The X-Files Recap With Spoilers: Home Again
The episode opens with city officials in Philadelphia clearing homeless people out of the city, [...]
The episode opens with city officials in Philadelphia clearing homeless people out of the city, with the man in charge of the operation telling those being displaced that they had plenty of warning, and that their belongings can be collected at the organization offices the next day.
Arriving at the office, he warns those huddled around the building that their street is next.
There's a sound, and the homeless in the area take cover. A garbage truck rumbles down the road and a hulking figure climbs out.
Inside, the man — who identifies himself as Cutler — is talking on his cell phone when suddenly the lights go out. He sees a shadow outside his office door, draws a gun, and calls 911 for help. Moments later, though, the door simply explodes open and the hulking figure grabs Cutler, rips him into pieces, and then exits the building, crawling into the back of the waiting garbage truck, which then drives away.
Later, a forensics team is looking over Cutler's office when Scully and Mulder arrive. A local detective admits he called them but is a bit territorial. While they're collecting evidence, Scully gets a phone call: her mother has had a heart attack and is in the hospital. She leaves for DC, Mulder staying behind to handle the crime scene.
Mulder sees that the security camera near Cutler's office door has been turned around. He and the Detective — named Dross — look back at security footage, where the cameras seem to be knocked out of position just moments before the killer passed each one.
Mulder also sees in security footage that moments before Cutler's murder, a billboard outside was blank. Now, there's graffiti, which the audience can see is a monochrome image of a man who looks like the hulking man who crawled out of the garbage truck. Mulder wonders whether the artist saw anything.
On his way out of the building, Mulder steps on a Band-Aid — a truly gross one, which sticks to his shoe. He peels it off with napkins and keeps it for evidence.
At the hospital, Scully learns that her mother has been unconscious almost since she arrived, except for asking repeatedly for her estranged brother, Charlie. Scully thinks it doesn't make any sense that her mother wouldn't have asked for anyone but Charlie, but the nurse confirms it. Scully talks to her mother, saying that she's been where she is, and she knows her mother can see her late father and sister, but that she doesn't want to lose her mom yet.
Outside the federal building, Mulder sees a pair of local politicians arguing; Daryl Landry is one of Cutler's co-workers, and Nancy Huff is President of the local school board. She objects to the homeless being relocated to an old hospital in her district.
Mulder tells each of the politicians that he hears them speaking for themselves, but who speaks for the homeless? One of the homeless people speaks up to say the "Band-Aid nose man" does," and indicates the billboard, the piece of which with art on it is now gone.
At the hospital, Scully remembers when Mulder came and visited her while she was comatose. She looks on the bedside table next to her mother and finds a necklace she doesn't recognize. While she's pondering it, she gets a call from her brother in Germany, telling him to hurry there because she can't guarantee how long her mother will survive. She tells him that she'll keep their mother on life support, that they talked about it after her own experience in the coma and that her mother's advance directive indicates they should do everything they can to keep her alive.
At the crime lab, a test has been run on the Band-Aid, and it didn't pick up anything: there's no organic or inorganic material on the Band-Aid, even though it's clearly got something on it.
At the hospital, Scully asks the nurse about medications, and the nurse tells her that the advance directive was modified last year and says not to keep her mother alive if she's unconscious or requires a machine to breathe.
In a warehouse, a pair of men are looking at the stolen piece of graffiti, and trying to figure out how they're going to arrange a sale. Their warehouse is full of other pieces of art, as well. When one man turns his back for a second, the art disappears off the piece of billboard. He disappears around th back of it looking to see what happened, and when the other man comes to see him, both of them are attacked and killed by the huge man previously depicted in the art. Afterwards, he carries one of the bodies outside to a waiting garbage truck.
At the hospital, the nurse tells Scully that they have to remove her mother's breathing apparatus. Scully gets a call from Mulder and answers it; he's there, waiting outside the ICU.
