X Files: Field Trip. When a young married couple vanish in the woods and are then found as skeletons inside of just a couple of days, Mulder and Scully set off to investigate.. and find themselves in for one hell of a trip. I love the cleverness of this episode (Scully's hallucinatory experience is particularly amusing; there's something deliciously satisfying about having everyone parrot her own "plausible" theory (that she doesn't even believe herself) at her word-for-word, much to her own horror)) and there's an eerie plausibility to the nature of the menace that makes it genuinely unsettling (SPOILER for anyone who hasn't seen this episode!). There
are fungi that span several acres, often underground, there
are fungi with hallucinogenic properties, and there
are plants that feed on living organisms, making this particular threat feel like something that
could genuinely exist. That said, I would have loved to have heard the writers pitch this one to Chris Carter: "It's a giant killer mushroom!" As Mulder notes, "Sounds like crap when you say it."
