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Large, strange mailguy Kevin gets a gift aquarium from Blush publisher Jack Gallo. The tank looks like a nice, 20 gallon Nanocube, but since the camera doesn’t focus on it, I can’t be sure. We only get to see it from the side. Kevin is pleased with the gift and names the fish Jack Gallo.

There is also a nice, colorful saltwater fish in the tank that does not get a closeup - which is probably for the best, since Finch persuades Kevin to eat the fish for $20.

We don’t see him eat the fish but I’m not happy with this plotline. Daring people to eat pets just isn’t funny in my book. Too many goldfish get swallowed as bets, which is basically torture to a living creature. I realize the plot point is meant as a joke, and is only featured as a tag to the episode. Even in jest, I don’t like references to animal cruelty.

Fish Keepers on TV - Malcolm in the Middle
Fish Keepers on TV - The X-Files
More Fish Entertainment Articles - Fish Movies, Fun and Games

FBI Agent Fox Mulder was a dedicated fish keeper during his run on the X-Files. His ten gallon goldfish tank was always spotlessly clean, and the fish tank even featured prominantly in a few episodes as a plot point.

Mulder usually had two or three goldfish in his ten gallon, which I consider appropriate enough - his tank looked empty compared to how most TV shows depict over-stocked tanks. Since goldfish can get big, and are huge ammonia producers, showing only 2-3 fish was a relatively responsible way to depict a healthy goldfish tank.

During Mulder’s frequent disappearances, Scully cared for his fish. In 8th-season premier Within/Without, fellow agent John Doggett “caught” Scully sleeping in Mulder’s apartment. She excused herself by saying she had to feed his fish. While she fumbled around looking for the fish food, Doggett produced it from a drawer - obviously he had been caring for the fish himself. This was not the first time she used “feeding the fish” as an excuse to let herself into Mulder’s apartment.

Mulder had a well-honed, wry sense of humor, which included making fun of himself. In his fish tank, he kept a “spaceship” bubbler toy, a flying saucer that rose and fell. In the 8th-season finale Requiem, we see Mulder and Scully start to get physically close, then cut to his fish tank and the flying saucer.

In the final season of the X-Files we understand that Mulder himself has been abducted. In episodes that show Scully in her home, we see she has moved Mulder’s fish tank to her living room. Scary Monsters is one such episode. This is a nice example of understated plot continuity.

Other episodes show different fish tanks. The highly-regarded “loch ness monster” episode, Quagmire, shows a biologist with a large tank of several healthy Oscars in his lab. This scientist is also breeding frogs to release to a local lake that is experiencing a significant drop in wild frog populations. And while the aquatic menace that Mulder and Scully are searching for is a Plesiosaur, Mulder mentions that Bullsharks, a fish long thought to be extinct, was recently rediscovered in modern times.

More Fish Entertainment Articles - Fish Movies, Fun and Games
All I Need to Know I Learned From My Betta
X-Files Articles on the SF/Fantasy Movie Site at BellaOnline

Finding Nemo got four nominations for the 2004 Academy Awards! Not bad for a fish story. I’ll be hosting my own Finding Nemo party to celebrate, and inviting my favorite aquarium addict friends.

Searching for Nemo

In Animation, we should expect Finding Nemo to swim off with a clear victory. Nemo was nodded for Sound Editing, as well the expected win for Best Original Screenplay. This fun fishy flick also snared a vote for Best Original Score, which I still expect to go to Howard Shore for Lord of the Rings.

This amazing Disney film has the gorgeous animation and touching tale you expect from a Disney classic - plus depicts marine life very engagingly.

Discuss Finding Nemo on this forum: Nemo was here.

A Fish Called Wanda opens with the credits’ score played over the swimming inhabitants of a well-tended hobbyist’s aquarium.

This funny movie isn’t really about a fish - although the namesake is an angelfish kept in one character’s personal aquarium, and features prominantly in the film as a plot point.

A Fish Called Wanda

Wanda is also a sexy, charmingly manipulative woman, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Through the plot, it becomes apparent that each character is, in their own way, in love with her. Ken (Michael Palin), a peaceful, animal-loving man with a painful stutter, can only worship Wanda from afar. He sees her as an angel (a humorous allusion, since Curtis’ character certainly is far from an angel). So the central pet in Ken’s life, an angel fish, is also named Wanda. And when Ken talks to his that fish, he doesn’t stutter. Later, when Wanda the woman wants information from Ken, she kisses him soundly - and his stutter also melts away.

While Ken’s character is only given the fourth most screen time (after Curtis, John Cleese and Kevin Kline), his role is memorable. A pivotal point comes in the film when Otto tortures Ken for information - by slurping down his aquarium’s inhabitants! Wanda is last to go, and Ken manages to squeak out his information only when Otto (Kline) reaches for this last, special fish. Otto thoughtlessly swallows her anyway, and the seeds for Ken’s humorous revenge scene (”It’s K-K-K-Ken, C-C-C-Coming to K-K-K-Kill me!”) are born.

Cleese and Palin, the wacky Briton team from Monty Python, manage to craft a coherent, hysterically funny movie, blended with the best kind of wit from both sides of the Atlantic.