Episode Reviews

(by original air date)

Season Four

Herrenvolk:    Mulder appears to have killed the Alien Bounty Hunter with the old "piercing the base of the neck" trick, so he runs off to Canada with Jeremiah Smith, once again leaving Scully behind. For some reason, though, the ABH isn't dead after all. He uses Scully to find out where Mulder and Smith have gone. Where have they gone? To an aviary in Canada - crops and bees tended by what appear to be clones, and one of them is a dead ringer for Mulder's sister Samantha at the time of her disappearance. This is "The Project" at which Smith has so breathlessly hinted? What's going on here, anyway? The answers are still murky. Anyway, the ABH catches up to them, and we're led to believe that he kills Smith, after which Mulder makes his way back to Washington empty-handed. Meanwhile, CSM plants a rumor to find out where the leak in his organization lies, and as a result X is shot outside Mulder's apartment. With his dying messege, though, he sends Mulder to Marita Covarrubias, the Assistant to the Special Representative to the Secretary General at the United Nations, and he thus has a new informant. At the same time, CSM calls the ABH to the hospital where Mulder's mother lies, still suffering from the effects of her stroke. When the ABH asks why he should help her, CSM makes a mysterious reference to how important Mulder is to "the equation". Once again, more questions are raised than answered here, leaving us with not even a vague idea of the purpose of the bees or the clones, in what capacity X worked with CSM (and now we might never know), what kind of being Jeremiah Smith was, and most importantly, why a seeming thorn in the side of the Syndicate (or at least of CSM) such as Mulder could still be seen by them as being so valuable doing what he or they are doing.

Home:    Here is an episode that is either loved or reviled by x-philes - there seems to be no middle ground for an opinion of the Peacocks and their story. A seemingly idealic Pennsylvania town with a sheriff named Andy Taylor and a deputy named Barney prepares to meet the outside world for real when the corpse of a monstrously deformed infant is discovered in its burial place not far from the house that everyone in town shuns, and for good reason. As Sheriff Taylor says, "They breed their own... stock, if you get my meaning." Yes, the family has been inbreeding for generations, but the rest of the town has basically left them alone to carry on in their own ways. After all, they weren't hurting anyone else, and herein lies the moral of the tale. Although it seems that the Peacocks go out of their way to kill the sheriff, his wife, and Barney, they're doing it out of the instinct of pure self-preservation. Now that the outside world knows about how they live (and presumably have been living for so long), the matriarch of the family reasonably believes that they'll be taken away, separated from each other, and not be allowed to live in their own way. There's a strange sadness to their situation. After all, as repulsive as we might find their habits and the way they live, it's not us who are living that way, so as long as they're not hurting anyone else, what gives us the right to tell them how to live. The fact that their babies are dying due to massive genetic abnormalities because of the inbreeding might not be the justification for us to move in on them that we believe it is. If it were, then we'd be making more of an effort to decrease the infant mortality rates in our more rural areas, and these are infants of relatively "normal" (i.e. - not related through blood) parents. The final scene drives the point home - they were just trying to live their lives in peace, and now the two survivors had to bug out and look for some other place in which to build a new home.

Teliko:   Here is one of those "marking time" episodes, although one of its saving graces is a second appearance for Marita Covarrubias. Black men are being found dead with the color somehow drained out of their skin. An African immigrant is to blame. After he kills a couple more people, Mulder and Scully find his hiding place, and Mulder gets hit with one of the darts the man uses to paralyze his prey. Plot hole alert - if the poison is supposed to cause the victim to lose control of his voluntary muscle actions, then how is Mulder able to use his eyes to signal to Scully that the killer is sneaking up behind her? For all I know, maybe its effectiveness has something to do with the victim's skin pigmentation, but by the time this happens, I found myself really beyond caring.

Unruhe:    This standard story about a repeat abductor of women is partially redeemed by the creepy performance of Pruitt Taylor Vince as the kidnapper. He has some kind of coincidental ability to project his own thoughts, feelings, and prescient visions onto photographic film, and it's through this ability that he's discovered his self-styled goal in life - to rid women of what he feels is haunting them. Unfortunately, his chosen method of accomplishing this, while technically called a "transorbital lobotomy", is basically to shove an icepick into the victim's eye socket until she feels better. There are some vague references to his father as a motivation for his actions, but the whole thing degenerates into the "Scully's in life-threatening trouble in the final ten minutes, but Mulder's going to burst in and save the day at the last moment" conclusion that we've seen so many times before.

