Fire

Mulder receives a visit from an old flame in Scotland Yard. Members of the British aristocracy have been bursting into flame for no readily apparent reason.

Tropes:

• Artistic License – Geography: Phoebe mentions a Noodle Incident involving Arthur Conan Doyle's headstone in Windlesham. In reality, Doyle was buried in Hampshire.
• Ax-Crazy: Cecil L'Ively. Although he can act cordial and calm, he's a deeply disturbed man who will set buildings or people on fire for extremely petty reasons, at one point he burns down a bar for no apparent reason other than to mess with the patrons.
• Betty and Veronica: Despite Scully not being a love interest for Mulder at this point, there is something of this dynamic between her bookish, reserved, professional manner versus the dark, flirty, mischievous Phoebe, who travels in well-to-do circles.
• Bookends: Mulder gets a tape from Phoebe at the beginning and at the end of the episode.
  Mulder: Ten-to-one, you can't dance to it.
• Brief Accent Imitation: Scully pulls out British accent briefly. First when she greets Phoebe with "hello" and then at the end when she teases Mulder.
• The Call Knows Where You Live:
  • Mulder and Scully's newest assignment starts when, after a day in court, the two find a tape from Fox's ex in the car. She then reveals herself and explains that she wants Mulder's help on a case.
  • A villainous example with the Malcolm family. After several Parliament members died, courtesy of Cecil, Sir Malcolm decided it would be safer for his family if they spent some time in America. Cecil followed them, murdered the caretaker of their vacation home, and impersonated him so he could go through with his plan of killing Sir Malcolm.
• Distress Ball:
  • Mulder carries a Distress Ball in one scene when he tries to rescue the children from fire. He cannot continue and just collapses. Firemen to the rescue!
  • The boys are in big trouble twice. First the villain pulls the trick of saving them and then it's Mulder, overcoming his fear.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Scully does enjoy looking at shirtless Mulder.
• Evil Brit: Cecil L'Ively, who was a British national that burned several people alive, a bar full of people, the 14th story of a building in Boston, and the Marsden's house at Cape Cod.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: The Malcolm family dog quickly dislikes Cecil, as he finds the body of Bob the caretaker (who Cecil is impersonating) and barks at Cecil whenever he can. The fact that Cecil literally kicked the dog doesn't help matters.
• External Combustion: Mulder and Scully get into their car and find a strange cassette tape on the dashboard. They pop it in, and a voice informs them that by doing so they have armed a bomb hooked up to the car, and opening the door will trigger the explosion. Someone then opens the door from the outside, and Scully jumps—turns out the voice on the tape was just Mulder's New Old Flame, trying to mess with their heads.
• Face Your Fears: Mulder is upstairs as the house is burning down. Despite his terror of fire, he rescues Jimmy and Michael from their locked room and escapes the house with them.
• Faux Affably Evil: Cecil acts like a perfectly kind gentleman in the presence of the Marsden family. Whenever he's left to his own devices (like in a bar or after the agents expose him), he lets his true colors show.
• Finger-Snap Lighter: Cecil L'Ively lights his finger to mess with a young woman at a bar. He also lights his cigarettes completely hands-free on several occasions.
• Foreshadowing: Twice during the episode, Cecil can be seen painting a substance onto the house walls and boys' swing set. In the episode's climax, it's revealed that this is a flame accelerant (likely the same one he's used to get all of his victims).
• For the Evulz: While out in town, Cecil burns down a bar just for the fun of it, laughing as people run for their lives.
• Friendship Moment: After Mulder fails to get to the kids (and ends up a victim of smoke inhalation), Scully is the only one to go to his side when the firemen get him to safety (everyone else is congratulating Cecil for saving the kids). Later, she sits by Mulder's bedside as he recovers.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Cecil is a heavy smoker, and at one point tries to induce the boys to take a puff. He's also one of the most evil characters in the show's history.
• Healing Factor: Cecil's ability to heal is pretty extreme, as is revealed at the end of the episode. He not only survives getting fifth to sixth degree burns over most of his body, where a fourth degree burn is often lethal, he is shown to be recovering within weeks. This might be Required Secondary Powers for his pyrokinesis.
• Heroic Fire Rescue:
