We would (quite seriously) love to see James Hong be cast as a CSM equivalent or just be a member of the syndicate in general, but in the likely absence of that, we will take his fantastic turn as the Hard Faced Man in Hell Money. Which features a good number of actors who have also been in Mulan.
We discuss the episode's kind of back-door pilot feel and why the body-part lottery supernatural cover-story feels kinda redundant in the end.
The X-Files has dabbled a few times by this point with implying alien abductions are in truth covers for some other shady goings on by the government. Jose Chung's "From Outer Space" offers the wonderfully silly next step by asking what happens if, mid-faking an alien abduction, an actual (stop-motion looking) alien showed up and captured the disguised air-force pilots and their would be teen abductees?
If only the story could be remotely as simple and not make everyone look very, very silly. We find it tremendously hard not to gush about all the surreal comedy this episode provides, the assorted guest stars and cinematic flourishes to sell the unreliable narrators.
Fear not though! Even with this episode Nick manages to come up with some complaints and nuisance slips on the part of the episode.