The Field Where I Died:    A classic case of a wasted opportunity. We've got a great setup with the chance to make some thought-provoking comments about what constitutes the difference between a religion and a cult as well as to ask some of those hard questions about Federal troop actions in similar situations in the wake of Waco. Unfortunately, the script chooses this inopportune time not only to focus on reincarnation as the primary story element, but also to use it to try and convince us that there's some kind of transendant essence of the soul that puts the same souls in close proximity to each other in one life after another in basically the same relationships, over and over again. CSM was an evil SS officer, and in the next life he's still in this position of power? So much for karma

Sanguinarium:    This one is just plain weird. It has something to do with a twisted combination of witchcraft and plastic surgery. Actually, this one could have been salvaged if there'd been more of an attempt at the writers' level to make more of a connection between these two ideas. Of course, the attempt was made, but the opportunities for sly cultural observations that are taken at all end up going over like a lead balloon.

Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man:    This is another of my favorites. It's hated in many circles, and the usual reasons given are because of inconsistencies with what we've already been led to believe about CSM's past and because it turns CSM into a one-dimensional character with a ludicrously simple motivation. Needless to say, I disagree with both of the above criticisms. It's inconsistent with what we've already seen in E.B.E. and Apocrypha, but remember that Frohike is still fleshing out this theory of his, so his facts might not be entirely straight yet with regard to the timeline. Remember also that Deep Throat was lying to Mulder early on in E.B.E., so maybe his Vietnam-era tale was a last ditch effort to throw Mulder off. Finally, although he's shown ready to resign when it looks like he's going to make it as a fiction writer, it's made abundantly clear earlier that he realizes what he's best suited to do with his life. This might not have been exactly how CSM came to be as a mover and shaker, but what's important is that the episode captures what must have been the feeling of frustration in those who were so positive they could do things better during the 1960's if only people like King and the Kennedys would just settle down. It's also interesting that the events depicted during that decade are among the very ones that have had the largest impact on the public's distrust of their own government - an attitude that has contributed to the success of The X-Files itself.

Paper Hearts:   A serial killer of children uses his irrational ability to manipulate the dreams of others to cause  an uncertainty in Mulder's beliefs concerning the fate of his sister. While it's still a hell of an entertaining episode, I've got a couple of problems with it. I really wonder if Mulder would have taken this prisoner out of the custody of the prison to satisfy his own narrow quest for answers, obsessive though it might be. More importantly, the notion that Mulder would have done this, after which he lost the prisoner, and still be able to talk his way into remaining on the case is one that I certainly can't buy, regardless of what friends and closet supporters he has among his superiors and elsewhere in the government.

Tunguska:    This marks the return of the black oil, although unlike what we saw last season in Piper Maru/Apochrypha, the oil now seems to have quite a different purpose entirely. Krycek returns, having been released from what was supposed to be his anonymous grave in an abandoned missile silo by a militant militia-type group scavenging for leftovers. Meanwhile, a meteorite is discovered during it's attempted smuggling into the U.S. from Russia. With the help of Marita Covarrubias, Mulder flies off to Russia, taking Krycek with him, and finds that there's a lot more going on at a mining camp than just digging. There's some kind of experimentation on unwilling human subjects going on, and Mulder soon finds himself such a subject, and the last time we see him is while the black oil (or something similar) is invading his body. While he's gone, Scully is once again left to hold the bag, appearing before a Senate committee and trying to cover for Mulder's activities

Terma:    Having recovered from his first experience as a test subject at the Russian prison/mining camp, Mulder escapes and finds his way home. Unfortunately for Krycek, he escapes as well, but finds himself in the midst of a group of people who've found a way to avoid the tests going on not far away. Part of the testing involves an injection to the left arm, so, the villagers reason, with no left arm, they become useless as test subjects and the experimenters will leave them alone, at least in theory. Believing themselves to be doing him a favor (at least, I think that's what they believe), they forcibly hack off his left arm as well. While Mulder rushes back to Washington to support Scully in the Committee hearing, a Russian enters the U.S. intent on finding... what? Well, I'm sure he wants to find out what the Syndicate knows with regard to the black oil, but I think he also wants to find out what Mulder and/or Krycek stole from the camp in Siberia and brought back. Given what will happen toward the end of Season Five, it's my guess that the Russians have been developing their own vaccine against the black oil's effects (probably with more success than the Syndicate), and it was Krycek who stole it and brought it back. Now that I think about it, and with the fifth season and the movie past us, this two-parter makes a hell of a lot more sense than it did at the time.

