War of the Coprophages

Infobox Television episode | Title = War of the Coprophages


Caption =
Series = The X-Files
Season = 3
Episode = 12
Airdate = January 5, 1996 (Fox)
Production = 3x12
Guests = Bobbie Phillips as Dr. Bambi Berenbaum
Writer = Darin Morgan
Director = Kim Manners

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Prev = Revelations
Next = 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.

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."
* The drug the teenagers were using in the episode is known as Jenkem.
* At one point during the episode, a cockroach crawls across the screen.
*Dr. Bambi Berenbaum is named after the entomologist Dr. May Berenbaum of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
*Miller's Grove is a parody and homage to Grover's Mill, the name of the site of the first cylinder landing in War of The Worlds.

External links

*imdb title|0751259|War of the Coprophages
* [http://www.tv.com/the-x-files/war-of-the-coprophages/episode/551/summary.html War of the Coprophages] at TV.com