Let me take you back to the fall of 1998, when “The Hampster Dance” became one of the first viral sensations of the internet, a little show called Total Request Live premiered on MTV, and The X-Files returned to the small screen after popping its summer blockbuster cherry. It’s here where we catch back up with Mulder and Scully, post-bee stings, almost-kisses, tense interactions with Blythe Danner (never to be seen again in canon), and the second re-opening of the X-Files division. Production has made the move to Los Angeles, and as much as we miss those comforting Vancouver forests, it’s nice to see the show stretch its legs a bit. (And even nicer to have access to some serious West Coast talent.)
To break down the best and worst of this season, we’re once again joined by #TrustNoOne pal KatyBeth and grateful for her insights. So read on for our many thoughts on Season Six of The X-Files, including the obligatory complaints about the lighting in “Triangle.” —Sage
- Favorite Mythology Episode?
KatyBeth: I wrote an entirely different answer to this while I was watching “One Son” before realizing I was writing about the wrong story. Because in spite of the overuse of the film score (sorry Mark Snow, I mostly hate when it is used in the series because it overwhelms what is on-screen) and having to look at Diana Fowley and her underwear drawer, I really love “One Son.”
We’ve got Chris Carter bringing back the original members of the Syndicate for a little farewell before literally burning down The Patriarchy™. THE Decontamination Shower Scene happens. Dana Scully has reached her all-black fashion era and she’s looking hot AF bothering Mulder at the indoor basketball court where he is playing hooky. Scully and the Gunmen team up to help Mulder finally realize Diana is full of shit! (But he ignores it some more anyway.) Cassandra Spender is back for one last visit. Skinner gets involved in the action. Krycek and Marita are back! Krycek, who has miraculously wormed his way back into the Syndicate like Jax Taylor getting rehired at SUR after cursing out Lisa Vanderpump in front of an entire dinner crowd, continues to look hot! Marita looks extremely cold. (This show does not deserve how good Laurie Holden is in this episode.)
And then, of course, there’s my beloved, Jeffrey Spender, who is arguably having The Worst Day of his life. He’s been handling his dual parental abandonment issues by teaming up with his absentee father (yikes). His mother has reappeared, and she can walk again, but because he can’t handle his problems with her head-on, he keeps her under protection in the hospital instead of spending time with her. He’s teamed up with Alex Krycek, who mentors him on killing alien rebels to gain favor with his dad. (Spoiler alert: the only thing that makes that man happy is cigarettes and committing murders). He’s killing aliens with an ice pick to the back of the neck*. His partner is possibly banging his dad AND his half-brother. This man is trying his best and making a giant mess because of his own issues. He needs so much therapy.
I had this fun moment (over a Diana scene I was ignoring) where I imagined a version of the show where Spender teamed up with Krycek and Marita to fill the power vacuum and he kept failing upward and eventually became a villain in his father’s image, and how interesting would it be to see how CSM’s two sons took what he did to them and became entirely different people. CSM could have been retired. The show could have had a new but similar antagonist instead of becoming More Mess.
Anyway, this did not happen. What DID happen is that Jeffrey Spender’s mother was murdered by aliens with a bunch of minor baddie randoms as a result of his dad’s shitty choices. He feels like he could have stopped things – had he listened to Mulder over the previous year instead of trying to win his dad’s approval. Spender calls a meeting with Kersh, Skinner, Scully, and his ex-nemesis Mulder to take the blame for the deaths, and ends with this:
Spender: I would ask, sir, before you tell me that it’s not my business, that you do everything you can to get them back on the X-Files. Far worse can happen. And it will.
And then he quits, finally having done the right thing. (Imagine me yelling THIS IS WHY I LOVE HIM in my apartment as I rewatched this scene.) Have your life’s work back, Mulder. Mic drop. And scene. But we all know it’s a bad sign when TV follows the person who just had a strong exit, and in this case, it’s because that Cigarette-Smoking Son-of-a-Bitch is waiting to murder his only legitimate child for doing the right thing.
So like the CSM knocking out his wife and child within the same episode, Chris Carter has burned most of his original conspiracy plot to the ground and is now free to make new great ideas (or a few good ones and a lot of stupid ones that will make us all mad in the future). It’s a bold move from a man who often barely moves at all.
*oh my god, is that a reference to the Sontarans?
Kim: It is a truth universally acknowledged in The X-Files that the mythology falls apart in Season Six, mostly due to the fact that Chris Carter literally decided to set it on fire. From here on out, things get real messy and convoluted, and you’ll hear the phrase “Super Soldier” more times than you can count. Pour one out for the Syndicate, y’all. It was fun while it lasted. Now, does “S.R. 819” count as a mythology episode? At first glance, one wouldn’t necessarily think so, but Alex Krycek makes an appearance and the nanobots in Skinner’s blood come back into play in “Biogenesis,” so I’m going to say yes. “S.R. 819” is a mythology episode and it’s a banger one at that. It’s a thrilling race against time as Mulder and Scully fight to save the third in their triad from a mysterious illness. What makes this one so good is that the stakes feel real and immediate. After all, it wouldn’t entirely be out of the realm of possibility that The X-Files would toy with killing off a beloved character like Walter Skinner in the sixth season. The script really keeps the audience on the edge right up until the very end. It’s a killer performance by Mitch Pileggi, who has always risen to the occasion when Skinner gets the spotlight, but he really takes it to the next level here. We get to see Skinner at his most vulnerable in a gorgeous deathbed scene with Scully where he confesses that their fight should have been his own. We also see him at his most closed-off when he coldly shuts Mulder down in regards to any further investigation of what happened to him. Skinner has made one too many deals with the devil over the course of the series and now it’s really bitten him in the ass. Because now? Now he’s literally under the thumb of Alex Krycek and subject to any one of his mood swings or double crossings. It’s devastating. Like any good mythology episode should be.
Sage: Josh Exley is a gray, and the Alien Bounty Hunter is present, so “The Unnatural” is technically a mythology episode. I still feel like I’m getting away with something choosing it for this question, because it has the heart of a standalone.
