Recap / The X-Files S03 E18 "Teso dos Bichos"

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Season 3, Episode 18:

Teso Dos Bichos

If you believe this beast is the main threat of this episode, think again.

Written by John Shiban
Directed by Kim Manners

"What is it that the Secona believe? That the jaguar spirit will devour anybody that desecrates the burial place of a holy woman."

— Fox Mulder

Bodies start piling up after archaeologists remove an ancient burial urn from a site in the Ecuadorian highlands.

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Tropes:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Mulder and Scully can walk comfortably in the sewer.
• Atop a Mountain of Corpses: A hoard of killer pussy cats were filling the sewer with dead bodies but the cats were not seen triumphantly sitting atop of them.
• Attack of the Killer Whatever: Attack of the killer kitties. They're quite deadly.
• Cats Are Mean: Sewer killer pussy cats. Mewing and hissing very loudly, killing people and attacking Mulder and Scully.
• Cat Scare:
  • There's a Dog Scare.
  • Rat(s) Scare, which follows the Cat Scare formula.
  • Cat jumping to scare the characters and the viewers. Subverted, in that for once the cats are violent, numerous, and actually worth being scared of.
• Curse: There is a curse put on those who disturbed the skeleton of a female shaman sacred to the tribe and on those who obstruct the urn to be returned.
• Death by a Thousand Cuts: Death by a thousand cats. One killer kitty — not so dangerous. Many killer kitties — deadly.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Sugar the dog, barking at the MacGuffin of an urn.
• Foreign Language Title: "Teso Dos Bichos" translates from archaic Portuguese into English as "Burial Mound of Small Animals," although other translations have been proposed.

• Hellish Pupils: A shaman that appears at the end of the episode has cat-like evil eyes.
• Killer Rabbit: Sewer cats that kill people.
• Panthera Awesome: The X-File is connected to a mythological jaguar spirit.
• Shout-Out: One of the archaeologists is named Dr. Lewton.
• Swarm of Rats: Many, many rats appear in the museum swarming out of the toilets.
• Zerg Rush: The cats again. Very large number of cats. There is strength in numbers. And it's adorable.

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"The true curse that struck the museum was the failure to understand that there are powers that should not be disturbed... that some things are better left buried."