“Young at Heart” is episode sixteen of season one of The X-Files.
The episode opens at night at the Tashmoo Federal Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania, 1989. A convict in a wheelchair is making his way to bed when he hears a scream. He goes looking and enters a room where there is a man lying on a bed, missing his right hand, and a doctor working on him. The convict asks the doctor what he is doing to John Barnett. The doctor tells him to go back to his ward; there is nothing he can do for his friend now. He’s dead. The man says he heard screaming and the doctor holds a scalpel to the man’s throat and repeats what he said. As the man in the wheelchair leaves, he glances across at Barnett, whose eyes are open and look dead. Until he blinks.
In the present, Mulder and Scully arrive at the scene of a robbery. Mulder doesn’t know why they are there, but a guy he used to work with in Violent Crimes said it was important. The man, Reggie Purdue, tells them that a lone gunman took out a sales girl in the jewellery store where the robbery took place after she filled his bag. They haven’t turned up much, but there is one thing that Purdue says will blow Mulder’s mind. Mulder takes a look at it and asks for descriptions. He says that it’s Barnett. Purdue says it can’t be and Scully asks who Barnett is.
Barnett was the first case Mulder worked at the bureau. He was pulling armed jobs all over DC and getting away with it. Barnett was trigger happy and had killed seven people. A task force was assembled and Reggie was Mulder’s ASAC. Mulder had a theory on the case but Reggie thought he was full of it, and Mulder admits he was. His theory was that Barnett had an inside connection with the armoured car company, who was tipping Barnett off when there were large shipments of cash. Mulder was sort of right. They planned a trap, then the notes started. There was a note left at the latest scene, ‘Fox can’t guard the chicken coop.’ Scully assumes they didn’t catch Barnett, but they did. Not clean; an agent died in the process. Because, Mulder says, he screwed up. Barnett escaped the death penalty on a technicality, but was sentenced to 340 years in prison, where the judge promised he would die. Scully assumes he escaped. No; he did die in prison four years ago.
Mulder is having the handwriting of the latest note compared to that of an older one by Agent Henderson. She says note was written in the last 48 hours and the match is 95%; the writing is sloppier. Yes, it could have been traced over an old note but, if so, an extremely good job of it was done.
Purdue is showing Scully a video of their arrest of Barnett. Barnett took the truck driver hostage; Mulder was behind him and he couldn’t see him. Mulder had a clear shot and Purdue says he should have taken it – but with a hostage so close, it’s not by the book. Then Barnett just started shooting, killing the hostage and an agent before Mulder took him down. Mulder never forgave himself for the agent’s death. At the trial. Barnett told Mulder he was going to get him.
Mulder has a copy of Barnett’s death certificate; Scully asks him if Barnett is getting revenge from beyond the grave, and confirms she saw the video. She tells Mulder he did the right thing; he’s not so sure. He mentions that the dead agent’s son now flays American football, and promptly goes to watch him play. When Mulder returns to his car, he finds another note, ‘A haunted fox eventually dies’ and photos of him and Scully at the crime scene. One of the people watching the game has misted eyes. Just like Barnett did.
Purdue speaks to Mulder and tells him that some at the bureau think Mulder has become an embarrassment and a liability. So perhaps someone at the bureau is behind this. Then Scully arrives; Barnett’s last will and testament left what little he had to another prisoner, Joe Crandall. Barnett was cremated and his ashes scattered in the Delaware.
Scully gets Barnett’s medical records; he was admitted to the prison infirmary for an infection in his right hand. There is nothing about the cardiac arrest that supposedly killed him. So, they head to see Crandall, the man in the wheelchair. Who says that Barnett isn’t dead. The last time he saw Barnett, the doctor had taken his hand clean off and told Crandall that Barnett was dead. Crandall knew he was alive, because Barnett looked at him.
So, Barnett may not be as dead as he is supposed to be. He is also missing his right hand – and Henderson said the notes were written by a right-handed man. Which is odd. Barnett is going after Mulder, by going after people he knows. Then it turns out the doctor in the hospital who claimed Barnett was dead had been performing experiments on human subjects.