I was at a book signing for David’s novel Bucky F*cking Dent back in 2016, and I’m very grateful I got the chance to tell him (without straying too far from the point of the event, since that book is also about baseball) how often I come back to “The Unnatural” and what a beautiful piece of writing it is. As flashbacks go, it’s much deeper than “Travelers” (and considerably less dull, thank god), and does social justice allegory without cheapening the subject matter. After five-and-a-half seasons, it’s about time we see the conspiracy from the perspective of an alien, even if Exley is an outlier. Like Ariel, he wants to be where the people are, and he discovers a forbidden pastime that makes him feel alive for the first time. Intertwining that story with the historical reality of segregation is a tricky business, but the charm of Jesse L. Martin’s performance and the fact that the script resists the urge to give Exley a happier, less plausible ending carry it off.
Like all the best episodes of this series, “The Unnatural” is a love story. There’s Exley/baseball, of course – a love that literally transforms him from the inside out. But there’s also Exley/The Other Arthur Dales, in whatever way you want to read into it. (I believe that they kissed, but I am me – I am always going to believe that the boys kissed.) Regardless of its nature, their brief connection is powerful enough that Dales can recount the story in detail decades later, and he talks openly with Mulder about how knowing Exley changed him, too.
And of course, every Arthur Dales story is also a Fox Mulder story. The latter’s commitment to the X-Files is initially presented to us as his penance for not being able to protect his sister, but it becomes so much more than that (not coincidentally after Scully comes along). It’s about time Mulder realizes that he doesn’t have to continue punishing himself for the rest of his life, and that maybe the loss of Samantha isn’t all that’s been keeping him going all these years. Dales’ story reminds him that he’s also in this, if you’ll forgive me, for the love of the game. That the very first thing he does after leaving Dales’ apartment is call Scully up to share something else that he loves with her makes me want to shoot myself into space. But more on that later.
- Favorite Standalone Episode?
Kim: Unlike the mythology episodes, Season Six is overflowing with episodes that no one would really bat an eye at if you said they were the best standalone episode of the season. But at the same time, for me, there’s really only one answer and that’s “Triangle,” of course.
And no, I’m not saying “Triangle” because of the kiss. I can hardly see the kiss because Chris Carter is a hateful person and that kiss is as dark as 90% of the episodes of Game of Thrones. I’m saying “Triangle” because it’s an absolutely masterful episode of television and, as Sage said during our rewatch, you can tell that it’s made by people who completely geek out over the art of making television. We rightfully give Chris Carter a hard time in these recaps because he deserves it. Hell, I just gave Chris Carter a hard time two sentences ago because he REALLY deserved it. But when Chris Carter is on, he’s ON and boy, was he *ON* for this episode. Everything about “Triangle” is firing on all cylinders, from the production design to the costumes to the scoring. You can tell everyone is having a great time playing Alternate Universe versions of themselves. But what really sets “Triangle” apart from the rest is the direction. All of those gorgeously long continuous takes! It’s truly a feat of television making and it’s criminal Chris Carter didn’t take home buckets of awards for this one.
Maybe if the Television Academy had been able to see the Mulder/Scully kiss properly he would have. I’m just saying.
And the script! The script for “Triangle” is just so fun and is a rollicking good time from start to finish. This is Chris Carter’s “Bad Blood,” taking in all the fandom jokes like Rat Boy and Weasel and integrating them into the script. Plus he throws a bone to all the Skinner and Scully shippers out there by having THEM lock lips too, in a perfectly lit elevator for the whole world to see clearly. And then the romp is capped off by a Wizard of Oz-style reunion in Mulder’s hospital room leaving us to wonder if all of that really happened or if Mulder was just floating in the ocean with a bump on his head the whole time. But after Mulder tells Scully he loves her WITH HIS WHOLE CHEST, she rolls her eyes and chalks that one up to the painkillers, walking out of the room. Mulder smiles and touches his cheek, still tender from where 1939 Scully’s mean right hook clocked him in the jaw after he kissed her. As we love to say…whatever happened, happened. Mulder’s got the bruise to prove it.
Sage: In a season rich with worthy standalones (some exceptional, others just plain dumb fun), “Triangle” still stands head and shoulders above the rest. It’s certainly the most ambitious episode the show has done to this day. The crew were reportedly pushed to the limit in order to pull off this 44-minute adventure that looks like a series of long, single takes.
I’m always blown away by the sheer craft of this episode, from the camera winding through corridors of the Queen Anne (IRL the Queen Mary) to the FBI sets literally being taken down and rebuilt on the other side of the doors while Scully takes the elevator up and down to secure the information that will help her locate Mulder. Everything is on point, including the art and set decoration, plus those costumes by Christine Peters (including 1939 Scully’s siren red gown!!). It’s also masterfully cut together to give the show a completely different look and feel than it’s ever had before, and I recently learned that editor Louis Innes had just been hired on the show and had to tackle this as her first episode. Daunting! Hell, Mark Snow had to teach himself how to compose big band music, just for this singular case.
The storyline is secondary, at least as far as what happens on the Queen Anne itself. “Triangle” has a plot that was shaped to fit its structure rather than the other way around. It’s difficult to care about the thinness of it and that what Mulder experiences on the Queen Anne (or dreams when he’s unconscious, take your pick) doesn’t have any broader implications on the season arc, however. For one, Mulder’s journey to Oz actually is vitally important to his character arc, because he comes back from it knowing for sure that he is butt-crazy in love with Dana Katherine Scully. Plus, it’s just a good, wholesome time watching our favorite agents beat up Nazis and, in Scully’s case, go floor to floor at the FBI threatening her coworkers. I’ve even made peace with the lighting (or lack thereof) of the kiss, or at least accepted what I cannot change. It happens, and that’s the important thing.
KatyBeth: You know what is especially cool when you are twelve and your first crush was Dr. Sam Beckett, you love WWII fashion, and your favorite movie for most of your childhood was The Wizard of Oz – but you’ve recently gotten into the works of Alfred Hitchcock? An episode of your new favorite TV show where a character somehow time travels back to 1939, there are references to The Wizard of Oz all over the place, and it’s filmed in the style of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope.
This show does so well when it shifts into genre for a week, and “Triangle” is among the best of those episodes. It’s gorgeous (albeit poorly lit), fun, makes a clear connection between the Syndicate and the Nazis (you may remember from Paper Clip that the former hired scientists previously employed by the latter), and brings together many of our fave recurring cast members. Half of the episode takes place in Mulder’s head, where he definitely knows Spender is working for CSM and he manages to find a version of Scully that punches him in the face after being kissed.
