The X Files: Lazarus

Again, the title tells you everything you need to know. No beating around the bush. A man dies and gets resurrected. In this day and age (meaning the mid-1990's) of advanced medicine, people are brought back to life all the time. What is rather unusual is that two people die at the same time and when one body is resucitated, the spirit/soul/personality of the other comes back to life. So, the first of a few body switch/shape shifting episodes The X Files have brought us over the years.

The formerly dead guy is Agent Jack Willis, a former lover of Scully (yes, former used to have a love life, as well). He has been hunting a thieving/murdering couple for a long time and gets shot along with Warren James Dupre, who now inhabits his body.

Mulder suspects something is wrong, of course. He knows that Scully and Willis share a birthday for example and Willis is right-handed. He tests this new Willis by asking him to sign Scully's birthday card (two months early) and Willis does so with his left hand.

Dupre is not really interested in pretending to be Willis. He just uses this situation as a means to an end. He want to find his wife again and when he does so, the duo decide to make a quick buck by trading Scully for 1,000,000 $. Dupre's wife, Lula, however, had actually planned to get rid of her spouse and sold him out to the FBI and that is how he got shot in the first place.

The moment she choses to reveal this to Willis/Dupre and Scully is when Scully is about to give him an insulin shot. Willis is diabetic, which Dupre doesn't know and he has drunk enourmous amounts of soda, and is now in dire need of the medicine. Lula steps on the saving bottle of insulin but makes a mistake eventually, when she believes Willis to have died and gets too close to throw the wedding ring at him. Willis snaps awake, takes her gun, and shoots her just as the FBI is taking down the door to rescue him and Scully.

The second death takes.

6/10