Irresistible (The X-Files)

In St. Paul, Minnesota, a funeral is held for a young girl. The ceremony is observed by Donnie Pfaster, the eerie assistant director for the funeral home. Later that night, as the girl's body is being stored for burial the following day, Pfaster's boss finds him cutting off the corpse's hair. Pfaster is promptly fired.

Some time later, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are summoned to Minneapolis by Moe Bocks, an FBI field agent who is investigating the exhumation and desecration of a body in a local cemetery. Mulder discounts Bocks' theory that this act is a variation of extraterrestrial cattle mutilation, and suggests they search for a human culprit. Scully is disturbed at the sight of the disheveled corpse. Two more bodies are found exhumed, with their hair cut and fingernails removed. Mulder develops a psychological profile of the criminal, believing him to be an escalating "death fetishist" who may resort to murder to satisfy his desires. Scully keeps her discomfort with the case to herself, and writes up a field report on necrophilia.

Pfaster, who is behind the exhumations, proves Mulder's prediction correct when he brings a prostitute to his apartment. When the prostitute discovers a collection of funerary wreaths in Pfaster's bedroom, he kills her and removes her fingers. Later, Pfaster—having been hired as a frozen food delivery man—delivers to a low-security house of a woman with teenage daughters. In the bathroom, he steals some discarded hair from a brush found in the trashcan. Later, Pfaster attends a night class at a community college, where a female classmate defends herself after he makes threatening advances. He is arrested and is placed in a jail cell across from a suspect being interrogated for Pfaster's crimes by Mulder, Scully, and Bocks. Pfaster shows interest in Scully, and learns her name from the interrogated suspect. Pfaster is later released as his charges are dropped.

Scully is deeply troubled by Pfaster's crimes, and has unsettling dreams and hallucinations about the case. In Washington, she has a counseling session with a social worker, during which she shares her anxiety about the investigation. After the session, Scully learns that someone from Minnesota had called for her. When she contacts Mulder, she learns that neither he nor Bocks made the call. Tracing a fingerprint to Pfaster from his arrest, Bocks and Mulder raid his apartment, finding one of the prostitute's fingers in his refrigerator. Meanwhile, after Scully arrives in Minneapolis, Pfaster forces her car off the road. He kidnaps Scully and takes her to his late mother's abandoned house. He ties and gags Scully, and keeps her in a dark closet.

Mulder and Bocks discover that Pfaster's mother had owned a car which matches paint found on Scully's abandoned car, tracking down her former residence. Meanwhile, Scully escapes from Pfaster as he prepares a cold bath for her, resulting in a pursuit through the house. Scully and Pfaster have a struggle that sends them falling down a staircase onto the foyer, where a task force led by Mulder and Bocks breaks in moments later and apprehends Pfaster. Scully initially insists that she is okay, but then breaks down and cries in Mulder's arms. In a voice-over narration, Mulder traces Pfaster's pathology to his childhood, when he was raised in a family of four older sisters. Mulder also reflects on Pfaster's nature and the nature of evil in general.[1][2]

The episode's initial script where Pfaster was a necrophiliac was rejected by the Fox Broadcasting Company for being "unacceptable for broadcast standards".[3] As series creator Chris Carter described it, "When I handed the script in, it was really for a necrophiliac episode, and that just didn't fly. You cannot do the combination of sex and death on network television."[4] Carter was forced to tone down the script by changing Pfaster from a necrophiliac to a death fetishist and diminishing Pfaster's sexual obsession.[3] He considered that the sexual content was "implied and understood by audiences", and that Pfaster still resulted in a creepy character, particularly his "creepy arrogance" in using shampoo on the hair of his victims.[5] The episode's original title was "Fascination".[6]

The episode is one of the few in the series that has no paranormal elements to it.[3] Carter said of the episode's conception, "My first chance to work with David Nutter in a long time, and I wanted to give him something he could sink his teeth into. It's a little bit different for us. It doesn't really have a paranormal aspect, except for Scully's perceptions of her deepest fears. I felt that I had to figure out what she is most afraid of, and she is most afraid of those things that most of us are afraid of. The idea of dying at the hands of someone—creature or not—and she is helpless to do anything about it. I thought it was a very good way to explore Scully's character."[7] The scene where Dana Scully imagines Pfaster appearing as a devil was influenced by real-life accounts, as described by Carter: "There are reports of people who had been under the spell of Jeffrey Dahmer, who actually claimed that he shape-shifted during those hours when they were held hostage; that his image actually changed."[4] Nutter said "In many ways, Chris wanted to sell the idea that, as established in Mulder's closing dialogue in the show, not all terror comes from the paranormal. It could come from the person next door."[7]

Carter said of the casting of Nick Chinlund as Pfaster, "I thought it was a wonderfully creepy villain. The casting of that show was very difficult. We saw many actors, but there was a quality I was looking for and I couldn't put a name on that quality. I finally figured out what it was when Nick came in and he had a kind of androgynous quality that worked. I thought he looked like Joe College, but he could scare the hell out of you."[7] Producer Glen Morgan said Chinlund's performance was outstanding.[7] Nutter stated "Nick Chinlund was wonderful to work with. The guy was like putty in my hands. He was great. If you're looking for someone to underline the weirdness and strangeness of the character, he did that."[7]

Nutter said of the episode "I really worked hard to make it a special show, because I thought it was special. It was Gillian's post-traumatic stress episode, because she had not really had the opportunity to vent her feelings about the whole Duane Barry situation. This was an opportunity to sit back and let all that happen."[7] Carter particularly liked the scene where a clearly disturbed Scully hugs Mulder, claiming it was a "tender moment" between two characters that had not shown that much affection for each other.[5]

• Edwards, Ted (1996). X-Files Confidential. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-21808-1.
• Hurwitz, Matt; Knowles, Chris (2008). The Complete X-Files. Insight Editions. ISBN 978-1-933784-80-9.
• Lovece, Frank (1996). The X-Files Declassified. Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-1745-X.
• Lowry, Brian (1995). The Truth is Out There: The Official Guide to the X-Files. Harper Prism. ISBN 0-06-105330-9.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: TXF Season 2

• "Irresistible" on TheXFiles.com
• "Irresistible" at IMDb
• "Irresistible" at TV.com