Case 8.5, File 03: Eine Kleine Frohike

AKA: That's Some Real Bad German

Three or four episodes in is usually the point when a series can stop setting up its character dynamics and worlds and just get down to the business of what we're going to be doing week to week, and as such can usually function as something of mission statement; 3 episodes in was The X-Files hit Squeeze, which is one of the best early episodes. So now that we've got our basic setup (with Jimmy added to the crew) it's time for us to see what the show is going to try to be.

Case 8.5, File 02: Bond, Jimmy Bond

AKA: There Are Just People With The Name "James Bond" Out There, Right?

One of the first things a spinoff has to do is get its own cast up and running. Leeching too heavily or too obviously off the main cast can cripple both shows, as you're pulling too much from the original's fabric and risking falling prey to existing cast dynamics. It's worth noting that one of the more successful spinoffs of the 21st century (Angel) only pulled one other main character, and a tertiary character a bit down the line. And even if The Lone Gunmen wanted to pull characters from The X-Files, it just plain doesn't have that many secondary characters it can spare. The writers have to create their own cast from scratch.

Case 8.5, File 01: Pilot

AKA: There's No Jokey AKA I Can Do Here That Isn't Way Too Dark

Spinoffs are, in the modern TV era, kind of in a weird spot. TV execs love them, and not just because they used to soft test new TV show concepts in other shows (seriously, look up how many spinoffs Happy Days had). It seems like a foolproof way to make a new show; Take an element people like from an existing show, and build a new show around it. In practice it's not that simple. Often times the element in question was only ever really functional as part of the larger ensemble and just because people like it, doesn't mean it's enough to anchor a full tv show.

Case 08, File 14: This is Not Happening

AKA: Holy Shit, Mulder's Off The Spaceship

Although it seems in retrospect that Duchovny's return to The X-Files was as inevitable as the tides, when the Season Seven finale was written, they were trying to thread the needle of creating an exit that would let them bring back Mulder if they could reach an agreement with Duchovny while also keeping him away without having to explain too much if the agreement fell through. But when they managed to get Duchovny secured, they all knew they couldn't keep giving him cameos and flashbacks forever; Eventually they'd have to figure out how to bring him back to the main plot.

Case 08, File 13: Per Manum

 AKA: Is An It's Alive Reference Here Too Esoteric?

While I've been pretty obviously bummed out about Duchovny's departure from the series, it's nothing compared to what the series has been going through. The series is caught between the desire to move on and make a clean break from the Duchovny era and feeling completely lost without the actor and relationship that used to be the anchor that they could build scripts around. And while that's not necessarily the worst place to be in, their terror to move on has led to them failing to actually build on what should be the new core partnership.

Case 08, File 12: Medusa

 AKA: All Of My Attempts To Write This AKA Turned Into Covid Jokes

One thing that I think helped The X-Files gain so many fans and stay so popular is that, while its primary influence is horror, that's not the only thing it draws inspiration from. Romance, comedy, action, and especially thriller are all big parts of its DNA and what that means is that, depending on what you want out of an episode (or depending on what your actors strengths are) The X-Files can probably find something for you.

Case 08, File 11: The Gift

AKA: If I Put Something About Soul Eaters Here Will I Get SEO From The Anime?

I feel like I've been mean to the Season 8 episodes, and I don't mean to be, but I can't really help it; The X-Files' quality had been dropping since Season 6, and losing one of their key actors, and the relationships his character had means that bad episodes had less to lean on. But there are still things the series can do to make a damn fine episode if it wants to. And there's no reason the series can't still make a damn fine episode without Duchovny. Or even with him.

Case 08, File 10: Badlaa

AKA: I Couldn't Think Of A Safe AKA Title

The X-Files is consistently weird, often spooky, occasionally scary but rarely gross. I don't really know how to write down that distinction in terms of violence and content, it's mostly just a judgement call that makes Machete silly, Texas Chainsaw Massacre disturbing and Saw III gross; I may not be able to define gross in a horror context, but I know it when I see it. And more importantly, it's hard to nail down when exactly being gross is a bug and when it's a feature.

