Season 8, Episodes 20 and 21: “Essence”/“Existence”
Original Airdates: May 13 and May 20, 2001

If it seems like we keep ending eras, we do. We do keep ending eras. We’ve said goodbye to the Consortium, and we’ve said goodbye to regular appearances from Agent Mulder, and, well, you know. It’s been a lot of change, a lot of goodbyes, and honestly I think we’ve handled it pretty well! But you guys, I hate to break it to you, we’ve got to do it again. We’ve got to say goodbye to the show as we know it, to the show that’s about Mulder and Scully solving cases together. This is it. This is the end of that. Are you ready? Better yet: is the show ready?

[I just felt a contraction.]

Season 8, Episode 18: “Vienen”
Original Airdate: April 29, 2001

This is an episode about Fox Mulder and John Doggett, and how the former decided to stop being a jerk to the latter. Was a time when Mulder would never ever stop being a jerk to a tough-jawed interloper like Doggett, but also was a time when the actor playing Mulder wasn’t working super-hard to get off the show. And so. It is not a surprise, to watch Mulder release the X-Files into the care of another. It is, however, a little bittersweet.

[How about a twenty count?]

Season 8, Episode 16: “Three Words”
Original Airdate: April 8, 2001

Before you make yourself crazy about it, the three words are “fight the future.” A few years ago, it was a terrifically nonspecific subtitle for a movie. The future could have been anything, then—the work of the Consortium, the work of the aliens, the work of the aliens and the Consortium together—but with the Consortium gone, and with much of the mutual work wiped out, the future is one thing: invasion.

[You’re being paranoid, Mulder. Even for you.]

Season 8, Episodes 14 and 15: “This is Not Happening”/“Deadalive”
Original Airdates: February 25 and April 1, 2001

No, well, actually, it is happening. It’s happening, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Our show is getting older, and more frail. More forgetful, and more—somehow—nonsensical. These two episodes, the episodes in which Mulder returns! should be the boldest, and most wonderful. And somehow instead they are dull, and exhausting, and not half as mysterious as they would like to be.

[Hanging on to life by a thread.]

Season 8, Episode 13: “Per Manum”
Original Airdate: February 18, 2001

What if Scully had always been the believer? What if, and I mean, really what-if, and I mean, what I’m really talking about here is gender. Is about what it’s always meant to this show to have a female skeptic and a male believer, and how that’s changed now that Mulder is gone and Scully believes and Doggett is Doggett. “Per Manum” returns us to one of the show’s classic mytharcs—the eternal mystery of Scully’s womb—and as it does so, with these roles reversed, the division between the new show and the old show appears more startling than ever.

[Can’t keep it a secret forever.]

Season 8, Episode 11: “The Gift”
Original Airdate: February 4, 2001

The X-Files has always been driven by absence. The absence of Samantha, to begin; the absence of Scully, for awhile; and now the absence of Mulder. Driven by, but not particularly constructed around. The missing are always sought-after, but intermittently, as monsters-of-the-week intervene and mythology threads go cold.

[You’ve got it all backward.]

Season 8, Episode 5: “Invocation”
Original Airdate: December 3, 2000

So what is this, is this business as usual? A monster-of-the-week, a skeptic and a believer investigating the disappearance slash reappearance of some creepy little kid, same old business, same old partner dynamic, I mean. That’s the risk, isn’t it? Even flipping the script and turning Scully into a believer is a thing that could be ruined. Fortunately, “Invocation” shows us that there’s potential in the flipped script. Unfortunately, “Invocation” also shows us how harrowing the new world might be.

[Now listen to it backwards.]

Season 8, Episodes 1 and 2: “Within”/“Without”
Original Airdates: November 5 and November 12, 2000

Aw, look, I know. Change is hard. You miss Mulder. You miss the conspiracy. You miss the old days! You miss your youth. I miss your youth too, but the point is—change is an opportunity. No, it is. Even on this stubborn old television program. The addition of John Doggett may have been, to some, a sign that it was time to write off the whole show, but if “Within” and “Without” have anything to say about it, the addition of John Doggett could be exactly the thing this thing needs.

[You’re the man in charge.]

Season 7, Episode 22: “Requiem”
Original Airdate: May 21, 2000

This is how it ends. Not with a voiceover, or with a Grey. Not even with an ending, because yeah, no, no, “Requiem” is not the end of The X-Files. But it is, or it could be. Like most of the show, it was conceived to cover a number of potential bases: that the show would have another season, that the show would not have another season but would have a movie, that the show would not have another season and would not, either, have a movie. It pays homage to its roots while maintaining the hazy melancholy that permeated the whole of the season, the long, longing looks at the door. And then it ends. And Mulder is gone.

[There’s no such thing as a snipe, sir.]

Season 7, Episode 21: “Je Souhaite”
Original Airdate: May 14, 2000

So here we are. Nearly at the end of the seventh season of a show about two FBI agents who investigate paranormal activity. Seventh season! Did you ever thought you’d live so long? Fitting, then, to have an episode about immortality, and the corruption of a long life. “Je Souhaite” is the episode with the genie in it, an episode that—despite the fact that there’s explosion, halfway through—comes off as meditative. There’s hardly a crime, and hardly a case. Just a woman who has seen too much, meeting a man who always needs to see more.

[Barbara Eden never killed anybody.]

