Original artwork, not a still
I’d kiss you if you weren’t so damn ugly.
— The X-Files · 1993
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
It is the show's tenderness in disguise: Scully cannot touch her partner when he looks like someone else, so she insults the borrowed face and says the affection out loud anyway. The joke is aimed at Morris's body, not Mulder, which is why fans take it as one of the clearest Mulder and Scully love lines in the series.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for The X-FilesShow the scene
The line closes "Dreamland II", the season 6 X-Files episode first aired on 6 December 1998, in which Mulder has been swapped into the body of the oily Area 51 man Morris Fletcher, and Fletcher into Mulder's. Scully has worked out who is really inside the stranger beside her. She tells him she is out of the Bureau, censured and relieved of her position, and he insists she can explain it to her superiors and get her job back. Moved by how differently he reacts from Morris, she says she would kiss him if he were not so damn ugly. Morris, in Mulder's body, honks the horn from the car. Mulder hands her a few sunflower seeds in farewell.
Sources (2)
- X-Files Wiki, Dreamland II (transcript)final parking-lot sceneReference checked
- X-Files Wiki, Dreamland IIinfoboxReference checked
Context reviewed