Case 08, File 09: Salvage

AKA: As He Lost His Mind, Can He See Or Is He Blind?

The question of what makes a great, or even good, Monster of the Week episode is one that's been plaguing me these last few reviews. Obviously there are elements that need to be present; a decent monster, solid characters, an engaging script, good Mulder and Scully banter, but the absence of one of those elements doesn't make an episode bad. I think all of the good elements are less of a binary and more of a gradient; Lack of any one won't make an episode bad, but it will mean the other elements will have to work harder to make up for it.

Case 08, File 08: Surekill

AKA: Did Rob Liefeld Name This Episode?

The X-Files needs to strike a weird balance in how it spreads its time, at least in a normal Monster of the Week episode. We have to spend enough time with the monster to know what it's doing and why, enough time with Mulder and Scully to keep the plot moving and maybe get some banter, and if there's time we might want to have a plot running with the episode specific characters. With Mulder out of the picture at this point, banter has taken a back seat and as such there might be more time to develop episode specific characters, depending on how they want to execute an episode.

Case 08, File 07: Via Negativa

AKA: One, Two, Tipet's Coming For You 

The X-Files is not a show that repeats elements, beyond broad plot outlines, very often. Between a wide variety of weird monsters, odd writing and increasingly convoluted continuity to keep track of, it generally has enough variety in its story and setups that it doesn't need to dip into the same wells more than once. We are at this point however, 8 seasons and well over 150 episodes deep, it is inevitable that some episodes start looking like specific older ones, at least if you squint.

Case 08, File 06: Redrum

AKA: No It's Not Related To The Shining

As much as I mock the Revenge From Beyond the Grave plot setup, it's mostly a punching bag because many of the episodes that use it are pretty bad, not cause the series usually has a wide variety of complex plot setups. While The X-Files can have extremely creative monsters and ideas, it usually has pretty straightforward plots, and that's not a complaint. When you have 43 minutes to tell a complete story, you kind of have to fall back on easy to understand plot beats so you don't have to worry about confusing your audience. What that does mean is that the plots that are uniquely put together stand out.

Case 08, File 05: Invocation

AKA: Isn't This The Plot Of The Lovely Bones? I Never Read It

Writing a character on a TV show, especially a main character introduced late in the series run, is a little like writing backwards. Elements are added onto their personality and backstory as the story needs and become integral parts of the character or are discarded, depending on the later story needs or how fans respond to them. But there are elements of a backstory that can't be left to the random happenstance of random story beats, in which case you might want to develop a whole episode to introduce them.

Case 08, File 04: Roadrunners

AKA: I Gotta Make This One "Meep Meep," Don't I?

One aspect of The X-Files that gets lost on rewatches is that it was, for the most part, playing horror tropes straight at a time when horror was increasingly leaning on ironic mockery and parody (Scream hit right in the middle of The X-Files' 3rd season). But as the series wore on and the characters lived through more and more horror stories, it became inevitable that they would start to figure out when they're in another one. Or at least get a sixth sense for when they're getting manipulated.

Case 08, File 03: Patience

AKA: I Wouldn't Say The Man-Bat's Most Notable Trait Is Patience

Let's be honest, the real test of the Doggett/Scully team up wasn't going to be a Myth Arc episode. As important as they are to the fabric of the show, they aren't a big percentage of any given season and they aren't what kept people coming back. No, for Doggett and Scully to work as the lead pair of the show, they'd have to be able to navigate a Monster of the Week episode. And sure, that's easy to do when the episode is good, but they might also have to navigate some pretty mediocre episodes.

Case 08, File 02: Without

AKA: Is This Episode Naming Convention Better Or Worse Than Part 1/Part 2 Style?

When a major part of the show departs, there is a temptation to, when discussing it, get Meta in your discussion. And why not, it's clear to anyone who watches that reality has intruded upon the show and that decisions are not being made with "What's good for the story" in mind, they're being made within the real life constraints being forced on them. But at some point you have to stop away from that and start considering the story for what's actually happening in it.