El Mundo Gira:    I thought this episode was just plain bad when I first saw it, but having seen it again a couple of times, I like it a lot more. What was the difference? On first watching it, I was distracted by the ridiculous goat-sucker angle. Later, though, already knowing what it was about, I was much more able to appreciate the technical aspects of this episode, particularly the music, the editing, and the art direction, and how they were used to evoke the feelings of both displacement and belonging a member of a transient group such as these Latinos would have on a daily basis. Even the punch line gains greater weight when seen in this light - the two brothers were formerly members of one group that self-styled "proper society" wouldn't have anything to do with, but now they're even shunned by even their own group. Could it be that some of the Chupacabra legends held by this group are simply the stereotypes that come from ignorance and a lack of (or even a bigoted refusal to look for an) understanding?

Kaddish:    Speaking of stereotypes, there's a huge sign that can almost be seen throughout every minute of this episode, and the sign says, "MESSAGE". Yes, anti-semitism is bad - I think we can all agree on that without needing to be beaten on the head with it, and yet that appears to be the primary goal here. A murder during a robbery turns out to be a hate crime, and the victim is brought back to life as a golem (or something) according to an ancient Hebrew ritual, and whatever it is wreaks havoc upon those who can conceivably be blamed for the murder. Mulder gets a contrived opportunity to make the old joke about how Jesus himself was jewish, and one of the murderers makes a short speech to pass the blame for what he's done on to someone else, revealing not so much his own refusal to accept responsibility, but rather a lack of imagination at the teleplay level. Why not show the unrepentant murderers as fully responsible for their own actions rather than as unwitting pawns of a guy in the shadows with a printing press? As it stands, this episode could just as well be saying, "Yes! It's Hollywood that really is responsible for all of the nation's current ills!"

Never Again:    Here's an episode that goes to show what a double standard some fans have toward our respective agents and their personal lives. Many fans reflexively get defensive (and sometimes downright offensive) at the mere mention of Phoebe Green, Kristen Kilar, and Dr. Bambi Berenbaum, all of whom Mulder has taken the initiative with to develop some kind of personal relationship (with varying degrees of success). It's this same line of thought that has caused the completely unjustified but almost universal hatred of Marita Covarrubias, although her relationship with Mulder has been nothing but professional all along. However, when Scully goes out on her own and has a one night stand with Ed Jerse, the reaction tends to be along the lines of: "Well, a girl's got to have a personal life, doesn't she?" The episode itself is about how this Ed Jerse is going through a divorce, gets a tattoo that later begins talking to him, tries to get something started up with Scully, and ends up trying to kill her at the behest of this tattoo that has suddenly developed a personality of its own. It's basically of no consequence in itself - as I said above, what's more interesting is the contrast it provides as far as fan perception is concerned.

Leonard Betts:   The cancer that has been hinted at for more than a year becomes the big revelation at the end of this episode (sorry if I spoiled it for you). What's also unique here is that the episode's villain gets decapitated during the teaser, but that doesn't stop him from carrying on with his usual activities for the remainder of the hour. What are his "usual activites"? It's theorized that he's some kind of mutant with regenerative powers, but he has to eat tumor-ridden tissue in order to survive. Despite this doubletake-inducing premise, the episode works due to its originality (at least to my experience) and the life-changing discovery that Scully makes about herself.

Memento Mori:    It's hard enough to maintain a consistent mood throughout an entire one-hour episode. What makes this one great is that it takes two wildly different moods (Scully's forlorn sadness as she learns more about her condition and Mulder's hair-raising adventure as he infiltrates a secret research facility with the assistance of the Lone Gunmen), establishes them, and maintains them for the length of the episode. Scully's diary entries provide reinforcement for what we already believe about the strength and resolve of her character. However, although Mulder gets the flashier scenes as he confronts the clones who are "subverting the project" and later evades bullets in his escape from the building, this is primarily driven by Scully's wavering resolve but eventual determination to go on.

