This story seemed more like "The Monkey's Paw" than "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp."

"His dental records are a match." Just how did they manage to x-ray an invisible man's teeth? Way cool special effect with the yellow dust though.

Good thing that genia ran into those two brothers. Be tragic if they'd gotten the chance to breed.

So she complains about human greed and shallowness, then disses Mulder's world peace wish. Geez, there's no pleasing that girl (then again, she is French....). Bet she helped that Filipino kid, too: "I wish for a really hot thesis project."

Anyone else not see Mulder's third wish coming?

Okay, I admit to being thick about Arabic folklore, but can a creature of flame or air, as Mulder describes her, really be immobilized inside a carpet? If she's air, she can just leak away. If she's flame, she can burn up the carpet from the inside.

Given that Leslie was not that specific about how Anson came back, how is it that he managed to reverse his invisibility?

>"His dental records are a match." Just how did they manage to x-ray an invisible man's teeth? Way cool special effect with the yellow dust though.>

Anson specifically asked to be invisable. This wish would not include x-rays, infrared, etc. just visable light.

All I gotta say is, where the hell can I get one of those remote controls?

Ok, that and why wasn't this entitled I Dream of DJinni, since I'm watching it now and Mulder just did the Jeannie theme song while talking to Leslie, played quite well by MADTV's much slimmed-down Will Sasso.

Shane, I think Anson was visible only because of the yellow powder so technically he's still invisible. I guess he could will himself back but I think his brains still messed up.
How come the guy who had his mouth shut (can't remember his name) get such a bad mouth work? With all the progress in cosmetic surgery, you'd think he'd get a better mouth than that. Of course then he wouldn't be able to make a case out of it eh?
I was just waiting for a truck to hit Anson when he ran out of the trailer like that.
Scully is particularly giggly in this episode as well ... esp. when she's working on putting the powder on Mr. Invisible.
Is genia really the feminine form of genie? I thought it was genie regardless. Djinn in the books I've read as a kid.
Most of the genies I've read in literature are in a vessel and this is the first I've seen that lives rolled up in a carpet. Shane, you're right in your points. :-)
How did Leslie carry the carpet and the genie back to his trailer without using a wish? Assuming that the genie follows whoever unrolls her from the carpet, it doesn't seem to me that she carries it around with her. When Anson takes her home, the carpet remains in the storage. And how dense can Anson be ... he's in a wheelchair and he doesn't think of walking again ... esp. since he did walk until his accident. By the time he realizes this, it's too late ... and he didn't smell the gas? 8-/
Nice touch, when Mulder runs into the street to find all mankind gone, the first person he misses is Scully. :-)
When Scully asked for the genie to give them a minute, I was hoping she'd go "poof" given the references to "I Dream of Jeannie." Instead the camera moved away for her to do her exit. But Mulder doing the "boing" was funny.
Well, that's all for tonight folks. Just my $0.02 worth.

I also expected Anson to reappear after he died and the boat to disappear and his boss's mouth to revert back to what it originally was.

How did they even find Anson's body?

Didn't everyone expect Mulder's last wish to be what it was? I half expected the video that he and Scully were watching to be Aladdin®, given the situation and his third wish.

-12-

S.Wong,

Scully stated that "now he's visible", after the explosion.

-12-

-12-, visible after the explosion because of his charred remains? The first time I think they found Anson's body from the imprint on the ground. My question is how he even got there to begin with. He was hit by a truck so he should've been thrown on the road not to the sidewalk. But that would've made finding him more difficult eh. Besides, other vehicles would run over him and he'd be in worse condition.

Ehh, predictable yet fun. Kind of entertaining to see the two yahoos messing around with their three wishes.

One thing I wanted--that Leslie's corpse be found...with legs.

I agree. If I were Mulder I would have wished that peddler had never come to her village. Barring that, that Anson had not discovered her.

I was a little suprized that the Cleopatra angle was never mentioned. Cleopatra and her brother Ptolomy were going to plead their case for the rulership of Egypt before Julius Caesar who would back one or the other. The night before the joint meeting was to take place Cleopatra had herself smuggled into Caesar's bedchamber in a rolled up carpet. He unrolled her and we all know what happened to him in the end.

BTW, the title is "I Wish" in French.

Actually as she states to Mulder she wasn't
originally a genie,she was a French girl from
15th Century who made a bad last wish..the one
about long life and great power.

Ok..obviously no-one had much brains when it
came to making wishes!

I mean shouldn't Mulder's first wish ought to have
been to get his sister Samantha back?After seven
years you'd expect him to make that particuliar
wish.

"I did say it was the 15th Century,didn't I?"the
genie explaining about her wish for the donkey and
the neverending supply of turnips.:)

My first wish,if it were me,would be an encylopedia series detailing who all my ancestors
were,when they lived,where they lived,what they
did,what they believed and when,where and how they
died,with pictures.:)

I mean shouldn't Mulder's first wish ought to have been to get his sister Samantha back? After seven years you'd expect him to make that particuliar wish.

