“Never Again” is episode thirteen of season four of The X-Files.
The episode opens in Philadelphia in court. A divorce hearing is over and the ex-wife looks far more thrilled than the ex-husband, Edward Jerse. He goes to a bar to drink and, whilst looking at a photo of himself with two children, burns his face off it. Later, he’s walking past a tattoo place when he stops. He looks at a tattoo of a winking woman. When he returns to his apartment, he looks at the tattoo of the woman, then collapses unconscious. The tattoo has ‘NEVER AGAIN’ written beneath it – and both eyes are now open.
Mulder and Scully are at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial interviewing someone. Scully seems bored and wanders off to look at the wall.
Jerse is at work trying to sell stock to a woman on the phone when he hears someone say ‘Loser.’ He asks the woman on the phone what she said and she says it wasn’t her. Jerse hears a giggle and looks around before storming into the neighbouring cubicle and accusing the woman in it of calling him a loser. His boss tells him to go home.
Scully is looks at Mulder’s nameplate in his office when he comes in. Mulder is rambling on about vacations – it seems he’s taking one for the first time in years – and wants Scully to keep an eye on things. Scully asks why she doesn’t have a desk. Mulder assumed that another part of the office was her area. Still, they can get a second, have no place to move and out them face to face. Maybe play a game of battleships. Mulder mentions the contact they met last night, Pudovkin. Who was there for a first – Scully abandoning him during questioning.
Pudovkin is a Russian immigrant with a doctorate in astronautical engineering and supposedly worked at a military space centre where they reverse-engineered something that crashed in the Bering’s Sea. Mulder wants Scully to follow up. Scully doesn’t want to go. Because the story Pudovkin recounted is the plot to an episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Assuming Scully is recounting it correctly, it does match. Mulder says that his work is his life. Scully is bothered that it’s become hers. She says it’s not about Mulder. Well, maybe indirectly. She doesn’t know. She feels she’s lost sight of herself. Mulder’s vacation is a spiritual journey, and he hopes to discover something about himself. Maybe Scully should do the same.
Jerse’s tattoo is now back to normal and he’s currently being fired by phone. The woman’s voice – which is Jodie Foster – starts talking to him again. Jerse bangs on the floor and tells the woman below he can hear her. She’s clearly not the one talking. Jehovah’s Witnesses come to his door and his crazy ramblings about how the television has been programmed to criticise him drive them away. After they are gone, he storms downstairs to the woman’s apartment. Then breaks the door in and attacks her. He’s hauling a box downstairs to the furnace and is throwing stuff in from the bloody interior when the voice congratulates him. As long as she’s with him, no-one will ever hurt him. Never again. Jerse looks at his tattoo.
Scully has gone to Philadelphia and sees Pudovkin go into a shop. Where he extorts protection money from a woman. She then sees him go into a tattoo shop across the street. It’s the one Jerse went to and he’s inside, complaining about the tattoo. He wants it covered up. The tattooist says everyone gets the tattoo they deserve and it’s too soon. Scully has entered and is looking at tattoos herself. The tattooist comes to speak to her and talks about how tattoos reflect a person’s soul, explaining how he creates his inks and learned his trade in a Russian prison. He’s then called over by Pudovkin.
Jerse speaks to Scully and tells her to make sure she has thought it over before she gets it done. He was impulsive. She wishes she was that impulsive. Jerse explains that he got his whilst after drinking in the bar across the street. Scully comments that it was not so much impulsive as hammered then. Then Jerse essentially asks her out.
Mulder’s spiritual journey is to Graceland. Seems he’s an Elvis fan. Scully does end up getting a tattoo – and her reactions whilst getting it are not typical for someone getting one. They are, however, rather more typical for something else. Then there’s Jerse’s tattoo itself. Is it really speaking to him? The eyes are opening and closing it seems, but have things just gotten too much for him? A very Scully-centric episode.