Case 08, File 01: Within

AKA: What An Oddly Disconcerting Title

We're beginning to swim into some uncharted waters here. Not completely uncharted mind you, I have seen all these episodes, but while the earlier seasons of The X-Files (especially Seasons 1-5) are borderline tattooed on my brain, for some reasons my rewatches often trailed off around this point in the series. So while I know how this all shakes out, the details will often be surprising to me. I dunno if this is gonna make my reviews better or worse, but it'll probably make them different.

Case 07, File 22: Requiem

AKA: Does Motzart's Requiem Have Words? Pretend I Put Them Here

Part of me assumed I'd never get here.

I'm serious, I'd always thought in the back of my head that I'd just never get to the end of Season Seven, that something would come up, I'd get bored or my hilariously low view counts would get to me and I'd stop for long enough that I'd just never go back. I didn't even buy The Lone Gunmen on DVD until a few months ago. But here I am, staring down 2 full, Mulder-less seasons with no reason to stop and everything urging me on. All that's left is to jump in.

Case 07, File 21: Je Souhaite

AKA: If I Made A Wishmaster Joke Here, Would Anyone Get It?

What exactly is it that makes an episode a comedy episode instead of a regular Monster of the Week. One could argue that it has to do with how scary or not it is, but that's not it. Humbug is way scarier than Teso dos Bichos. There is a character to the way the plot moves in a comedy episode, good or bad, that gives them a distinct flavor from the regular Monster of the Week episodes and which can, when properly utilized, make what could be a horrifying episode warm and funny.

Case 07, File 20: Fight Club

AKA: No, Seriously, Don't Talk About Fight Club

In retrospect, it's hard to explain how the comedic episodes got as big as they did, because they're always walking a fine line. Bad horror is merely kind of dull, bad comedy is often actively irritating. That The X-Files managed to not only create so many comedic episodes without getting one that was teeth gratingly annoying (never mind making some of the best, most heartfelt episodes of the series) is nearly a miracle. It also meant that they were overdue to fuck up that average eventually.

Case 07, File 19: Hollywood AD

AKA: Everybody Goes To Hollywood

The creation, evolution and eventual oversaturation of the comedic episode in The X-Files history is an interesting one, because on the surface it doesn't seem like something the series would be interested in doing. The X-Files is a horror show, why would it want to do comedy (we are, for the moment, ignoring how much DNA The X-Files gets from Twin Peaks, which was as devoted to its bizarre flights of comedic whimsy as it was to its deeply disturbing horror sequences). But against the odds, the comedic episode not only appeared by flourished. And since the last run of Monster of the Week episodes leading into the season finale are all comedy slanted, we get to examine them from several different angles.

Case 07, File 18: Brand X

AKA: Actually Not The Grossest Anti-Smoking PSA

Cigarettes are a big part of The X-Files' identity, but they ended up getting pigeonholed in an odd sort of way. Our main villain (or the face of the main villains, if we want to get pedantic) is so identified with his smoking habit, it was his name for most of the series (I still call him that in these very reviews, because Spender is someone else). This led to a paradoxical inability to let any other character smoke (I guess Fletcher smoked?) which incidentally made a lot of episodes set in the 50s historically hilarious. So I guess it made sense to eventually let the anti-cigarette sentiment that was huge in the 90s and 2000s, permeate an episode, but it does seem weird that it took them so damn long.

Case 07, File 17: all things

AKA: No I Don't Know Why It's Capitalized Like That

Scully's staunch skepticism is and was her primary character trait for much of the first big chunk of the series. Early in the series, they went to great (often comical) lengths to keep Scully from witnessing the supernatural goings on so as to keep them from affecting her skepticism. But as the series went on they relaxed that standard and now, with Mulder's exit speeding toward the series, it was time for Scully to be prepared to take over his role as "Believer in the weird shit."

Case 07, File 16: Chimera

AKA: Should I Watch Full Metal Alchemist So I Can Make A Reference To It Here?

