The X-Files season 11 episode 6 recap and review: Kitten

Skinner tangles with his traumatic past, skeletal monsters and hallucinogenic gas in “Kitten,” this week’s episode of The X-Files.

This week’s episode of The X-Files opens with oddly grainy footage, at least until you realize that we are to understand this is the past. Specifically, this is the Vietnam War. We follow a group of Marines in a helicopter. Their officer helpfully explains that they are to deliver a mysterious crate. Their helicopter goes down, but a few manage to survive and grab the cargo.

A young man in glasses, accompanied by Haley Joel Osment, carries the crate into a shelter. Said shelter also contains some terrified Vietnamese people trying to stay away from the conflict. The bespectacled Marine — who is obviously a young Walter Skinner — sees that a fellow soldier is wounded and runs to help.

In quick order, bullets fly, the crate is pierced, and a sickly yellow mist begins to fill the structure. From outside, Skinner and the wounded soldier see the gas leak out and hear screams. Unbelievably, they go towards the escalating horror. Through the smoke, we see “John” (Osment), hacking at the defenseless people in a rage. He then turns into a shaggy monster with a horse skull.

“Monsters,” John whispers as he advances upon Skinner with a hunting knife.

Skinner’s unapproved vacation

We then see Mulder and Scully walking into the office of FBI Deputy Director Kirsh. “Where is he?” Kirsh asks. Mulder acts confused, and rightfully so, but Kirsh doesn’t buy it.

“Cut the crap, agents,” Kirsh says. He’s looking for Skinner, who has gone AWOL. Kirsh also guilt trips Mulder and Scully, saying that their X-Files program has stalled Skinner’s career. In between all of the sourpuss muttering, Kirsh gives the pair their marching orders. They had better find Skinner, and fast.

First stop: Skinner’s apartment. Mulder picks the lock and promptly goes through Skinner’s pantry. Scully muses that they know so little about their superior, then helps Mulder go through their boss’ mail. They find an envelope addressed to “Lance Corporal Walter Skinner” containing — eesh — a human ear. At least Mulder has the good sense to get grossed out.

The ear is wrapped in a paper from Mud Lick, Kentucky, giving the agents their next clue. They head south, where they hope to find the owner of the ear. “You ain’t gonna find no kitten,” says a homeless man on a bench outside the morgue. Okey-doke, says Mulder.

Inside, the local sheriff clues them in. The ear belongs to the now-deceased Doc Wegweiser, the town’s cherished doctor. He went hiking and got caught in a trap utilizing punji sticks.

Wegweiser was also missing several teeth, despite good dental health. Weird, says the sheriff, because he and his wife have recently lost their teeth, too. The sheriff also mentions a strange monster that everyone’s been seeing in the woods.

The monster in the woods

Next, we see an unnamed hunter with his dog in the local woods, who seemingly encounters the shadowy monster. He falls into a bed of punji sticks. Skinner later comes along and shines a flashlight on the body.

In the daytimes, Mulder, Scully, the sheriff, and another hunter stand at the edge of the pit. The unfortunate victim is Mr. Krager, nicknamed “Banjo”. The hunter says that Banjo also spoke of seeing a strange monster. And, yes, he was losing teeth, too — just like his hunter friend.

Scully helpfully spots a nearby deer cam. When they review the footage, it clearly shows Skinner standing at the edge of the trap. Though it doesn’t show any actual murdering, the sheriff pretty reasonably wants to look for him. Scully and Mulder decide that they need to find Skinner first.

With nicknames like “Banjo” in mind, Mulder decides to return to “Trigger”, the veteran sitting outside. Still no explanation about “Kitten”, but he does mention “Eagle.” A bald Eagle, perhaps?

Meanwhile, Skinner arrives at a trailer in the woods. He spends some time looking around the ominous site, full of trash and a half-processed deer carcass. He gets into the trailer, which is surprisingly nice inside, considering the backwoods squalor stereotype outside. Just like Mulder, Skinner starts to paw through the possessions inside, including a photo album with pictures of John and himself.

Davey

Then, John appears. Well, no — it’s actually John’s son, Davey, also played by Haley Joel Osment. “Father says it’s your fault the way our life turned out,” he says. Osment deserves kudos for his dual role here, exemplifying the tragic, unhinged weirdness of father and son.

Skinner apparently testified against John, condemning him to nearly 40 years in a mental hospital. Davey monologues about his dad’s exposure to the weird, hallucinogenic yellow gas. “It was the gas using his own fear against him,” claims Skinner.

But why didn’t he say anything about that at the trial? Skinner says he was forbidden to speak about the gas. “I was following orders,” he claims. “I think about him every day. But you’ve got to understand, your dad murdered innocent people.”

