Season 4, Episode 13: Never Again

Synopsis

After getting a divorce, a depressed Philadelphia broker named Edward Jerse gets a tattoo of a winking woman over a banner reading "Never Again." After he passes out, the tattoo opens both eyes. In Washington, Scully gets bored as Mulder questions a man about a UFO sighting near the Vietnam Memorial. Mulder reluctantly heads out on vacation, having arranged for Scully to travel to Philly to follow up on a UFO conspiracy. Scully's not too enthused, and says she feels like she's lost control of her own life during her work with the X-Files.

Jerse hears a voice at work calling him a loser, and trashes a woman's desk after mistakenly thinking she is the culprit; he is fired as a result. The voice continues to heckle him about being a weak guy, and Jerse is driven to murder his downstairs neighbor. Jerse realizes that the tattoo is the source of his problems, and tries to get it removed. He runs into Scully, who is in Philly investigating the matter Mulder gave her, and the two hit it off. The tattoo is not pleased. Mulder, who is visiting Graceland, checks in with Scully, who says she has handed off the case to the Philly bureau.

After a date, Jerse convinces Scully to get a tattoo of her own: a Millenium symbol of a snake eating its own tail. The two spend the night together. The next morning, a couple of detectives stop by during their investigation of the neighbor's disappearance. Scully tells them she's with the FBI, and they let her know that blood that was not the neighbor's was found at the scene. She worries that there may have been ergot, a hallucinogenic parasite, in the materials used in the tattoos, and tells Jerse that they should both be checked out at the hospital.

Jerse feels that Scully has betrayed him, and tries to kill her. There is a showdown as Scully tries to reason with him and the tattoo tries to get him to kill Scully. Jerse ends up burning the tattoo off in the flames of a furnace. Ergot is found in both Jerse's and Scully's bloodstream, but not in Scully's to the degree that it would cause hallucinations.

The voice of Betty, the tattoo, is provided by Jodie Foster, known for her roles in Taxi Driver, The Silence of the Lambs, Contact, and other fine films...and for a guy shooting President Reagan in an attempt to impress her.

Episode Body Count

Kaye Schilling: murdered by Jerse after he thinks she's mocking him.

Humans: 1
Creatures: 0
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (86/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)

Humans: 1,018
Creatures: 80
Aliens: 48

Grand Total: 1,146