Dr. Blockhead: Nature abhors normality. It can't go long without creating a mutant.

Updates The X-Files Season 2

Humbug

1995.03.31    S02E20

David Duchovny  Gillian Anderson  Gordon Tipple  Jim Rose  Michael Anderson  The Enigma  Vincent Schiavelli  Wayne Grace

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Hepcat Helm (Gordon Tipple): Who are the rubes?
Sheriff Hamilton (Wayne Grace): These are FBI agents.

Scully: What’s the Fiji mermaid?
Hepcat: The Fiji Mermaid… it’s, it’s the Fiji Mermaid.
Sheriff Hamilton: It’s a bit of humbug Barnum pulled in the last century.
Hepcat: Barnum billed it as a real live mermaid, but people went in to see it all they saw was a real dead monkey sewn on the tail of a fish.
Mulder: A monkey?
Hepcat: A mummified monkey.
Sheriff Hamilton: It supposedly looked so bad he had to exhibit it as a “genuine fake”.
Hepcat: Oh, but see, that’s why Barnum was a genius. You never know where the truth ends and the humbug begins.

Sheriff Hamilton: You don’t think these tracks were made by the Fiji Mermaid?
Scully: Do you recall what Barnum said about suckers?

Mr. Nutt (Michael Anderson): You took one quick look at me, and decided that you could deduce my entire life. Never would it have occurred to you that a person of my height could have possibly obtained a degree in hotel management.
Mulder: I’m sorry. I meant no offense.
Mr. Nutt: Well then why should I take offense? Just because it’s human nature to make instant judgments of others based solely on their physical appearances? Why I have done the same thing to you, for example. I have taken in your all-American features, your dour demeanor, your unimaginative necktie design and concluded that you work for the government. An FBI agent. But do you see the tragedy here? I have mistakenly reduced you to a stereotype. A caricature. Instead of regarding you as a specific, unique individual.
Mulder: But I am an FBI agent.

Mulder: Why’d you give it up?
Lanny (Vincent Schiavelli): Mr. Nutt—the kind-hearted manager here—convinced me that, to make a living by publicly displaying my deformity, lacked dignity. So now I carry other people’s luggage.

Scully: You must be one of those rare individuals whose nerve endings don’t register pain.
Dr. Blockhead (Jim Rose): You just keep telling yourself that.

Sheriff Hamilton: May I ask what you’re doing?
Mulder: We’re exhuming… your potato.
Sheriff Hamilton: May I ask why?
Scully: Sheriff, it’s, it’s been documented that many serial killers possess a fascination with police work. Some of them even holding positions on their local force. So surveillance of investigation team members is often utilized as a precautionary—
Mulder: We found out you used to be a dog-faced boy.

Scully: That doesn’t quite explain a potato.
Sheriff Hamilton: I got some warts on my hand.
Mulder: That doesn’t quite explain the potato.
Sheriff Hamilton: To get rid of warts you rub a slice of potato on your hand and bury it under a full moon. The investigation isn’t going too well, is it? {Mulder throws down the potato}

Scully: You know, Mulder, for a while there I was beginning to think this case involved something a bit more…
Mulder: Freakish? You really shouldn’t complain about banality, Scully, when your main suspect is the human blockhead.

Dr. Blockhead: If people knew the true price of spirituality there’d be more atheists.

Scully: Mulder, are you okay?
Mulder: More comfortable than a futon.

Dr. Blockhead: Twenty-first century genetic engineering will not only eradicate the siamese twins and the alligator skin people, but you’re going to be hard-pressed to find a slight overbite or a not-so-high cheekbone. You see, I’ve seen the future, and the future looks just like him. Imagine, going through your whole life looking like that.

Dr. Blockhead: Nature abhors normality. It can’t go long without creating a mutant.

The Conundrum (The Enigma): Probably something I ate.