Season 7, Episode 19: “Hollywood A.D.”
Original Airdate: April 30, 2000

“Hollywood A.D.” is not so much an X-Files episode as it is an X-Files pageant, a presentation put together for Parents Night or whatever. And we’re the parents in this scenario, so that’s fun. Tucked full of in-jokes and fairly unconcerned with having a cogent plot (or a plot, period), it oughta be excruciating to watch. But it isn’t. It’s sweet, actually, it’s all your favorite people getting to have some fun. God, when was the last time we all had some fun?

[Ms. Leoni’s shoulder’s made of turkey.]

Season 7, Episode 17: “All Things”
Original Airdate: April 9, 2000

Hey Scully what's going on with you these days! Like belief-wise, still Catholic? Eh? Believe in aliens or whatever? Not sure? Eh? Okay great, here's an episode called “All Things” that's going to cover, again, this ground, again, about whether or not Scully has the capacity to believe in things that are unusual. Wait, isn't that the premise of this entire show, sort of, you ask me? And I say yes. Except this time the episode was written and directed by Gillian Anderson. Okay so what does that mean for me, you ask? I tell you: Buddhism.

[Is that beautiful, or what?]

Season 7, Episode 15: “En Ami”
Original Airdate: March 19, 2000

Throughout the run of the show, the Cigarette-Smoking Man has appeared both as a simple bogeyman and a complex figure whose life has been a series of painful choices. The latter is interesting, of course—the Cigarette-Smoking Man as a steely-eyed family man, raising Samantha Mulder as his own alongside a son he would later be the death of—but there’s plenty of merit in the former. Since The X-Files has so often disregarded consistent character development, having a guy who you can always count on to be Very Bad is both a comfort and a mile marker. Draw too much sympathy for a guy like that and he ceases to be useful, as a Very Bad. Starts, instead, to be sort of depressing. 

[Just do your damn job.]

Season 7, Episode 12: “X-Cops”
Original Airdate: February 20, 2000

Nothing like the threat of a Cops crossover to put a scare in the honest X-Files fan, am I right? The drunk great-uncle of reality programming, Cops has been fighting the good-ish fight since 1989, inspiring all manner of parody and satire and terrible jokes and your friends to sing “Bad Boys” while hanging their heads out of a moving vehicle. It’s the sort of show that has no place mixing with Fox’s prestige program—even in the year 2000, when that prestige program was maybe losing a bit of its luster, maybe, a little. So it is against all odds, then, that “X-Cops” is a smart little gem of an episode.

[Because the FBI has nothing to hide.]

Season 7, Episodes 10 and 11: “Sein und Zeit”/“Closure”
Original Airdates: February 6 and February 11, 2000

Samantha Mulder has always been a concept. Never really a character, just a motivation, a young girl who disappeared and, through her disappearance, defined the lives of those she left behind. Mulder would not be Mulder if his sister had not disappeared, and thus, Samantha Mulder is important. But: not as a person. She has never had personhood, never had dimension. Never even really had consistent casting. She has been there when she was needed to serve the story, and now, she is done.

[I'm sure you're busy.]

Season 7, Episode 4: “Millennium”
Original Airdate: November 28, 1999

I think it must be nice, when one of your television shows is canceled, to be able to have another television show available, like if you need to tie up some loose ends. I think this is actually nice! And this is what Chris Carter got to do when Fox shut down his second television program, Millennium. Lo, the adventures of Frank Black, Depressed Former FBI Agent, did not have to end, not so long as the adventures of Mulder and Scully, Slightly Less Depressed Current FBI Agents, were ongoing. Both shows thrived on shadows and supernaturality; it should have been a match made in weirdo heaven. It was, instead: just okay.

[First and 18.]

Season 7, Episodes 1 and 2: “The Sixth Extinction”/“The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati”
Original Airdates: November 7 and 14, 1999

What happens when you care about a show, and it doesn’t care back? I mean that happens all the time, let’s be honest, shows don’t care about us. They are shows. We are people. It is a one-sided relationship and yet, you hope. That what you invest will mean something, and, in the case of these episodes, you hope that you have enough investment to give. “The Sixth Extinction” and “Amor Fati” want a lot from you. Primarily they want tolerance, and attention. They have some sort of story to tell but it is big and it is wild and it is, quite often, very silly. So then, we have to ask ourselves. Is it okay to stop caring?

[No one leaves here before me.]

Season 6, Episode 22: “Biogenesis”
Original Airdate: May 16, 1999

Okay so who are these aliens anyway. Does anyone know? They’re grey or they’re shapeshifters, they’ve got a life force made of black oil, they’re immensely powerful I guess, who knows, every time we meet them they’re half in shadow and there’s some completely wacked-out music playing. But. Throughout this campaign of non-information there has been one consistency, one half-acknowledged plot necessity. Alien life is old. How old is it? It’s so old that it’s maybe the reason we’re even here.

[You go ahead and prove me wrong.]

Season 6, Episode 21: “Field Trip”
Original Airdate: May 9, 1999

A redhead and a gentleman argue in a motel room. They’ve spent all day in the woods together, and she’s upset with him. “I thought we had a good time,” he says. “You had a good time,” she says. “Tromping around and leaving me a half a mile behind.” The gentleman apologizes to her. The redhead forgives the gentleman. Then the redhead and the gentleman lay down and die.

[Whatever happened to the most logical explanation?]