The other half of the episode is Scully trying to locate and rescue Mulder’s fool ass after being alerted by the Lone Gunmen (in a rare visit to the Hoover!) that he has gone into the sea. How serious is it? After being denied help by Skinner, Scully goes to Kersh and then Spender for help. She does a bit where she pretends to be Diana on the phone with CSM (while scowling in a perfect imitation of Mimi Rogers). She threatens the life of Jeffrey Spender! And then in her moment of triumph, when it is revealed that Skinner of course came through for her, she kisses him in the elevator. In 1998, someone on the internet wrote of this episode “just remember, Skinner got there first,” and I have never forgotten it.
You know what is also cool as heck? The Queen Anne was portrayed by The Queen Mary, a real decommissioned ship permanently docked in Long Beach harbor and yes, it is a hotel. I stayed several times when I lived on the West Coast and I can tell you that it is not haunted, you are just able to hear plumbing from other floors because the engines are not on. It’s impossible to walk through those hallways without humming “Bei Mir Bist du Schon” by The Andrews Sisters.
Best moments: Gillian slipping on her heels when she runs around the corner in that long shot in the Hoover building, The Scully Hallway Cross, 1939 Scully’s dress (which a friend made for me for my favorite ever Halloween costume), and naturally, the worst-lit kiss of 1998.
Worst moments: How have two different dudes named Chris put my favorite secondary character in a Nazi uniform on two different shows, 22 years apart? Also, the worst-lit kiss of 1998.
- Least Favorite Episode?
Sage: Given the continued presence of Diana and the reoriented mythology, there are plenty of frustrating episodes in Season Six. But there’s just one full-on lemon, and that is “Alpha.”
Killer dog murders aside, there’s potential there. With the normalization of online communication, it makes sense that Mulder would have had his LemonLyman.com moment. But Karin Berquist is such a dud of a semi-antagonist that even that conceivably rich plot falls right on its face. At least we get the poster back?
KatyBeth: The only good part of “Alpha” is when Mulder and Scully do the flirty “bad dog” bit. Otherwise it’s an episode that erases itself from my memory as I watch it.
Kim: It’s a close call between “Alpha” and “Trevor” for the worst of the season, and it feels like their terribleness is magnified by the fact that they aired back-to-back. Both episodes stick out like a sore thumb in a season that is otherwise firing on all creative cylinders. The cases are deeply unpleasant yet boring at the same time. As Sage pointed out during our watch, these two feel like the clunker episodes from Season One and that’s not a compliment. Really, they shouldn’t have even made it past the pitch phase, much less production and making the episode slate. Six seasons in, we all know The X-Files is better than this! As far as which episode takes the crown for the WORST of the season? It’s “Alpha,” of course, because, to paraphrase Britta Perry, I can excuse being unpleasant and boring but I draw the line at animal cruelty.
- Scariest Episode?
Sage: God Himself Vince Gilligan’s “Tithonus” has the heart of an A24 horror movie, in that the threat faced is not a person or an entity but a concept. Living forever and the radical apathy that comes with it are what’s to be feared here. There are some graphic vintage crime scene photos and a jump scare in the form of the sex worker Scully tries to save being hit by a truck, but for the most part, this episode traffics in existential dread. Arthur Fellig (Geoffrey Lewis, nailing it) is a spectacularly spooky witness and as morally gray as they come. You can’t blame him for being unimpressed by life or unbothered by death, but can be shaken by his numbness. This is an episode that I found myself still thinking about long after our rewatch ended – it’s the chillier, less fanciful answer to “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” and a masterpiece in its own right.
KatyBeth: “S.R. 819”’s inciting incident – the idea that someone could control a person by harm or even murder, from only a brief touch – has haunted me for over two decades. Bonus scary points for Krycek’s wig.
Kim: A slightly unexpected choice but I am going with “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas” for the scariest episode of the season. Not because it’s a horror fest, per se, though it does get some good jump scares in and I certainly don’t fuck with haunted houses and intentionally engaging with spirits. What makes “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas” scary is the existential dread that it provokes in regards to the nature of loneliness. The Holidays can be hard when you’re an adult, especially a single one; we’re all basically just trying to get from November 1st to January 5th unscathed. It’s like the Sunday Scaries for two solid months.
That feeling of dread has to be magnified a hundred fold when you’re a single adult at the heart of a global conspiracy with an emotionally closed-off mother like Mulder or you’re facing a family Christmas with your sibling who will inevitably spend the whole time making snide comments about your partner like Scully. (Hope you got coal in your stocking, Bill!) It’s pretty insidious how Lyda and Maurice manipulate Mulder and Scully’s psyches, taking their deepest fears and insecurities and using them against each other. They take those little voices in the back of their heads telling them that they are know-it-alls or that they are workaholic narcissists and amplify them, convincing our heroes that all of those intrusive thoughts are real. I mean, Maurice literally tells Mulder that “most people would rather stick their fingers in a wall socket than spend a minute with you” while Lyda insists to Scully that the only joy she has in her life is proving Mulder wrong and that she seeks intimacy through codependency. Truly, it’s the stuff of nightmares!!
- Underrated Episode?
Kim: Listen. “Agua Mala” gets a bad rap simply because of the fact that it airs right after the one-two punch of “Two Fathers” and “One Son.” There are gripes about “Agua Mala” being a wild tonal shift and that Mulder and Scully don’t even acknowledge any of the momentous events that happened in the previous two episodes. To those complaints, I simply have to ask when has The X-Files EVER had that kind of serialization when it comes to the big sweeps week mythology arcs vs. standard standalone episodes? The answer is rarely to never, so get over it. (See also: “Pusher” following “Piper Maru” and “Apocrypha,” “Paper Hearts” following “Tunguska” and “Terma,” et al.) The whole time we were watching “Agua Mala,” I kept saying that it felt like it was written by Steven Moffatt and now I can’t get that idea out of my head. Taken on its own, as it was truly intended to be, it is a perfectly fine to low-key great monster of the week episode. It’s “Ice” but in a hurricane! Mulder and Scully are wet for 75% of the episode, which categorically makes them 82.64% hotter. There’s a truly scary monster that lives in salt water and comes up through the plumbing. It attacks people and turns them into translucent goo. There’s banter! There’s Scully being a BAMF and delivering a baby without even having to google how to do it. (IYKYK.) There’s even a lifesaving cat! What more could you ask for from a midseason episode? The answer is not much.
