Madam, I'm Adam

"Madam, I'm Adam" is the sixth episode of the first season of The Lone Gunmen.
==Synopsis==
A man contacts the Lone Gunmen, believing he has been abducted by aliens.
==Summary==
A man returns home in Surf City, Maryland. Missing his key, he checks under the flower pot and finds a hidden key. He enters the house and flips on the television. He goes for a beer just as another man enters to find the television on. The second man changes the channel while the first man goes to the bathroom. This pattern of the two men just barely missing each other continues until the first man undresses and crawls into bed. Snuggling with the woman he finds there, the second man arrives, undresses, and also crawls into bed. The second man turns on the lights as his wife bursts out of bed and stands with him. The other man stares at them in confusion and asks: “Who are you people and what are you doing in my bed?”
Washington, D.C., 9:43PM. and Jimmy Bond enter a diner. Jimmy is excited because he took a call for a story and if they run it, he will share the byline. Byers stresses that this will only happen if they run the story.They sit down with the confused man from Surf City, Maryland, one Adam Burgess. He explains his whole life has been stolen. Byers misinterprets this as a case of identity theft but Burgess describes showing up at his home, finding other people living there, his wife's whereabouts unknown, and fleeing from the police. He holds up a copy of the Lone Gunmen from the alley he slept in last night.
“Yeah. Well, when I saw this paper, I knew that you would be the people who would believe me. Would understand.”“Understand what?”“That I’m from a parallel reality and aliens brought me here.”
Byers believes the man is a flake, especially after he hands them a small plastic container of blue goo that he says was in every crevice of his body, and he and Jimmy start to leave. Jimmy Bond notices something though: a computer port...on the back of Burgess's neck...
Back at the HQ of the Lone Gunmen, examines the data port on the man's neck. He believes it was self-mutilation. analyzed the blue goo and discovered it is an udder lubricant for milking cows. They don't really want to think about why it was all over his body. Byers thinks they should investigate further though because Adam Burgess wasn't even aware of the data port meaning that someone implanted it in him.
 brings out “Betsy,” their homemade MRI machine, joking to Jimmy its safe as long as it doesn't get near your testicles. Burgess seems to know Frohike's face but Frohike shrugs it off. Scanning his brain, they find a series of wires extending out from the data port and connecting throughout his cerebral cortex.
The four Lone Gunmen and Burgess travel to the house he claims to have lived in for years. They ask him to prove that he lived there and Burgess points out a few neighbors and describes the behaviors they will do before they do it. Yet real estate records say it's not his house. points out how they can't find any records at all for Adam Burgess, like he doesn't exist.
“But I do [exist]. Just in a reality parallel to yours. It’s got to be the aliens, I’m telling you.”Byers: “Adam, can we leave aside the aliens and look for a more earthbound explanation.”Jimmy Bond: “Which is?”
While Frohike cuts the power and acts as lookout, the rest of the team enter Adam Burgess's supposed house. Byers has a theory that Burgess watched this house on television through hidden cameras. Images were fed into his brain through the data port in his neck without ever actually being there. They cut the power to the house so they wouldn't be recorded by these hidden cameras.
A neighborhood kid gets nosey and Frohike tries to bribe him to get lost while not telling anyone about the Lone Gunmen at that house. He fails and the kid starts throwing dirt clods at him. Inside, Burgess uses a cordless electric saw to cut into the wall in places the detector lit up for. When the police arrive and Frohike has tackled the brat, things get worse as the entire wall of the house falls over.
In a laboratory somewhere, an assistant reports to a woman in a lab coat with a band aid over her eye that the house is off line, disabled at the source. Dr. de Vico tells him to put the subjects in sleep mode before they come to. She turns and walks over to the giant tanks of blue goo, all but one having a man with a breathing apparatus suspended in liquid.
The Lone Gunmen and Burgess are all in jail and bickering about the situation. Langly pushes Burgess over the edge by suggesting that Burgess has no wife or life like this and it was all just some deluded fantasy. Adam Burgess snaps and threatens to jam his thumbs in Langly's eye sockets. His sudden intense rage suggests to them an entirely different person from the Burgess they've been dealing with. Yves Adele Harlow arrives, amused at their current predicament, to bail them out.
Back at their place, Byers, Frohike, & Bond show Harlow the MRI scan they performed. Langly and Burgess are watching a football game on television. Yves postulates that this was done to cause some behavior modification. As the guys wonder who he used to be, Burgess snaps and beats up Langly when electronics salesman “Maniac Marvin” appears in a commercial.
While Langly, Byers, Bond, and Burgess all go to see Maniac Marvin to learn how Burgess might know him, Harlow and Frohike remain at the Lone Gunmen offices, encountering Dr. de Vico. Dr. de Vico is looking for Adam Burgess and came there because the Lone Gunmen were arrested with him. She claims her name is Lois and that she is Adam's wife, while hiding everything about who she really is and her true purpose.
Meanwhile, at Maniac Marvin's, Byers and Bond go in to speak with the owner while Langly stays outside with Burgess since they can't afford to have another incident. They speak with the one-eyed Marvin, who denies knowing Adam Burgess. As a standee with Maniac Marvin on it is placed in the window, Burgess attacks Langly again outside. Byers and Bond rush to his aid, just missing Marvin taking out a photo of Burgess and a dwarf woman from under the glass counter.
