Case 04, File 24: Gethesemane

AKA: Old Alien and the Mountain

End of season cliffhangers are a risky business, not least because they require a degree of certainty that the series is coming back. You want to give the audience a desire to return without making them feel like they're being manipulated. It's a fine line to walk, but if you do it right, you can keep your audience always coming back. There's a reason why I'm writing this review while watching Orange is the New Black. Fumble it thought and the audience can feel they're being manipulated for cheap effect.

Case 04, File 23: Demons

AKA: Cucked By The Cigarette Smoking Man

Mulder makes bad decisions. This is not a complaint or an insult, this is a fact of his character, one that other characters are aware of. There is a moment in the second movie where Skinner insists that Mulder wouldn't do anything rash and Scully just looks at him in disbelief. As much as I love Mulder, the fact that he can do some stupid stuff is basically just something we all have to live with. But still, even among his many odd choices, there a handful that stand out.

Case 04, File 22: Elegy

AKA: Fuck It Dude, Let's Go Bowling

It's pretty safe to say that non-neurotypical people didn't get great media representation during the 90s but one of the ones who had it worst was...actually, I have no idea how to even rank that, but people with autism certainly didn't have the best, usually portraying them as people with no ability to talk or even act normally but with some sort of number or memory related super power. And while The X-Files dipped its toe in that pool before, it almost feels inevitable that they'd return to it.