Unrequited:   This is one of those that falls between mythology and monster because it contains elements of both types of episodes. As in Sleepless (and the same could be said for that one), events from the Vietnam War come back to haunt those perceived by someone with some special power to be responsible for this particular person's fate. In this case, an American soldier who was supposedly held in a Viet Cong prison for decades is liberated by a militia-type paramilitary organization and returns to the U.S. to right what he feels are old wrongs. The special power in this case is that of being able to become unseen by a relatively small group of people (for all practical purposes, to "become invisible"). Remembering stories he heard about American soldiers and how the Vietcong sometimes seemed able to "disappear" right before their eyes, Mulder theorizes that this is some ability that the man might have learned from his captors during the time he was held prisoner. He wants to kill those officers he holds responsible for the capture of his unit, and the twist is that those unseen but still powerful people in the shadows are perfectly willing for him to finish his self-appointed mission because it will save them the embarassment of publicity for something else in which these generals were involved. Ironically, this killer/avenger doesn't make the impression you'd think he would precisely because his monotone voice (on those rare occasions when he uses it) and calmly executed actions are exactly what you'd expect from him.

Tempus Fugit:    The long-awaited return of Max Fenig (from Season One's Fallen Angel) is both everything we expected and less. Why less? That's my only complaint with this two-parter - that the need was felt to kill Max and turn him into some kind of martyr. We see him on a plane, suspicious of one of the other passengers (with good reason, it turns out), but before anything can happen regarding that situation something happens to the plane and it crashes. Thus begins a National Travel Safety Board accident investigation procedural as seen through the paranoid point of view that we're used to. A military air traffic controller confesses to Mulder and Scully that a plane was sent to intercept a UFO that itself appeared to be intercepting the passenger jet. Mulder finds the UFO wreckage while Scully tries to get the air traffic controller into protective custody. Unfortunately, Agent Pendrell is caught in the crossfire during an unsuccessful attempt on the controller's life.

Max:    In part two, a few of the questions raised by part one are answered (at least maybe they are). Max was carrying some kind of hardware he'd stolen from a research institute that he believed was an energy source from a previously crashed UFO, or maybe something developed as a result of research on the same. Although certain pieces of evidence support Mulder's theory that a UFO was shot down while intercepting the passenger jet, causing the latter to crash as well, the idea is immediately dismissed, and understandably so. However, this doesn't stop Mulder from going into a narrative of what he believed happened, and this is the centerpiece of the episode, as we watch what he believes happened inside the plane while he describes it. Scully learns that Agent Pendrell is dead, and why shippers didn't rejoice at that I'll never know. Finally, we get one last look at Max on a videotape he'd made earlier, and this combined with the loss of Pendrell causes the episode to end on an unusually strong poignant note.

Synchrony:    During the series pilot, we learned that Scully's bachelor's degree was in physics and that she wrote a thesis dealing with some new interpretation of Einstein's Twin Paradox. After this episode, I really get the feeling that somebody associated with the show wonders what Chris Carter was thinking when he originally wrote this. Why do I think this? Because it's been avoided from then until now, and even here it's only mentioned as a side note, although considering that "time travel" is central to this plot, one would think that Scully would have all kinds of fascinating insights into the case. As near as I can tell, it's either the writers who don't want to get to deeply into the subject for fear of getting something wrong at a fundamental level that would be easy to understand with a little explanation, or it's the network executives who are mortally afraid of scaring off parts of the audience with too much hard science (and if this is the case, I'm sure the belief is that any hard science is too much). Why am I going on about this instead of talking about the episode? That's because this is exactly what I was thinking during the episode - there really wasn't anything there to keep me interested.

Small Potatoes:    This is Season Four's only foray into the whimsical areas previously visited by Humbug, War of the Coprophages, and Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space', and it's a good one. Eddie Van Blundht apparently has the ability to morph into anybody he wishes, and he's used it to get into the beds of several women around town. Consequently, several kids have been born who are undoubtedly his. We know this because the kids were born with vestigial tails, just like the one Eddie had removed years ago. Although this is basically high concept based on the idea of a single scene (Mulder leaning in to kiss Scully), everybody involved makes the most of it, especially David Duchovny and Darin Morgan as Eddie. One gets the feeling that Eddie's scene in Mulder's apartment (disguised as Mulder) is the most fun Duchovny's had since the beginning of the series, with him trying out different ways to say "F.B.I.", invoking some immortal lines from Taxi Driver, and otherwise making fun of Mulder's character. Also, after having written some cruel jabs at Mulder in previous episodes, Morgan is finally able to insult Mulder to his face.

