Case 07, File 08: The Amazing Maleeni

AKA: Ocean's...I Dunno, I Think Two?

I go back and forth on how much I want Mulder and Scully to actually accomplish in a given episode. Obviously they can't take down the conspiracy, capture an alien and prove that supernatural shit exists, that would make the rest of the series pointless and I need to see Mulder and Scully flirt dammit. But, outside of the Myth Arc episodes, I like it when I feel like they accomplished something by their presence. Maybe they don't need to actually catch, or even stop the subject at hand, but it would be nice if they did something.

Case 07, File 07: Orison

AKA: If I Could Slow Down Time

As a series enters its twilight years and original ideas begin to get thin on the ground, the temptation to revisit old ideas becomes greater and greater. The Office's final season devolved into a series of love triangles ala its early seasons, Seinfeld brought back the Mandelbaums in its final season, Buffy handed Spike a soul so they could do another variant on that storyline, it's hard to resist. But reusing old characters comes with the risk that you'll fall short of the original, and make an episode that cheapens them. Especially when the original is one of the best episodes of the series.

Case 07, File 06: The Goldberg Variation

AKA: Luck Isn't A Super Power

Season Seven has an...odd relationship with the funny, quirky episodes The X-Files did every so often. I think everyone on the writing staff realized they'd gone kind of overboard with them in Season Six, but they'd been doing funny, quirky episode since Season Two, they were basically as much a part of the show's DNA as Alex Krycek. Their solution, it appears, was to throttle them down to only 2 or 3 episodes, and make those episodes vary wildly in quality.