A very grumpy Langly holds a steak to his face back at the home and offices of the Lone Gunmen. Burgess apologizes and then is shown a captured image from the security camera outside their main door. He recognizes the woman (de Vico) who came to the offices as his wife Lois but Yves and Frohike lied about knowing where Burgess was because they suspect the woman is not his wife but his keeper. “Lois” claimed there was a car accident and Burgess just wandered away from the scene. They believe Adam Burgess is some sort of lab rat who is fed false images into his brain as part of some experiment. Harlow and Frohike encourage him to try and remember who he actually is before he goes anywhere with “Lois.” Burgess stares a long moment at Frohike until Frohike transforms into a dwarf wrestler with goggles. Full of fury, Mr. Burgess tackles Frohike and tries to strangle him.
They show a videotape of the man Burgess hallucinated when looking at Frohike. The Dwarf Santini was a dwarf wrestler of some fame but he died years ago. Yves Adele Harlow points out that Santini had a daughter and they should go visit her.
Maniac Marvin arrives at the trailer of the daughter of Santini, Sadie. Marvin reminds Sadie that her husband has been gone a year and that they should get together. He will move her out of this dump and into a nicer home. While Sadie doesn't seem particularly pleased to see him, Marvin sweet talks her and the pair head off to the bedroom.
When the Lone Gunmen, Yves, and Adam Burgess show up at the trailer of Sadie, Yves relates that Sadie spent time on the midget wrestling circuit just like her father. Burgess notices the mailbox and is disgusted by the last name: Muckle.
“Muckle. What does that sound like–a last name or a sex act?”
The second Burgess notices the cadillac with the vanity plate: Maniac M, he flies into a hysterical rage, picks up a gardening tool, and charges into the trailer as Jimmy Bond and the others pursue him. He bursts in on Sadie and Marvin and, as he is being dragged back by Jimmy, screams how he will take his other eye. Out in the living room, Sadie calls Adam Burgess by his true name: Charlie. Charlie Muckle. His memories begin flooding back to him as Dr. “Lois” de Vico arrives, concerned that she would find him there.
In the living room, Burgess explains how he is Charlie Muckle and describes a long list of his petty crimes, flaws, and wrongdoings to the Lone Gunmen as de Vico sits beside him. She informs them all that Charlie decided he had to change so he entered her virtual reality program of behavior alteration therapy. Being in the tank is meant to make him a different person. Dr. de Vico defends it all as perfectly legal though Yves Harlow points out the doctor playing the role of Burgess's wife in the tank does not seem “above board.” Apparently, it was Charlie's only option after he put Maniac Marvin's eye out to avoid time in prison. Although Charlie Muckle clearly still cares about his real wife, Sadie Muckle, he decides to go with the doctor and get plugged back into the tank.
Back home, the four Lone Gunmen and Yves Adele Harlow are gathered around the computer as they begin work on the article. Jimmy Bond is upset about how things turned out; he thought Sadie and Charlie should end up together because it is clear that they love each other. He wants them to do something to change the ending of the story.
At the Hobbes Research Institute, Charlie Muckle is lowered into the tank to return to his life as Adam Burgess. Dr. de Vico reveals a data port at the back of her own neck as she walks away from the sealed tank of Charlie Muckle.
Sadie cries in her wedding dress as the groom Maniac Marvin comes in to excitedly tell her that her divorce came through. Her bridesmaids shoo off Marvin since he is not supposed to see the bride before the wedding because of bad luck. Marvin piggishly reminds them it doesn't matter since he saw the bride naked yesterday and surely that effects luck positively. He leaves as Sadie grabs another tissue and is comforted by her bridesmaids.
As Dr. de Vico climbs into bed with her husband “Adam Burgess” and explains she made it Saturday so he wouldn't have to go to work, Charlie Muckle seems discontent as he stares blankly at the ceiling.
The five compatriots go to the house that is connected to the virtual world. The cameras are actually outside and the house was scanned in at an earlier time. So the input for his world is from the area just outside that home in the real world and if they stand out there, Charlie Muckle can see them and hear them, even if they can't see him. Muckle pries himself away from the obsessed de Vico and goes to his front step to see them. Yves taps them into the program so they can hear him. They try to convince him that he should leave the wonderful pleasant easy virtual world and go back to Sadie but they mostly fail at it. The virtual world is extremely enticing but he doesn't need it to change and it doesn't have Sadie in it. As the police come, they flee, leaving Charlie Muckle to contemplate his choice.
Charlie Muckle crashes Marvin and Sadie's wrestling ring wedding and he and Sadie make up. A tearful Jimmy Bond and the others watch the happy ending they helped along.
==Background Information==
*There was an inadvertent spoiler in this episode. When Frohike is examining their client's story and the odd blue goo, he comments, "Let's not call Mulder just yet." This episode originally aired just two days before the first broadcast of episode "DeadAlive", in which Mulder is "resurrected" after having been returned from his abduction.
==Cast==
Starring
*Bruce Harwood as 
*Tom Braidwood as 
*Dean Haglund as 
*Stephen Snedden as Jimmy Bond
*Zuleikha Robinson as Yves Adele Harlow
Guest Starring
*Stephen Toblowsky as Adam Burgess
*Debbie Lee Carrington as Sadie Muckle
*David Earl Waterman as Maniac Marvin
Featuring
*Marie Stillin as Lois de Vico
*David Bloom as Weary Man #2/Tom Shantz
*Beverley Breuer as Woman/Carol Shantz
*Greg Barr as the Dwarf Santini
*Arnie Walters as Preacher
*Rob Court as Technician
*Casey Dubois as Little Boy
*David Thomson as Man with Net
===References===
SEMICOLON-SEPARATED LIST OF ITEMS/LOCATIONS REFERENCED IN EPISODE (BUT NOT LINKED TO IF ALREADY LINKED IN SUMMARY OR GUEST STARS SECTIONS)
Category:The Lone Gunmen episodes