Case 09, File 18: Sunshine Days

AKA: The Navidson Bunch

As The X-Files faces down what was, at the time, its ultimate ending, it kind of went through its own stages of grief. Improbable feels like denials, Jump the Shark could be viewed as depression, Scary Monsters as bargaining, even Hellbound as anger although I'm really pushing the metaphor well past its breaking point at that point. But here, in the penultimate episode of Season 9, the last Monster of the Week of the original run, we have acceptance.

Case 09, File 17: Release

AKA: I Really Don't Like That Title, Can't Explain Why

I don't know to what degree Doggett's dead son was intended as a direct attempt to recreate the mystery of Samantha's abduction, but it's what it felt like, and so that's the metric it has to be judged by. The problem is, it never really committed to it the way the series committed to the Samantha mystery. Samantha was central to Mulder's motivation and a major element of the main story. Doggett's son was a detail of his backstory. But with the series wrapping in a little bit, it did manage to remember that this was an element of his backstory that needed resolution.