Or at least to know the truth about it?

If I were Mulder I would have wished that peddler had never come to her village.

Well, if Mulder wished for the Original Genie to not have gone to the 15th Century French Village, Jenny-genie wouldn't have been able to put Mussolini and Nixon in power, and half of WWII and the Watergate Scandal would have disappeared, drastically changing history as we know it.

-- Aaron

There are so many things wrong with this episode (that ending? Please. Even Disney did that!), that I hate to say I enjoyed it as much as I did.

I agree with Mulder. She was just a •••••. If I were Mulder, I would have thought seriously of using a wish to say that she can from now on only grant wishes in pro-social ways. Or that she has to follow the intentions of the wishers, not just their words.

Incidentally, if you ever find yourself in the possession of a genie, here's the wish to make: "I wish that, with no change at all in my current situation, I should become the most miserable person in the world."

Murray,

using a wish to say that she can from now on only grant wishes in pro-social ways. Or that she has to follow the intentions of the wishers, not just their words.

I suspect that meta-wishes (to use terminology from Godel Escher Bach) are forbidden, hence the prohibition that she mentioned when the rednecks were going to wish for infinite wishes.

Incidentally, if you ever find yourself in the possession of a genie, here's the wish to make: "I wish that, with no change at all in my current situation, I should become the most miserable person in the world."

Why? You get just what mulder got when he wished for peace on earth. His situation was unchanged, but because there was nobody else, he was the most miserable person in the world.

I also saw coming where Skinner and the guys reappear in the office and wonder what Mulder's doing there.

Still, it was a pretty fun episode.

I had a bucketload of fun, but the overarching thought I had was.....huh????

"Incidentally, if you ever find yourself in the possession of a genie, here's the wish to make:
"I wish that, with no change at all in my current situation, I should become the most
miserable person in the world." "

"Why? You get just what mulder got when he wished for peace on earth. His situation was
unchanged, but because there was nobody else, he was the most miserable person in
the world."

Maybe you could specify that everyone else wouldworld. continue to exist in a semi-normal state, but that you would become the most dissatisfied with your life. (miserable is just no fun)

This story was a bit of the "Monkey's Paw," and a bit of an old folktale about a fisherman who captures a talking fish. The fish offers three wishes in exchange for not being dinner. So the fisherman asks for a bigger house, gets one ten miles high, all the local soldiers and tax collectors notice it...

It looks like this one was an homage to those stories.

Hey, about the Djinni being held in a carpet, the one in Aladdin could have gotten out the spout at any time. It's not science, it's magic. The magic spell held her in the rolled up carpet.

Peace on Earth, Fox? How about, "Please keep the aliens from invading" or "Let me know everything about the consipiracy I've been fighting"? To keep the conspiracy storyline out of the fun episodes, that's why not! Sometimes, we need a break.

I know they're dancing around the season/series ending problem, but one episode is not enough to wrap this series. It deserves a two-parter, or a two hour, or something! At least!

S. Wong: {Shane, I think Anson was visible only because of the yellow powder so
technically he's still invisible. I guess he could will himself back but I think his
brains still messed up.}

Then how could I see the whites of his eyes? But you're right, he is too messed up to restore himself.

Am I the only one who's reminded of Homer Simpson, screaming "The turkey's a little dry!"

They didn't do anything with it, but he didn't specify "and be able to turn myself visible again."

what does "Je Souhaite" mean anyway?

len, "I Wish" ... Ccabe mentioned it at the top.

oops! silly me! sorry about that! Thanks

When Scully first got at that invisible dude and started painting him, my thoughts were:

Scully? Why aren't you videotaping this?

Later:

Oh, pictures. Good.

Later still:

Scully, you didn't have to be embarassed with those Harvard guys. Why didn't you show 'em the pictures, or at least tell 'em you had pictures?!

The general theme for me seemed to be that selfish wishes will rebound, causing the wisher to come to harm, that's why mulder wishes for world peace instead of samantha or anything else. I've read some sufi stories, which where the original for the aladin-type stories, and they stress the point that only wise people can safely wish for something. So the first thing you should wish for is neither money nor power but wisdom. With wisdom, you will realize that gifts are useless, that you have to earn the real important things (enlightment, peace and so on) yourself, because only then can you use them and treasure them.

It does not matter how you word the wish (as mulder tries with his 3rd wish), there will always be a trap from the force that grants the wish (kismet, if you like).

So yes, I thought the theme of the ep. consistent.

The only thing I would have done different than mulder was to wish for scully to be able to become pregnangt again (seeing how much that was bothering her) and then set the genie free (mulder could have given the carpet to her). But then, maybe he just wanted to get rid of the power.

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