I'm surprised that none of the six prior reviewers for this episode made any connection to what I believe is the the X-Files story it resembles most - Season Three's 'War of the Coprophages'. It's right there in the title, the word 'coprophage' refers to insects that for lack of a more appropriate word, are dung eaters. The writers refer to it as 'crap' here, but the effect is the same.
And then there's the hilarious Dr. Rocky Bronzino (Micheal Wiseman), the show's answer to Dr. Barbi Berenbaum (Bobbie Phillips) in 'War of the Coprophages'. Say, wouldn't it have been great if the show brought her back to join in the mayhem here? After all, she was a well regarded entomologist too. That way, Scully could have gotten jealous all over again when 'Rocky' would have fallen all over himself to impress Bobbie instead of herself. Think of the possibilities.
Be that as it may, the episode offers it's fair share of gross-out scenes with it's Monster of the Week, in this case teenager Dylan Lokensgard (Hank Harris), and his Mom (Jane Lynch), the high school principal. The kid seemed to attract all manner of house flies with his high concentration of C-13 calliphorone. You know, these X-Files episodes used terms like that which sometimes were real, and sometimes not. When I tried to look it up, the only thing that I found were references to this X-Files episode, so I'm thinking it was made up for the show. Fair enough, it sounded cool in context with Dr. Rocky's theories.
Besides the Shopping Cart of Doom, the biggest kick I got out of this episode was when the shrink wrapped Rocky Bronzino yelled out to the FBI agents to 'Help me' when they found him all enmeshed in a cocoon, ostensibly placed there by Mrs. Lokensgard, along with her long missing husband. That was a really clever tribute to one of my all time fave horror flicks from 1958, "The Fly" starring Vincent Price. It would have been even better though, if director Kim Manners had made Wiseman's Bonzino place some added emphasis on it the way the human headed insect did at the finale of "The Fly". Stuck in a spider web, it shrieked out 'Pleeeeease, help me'. Maybe someone thought of it and decided against because it would have been too dumb ass.
And then there's the hilarious Dr. Rocky Bronzino (Micheal Wiseman), the show's answer to Dr. Barbi Berenbaum (Bobbie Phillips) in 'War of the Coprophages'. Say, wouldn't it have been great if the show brought her back to join in the mayhem here? After all, she was a well regarded entomologist too. That way, Scully could have gotten jealous all over again when 'Rocky' would have fallen all over himself to impress Bobbie instead of herself. Think of the possibilities.
Be that as it may, the episode offers it's fair share of gross-out scenes with it's Monster of the Week, in this case teenager Dylan Lokensgard (Hank Harris), and his Mom (Jane Lynch), the high school principal. The kid seemed to attract all manner of house flies with his high concentration of C-13 calliphorone. You know, these X-Files episodes used terms like that which sometimes were real, and sometimes not. When I tried to look it up, the only thing that I found were references to this X-Files episode, so I'm thinking it was made up for the show. Fair enough, it sounded cool in context with Dr. Rocky's theories.
Besides the Shopping Cart of Doom, the biggest kick I got out of this episode was when the shrink wrapped Rocky Bronzino yelled out to the FBI agents to 'Help me' when they found him all enmeshed in a cocoon, ostensibly placed there by Mrs. Lokensgard, along with her long missing husband. That was a really clever tribute to one of my all time fave horror flicks from 1958, "The Fly" starring Vincent Price. It would have been even better though, if director Kim Manners had made Wiseman's Bonzino place some added emphasis on it the way the human headed insect did at the finale of "The Fly". Stuck in a spider web, it shrieked out 'Pleeeeease, help me'. Maybe someone thought of it and decided against because it would have been too dumb ass.