Sage: It was never going to set the world on fire, but “Agua Mala” is one poorly reviewed episode of The X-Files that I will happily defend. Is the monster any good? Not really. Does it look like it was miserable to film? You bet. But Mulder and Scully doing Arthur Dales a solid in the midst of a Florida hurricane leads to some pretty entertaining escapades, from the group of residents who couldn’t evacuate sheltering their own would-be looter to Scully delivering a baby on someone’s waterlogged living room floor. That it all ends with Dales reminding Mulder that he ought to thank his lucky stars every day that he ended up with his partner is icing on the cake.
KatyBeth: Are there underrated episodes in this season? (“Alpha” has a low rating on IMDB, but “Alpha” is bad.) I will choose “Agua Mala” at random and tell you that it’s a delight to watch Agent Scully and Detective Scully (from the Brooklyn Nine-Nine future) interact. Also the idea that people who live in Florida would not prep for a hurricane until after it made landfall is preposterous. And no way would Mulder and Scully have been able to fly into an airport where a hurricane had already made landfall. I do like the return of Arthur Dales even if it feels weird that he called Mulder after 10 years to save some neighbors in a storm? Also, Scully’s hair is cute, and she delivers a baby while wearing an apron, a bandana face mask, and kitchen gloves.
- Best Mulder Moment?
KatyBeth: I think I’m contractually obligated to answer with the mirror dance David does with Michael McKean in “Dreamland,” which is a delight.
Kim: The only redeeming element in the entirety of “Trevor” is Mulder’s reaction when Scully dead-ass suggests spontaneous human combustion as a cause of death with her whole chest. The journey Mulder’s face goes on as he processes what he just heard! He cycles through disbelief, awe, glee, adoration, and horniness all in the span of a few microseconds. And then the way his voice goes up an octave when he practically whines “Scully,” dragging her name out a few extra syllables? Please!! It’s a complete contrast to when Scully suggested Eddie Van Blundht was a shapeshifter in “Small Potatoes.” Then Mulder joked about them needing to pick out china patterns, and now it gives the vibe of “why are you DOING this to me, I love you so much and P.S. meet me in the supply closet, I’m horny.” It’s so pure and in the era of disillusioned Mulder, it’s a moment I’m gonna cling to in those times when I want to smack some sense into him.
Sage: He’ll find his way to Antarctica to save your life, but Fox Mulder has never been one for pleasantries. So while I do realize that the bar is on the floor in that sense, there’s something so sweet and vulnerable about the way he thanks Scully over the phone at the end of “Dreamland II.”
Of course, we know what they’ve been through and they don’t, which adds a layer of meaning to their brief, post-Area 51 field trip conversation. Mulder and Scully had to face the very real possibility not only that they would lose each other, but that they would both have to go on living new lives, separated by very stupid but also insurmountable circumstances. To the Mulder who doesn’t remember swapping bodies with Morris Fletcher, however, he’s merely closing the loop on the conversation that Scully starts in the car on the way out to the base. She wants to know why they’re still out there driving, off the clock and off the FBI’s radar, to chase down yet another lead that will probably go nowhere when they could be getting on with it – “it” being the business of “a normal life.” But unlike in Season One’s “Jersey Devil,” when they talk about their personal lives as being separate from one another’s, Scully uses “us” and “we” in this hypothetical. She could “get out of the damn car,” as she puts it, any damn time she wants, and they’re both very aware of it. She could meet a nice doctor or some congressperson’s chief of staff, move out to the suburbs, and leave Mulder to it – but, of course, that’s not what she’s asking.
Mulder responds facetiously in the moment. He pretends not to understand what she means or why he might want anything else. (Wait about one-and-three-quarters seasons, buddy, is all I have to say about that.) But when all is said and done, at the conclusion of what they believe to have been another fruitless quest, he allows her to know that he did hear her and that he does appreciate all the sacrifices, large and small, she makes so that they can continue to be on this journey together. “Hey, Scully? I, uh, know it’s not your normal life, but… Thanks for coming out there with me.” It’s a start!
- Best Scully Moment?
Sage: Gillian Anderson is having so much fun playing Scully high on the drug Suzanne Modeski invented in “Three of a Kind” that it’s my Scully moment almost by default. We of course know how giggly and silly and irreverent she is IRL, and it’s about time that she was allowed to explore that side of herself on-screen and still miraculously in-character. Scully is obviously analytical and practical by nature, but she’s also carefully modulated her behavior to cultivate a certain reputation, because she needs to be taken seriously – as a doctor, as an agent, as the very attractive partner of a man. And though the Gunmen would never think of burdening her with the knowledge of how she behaved after she was dosed, it does a fangirl’s heart good to see her free from the shackles of inhibition. Otherwise, nothing that she does is inconsistent with her character! She feels affection for the Gunmen, she thinks slicing and dicing is kind of fun, and she enjoys a little bit of male attention, on her own terms. The only real shame about Scully’s lost weekend in Vegas is that Mulder isn’t there to see it, but that’s what fanfiction is for.
KatyBeth: The Moment has arrived, friends. DANA SCULLY IS FUCKING IMMORTAL. Remember when Clyde Bruckman told her she didn’t die? Before “Tithonus,” it made sense to interpret the line as him seeing Scully’s cancer and trying to reassure her that she will survive the diagnosis. But after “Tithonus,” it’s hard to not ponder that maybe, just maybe, she really IS immortal. You can’t tell me that exact thought didn’t go through her head when she came to in the hospital.
I know the intention was for this storyline to button up Bruckman’s comment, and no, she never indicates she can tell when people are about to die. Maybe Scully doesn’t see people in black and white like Fellig did, because she so desperately wants to live where he so desperately wanted to die. Maybe her passion for life, her search for good, her commitment to justice for harmed people, make her the exact right recipient for immortality.
