully insists they go back to work. She wakes up briefly before flatlining, grabbing MulderвЂ™s hand and tenderly proclaiming, вЂњMy son is named William too.вЂќ When Charlie finally does call, itвЂ™s right before ScullyвЂ™s mom passes, though her last words are to Mulder, who has joined Scully in the hospital. While Mulder keeps the investigation going, connecting more murders to a municipal redistribution of the CityвЂ™s homeless in order to make way for gentrified development, Scully struggles to convince her estranged brother Charlie to reconnect with their mother, at least over the phone: Her mother, Scully learns, only called out for Charlie before she slipped into a coma. Considering that ScullyвЂ™s father died in the first season (during the episode вЂњBeyond the Sea,вЂќ which, if youвЂ™re looking for X-Files to make you cry, start there) and her sister was killed by Alex Krycek in вЂњThe Blessing Way,вЂќ the fates of ScullyвЂ™s family members have always served as a natural foil to her supernatural occupation. This means some overbearing one-liners on MulderвЂ™s behalf, making light of mangled corpses as heвЂ™s wont to do-but it also means the show has yet another chance to go full-on gross, as director Morgan shoots a Mortal Kombat-style decapitation in gorgeous silhouette, pushing, as the show has so many times in the past, the boundaries of taste and what passes for acceptable on popular network TV.Д«efore Scully can get deep into the investigation, though, her brother calls to tell her that her motherвЂ™s (Sheila Larken, reprising her role) had a heart attack. This week, after an especially gruesome cold open in which a federal HUD employee (Alessandro Juliani: Gaeta from Battlestar Galactica!) in Philadelphia is ripped limb from limb by a giant Lurch-like monstrosity, Mulder and Scully are assigned to figure out what happened. It works, and itвЂ™s some gut-punching, tearjerking stuff, but thereвЂ™s something unbalanced in the fact that a case about how five people are mysteriously torn to pieces only serves to teach Scully a lesson about parenthood. Whereas Glen MorganвЂ™s regular partner James Wong used вЂњFounderвЂ™s MutationвЂќ to pry into ScullyвЂ™s and MulderвЂ™s regrets regarding their giving up their son William for adoption-while a case about government genetic experimentation wound down to a literal eye-roll-Morgan here does pretty much the same, but amps up the emotional ante to a degree this season hasnвЂ™t yet reached.

вЂњHome AgainвЂќ is one of those X-Files episodes where the actual weirdo case Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate is little more than set dressing for the much more pressing, much more metaphysical quandaries taking over their plain-clothes realities.

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