Zero Sum:   Back during Memento Mori, Skinner advised Mulder not to go to CSM for help with Scully's condition, but then Skinner went and did it himself on her behalf. Because of a shipping error (or possibly on purpose), a postal employee is stung to death by a swarm of bees that escaped from a package. Therefore, there's a mess to be cleaned up and a corpse to be disposed of, and Skinner gets the call. He takes care of it, not knowing that CSM is following him around and tying up loose ends, which includes killing a detective on the case. Rather than sit and wait for CSM to fulfill his part of the deal, Skinner's sense of justice gets the better of him, and he begins trying to find out more about what's up with all these bees. Enter Marita Covarrubias again, as Skinner tries unsuccessfully to get information from her. Meanwhile, the Syndicate is ready to perform one of its experiments, which appears to involve unleashing the bees on a schoolyard full of children. So, now we have bees and smallpox somehow involved in whatever it is the Syndicate is up to, although it's very much unclear at the moment. Of course, there's also the one scene for which this episode will always be remembered: Skinner confronts CSM in his apartment and points his gun at CSM. The phone rings, and CSM calls Skinner's bluff by saying that he'd like to answer his phone if Skinner isn't going to shoot him. Suddenly, Skinner fires his pistol in CSM's direction three times, and for an instant we just sit there in stunned silence. Then Skinner leaves, striding past a paralyzed-looking CSM with three bullet holes in the wall behind him. He answers his phone, and we learn that it's Marita calling him. Furthermore, someone out of focus is behind her, silently listening in on the extension. Who is it? Given the events late in Season Five, it's pretty obvious.

Elegy:    Scully gets an opportunity to look her own mortality in the face, although beyond this, the episode doesn't provide much. Once again an anonymous killer is stalking the streets, and a retarded attendant at a bowling alley has some kind of connection with the victims. He's able to see ghostly images of them dying after the killer strikes. There's some kind of theory voiced about how, as a person gets closer to dying himself, his impending death gives him an increasingly closer connection to others as they die themselves. It doesn't make much sense to me, but... whatever. Since we know about Scully's cancer, we already know that she's probably going to see a couple of ghostly images herself, so apparently this is the whole reason for the episode in the first place. Whatever reason there was for it, it wasn't nearly enough to keep me interested.

Demons:    Mulder decides to undergo a radically experimental treatment in the hopes that it will help him remember more about the night Samantha disappeared, and maybe it does, but it also gets him involved in a murder-suicide that was done using his own weapon. While he's in the custody of the local police department, a cop in the building decides to kill himself as well. Both the cop and the other two dead people were also recent patients of this psychologist, and their motivations for undergoing it had something to do with their belief in their own extraterrestrial-related experiences. Mulder eventually does believe he learns more about the time of his sister's disappearance, and it appears that CSM played a large part in some kind of events surrounding it as Mulder sees them, however murkily, years later. Unfortunately, the flashback sequences, although intended to convey the idea of a dream-like state, only succeed in causing a headache for the viewer.

Gethsemane:    Here we begin another story arc, this one again pivotal in the continuing mythology, although one might not realize it by watching this episode on its own. Although what might be the recovered corpse of an alien is central to the story, none of the semi-regulars puts in an appearance - there's no Skinner, no CSM, no Krycek, no Gunmen, no Syndicate, and no Marita. I think this might have been part of the idea - to put our agents into an arena with no familiar faces such that they might see the situation from a different perspective. This is something Mulder certainly does, hearing as he does from a Department of Defense employee that he's been manipulated in everything he's done since he started work on the X-files, resulting in a carefully orchestrated smokescreen that would create yet another layer of confusion to cover up what's really going on. Furthermore, the guy is so convincing and everything fits together so well that it appears Mulder might just believe him. This twist has been loudly criticized by many fans, but I think it was just what Mulder's character needed to grow, and it came at a crucial time when it appeared the character didn't have anywhere else to go. Was the alien corpse a fake? Was the DOD guy telling the truth, was it what he himself believe but wasn't actually true, or was he flat out lying? Most importantly, as Scully is telling this review board of the events over the previous few days, what's going to happen with her tumor, and did Mulder really kill himself? Sure, this was a cheap way to manufacture a season-ending cliffhanger, but other than that misstep, this episode provides a fertile garden from which the next season can grow.

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