“Irresistible” is episode thirteen of season two of The X-Files.
After a funeral service, one man from the funeral parlour tells another that there is going to be a graveside service tomorrow, and they’re keeping the body overnight. The coffin is open and the second man, after the first has left, plays with the dead young woman’s hair, saying she is such a pretty girl.
Later, the first man is working when he hears something he calls out, asking who’s there, and an inhuman figure stands up. The man turns on the light and the figure becomes the person who was playing with the hair. He claims he was working, but he’s got scissors and there’s hair on the floor. He’s been cutting the dead girl’s hair and the first man tells him to get out and don’t come back. At least he didn’t stab the man with his scissors.
Mulder and Scully are in a graveyard in the rain and a man is leading them. He got a call from the Minneapolis PD who wanted the FBI to take a look. So, he, Busch, did. In 22 years, he’s never seen anything like it. After one look at the corpse in the exhumed grave, he checked to see if there had been any UFO activity; according to the literature, it had tell-tale signs. Hair and nails have been removed.
Mulder tells Agent Busch that it isn’t aliens. He saw this before when he worked Violent Crimes. It was done with a backhoe; the person who did it might work here but it isn’t likely. He probably has worked for a mortuary or a cemetery and has probably been busted, but there will be no record. Public knowledge of this is bad for business.
Afterwards, Scully says she hasn’t seen desecration of the dead before; she seemed a bit shocked by it. Why do people do it? According to Mulder, some people collect salt and pepper pots, death fetishists collect dead things. No-one knows why. Although Mulder never understood the salt and pepper thing either.
Scully realises that Mulder knew it wasn’t UFO related from the start. He admits he suspected as much. It took three hours to get there and their plane doesn’t leave until tomorrow. Mulder has American football tickets, Vikings vs. Redskins. That’s why they came.
The creepy guy from the morticians is currently applying for a job at Ficello Frozen Foods. He says he worked in cosmetology before, and recognises the lipstick colour of the woman interviewing him. He’s going back to school, studying comparative religions. The man, Donny Pfaster, says he is very religious and seems to be making a good impression.
Mulder doesn’t get to see all of his game, because Busch pulled them back in. They have more bodies dug up. Scully has an odd reaction to one of the photos. Mulder wants people warned that there is an escalating fetishist. He’s only collecting from the dead at the moment, but soon he will want fresher bodies, ones he will make himself. Once he’s got a taste for that, he will kill more. They are staying.
Scully, in her report, says that it’s easier to believe in aliens and UFOs than in cold, inhuman monsters who prey on the living to scavenge from the dead. Donny is currently picking up a prostitute, and takes her back to his place. He wants her to have a bath and to shampoo her hair; he will pay extra. He’s rather creepily polite. During this, the phone rings and he gets the job he applied for. However, the bath was freezing and the prostitute came to complain and found wreaths from graves in the bedroom. Her body is found later; now, he’s got a taste for blood.
Scully, who is having problems with this case, does the autopsy. She seems awfully uncertain of herself given that she’s trained to deal with dead people. Something she doesn’t want to admit to Mulder; he senses and asks her. Scully thinks these are some of the worst cases to deal with. Mulder is comping far better, but it is something he’s encountered before.