  • Invoked by Cecil L'ively who set the fire at the hotel himself so that he could save the boys from their room. He succeeds and comes off as a hero.
  • Played straight with Mulder who saves the children from the burning house.
• I Know What You Fear: Mulder confides to Scully that he's scared to death of fire, because of a childhood incident. Phoebe seems to be aware of this, as she lays an indecent emphasis on the word "burn" when she describes the Serial Killer's methods and drinks up Mulder's reaction.
• I Am Very British: The case of the week is the serial immolation of very posh English people. Upon espying his new home, a seven-year-old British child naturally exclaims:
  "What a pleasant surprise!"
• Infernal Retaliation: "You can't kill fire with fire."
• Kick the Dog: Cecil has two.
  • Near the beginning, he literally kicks and berates a dog that is about to expose the corpse of the caretaker he is impersonating.
  • Later, after taking time out to show the Marsden children a series of magic tricks with a cigarette (which on its own might have been a Pet the Dog moment), he rather aggressively tries to convince them to smoke.
• "London, England" Syndrome: The opening scene in England even includes the distance from London on the time-stamp.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Phoebe teasingly reminds Mulder of an assignation they had while they were both studying at Oxford, over Arthur Conan Doyle's headstone.
• Male Gaze: When Cecil is spying on Mrs. Malcolm, the camera has several lingering shots of her from the neck down as she prepares tea.
• Monster of the Week: A pyrokinetic villain.
• Mr. Fanservice: Mulder wears nothing but black boxer shorts in one scene.
• Must Have Nicotine: Cecil's smoking may have more to do with his pyromania than with an addiction, but he at least references this trope in the final scene.
• New Old Flame: Mulder and Phoebe Greene were a couple at Oxford.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: In-universe and justified. While around the Malcolm family, Cecil uses a faux American accent to further convince them he's Bob. Whenever he's not around them, he drops it and uses his true English accent.
• Playing with Fire: Cecil has pyrokinetic abilities and is capable of starting fires at a distance.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Cecil likes delivering these:
  Care for a light?
  Time to call 9-1-1.
• Pyromaniac:
  • Cecil L'ively is the Monster of the Week. He's a British arsonist and murderer with pyrokinetic abilities.
  • The FBI arson specialist comes off as a (benign) pyromaniac. The first thing we see of him as he is shown a slideshow consisting of fires that spontaneously erupted on - and killed - a member of the British aristocracy is him hugging the projector screen while gushing about how beautiful the fire is. He's even a little jealous that it's Mulder on the case and not himself. But its clear he's more of a Bunny-Ears Lawyer than a killer, as Mulder doesn't treat his behavior as anything unusual.
• Shirtless Scene: Mulder when recovering from smoke inhalation.
• Shout-Out: Green refers to the arson case as a "three-pipe problem", which Mulder explains to Scully as a Sherlock Holmes reference and an In-Joke.
• Single-Issue Psychology: Mulder has to face his fear of fire, which goes back to a single traumatic event in his childhood. It will never come up again after this episode.
• Smoking Is Not Cool: Cecil tries to get the kids to try his cigarette, but they are mostly grossed out by it (even though he just did a cool magic trick with it).
• Spontaneous Human Combustion: This was suggested as a possible explanation, but it wasn't the case.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Despite being pyrokinetic, Cecil can't self-generate a fire powerful enough to consume a human being, or a house, so he booby-traps his targets with rocket fuel.
  • Running into a fire with no protection (and breathing heavily due to panic) leaves Fox with smoke inhalation. Cecil and the kids are fine, but that's likely due to the kids having less exposure than Fox and Cecil being immune to his own fire.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Cecil poisons the Marsden family's driver/bodyguard by mixing fire accelerant into his cough syrup.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Scully doesn't like Phoebe, and she's more than annoyed with her and Mulder dancing and kissing. How much of her annoyance comes from jealousy, and how much from Mulder's non-professionalism —they're dancing when they should should be looking out for a suspect— isn't made clear.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Mulder is deathly afraid of fire, and guess what he has to face. However, it is not that much of a coincidence, as Phoebe Green brought him on the case on purpose.