Kim: I’ve got a literal whole ass essay published where I use “The Rain King” as a microcosm for shipping in The X-FIles fandom, so I’m going to do my best not to repeat myself except to say this: Scully’s heart-to-heart with Sheila in the bathroom would not be out of place in the climax of a romantic comedy. In my essay I compared it to “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her” from Notting Hill but five years later, I would actually say it’s more along the lines of the “I’m majorly, totally, butt-crazy in love with Josh!” moment from Clueless.*
*Editor’s note: I cannot believe Kim and I independently wrote the phrase “butt-crazy” into our answers this week without discussing it. That alien mind meld is mind melding. -S
Look, we can debate for ages and ages about when exactly Scully realized her feelings for Mulder were not platonic. I know it wasn’t in that bathroom, but the way Gillian Anderson plays that monologue makes you feel as if it was, simply because of the awe with which she delivers the lines. It’s the very deliberate pauses she takes for me. It’s the way you can see the wheels in Scully’s big beautiful brain turning, almost as if in telling Sheila about how it happened for her, she’s reliving the moment, whatever moment it was, she looked at Mulder and realized he was it for her. It’s like she’s rediscovering her love for him by saying it out loud to someone, maybe for the first time. It’s how she still plays her cards close to her chest by confessing her feelings to someone who she knows they’ll never see again, so it’s safe for her to be vulnerable in that moment. It’s a LOT, okay????
- Best Shipper Moment?
KatyBeth: I refuse to choose between the office scene in “The Unnatural,” which BTW was meant to take place in the Library of Congress (!!), and the batting practice scene that closes the episode. They are perfect. They are romantic bookends. These people are in love! They are cute about it! They just want to flirt (with their language, so hot) and touch each other under the guise of a sport. Mulder absolutely understood the story Arthur Dales was telling him.
Kim: Honestly, Season Six is a shipper’s wet dream. You want a trope? Season Six has got it. Historical AU with a kiss? Check. Confessions of love not taken seriously? Body swaps and confessions of love that are undone by time snapping back to itself? FAKE MARRIED? Check, check, and fucking check. It’s a veritable feast. How is a poor shipper supposed to choose one moment? But then I sat down to write all my gut reaction answers for this post and was just like…how can I say anything other than the “Shut up, Mulder. I’m playing baseball.” scene? It’s the moment that makes me dissolve into a pile of schmoopy goo and it’s the scene that I will 100% rewind and watch again. Multiple times. Honestly, much like the end of “Last Christmas,” it’s a scene that I can’t quite believe is real and actually aired on television. It’s a non-stop assault on the senses from THAT shot of Mulder in his jersey (You know the one. It was almost my thirst moment.) to Scully’s delighted giggles as she and Mulder take batting practice together. It’s so flirty! So romantic! So SEXY with Mulder and Scully all pressed together, their bodies fitting like fucking puzzle pieces. And then we have the whole “hips before hands” nonsense which is really just an excuse for Mulder to touch Scully and she doesn’t call him on it because she WANTS him to touch her. He fucking nuzzles into her neck and she SMILES, okay???? It’s like fanfiction come to life and in a way it IS because as Sage put it, David Duchovny was basically like, “Okay, fuck you, Chris Carter, I’m going to do this MYSELF,” and somehow Chris Carter let him????? And we’re supposed to believe these two are JUST FRIENDS? I don’t fucking think so.
Sage: Season Six is full of references to the fact that Mulder and Scully are very much a couple, even if they haven’t realized it themselves yet. From Holman and Sheila being independently shocked that nothing’s happened between them to Mulder actually confessing his love from a hospital bed to Scully’s disbelieving scoff, every shippy moment in this season is screaming that it is just a matter of time. And yet, even though we already know it to be true, it’s still a thrill when aspiring novelist Philip Padgett finally figures out the mystery of his muse in “Milagro.” He spends most of the episode believing that he can manipulate Scully into giving into him by exploiting her loneliness. She just wants someone to see her, he thinks, and he positions himself to be that person. But all it takes to make him realize that his efforts are pointless is one seemingly insignificant touch to Mulder’s forearm mid-interrogation. We can all agree that Padgett is a hack writer, but his powers of observation are working just fine. Once he’s given up, he decides to drop a little truth bomb on our agents on his way out the door.
In true X-Files fashion, we never get to unpack how this hit each of them in the moment. They don’t discuss it with each other either, because that would be the normal thing to do. Instead we’re left to interpret their expressions. As for Scully, I refuse to believe that this guy has the ability to tell her anything about herself that she doesn’t already know, but I do think that, up until now, she’d only been aware of her feelings for Mulder in the abstract. Padgett’s declaration comes as more of a surprise to him, and though this may be giving the show that continuity forgot too much credit, I think the mere suggestion that it could be true influences his actions throughout the rest of the season. With the sorts of comments they get from every direction in “Rain King,” there’s still mutual plausible deniability. This one is not quite so easy to brush off, and it ratchets up the tension so deliciously.
- Thirstiest Moment?
Kim: After five-and-a-half seasons of Scully’s covert glances and lingering gaaaaaaaaaazes that Mulder is in deep denial about, we’re FINALLY given a moment where our heroes are naked and openly checking each other out. True, it’s in a decontamination shower after Diana Fowley’s sham of an intervention and it’s when Mulder and Scully couldn’t be in a worse place with each other personally thanks to her presence, but beggars can’t be choosers.
KatyBeth: Mulder and Scully in the decon shower, L-O-O-K-I-N-G. (These people have definitely seen each other naked before and they definitely do not talk about it.)
Sage: Something something about the connection between sports and male sexual prowess, because both of my thirst moments share this theme. Firstly, let’s discuss the way Mulder brings the pick-up game he’s playing at the gym to a screeching halt so he can properly check out Scully in “Two Fathers.” She’s there to deliver a message from Cassandra Spender via Jeffrey; he’s there because he knows it’s really hard to get fired from a government job. Anyway, there is no professional way to interpret his eyes sliding up her body as she walks towards him in what amounts to a miniskirt as far as Scully’s closet is concerned, ignoring the other players’ pleas to “cough off the rock,” because he just can’t get enough of looking at her. Once he’s sure she’s close enough to see it, he sinks a shot to impress her, and I immediately want to read all the high school jock/valedictorian AUs that must surely be out there.
I consider the end of “The Unnatural” to be an extension of this scene, seeing as Mulder has finally realized that a game may be all it takes to get closer to Scully, in every sense of the word. He’s deliberately pushing at their relationship to find out what may give, and the strategy he comes up with is so wholesome and youthful and normal that it makes me want to cry every time. Perhaps not too wholesome, since her entire back side is pushed up against his entire front, his hands alternating from lightly touching her hips to bracketing hers on the bat, his arms enveloping her from behind. He hooks his chin over her shoulder and talks into her ear, lips grazing her face. She unselfconsciously wiggles around in his embrace and pretends not to know how to hit a baseball so he’ll keep teaching her. (We all know that little Dana was a tomboy!) And she giggles. A lot.
