In this column, we look at two pop-cultural interpretations of ubiquitous Weird legends as portrayed by two narrative television programs… like how Walter on Fringe and the eponymous Gilmore girls repeatedly explored binge eating as a salve for intellectual fatigue. But with monsters. Enjoy.

This week:

“I heard a Frankenstein lives there!”

The X-Files Episode 5×06 – “The Post-Modern Prometheus”

Written by show creator Chris Carter

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Episode 2×02 – “Some Assembly Required”

Written by Ty King

The classic story of Frankenstein has been reinterpreted through the catch phrase-addled, boob-frenzied lens of pop culture over and over and over again. Just when you thought the premise was dead, some mad scientist of a producer resurrects it against the will of God and allows the resulting hideous perversion to rampage through prime time all over again. Two of the most lauded modern genre shows, X-Files and Buffy The Vampire Slayer each took a stab at the story, but only one truly broke new ground on the legend.

Chris Carter, who created The X-Files and generally stuck to writing the complex-to-the-point-of-impenetrability mythology episodes, tried his hand at several monster-of-the-week stories. While his early one-offs, such as “Jersey Devil,” in which the titular devil is revealed to be a feral child, and “Space,” in which a ghost from space that’s somehow the infamous Mars face possesses an astronaut (how could anyone think this show is nerdy?) are arguably series’ nadirs, his fifth season episode “The Post-Modern Prometheus” was a daring, captivating bit of television that managed to be equal parts James Whale and Thomas Pynchon.

While the title of the episode is a play on The Modern Prometheus, which is the subtitle of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, the episode itself is an over-the-top homage to the Universal Frankenstein franchise, complete with a deep-contrast black and white look, repeated cartoonish jags of lighting in the sky and a climactic scene featuring torch- and pitchfork-wielding villagers.

To briefly recap: Mulder and Scully go to a strange mid-western town to investigate the mysterious pregnancy of a woman who contacted Mulder and told him she was raped by a monster (the woman got Mulder’s name when he was mentioned by a guest on The Jerry Springer Show who said Mulder helped her when she was impregnated by a werewolf). The agents confirm the existence of the monster, trace his origins back to a local mad scientist and discover the mysterious pregnancies were actually the work of the scientist’s father, a local farmer, who, feeling bad for his son’s creation, was using animal DNA to impregnate local women in the hopes of creating a mate for the reconstructed offspring. The creature, having found solace in the film Mask, is nurturing a Cher obsession, which is built up throughout the episode via a Cher-heavy soundtrack.

The episode not only riffs on the classic Frankenstein story, but also on the pervasive, near-instinctual presence of that story, and other stories like it, in our culture. By employing cliché visual tropes and throwing in a succession of references to an array of then-current pop cultural hallmarks, Carter demonstrates how these classic horror stories are built into a cultural dichotomy wherein people immediately identify the story and it’s most classic tellings as iconic fiction while still unknowingly incorporating the underlying primal horrors represented by these fictions into the everyday narratives of their lives. People use these stories to put a face to their fears, but even in a post-modern society, where everyone is aware that these legends are created to externalize innate distresses of the human condition, the stories and the terror behind them persist.

Carter also wrote the episode entitled “The Host,” in which he posits that a man/fluke worm hybrid would, like, totally bite the sh-t out of you.

Meanwhile, in the Whedonverse, Chris, a high schooler driven mad with grief resurrects his dead athlete brother Daryl and then goes about harvesting female body parts in order to construct an ad hoc cadaverous hottie for his newly undead brother to put the staggering, unsettling moves on. Then Buffy stops him before Daryl’s post-mortem paramour receives her final component: Cordelia’s head (this “Charisma Carpenter gives good head” joke is in parentheses because I’m leaving it up to you, the reader, to decided whether or not I, in fact, went there.)

As Buffy episodes go, “Some Assembly Required” is far from revelatory. However, it’s worth discussing because this episode represents the first of several stories throughout the series about the construction of the perfect girl as a means to stave off existential loneliness (At least in Spike’s case… Warren’s just a misogynistic douche).

This is where “Some Assembly Required” and “The Post-Modern Prometheus” dovetail so beautifully. Although both seem to be dealing with the traditional Frankenstein (or, if you prefer, Prometheus) legend, that story ends with a simple admonishment to respect powers that are beyond human reason and control. While both of these episodes flirt with this theme through the sheer existence of the creatures as a direct result of human meddling, the primary focus of the stories is on the inherent responsibility of the creator to the creation, even after every other natural law is broken. It’s the story of Universal’s original Frankenstein sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, which suggested that the need for love is an inextricable component of life itself, so that to artificially imbue something with life is also to imbue it with a desperate loneliness. The larger point is that, by the 1930s, when The Bride of Frankenstein was made, science and culture had both advanced to the point where fewer and fewer powers were beyond human control. The lesson of the original Frankenstein was moot. The narrative had to be revised to accept that humans will always attempt control, but teach that, in succeeding, vastly daunting liabilities are created.

Granted, for all the claims that this updated Frankenstein mythos answered to a completely different set of ethical concerns, it is true that the upshot of every bride of Frankenstein story is still a massive cosmic “told you so!” about how “none of this would have happened if you hadn’t insisted on building that damn monster in the first place!” But, I mean, it was a pretty stupid thing to build.

Lastly, while The X-Files helped put the ongoing existence of monster lore into a contemporary cultural context, it’s the Buffy episode that actually modernizes the Frankenstein story in direct response to the oft-overlooked fact that as technology develops, so do our motives and yens. Frankenstein classically portrayed a mad scientist embarking on a strange and seemingly impossible journey just so that he could prove that the journey could be completed. Carter’s script, because X-Files hinges on the revelation of the unexplainable taking material form and invading our reality, regards Shelley’s Frankenstein in the same way we do – as a fiction – and, therefore, allows the episode’s mad scientist to be the first person to successfully harness the power of life and death. Ergo, his motive of “to prove I can” is still viable. In a reality where people have already completed many seemingly impossible journies (a reality maybe not so dissimilar from 21st century America), no one is making the journey simply to prove that it’s possible. In “Some Assembly Required,” Chris knows that he can resurrect Daryl, and does so because he misses him and feels lonely. It’s only after resolving his own loneliness that Chris realizes he’s now responsible for Daryl’s loneliness as well. Chris’ mistake isn’t borne out of arrogance like Victor Frankenstein’s was; Chris’ mistake is borne out of mourning, love and a horrifically relatable nostalgic greed.

The Frankenstein story used to read as a cautionary tale to the learned and a tale of sensationalist horror to the commoner. In a modern world, where the commoner has increasing access to the resources of the learned, and the learned throw caution to the wind, that story is changing. And Chris Carter’s writing it. And eventually he’s going to put a Mars face ghost into it.

In conclusion, I guess pretty soon we’re all going to be resurrecting the dead and then having to resurrect more of the dead for the original resurrected dead to make out with. I blame computers.

Matt Finley is a writer currently based in Cleveland. His blog can be found here and you can follow him on Twitter at @Finfizzler.