“The Goldberg Variation” is episode six of season seven of The X-Files.
Several people are playing poker in Chicago at night. One, who looks like a mobster, changes three cards and ends up with four kings. Another, who doesn’t look like he fits with the others, Henry Weems (Willie Garson), asks for five cards. The dealer tells him he can only change four but the mobster says he can have five. Weems remains in when the mobster raises $4K. When the mobster raises $15K, Weems tells him not to; he has all that he needs. As he has a straight flush. Weems wants to cash out; he only needed $100K. However, the mobster’s goons take him up to the roof and throw him off. Weems plummets from the top of a building into an opening in the ground. Then climbs out and leaves, holding his face.
Scully arrives in Chicago and calls Mulder to find out where he is. Behind her, coming up in a lift. Mulder says the top two floors are leased to Jimmy Cutrona. Scully knows who Cutrona is; the FBI have been trying to build a case against him. Which is why there were two agents parked across from the building, according to Mulder, when they saw a man thrown from the top of the building. He plunged 30 floors, plus the distance down the shaft. Scully says ouch. Mulder guesses the man said that as well. After he clambered out of the shaft and skipped off into the night. They don’t know who he was.
Descending on the lift, Scully asks if the basement has been thoroughly searched. No; technically, falling 300′ and surviving isn’t a crime. Mulder thinks the man has special capabilities. Scully thinks he just got lucky. Mulder isn’t impressed with her scientific explanation. There’s a linen bin with broken wheels. That might have given enough. They need to find the man, and Mulder finds a false eye in the laundry.
They arrive at an apartment building. The occupant made an appointment to get a new false eye this morning. There’s no answer, so they grab the door as someone leaves. Inside, a woman asks if they can help, by turning off the water so she can leave for work. Mulder must be stronger than her. Mulder helps, gets a face full of water, stands up and plunges through the floor into the apartment below. Where Henry Weems is.
In Weems’ own apartment, Weems says he was hiding from them. He’s not testifying against Jimmy. He also got a bruise on his arm from the fall. Weems says he wasn’t cheating. Mulder notices a contraption Weems has made. A Ruth Goldberg contraption. Mulder asks if he can try it out. He likes it. Scully tries to convince Weems to testify; Cutrona will try to kill him again. Weems will take his chances.
Scully wants to tell the Chicago field office, get Mulder to change his clothes then head home. Weems just got lucky; there’s no X-file. Mulder now thinks luck is the X-file. They leave by the stairs as one of Cutrona’s goons arrives in the lift. Outside the building, Mulder realises he hasn’t got his keys and buzzes Weems’ apartment. Which distracts the goon as he’s about to shoot Weems, resulting in a chain of events that has the dead goon dangling by his shoelace from the ceiling fan when Mulder and Scully arrive.
Weems is gone and they’ve identified the goon as working for Cutrona. Mulder doesn’t think Weems killed him; he thinks the goon died of a heart attack. He explains the chain of events he thinks happened. And that he thinks Weems has tapped into dumb luck.
Scully sees Ritchie, the son of the woman Mulder tried to help. He’s ill and Weems has built a similar contraption for him. Afterwards, she wonders why Weems is working as a building super; he could enter the state lottery and win. It looks like Ritchie may be the reason Weems is staying around, and why he needs the money. It also seems that Weems’ good luck comes at the price of bad luck for others. Weems’ luck also results in incredibly unlikely, yet potentially possible, chains of coincidences.