Home Again
"All we do is hold the pencil. All we do is hold the clay."
Written and directed by Glen Morgan
"I suspect the subject may be a mission-oriented killer who believes he's helping the homeless by eliminating those involved with the relocation. And I would stay, but I suspect the subject will kill again."
— Fox Mulder
A mysterious man is slaughtering those who mistreat the homeless. Meanwhile, Scully's mother is on her deathbed.
Tropes:
- An Arm and a Leg: Bandaid-Nose Man pulls the arms off at least three of his victims.
- Art Initiates Life: The Trash Man's creations are able to manifest as living things, which he attributes to the dedication he puts into his work.
- Asshole Victim: All of the Bandaid-Nose Man's victims mistreat the homeless in some way. Mulder even lampshades the self-serving motives of two of them when he catches them arguing. The first victim sprays them down with hoses to drive them away, the second and third steal art from the homeless to profit off it, the fourth only "helps" the homeless to keep them out of her neighborhood, and the fifth was working with the first to move the homeless so he could renovate the block they were living on.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Ultimately, the Bandaid-Nose Man kills all his targets and escapes retribution.
- Central Theme: Like its spiritual predecessor "Home", the ways people in underprivileged communities respond to change and what they'll do to maintain their way of life, with new themes of homelessness and how the poor are treated by society added in.
- Condescending Compassion: The targets of the Bandaid-Nose Man are wannabe community activists who want to "help" the homeless by forcibly relocating them against their will and generally seem to view their charges with contempt more than anything.
- Continuity Nod: Upon, learning of the Bandaid-Nose Man's origin, Mulder is unfazed and rattles off more knowledge and analysis than usual; the agents encountered a tulpa like this before back in "Arcadia", so he knows now that this is something they've dealt with before.
- Converse with the Unconscious: Scully to her mom.
- Cry into Chest: Scully to Mulder in the hospital after her mother dies.
- Gone Horribly Right: Trash Man set out to create an embodiment of his desire to stand up for the homeless... but underestimated his own desire for vengeance on their behalf.
- Humanoid Abomination: The Bandaid-Nose Man, which is essentially a piece of political graffiti made living and malevolent.
- It's All About Me: As Mulder lampshades, the people supposedly trying to help the homeless only really care about how doing so benefits them personally, rather than out of genuine altruism.
- Magical Realism: The episode rather dramatically juxtaposes the supernatural horror of the Bandaid-Nose Man's rampage with a mundane and realistic story of Scully coming to terms with her mother's death.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Trash Man is more than a bit evocative of political street artists like Banksy.
- Not in My Backyard!: Nancy Huff doesn't want to help the homeless out of kindness. She just wants to get them out of her neighborhood so she doesn't have to put up with them.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Even accounting for the fact that the Bandaid-Nose Man can become a painting, he can just appear ahead of his victim whenever he wants. In the case of the woman he was hunting, he somehow manages to get to the other side of a locked door when he was on the second floor of the house to start, and that's after he inexplicably goes from walking down the street to being inside the house.
- The Power of Hate: The source of the Bandaid-Nose Man.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: A horrific deconstruction. A street artist created the Bandaid-Nose Man to pull off something like this, trying to scare people into treating the homeless right. Instead, his monster takes on a life of it's own and decides that the best way to achieve that goal is to outright kill the people it's creator dislikes.
- Shout-Out: The pictures of Bandaid-Nose Man look to be based on the work of Banksy.
- Slobs Versus Snobs: At it's core, the episode is about the conflict between the homeless and the rich who mistreat them.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The chipper "Downtown" by Petula Clark plays on the background while the Bandaid-Nose Man stalks and brutally kills one of his victims.
- Super-Strength: The Bandaid-Nose Man can casually rip people limb from limb.
- Thematic Series: The episode forms a spiritual sequel to "Home", as indicated by the name. Both episodes are Monster of the Week episodes written and directed by Glen Morgan that focus on themes of people's responses to change in their impoverished communities, class struggles, family, procreation, and the desire for a home. Furthermore, the Bandaid-Nose Man kills in similar ways as the Peacocks, and like "Home", the episode is an Innocuously Important Episode that bears no direct impact on the Myth Arc but does thematically foreshadow a lot about it. It also compares and contrasts "Home's" rural small town setting with an urban, inner city ghetto. And just to complete it all, both include a memorable sequence where the villains kill their victims while cheery music plays.
- Tulpa: The Trash Man explicitly describes his living creations as these, given life by his creative passion. Doubles as a Continuity Nod when Mulder instantly rattles off more exposition and analysis than usual. They've had a run-in with violent tulpa before, most notably in the episode "Arcadia" of the original series.
- The Unreveal: It's never explained why the Bandaid-Nose Man steals pieces of his victims, why there's a garbage truck ferrying him around, or how he's managed to sustain himself even though the Trash Man's other creations all went back to being inanimate when left alone for a while.
- Urban Fantasy: What the episode homages, in contrast to "Home's" Southern Gothic atmosphere. The episode is largely set in an inner city ghetto and concerns Mulder and Scully's investigation into what's essentially magic street art.
- Vigilante Man: The Bandaid-Nose Man takes on the role of one, hunting down and murdering people who mistreat the homeless.
- Wham Episode: Mostly averted in regards to the Myth Arc, but Mrs. Scully dying hits hard.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: The primary setting of the episode.
- Zeroth Law Rebellion: The Trash Man never intended for the Bandaid-Nose Man to be violent — he just wanted to frighten people into backing off. The Bandaid-Nose Man merely took his rage at those who mistreated the homeless to its logical conclusion.
"And I want to believe... I need to believe, that we didn't treat him like trash."