Though Mulder and Scully rarely allow themselves to be this loose and open with their awareness of it, their chemistry feels utterly lived-in at this point. The iconic baseball scene is a thirst moment not just because of everything you can infer from their physical proximity, but because it finally feels like anything could happen. The proverbial “little flip,” as defined so astutely by a drunk Kate Moseley in The Cutting Edge, could be right around the corner, and we’ll all be ready when it arrives.
- Grossest Moment?
Sage: IDK, I’ve always felt that our inner ears hold too much power over us. It frankly makes no sense that if they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, it makes us puke or fall down a lot or, in the case of Patrick Crump and his wife, lead the state police on a high-speed chase through the Nevada desert. The cold open to “Drive,” which takes the form of a live news report, is one of my favorites from the series, because it provides a rare dose of realism. And showing us the sudden, violent death of Crump’s wife at a distance makes it all the more shocking and mysterious. Different vibes, I know, but the way she rhythmically pounds her head against the car window before her ear drum explodes has always reminded me of the last minute or so of The Blair Witch Project, when one of the documentarians is standing in the corner of the cabin facing the wall and we don’t know why. It gives me the creeps, and it sets up one hell of a high-velocity episode.
KatyBeth: Diana Fowley hugging Fox Mulder. Worse than those alien guys getting their fake faces torn off.
Kim: In a season where we have a water monster that turns bodies into goo, people literally being digested by the fungal stomach bile, bleeding hearts literally being ripped out of chests, and *waves hands* whatever it is that happened to Marita Covarrubias, I am here to inform you that the grossest moment of the season is that Mulder and Diana liplock and their presumed tumble in the sheets. If I am gonna be forced to watch Mulder smooch another woman, the least they could do is look hot while doing it, you know what I mean? But alas, David Duchovny and Mimi Rogers have as much chemistry as a blank piece of paper and an unsharpened pencil, so literally the only response is EWWWWWWW when she goes in for the kiss. Don’t even get me started when it comes Mulder doubling down on Diana to what? Prove Scully and her valid reservations wrong? Emotionally gross, Mister Trust No One! Emotionally! Gross!
- Funniest Moment?
KatyBeth: I find that I cannot get over Bruce Campbell’s character in “Terms of Endearment” using an alias of “Gordy Boitano.”
Kim: It’s amazing to me that it took until Season Six for The X-Files to do a good old-fashioned body swap episode, but my God the “Dreamland” two-parter was worth the wait. It’s a comic romp from start to finish between Morris turning Mulder into a lecherous narc who tries to seduce his partner with mirrors on the ceiling to Mulder making an absolute mess of Morris’ family life. (In his defense, Morris’ children have gender-neutral names!!!) It was an inspired move casting comedy legend Michael McKean as Morris Fletcher because it just pushes comic genius David Duchovny to up his game. One of the biggest highlights of the two-parter is when David and Michael pay tribute to the iconic Marx Brothers mirror scene from Duck Soup, recreating it in painstaking detail. They famously rehearsed the choreography for a week and a half and even used a metronome to help them keep their movements perfectly in sync. It’s absolutely delightful and has become one of the enduring images of the season if not the series.
Sage: This is definitely a normal way to react when you find yours and your best friend’s skeletal remains buried under the floorboards of a haunted house:
- Best Monster/Villain?
Kim: It’s not just that Assistant Director Alvin Kersh is a by-the-book, expense-report-analyzing, red-tape-loving bureaucrat. It’s that he seems to relish having Mulder and Scully under his thumb, constantly rubbing it in their faces that they are no longer assigned to the X-Files. It’s the way he completely writes Mulder off as a lost cause while whispering in Scully’s ear that there’s still time for her to salvage her career in the bureau. It’s how he revels in Mulder’s misery, assigning him all the background checks and fertilizer analysis cases with a certain sadistic glee. If he were my boss, I would quietly quit too.
Sage: I knew I wanted to talk about “Monday” somewhere in this panel but I didn’t think it was going to fit anywhere until I realized that it has the most relentless foe of them all: reality. Pam (the excellent, late Carrie Hamilton) is living a waking nightmare as the only person who’s stuck in the episode’s time loop to even know that it exists. She hacks relentlessly away at it, changing her behavior every time to try to stop the seemingly inevitable outcome of her boyfriend setting off the bomb strapped to his chest during the bank robbery. Mulder eventually catches wise to it, but even his attempt at bringing about a different result is about to fail – that is, until Pam sacrifices herself to break the chain. The universe demands that sacrifice in “Monday,” and whether it’s Pam or everyone else in the bank, it’s going to get it. It’s a bleak ending for her, and it’s certainly not unintentional that Pam is clearly portrayed as the victim of some form of abuse at Bernard’s hand. She signed her life away the day she met him, and reality is just coming to collect.
KatyBeth: He’s monologuing in a self-important fashion to Diana Fowley. He’s sending his wife and child(ren) to be abducted by aliens and experimented on by humans with no morals. He’s pitting his sons against one another. He’s banging his older son’s ex. He’s running away when his coworkers get murdered. He’s shooting his second-born son in the face. He’s the Cigarette-Smoking Man!
Runners-Up: Diana Fowley for that fucking hazmat suit stunt and Christopher Carl Carter for almost writing an interesting story about family dynamics and then shooting my beloved Jeffrey Spender in the face.
- Right in the Feels Moment?
Sage: Skinner spotlight episodes always deliver, and “S.R. 819” is no exception to that rule. This one brings our favorite Assistant Director (by far, now that we’ve met Kersh) to the brink of meeting his maker, and he delivers his sort-of death-bed confession to Scully, his forever emergency contact. (As Kim has pointed out, the evidence is there!) After she lays out the radical treatment option they want to try and he tells her that he is “in her hands” (swoon), Walter apologizes to Scully for not being a more consistent or ferocious ally to her and Mulder. She argues with him, because of course she does. They would have been shut down long ago – or much worse – if he hadn’t stuck his neck out for them on multiple occasions. But I think his regret goes to show not only how much he believes in them but also how much he admires their courage and their tenacity and feels unequal to it. They may be his problem children, but he’ll always be their proud dad – even if the microscopic robots in his bloodstream won’t allow him to prove it.
KatyBeth: At the end of “Field Trip,” when a masked-for-safety Walter Skinner rescues them from the underground man-eating mushroom and pulls them from their shared hallucination, Mulder silently reaches out for Scully’s hand in the back of the ambulance and she reaches back without opening her eyes. They’re still fucking connected, and it makes me scream every time.
