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Arcadia
What do you get when you cross The X-Files and every sitcom you have ever seen? This episode.
Written by Daniel Arkin
Directed by Michael Watkins
Directed by Michael Watkins
"A.D. Skinner, in assigning us this case, thought a fruitful approach to the investigation would be if we went undercover posing as prospective home buyers, as this planned community would seem to hide a dark, possibly murderous conspiracy of silence."
— Dana Scully
Mulder and Scully go undercover as a married couple in a planned community where there have been several mysterious disappearances.
Tropes:
- Big Damn Heroes: Big Mike at the end.
- Bothering by the Book: At one point, Mulder orders the house's front yard to be dug up in order to possibly locate the bodies of the previous home owners and exhume their remains. As cover, he claims to be putting in a pool. When confronted by the neighbors about how a pool in the front yard is obviously against Association rules, he takes some satisfaction in pointing out that he's putting in a reflecting pool, not a swimming pool, which is not prohibited by the rulebook.
- Character Name Alias: Mulder and Scully go undercover as "Laura and Rob Petrie".Mulder: Like the dish.
- Control Freak: Gene Golgolak the homeowners' association president is a particularly murderous example of one.
- Cosmetic Horror: Mulder's "woah!" when seeing Scully in a green mud mask.
- The Dragon: Win to Gene, and although a jerk, he's not comfortable with the tulpa's violence and tries to enforce the peaceful solution first.
- Guys are Slobs: Mulder is a mild one, tossing his sweatshirt in the corner of the bedroom (& Scully throws it back at his face), and he leaves his shoes on the bed before Scully kicks him out of the room.
- Ham and Cheese: In-universe example, as Mulder is having entirely too much fun playing his role of a yuppie, suburbanite househusband, much to Scully's annoyance.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Golgolak was killed by his own tulpa.
- Hypocritical Humor: Mulder annoys Scully with his Meet Cute cover story, claiming they met at a UFO conference with Scully being the one more into it. "She's into all that New Age stuff. I don't know why she falls for it."
- Karma Houdini: Downplayed with Win, who tried futilely to keep the tulpa away, didn't actually cause Big Mike's death, and helps end the tulpa's reign of terror by leaving Gene to its mercy. But, however unhappily, he did go along with things until his own family got caught up in it.
- Karmic Death: Golgolak ends up beaten to death by the tulpa he summoned and set upon others for their transgressions against the Home Owners Association rules... because he's handcuffed to a mailbox at the time, which definitely isn't in the Association rulebook as a permitted decoration.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Win sours on Gene after his wife gets caught up in the carnage, an incident he blames Gene for.
- Monster of the Week: It's a tulpa.
- No Ontological Inertia: The tulpa crumbles down the moment Gogolak dies.
- Our Monsters Are Different: Tulpas are typically described as a thought-form manifestation. This tulpa is more of a sewage golem.
- Potty Emergency: After spending hours watching his un-perfected mail box through the peep hole and drinking orange juice, Mulder briefly considers using the empty container, but opts for the actual bathroom instead, giving someone exactly enough time to fix the damage he'd done without being seen.
- Self-Disposing Villain: The tulpa dissipates into a harmless mound of earth after killing its summoner.
- Ship Tease: Is it entirely necessary for Mulder to have his arm around Scully quite this much in every neighbour's house they visit?
- Stepford Suburbia: The community looks a little too perfect and something ugly hides there.
- There Is Only One Bed: Mulder has some fun teasing Scully by suggesting that she get in bed with him, but it's still not treated like a big deal. He goes off to sleep elsewhere, presumably on the couch.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Played for humor and horror.
- Tulpa: The Monster of the Week, when the president of the homeowners' association created one to enforce the neighborhood rules.
- Tyrannical Homeowners' Association: The homeowner's association would raise a golem to enforce all manner of esoteric "rules". Even small breaches of protocol or using decorations that the association considered bad taste could result in the golem taking often deadly retribution on the association's behalf.
- Uncanny Village: A seemingly peaceful American-dream community controlled by the Home Owner Association, represented mainly by President Gene Gogolak. They have strict rules and regulations about everything and observing them is enforced by death threat.
- Undercover as Lovers: Mulder and Scully are assigned on a case and they work undercover as husband and wife. However this is played for humor rather than the usual Ship Tease or UST.
- Unexplained Recovery: How Big Mike survives the Tulpa's attack, despite significant blood loss from the attack, implying a critical injury or death, manages to escape the Tulpa in a closed in environment without being pursued, then manages to appear in the house at just the right time to warn Scully.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Big Mike fights off the Tulpa a second time, but it's not clear if he survived.