I talk a lot about the themes of this or that X-Files episode, but honestly, a lot of that is just subtext. Sure every so often you end with an episode like Clyde Bruckman that takes a big idea and explores it with heart and nuance, but more often you get a general concept and maybe some subtext or small character arcs that build on it. That's not a criticism, the format of a 40 minute Monster of the Week storyline is not really built to explore heavy themes, but it's nice when the theme is at least central to the episode.

Case 07, File 15: En Ami

AKA: The Devil and Ms. Scully

Scully has been an important part of many of the Myth Arc episodes, but she's never really had any personal interactions with most of the conspiracy, so even though she's been victimized by them a lot (a lot a lot) she's never gained the personal enmity with them that Mulder has with say, the Cigarette Smoking Man or Krycek. But with Duchovny's exit coming down the line like a freight train, and with no idea of what the story of the series is going to be going forward, I think it's about time Scully got some personal antagonism with the Conspiracy.

Case 07, File 14: Theef

AKA: It's A Psychobilly Freakout

One of the things that can make horror age so quickly is that it can take shortcuts to be frightening, and those shortcuts can be insensitive, if not abhorrent, to more modern sensibilities. The X-Files, for the most part, avoids race and class based horror, so it does manage to avoid a lot of that stuff. But, one of the few things it has indulged in, is in indulging in horror based around lower income people from rural areas. And while that's not usually enough to sink an episode, it can be...awkward.

Case 07, File 13: First Person Shooter

AKA: Twitch Stream This

Once, while on a stream with YouTuber and generally excellent human Dan Olson, he said to me that, for any discussion of the worst episode of The X-Files to be interesting, Space has to be excluded. His reasoning was sound: Space is the episode with the least good in it, basically nothing worth talking about (and thus a very dull episode to review, honestly). But while there are no episodes with less good in them, there are some episodes with much, much, much more bad in them.

Case 07, File 12: X-Cops

AKA: The Only Thing To Fear Is Pro-Police Propaganda

The X-Files exists in an odd space, compared to other law enforcement centered media. Even when discussions of pro-cop media in the 90s media comes up, The X-Files is rarely part of the conversation. Part of that is that our heroes, despite being FBI Agents, are so often positioned as against the government (or at least the vast conspiracy within it) or maybe it's cause what Mulder and Scully do is so unlike what normal law enforcement does. Either way, when they actually do engage with real life law enforcement, it strikes an...odd tone.

Case 07, File 11: Closure

AKA: Oh Boy! Closure!

Let's be honest with ourselves: There was never a concrete plan for what happened to Samantha. And I don't mean that in the way that David Lynch never actually intended to resolve the question of who killed Laura Palmer, I mean they intended to resolve it at some point, but I don't think they ever knew what that way was. But with the future of the series in flux and Duchovny's exit coming like a freight train, I think they made the choice to just find an ending for it, and I'm determined to approach it as it's own thing. Even if it does contradict one of my favorite moments from Season Two.

Case 07, File 10: Sein Und Zeit

AKA: Law And Order: Ghost Victims Unit

Despite Mulder's motivation being (supposedly) the loss of his sister, The X-Files doesn't really do kidnappings. Oh it's done it once or twice but for the most part, not counting alien abductions, actual kidnappings are pretty rare. There's probably a complex psychological reason behind it, with kidnapping being just a little too real and dark, or maybe they just don't want to have to keep checking in on their victim in the script, who knows. Hence we all know that when they do kidnapping, it's cause Mulder wants to make it personal.

Case 07, File 09: Signs and Wonders

AKA: I Was Born A Snake Handler And I'll Die A Snake Handler

There is a moment in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace in which a character is dying and, randomly, decides to spout off some facts about Bermuda. It's funny, not just because of the non-sequitur but because, like much of Darkplace, it's reflective of a real thing writers do. Get too into researching an idea or concept and you can find yourself forcing that stuff in because it's just on your brain. You can even find yourself writing an entire episode about it.

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.