Kim: I don’t know what it is about the church scene with Scully and Padgett in “Milagro” that hits me right in the feels but it does. One of the recurring themes that Sage has really honed in on during this rewatch is Scully’s need to be seen as Mulder’s equal. I feel like this scene encapsulates that aspect of Scully’s character beautifully. Season Six really plays around with the idea of Mulder taking Scully’s presence for granted to the point where people like Arthur Dales and Holman Hardt start actually calling him on it. Earlier in the episode, Mulder dismisses her theory about the milagro charm. He derisively jokes that she just has a secret admirer, as if that would be some sort of outlandish possibility before practically ordering her to go do an autopsy. It’s big “Never Again” energy, and we’ve been here before, folks. When Scully encounters Padgett in the church, at first it seems like he’s a kindred spirit, drawn to the painting for “My Divine Heart” for the same reasons that she is. And then he absolutely reads her for filth, in a way, nailing down her daily routine to a tee just based on some basic observations. It may be creepy but Padgett sees her and it’s a big reason why she’s drawn to him in the first place. (One could say the same thing about Ed Jerse, that he saw her in a way Mulder didn’t or wouldn’t.)
But then, of course, Padgett reveals that he did indeed give Scully the milagro charm as a secret admirer gift. Mulder’s words come springing back to her and it’s like a slap in the face. Gillian Anderson plays the moment so beautifully because you don’t know exactly WHY she is crying, just that she is. It’s one of those deeply human moments that really just punches you in the stomach and that, my friends, is why she’s an Emmy winner.
- Best “Mulder, You’re Lucky You’re So Cute” Moment?
KatyBeth: (Dorky voice) “Hi, my name is Fox Mulder, we used to sit next to each other at the FBI.” What an absolute doofus. One brain cell bouncing around like a late-’90s screensaver.
Runner-up moment is when he makes Scully bring all those big heavy books to the office in “The Unnatural,” because he’s really just called her there to flirt and she knows so she’s brought along some kind of frozen snack.
Kim: Mulder has much more egregious behavior this season (hello, everything to do with Diana Fowley) but I’m going to go with the way he turns everything about the undercover assignment in “Arcadia” into a joke, from constantly crowding into Scully’s personal space to the ridiculously over the top pet names. As the audience, we know that this is a defense mechanism for Mulder, that he’s using humor to disguise the fact that he likes the idea of being married to Scully far too much. But Scully doesn’t necessarily know that and if I were her, I absolutely would have snapped being like “IS THE IDEA OF BEING MARRIED TO ME THAT AWFUL?” And then he would say no and then…wait. The rest of that is definitely something I once read on the Gossamer Archive.
Sage: Mulder acts like a complete stooge throughout the Diana arc, with small pockets of time during which he exhibits evidence of rational thought. The woman has “VILLAIN” stamped across her forehead; meanwhile, Scully has not once since she got on that plane to Bellefleur, Oregon given him any reason not to trust her – yet Mulder insists on giving her ex the benefit of an unlimited number of doubts. It comes to a head in “One Son,” when Scully turns to the Gunmen to find proof of what she already suspects: Diana is dirty (copyright: Michael Jackson), and she’s playing Mulder like a horny fiddle.
The exact moment at which she should have kneed him in the balls is when Mulder lobs the accusation that Scully is “making it personal” by calling in the loyalty she’s fucking earned by standing by his ass, saving his life dozens of times, legitimizing his work, and taking on the emotional labor that comes with being the best friend of rogue agent and perpetual death magnet Fox Mulder. Projecting much?? At least the Gunmen have the emotional intelligence to look so very disappointed in him.
- Best Guest Star?
Kim: Moving production to Los Angeles from Vancouver unlocked a whole new tier of guest stars for The X-Files. Season Six is sick with spectacular guest performances, from Michael McKean to legends Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin to Bruce Campbell to future Oscar nominee John Hawkes to a wee Jesse L. Martin, fresh off the Rent stage. How is one supposed to choose?? Ultimately, I had to go with Bryan Cranston in GHVG’s “Drive,” simply because it is the genesis of one of the all time great television marriages of writer/creator and actor. The character of Patrick Crump absolutely wouldn’t work without Cranston’s special knack for making you feel empathy for a seemingly terrible person, while still maintaining that edge of fear and unpredictability. It is a tour-de-force performance from an actor whose career is just getting started and when you look closely, you can see the earliest kernels of the once and future Heisenberg. Say his name, y’all.
Sage: This season has far and away the show’s strongest crop of guest stars, ranging from up-and-coming talent like a post-Rent and pre-Law & Order Jesse L. Martin to genre heroes like Bruce Campbell, all of them excellent and cleverly cast. But legends are legends, so I have to go with the incomparable Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin as Maurice and Lyda, the specters haunting 1501 Larkspur Lane in “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas.” The story goes that Lily had approached Chris Carter a few seasons prior and the role was written with her in mind. Maurice was originally intended for Bob Newhart, and while we all can admit that it would also be fun to hear him deadpan the word “paramasturbatory,” Ed brings the same reluctant warmth to the role that he did to Lou Grant, and I ultimately find it difficult to imagine anyone else in the part.
This episode is a joy to watch from the very first frame, and the two guest stars it’s built around canonize it as classic TV by their mere presence. But fortunately, they also bring the goods: the goods being bone-dry humor (the way Lily drawls that she “doesn’t show [her] hole to just anyone,” for example), an instant chemistry with Gillian and David, and that little bit of magic that makes “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas” a seasonal staple in my house.
KatyBeth: How exactly can I choose only one guest star for this season? This show is swimming like Scrooge McDuck in a wealth of guest star riches. In one season we’ve got Michael McKean, Ed Asner, Miss Frizzle herself Lily Tomlin, Bruce Campbell (who was famously almost hired to play John Doggett), Darren McGavin, AND M. Emmet Walsh as two different Arthurs Dales… I could go on.
Choosing only one was more difficult than I expected (truly the theme of Season Six!), but I couldn’t put anyone ahead of Jesse L. Martin as 1947 Negro League Ballplayer Josh Exley… who is secretly an alien. Like all great stories about baseball, “The Unnatural” is also a love story. Exley is an alien who never felt at place in his own society, falls in love with baseball and in the process creates a life where he can live as his true self – becoming so human that he bleeds red blood instead of green while dying in the arms of his close friend Arthur Dales. The entire episode hinges on the nuance of Jesse L. Martin’s performance, and he knocks it out of the park. (I’m not sorry.)