Later, a bus pulls up outside the federal building. Huff has an injunction telling Landry that his homeless people will be turned away if they show up at the hospital.
At the hospital, Mulder tells Scully that he's looking for an artist who calls himself "Trash Man," and he would stay, but he thinks the killer will kill again.
Scully tells Mulder that her mother asked for Charlie, which surprises him. She doesn't understand why she would ask for him, why she would change her living will without telling her, and what the necklace is that her mother was wearing.
In the next room, the doctors and nurses are taking the tube out of her mother's throat. Scully says she doesn't even care about the questions she's been asking, she just wants to talk to her mother again.
Elsewhere, Huff arrives at her huge home and, after eating a little bit, gets a call…but there's nothing there when she looks at her phone. Outside, a garbage truck pulls over to the curb and the hulking figure gets out and starts toward her home. He's ugly, and has a Band-Aid on his nose. Inside her home, she finds puddles of water and maggots on her stairs — and waiting for her at the top is the man. She tries to fight him off, but ultimately he is ahead of her at every turn. He pulls her apart and puts her head in her trash compactor, then crawls back into his waiting garbage truck.
At the hospital, Mulder and Scully are waiting near her mother's bed. Scully asks whether, back in the day, they ever came across the ability to just wish somebody back to life. Mulder says he did it, with Scully.
Scully gets a call from Charlie, and asks him to talk to their mother. She puts him on the speaker phone and her mother regains consciousness. She looks at Mulder and, when he speaks to her, she holds his hand and says "My son is named William, too," then she dies.
Scully starts to panic when the gurney comes, trying to turn the doctors away, but Mulder reminds her that her mother is an organ donor and they need her quickly. Scully breaks down crying, because her mother's last words were about the child she and Mulder gave away.
Gathering herself, she tells Mulder they need to go work — right now.
At the crime lab, the CSI tells Mulder that he's narrowed down the type of paint used in the graffiti (the signature was still there, after all), and they find the one store in the poor part of Philly that sells this high-end paint. They follow a man who buys a lot of it to a building where he's hiding out and after he pulls a gun on them and they take him down, they tell him they're looking for the trash man. He walks them to the stairwell, where there's no power, and then runs from them in the dark. They elect to go after Trash Man instead of following the man who led them there, and descend into the basement, where they see creepy rooms, strange figures moving back and forth in the darkness and, finally, a man huddled in a corner hiding from them. In the room is a clay statue of the Band-Aid Nose Man.
The Trash Man tells Scully and Mulder that he invented the Band-And man to give the homeless a voice…but then the man became sentient somehow. While he's talking about the creative process, Scully remembers giving birth to William, and ultimately remembers making the choice to give the baby up. He claims he always just meant to scare the people who would hurt the homeless, but the Band-Aid Nose Man believes he's supposed to kill them. Scully tells him that he's responsible, if he really believes all of that.
Trash Man tells the pair that Landry got the injunction lifted, and that he's going to be taking the homeless to the abandoned hospital tonight.
As Landry starts loading the homeless into the hospital, Landry heads toward his office, where he's overcome with a smell. The homeless, previously lingering in the hallways, all head into their rooms. Landry continues down the hall way and is assaulted first by the smell and then by the Band-Aid Nose Man, who dismembers him. When Scully and Mulder find the body, they see there was no way the killer could have got out of the room without passing them…but no one is there, and a dirty Band-Aid sits on the floor near Landry's body.
Later, the Trash Man leaves his home base, the clay on his makeshift Golem's face now transformed into a giant smiley face.
At the seaside, sitting with Mulder and her mother's urn, she says she understands why her mother asked for Charlie: that she just wanted once before she moved on to know he would be okay. That's why she said what she did about William, to make sure they know he's okay even though they can't see him. She's devastated that she'll never know if he's okay, and will never know that he wasn't hurt by them leaving him, even though she believes that one day even Fox will get his answers.
