War of the Coprophages

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War of the Coprophages
The X-Files episode
Episode no. Season 3
Episode 12
Written by Darin Morgan
Directed by Kim Manners
Guest stars Bobbie Phillips as Dr. Bambi Berenbaum
Production no. 3x12
Original airdate January 5, 1996 (Fox)
Episode chronology
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"Revelations" "Syzygy"

"War of the Coprophages" is the twelfth episode of the third season of television series The X-Files. It is a comedy episode, and revolves around a town plagued by cockroaches.

[edit] Plot

The episode begins in the fictional town of Miller's Grove, Massachusetts, in the basement of Dr. Jeff Eckerle, an alternative fuels researcher, as an exterminator explains trivial information about cockroaches. Dr. Eckerle explains that his house is currently infested with roaches and that "bugs drive me crazy." After Dr. Eckerle goes upstairs, the exterminator begins spraying the basement to kill the infesting roaches. However, after he stomps on a cockroach (which survives and makes an electric beeping noise), he begins grabbing his throat, apparently becoming asphyxiated. As he leans over a wall, more cockroaches emerge from a hole in the wall and seem to jump on him, attacking him. Dr. Eckerle comes back down to the basement to find the exterminator as he dies, with roaches crawling all over him.

Meanwhile, Agent Mulder has come to Miller's Grove on an impromptu weekend vacation, attracted to the location because of recent UFO sightings. He sits in his car, looking intently at the night sky, warding off insects with his windshield wipers. He calls Scully on his cell phone, and the two discuss the probability of life elsewhere in the universe. Mulder soon has to end his call when he is met by a local sheriff, who is curious why Mulder is sitting in the dark with his wiper blades on. When Mulder says he has been repelling bugs, the sheriff grabs his holstered weapon and asks if they were cockroaches. The sheriff then gets a call from dispatch in his cruiser. When Mulder asks what the matter is, the sheriff responds, "Another roach attack."

Trivia

  • The same teenagers seen in this episode experimenting with a home made drug lab appear later in the season in the episode "Quagmire."
  • At one point during the episode, a cockroach crawls across the screen. The cockroach was actually on the camera lens.
  • Dr. Bambi Berenbaum is named after the entomologist Dr. May Berenbaum of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

[edit] External links

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