"El Mundo Gira"

aka "El MARIA! Gira"
Aired January 12, 1997

This was a weird episode, even for The X-Files, but it turned out to be John Shiban's best script. I liked the goofiness and less serious approach, which made it feel "Darin Morgan-lite." The plot was a mix of a love triangle, monster-of-the-week, a potential mass outbreak of a deadly disease, along with a healthy dose of comedy.

First off, you can usually count on two things in these standalone episodes- that Mulder will have something funny to say and also the agents will encounter some type of law enforcement. This person will most likely get in the agent's way, except this time he not only helps Mulder, he also gets to be his "equal." Ruben Blades as Lozano felt like the Mexican equivalent of Fox Mulder because he was funny, slightly laid-back about his profession, and the Chupacabra legend seemed to be his version of Mulder's alien tales. The other actors, which includes the brothers and their nosy neighbor lady, were fun to watch as well. A great scene that stood out was when Lozano reads Eladio's name as "Erik Estrada", then he interprets Eladio for Mulder, and finishes by saying, "he's better than Erik Estrada." That's exactly the kind of humor I like in an X-File.

The story started to feel like it was going nowhere after Eladio kept "running around in circles" with Mulder and Scully chasing after, so much that I thought it was beginning to go off the tracks. However they pulled it together with a rather bizarre ending. The nosy neighbor has "her version", the cousin has her own which has a bit more truth to it, finally we have Mulder and Scully reporting back to their boss with what "really" happened, and then it ends the way it started, with the two brothers. Though they never explained the cause of the "Yellow Rain", that's the type of thing I've come to expect with this series, so you just have to roll with it. Or, like I'm doing, take Mulder's "other-worldly" explanation. Hey, stranger things have happened...

While there may not have been a real Chupacabra, I thought the make-up and effects for the fungsy corpses were excellently made. Its the usual nastiness we'd expect out of a Kim Manners-directed or Morgan & Wong episode. Even Mark Snow changed his style this time and contributed a mostly acoustic guitar-driven soundtrack. It might not be the most memorable hour of this great season, though it is one I will be revisiting again and again.