Davey agrees to take Skinner to see John. Surprise — John is now a corpse in Marine dress blues, hanging from a tree. It’s thankfully brief, but still shocking.

Skinner steps forward and promptly falls into another punji stick trap. He’s wounded, but not mortally. He’s screaming for help when a car pulls up, carrying none other than Mulder and Scully. Davey hides the trap, with Skinner inside, and plays the world’s most awkward host to the two FBI agents.

Davey, apparently an aficionado of vinyl, plays a record of John Cale’s “Fear Is A Man’s Best Friend.” It’s entirely appropriate and a good selection in general. Plus, it covers up all of the yelling coming from the pit in the yard.

Here he comes... 👹 #TheXFiles pic.twitter.com/eaOSPTT1af
— The X-Files (@thexfiles) February 8, 2018

Government testing

“Father had secrets,” Davey tells them. He says that John and other soldiers were subjected to weapons testing with the yellow gas. “Imagine the power of a government that could literally control minds of millions and millions of its citizens.”

To his credit, Mulder recognizes dangerous crazy when it’s right in front of him. Also, the photo album with pictures of John and Skinner was a dead giveaway. He hustles Scully out the door.

Back on the road, the two quickly deduce that Davey’s got Skinner. Mulder then squanders all of his intelligence points by getting out of the car and stomping through the woods back to Davey’s creepy trailer. He miraculously survives when he breaks into the trailer, though he has a close brush with the creepy horse skull costume right before he hears Skinner’s cries and breaks away.

Mulder finds Skinner in the pit and gets in, intending to save Skinner. Davey appears and sprinkles gas on them. He’s about to light it all up when Scully appears and shoots him. Good thing she got frustrated waiting around (though Gillian Anderson has precious little else to do this episode).

This is followed by a short sequence wherein Davey gets away, Mulder and Scully nearly encounter another punji stick trap, and Skinner rescues them. Davey falls victim to his own trap, in gruesome fashion.

Back in the trailer, Scully is patching up Skinner while he reminisces about his time in Vietnam. He feels particular guilt over John, who was drafted. “His whole life was upended by a war that he really, truly didn’t understand… I felt like I had to protect him. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

THE X-FILES: L-R: Mitch Pileggi, Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny in the “Kitten” episode of THE X-FILES airing Wednesday, Feb. 7 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2018 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Shane Harvey/FOX

Mulder and Scully do good

That fear and shame infected his previously all-American sense of righteousness. However, Skinner says Mulder and Scully taught him to have the guts to shine a light on the awfulness. He says it was better than advancing his career.

Moreover, he says he’s now emboldened to continue the good fight for John’s sake. “I intend to do right by this man.” He wants to find the truth of what happened “no matter the cost. I owe him that. I owe myself that.”

Skinner then walks out towards a waiting ambulance. He pauses at the front steps and removes a bloody tooth from his mouth.

This isn’t the first time that The X-Files has grappled with issues like PTSD or maltreatment of veterans. Second season episode “Sleepless” follows soldiers who were subject to medical experiments (and features the always excellent Tony Todd in a feature role). “Avatar,” from late in season 3, even focuses on Skinner’s service in the Vietnam War. Both were decent enough episodes, though neither shows up in regular rewatching.

What’s the verdict?

How does “Kitten” measure up? Like last week’s “Ghouli,” it wasn’t excessively bad, but neither was it hugely exciting. It manages to gain points, however, thanks in part to good performances from Haley Joel Osment and Mitch Pileggi as Skinner. Hey, I’ve got a soft spot for our Sam the Eagle stand-in, I’ll admit.

Unfortunately, performances weren’t quite enough to make up for the lack of action. It’s not that every episode of The X-Files needs to run at full speed, but the height of the action this week was … Skinner falling in a hole. A good monster chase could have spiced things up a bit.

“Kitten” is hardly a spooky episode, beyond a few nighttime sequences and the briefest glimpses of the “monster.” It might have been more satisfying to see the monster featured a bit more, even if it was only to show off the psychedelic morphing effect seen early on in the episode.

Next: The X-Files season 11: Mother and son

After this, we’ll be taking a break until the next episode airs on Feb. 28. The episode is currently unnamed, so its contents are a bit of a mystery. Previews show plenty of menacing drones and robots, however. Will we get another one-off episode, in the vein of “Plus One” or “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat”?

Perhaps we’ll jump right back into the conspiracy drama established in “My Struggle III.” However, showrunners have mercifully promised that there will be fewer mythology-focused episodes this season. We’ll see soon enough.

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