When I was a kid around ten tears old, my Dad would take the family each year to the local county fair, and in those days in the 1950's, they still had sideshow entertainment as seen in this episode of the X-Files. I had to laugh when The Conundrum came up out of the pond eating the raw fish; it was another take on the classic Man-Eating-Chicken those kinds of shows used to promote. The thing is, when you pulled back the curtain, there was a guy sitting there at a table chowing down on some Kentucky Fried.
But Holy Cow! The Conundrum - that was a real guy portrayed by the equally and weirdly nicknamed 'Enigma', who had his body tattooed into a blue patchwork of puzzle pieces for real! Just like one of the characters in the show said - "You never knew where the truth ends and the humbug begins".
I don't know if this episode was intended to be an all out comedy, and there's enough serious stuff like murder going on in the story, but most of it was just hilarious. David Duchovny undoubtedly made the most of his comedic timing to deliver some of the best comic dialog the show had to offer here, and that time Dr. Blockhead (Jim Rose) singled him out as 'looking like the future' was a riot. Come to think of it, the whole show was a riot!
But the best was the ending, I mean, come on, with The Conundrum known to eat anything, I never saw it coming and neither will you if you haven't seen the show yet. Try not to give it too much thought though, it will probably make you hurl.
Hey, if you go for bizarre stuff like this and haven't seen it yet, get hold of a copy of Tod Browning's tribute to the weird with 1932's "Freaks". Just like this program, it's got real live sideshow entertainers from back in the day before twenty first century engineering eliminated the types of mutations that gave rise to Siamese Twins, pinheads, and people without arms and legs. And if that's not enough, go for two whole seasons of these abnormalities with HBO's short lived series from 2003 titled "Carnivale". You'll never be the same again.
But Holy Cow! The Conundrum - that was a real guy portrayed by the equally and weirdly nicknamed 'Enigma', who had his body tattooed into a blue patchwork of puzzle pieces for real! Just like one of the characters in the show said - "You never knew where the truth ends and the humbug begins".
I don't know if this episode was intended to be an all out comedy, and there's enough serious stuff like murder going on in the story, but most of it was just hilarious. David Duchovny undoubtedly made the most of his comedic timing to deliver some of the best comic dialog the show had to offer here, and that time Dr. Blockhead (Jim Rose) singled him out as 'looking like the future' was a riot. Come to think of it, the whole show was a riot!
But the best was the ending, I mean, come on, with The Conundrum known to eat anything, I never saw it coming and neither will you if you haven't seen the show yet. Try not to give it too much thought though, it will probably make you hurl.
Hey, if you go for bizarre stuff like this and haven't seen it yet, get hold of a copy of Tod Browning's tribute to the weird with 1932's "Freaks". Just like this program, it's got real live sideshow entertainers from back in the day before twenty first century engineering eliminated the types of mutations that gave rise to Siamese Twins, pinheads, and people without arms and legs. And if that's not enough, go for two whole seasons of these abnormalities with HBO's short lived series from 2003 titled "Carnivale". You'll never be the same again.