- Favorite ’90s Fashion?
Sage: As someone who owned a pale yellow Abercrombie baby tee that said “PREP” on it in gigantic blue letters and was proudly wearing it around the time this episode aired, I have no choice but to shout out Mulder’s Lacoste-on-Lacoste look in “Arcadia.”
KatyBeth: No ’90s fashion gets my love in this season as much as the south end of the 1999 Las Vegas Strip in “Three of a Kind.” There’s the Monte Carlo before it became The Park and lost all of its beautiful ornate theming. Across the street is the MGM Grand and their old “small” ad for EFX starring Tommy Tune (which was soon replaced by the grandest and best show in town). The traffic even looks reasonable. I thought of that scene every time I ate at the pizza place that replaced that part of the front drive, and especially when I saw Cher there in 2018 (on the night “Plus One” aired, of all the wild coincidences).
Kim: I don’t think we had ever seen Scully in an actual dress before Season Six. Her daily uniform consists of separates like pencil skirt suits or sexy but practical pants, blazers, and blouses. Well, between the slinky red satin gown 1939 Scully wears in “Triangle” and the uber-chic linen shift and matching jacket she wears when she shows up on the shores of the Ivory Coast in “Biogenesis,” I think I know why we had never seen her in a dress before. It’s just too powerful of an image, pals. Both dresses are winners in my eyes, but if I had to choose one, I would go with the “Biogenesis” look because Scully looks like a perfectly pressed khaki goddess emerging from the pages of the spring 1999 J. Crew catalog. She looks like that after flying at LEAST 14 hours from D.C. to the Ivory Coast. She’s got some fucking nerve, I swear to God.
- Sum up your feelings about the season.
KatyBeth: This season is the first season I watched live and I loved it so much that I went around talking to everyone in 6th grade about it. (Nobody but me watched this show in 6th grade, including the teachers.) This got me labeled as slightly weird, but it seems I was just trying to invent next-day watercooler talk. But really, how do you watch this season of television and NOT want to talk about it? It’s a shining example of why a full US-length season of episodic television should exist. The standalone episodes are almost entirely no-skips! The writers and actors are having fun playing with tropes in the way that you can when the audience knows the characters really well. The guest cast is stacked. The sun is shining.
There’s a feeling of renewal in this season. It’s partly the move to LA, but I’d also credit it to the new horizons the show is exploring. There’s a body swap episode, ghosts, time travel, a werewolf (I think?), a man controlling the weather, a trash monster, a man-eating mushroom system! David Duchovny writes and directs his first episode. Mulder and Scully have different, unexpected adventures during their time in the bullpen office above the ground. There’s a feeling that their relationship has shifted, post-movie- they’re lighter, more open with each other (except when Diana is around). This was around the time when David and Gillian decided to play their characters how they thought they should be, tipping Chris Carter’s hand towards that inevitable relationship. (Sorry to these NoRoMos.)
When I want a fun episode to watch, odds are I turn to one from this season. It quickly becomes hard for me to not barrel through every one in a rush because I’m having such a great time with these characters I love so much. The season sparks joy in a way that propels me forward into season seven like I’ve been shot from a cannon. So let’s join Arthur Dales in a toast to Mulder’s good fortune in finding Scully – big things are ahead.
Sage: As much fun as I had reliving it, Season Six has an asymmetrical quality that’s impossible to ignore. The mytharc episodes and the standalone episodes seem to be happening on different planes, to the point where audiences may have been wondering week-to-week whether Mulder and Scully were getting their minds wiped between cases. One minute, their friendship is on the verge of fracturing, and the next they’re sharing each other’s dreams. Even in the standalone episodes where you can squint and see the effects of The Diana and Jeffrey Show on Mulder and Scully (they’re pretty prickly with each other in “Arcadia,” for example), the show never makes the connection explicit. There’s a lot of whiplash involved in bingeing Season Six, which is why I always advise shrugging your shoulders at canon to X-Files newbies. No one is going to hold your hand through these behavioral shifts, so your interpretation is as good as anyone else’s.
The good news is that, though it’s nowhere near as cohesive as Seasons Four or Five (the pinnacle of X-Files storytelling, imo), individual episodes in Season Six set the bar, re: quality and vision. “Drive,” Triangle,” “Monday,” “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas,” “The Unnatural,” the “Dreamland” two-parter, “Tithonus” – all of them break new ground and prove that this series still has plenty of tricks up its sleeve. Because of how successful almost every MOTW episode in this season is, though, the overall impression it leaves is that the show has outgrown its mythology, or simply that it’s a lot easier to come up with enough wild single case ideas to fill an episode order than it is to add another twist to the conspiracy that’s not laughably outlandish. (Or insanely infuriating, which is the direction we’re heading.)
Kim: Season Six was the first season I watched live. I was a sophomore in college and just starting to craft what appointment television really meant for me as a fledgling adult all on my own. So I will always have a fondness for this season for that reason alone, but it delights me that it holds up on rewatch. This season may not be the quote-unquote BEST of them all, but I would wager that it’s the most pleasantly watchable. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
As per tradition for these wrap-up posts, my term for Season Six is “genre-defying” because more than any other season before it, Season Six leans into the comedy and the romance that always existed in the show’s basic DNA. For some fans, this rendered the show unrecognizable and all they did was bitch about how the show just wasn’t the same as it once was. For me, it was invigorating because it was almost like the show was the most X-Files-y it had ever been: wonderfully weird and goofy, yet still wickedly scary and peak drama when it wanted to be.
Plus, I am absolutely never going to argue with the amount of MSR fan service this season delivered.
Look, at this point, the show is in syndication, turning those sweet syndication dollars that David Duchovny would eventually sue for. They had a successful feature film that turned a profit under their belt. Everything after that, in a sense, is just gravy. The X-Files tries new things in Season Six not just because the move to Los Angeles opened up a whole new world of locations for them but because, at that point, they had earned the right to do so! The minute they stop trying new things is the minute the show dies on the vine. And when the new things are successful more times than not, it’s my pleasure to just sit back and gobble the popcorn.
What do you remember best about this season of The X-Files? Tell us in the comments!
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