Season 4, Episode 2: “Home”
Original Airdate: October 11, 1996

“Home” is a bit of a legend, or at least, that’s how I remember it. It aired with a Viewer Discretion warning, the first of only two that The X-Files would receive, and it rarely appeared in reruns. I remembered the episode as a disgusting skin-crawler, some combination of Buried Child and the Flukeman, an episode that would make me want to avert my eyes over and over. But “Home” is in fact better than that: it’s horror, good horror, well-told and suspenseful with a broad streak of wry humor to keep you from dwelling too much on its brutal, awful murders.

[Meanwhile I’ve quit the Bureau and become a spokesperson for the Ab-Roller.]

Season 3, Episode 24: “Talitha Cumi”/
Season 4, Episode 1: “Herrenvolk”
Original Airdates: May 17 and October 4, 1996

So let’s say your show about aliens and monsters has gone and got big. Cover of Rolling Stone big, one of your leads is hosting Saturday Night Live big. In Season 1 your largest audience was 8.3 million. Now, in Season 3, you’re regularly pulling twice that. And maybe there’s a little bit of criticism, a little bit of fear that your mytharc is getting a teense unwieldy. But it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine because you have plans. Plans that can fill a big show, hell, words that can fill a big show. And bees. You also have bees!

[I’m not impressed by your miracles or moved by your trickery.]

Season 3, Episode 22: “Quagmire”
Original Airdate: May 3, 1996

There are all sorts of monsters on The X-Files. There are the ones that humanity has created, like the Flukeman. There are the ones that have evolved, like Tooms. And then there are the ancient monsters, the ones who live far below the surface, quietly reigning over the food chain. Lake monsters, for instance, those canny beasts. Or perhaps something worse, something silent and powerful and ancient in its way. The sort of monster that can drive you and your partner to Georgia, to sit stranded in the middle of a cold lake in the blackest heart of night.

[Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling.]

Season 3, Episode 20: “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space”
Original Airdate: April 12, 1996

This is an episode about the truth, which I know all of the episodes are meant to be about, but. “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” is not about seeking the truth so much as it is about the tiny falsehoods and embellishments inherent in every survivor’s tale. It’s a Darin Morgan episode, also, funny as hell and lovingly balanced on inverted paradigms. Mulder will be handsome and sullen, Scully will be tough and bright, the townspeople will be strangely manic, and absolutely no one will be entirely trustworthy.

[“Have you checked everywhere?”]

Season 3, Episode 17: “Pusher”
Original Airdate: February 23, 1996

Before Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan was Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, he was Vince Gilligan, the X-Files writer who seemed to understand exactly how in love Mulder and Scully really were. Not super in true actual love — it’s season three, calm down — but a little in love, a partner-in-love, a “there’s something about how whenever you put yourself in danger it upsets me but I would never try to stop you, because ultimately that is untenable” love.

“Pusher” is Gilligan’s second episode, a ripping yarn about a man whose sudden proximity to death sets him off on a wildly destructive path. That’s right: before there was Walter White there was Robert Patrick Modell.

[Please explain to me the scientific nature of the whammy]

Season 3, Episodes 15 and 16: “Piper Maru”/“Apocrypha”
Original Airdates: February 9 and February 16, 1996

Sssh, don’t be afraid. I know. They’re mytharc episodes, I know, and we’re afraid of mytharc right now. Afraid it will be all questions and no answers, all rise and no fall. But there is something good, here, in “Piper Maru” and “Apocrypha.” Old friends, a reinvestment in existing plot points, strong arcs for our leads, and, yes, okay, fine, an entirely new alien race to figure out, but! We can do this. I’ll be strong for you if you’ll be strong for me.

[Like a new man.]

Season 3, Episode 12: “War of the Coprophages”
Original Airdate: January 5, 1996

A Darin Morgan episode — of which “War of the Coprophages” is one, following “Humbug” and “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” — occupies a strange space. In many ways, these episodes lie entirely outside of the show’s arc: you could drop them into any point in the season and find that they work. The Mulder and Scully we meet here do not bear the scars of “Paper Clip” or “731.” And yet, Darin Morgan’s vision of The X-Files is precise, capturing the show’s most essential elements and presenting them in such a way that the show seems to be more like itself than ever. There is parody here, to be sure, a self-awareness in which the actors seem to revel. But while “War of the Coprophages” stays stubbornly outside the show’s complex mythology, it honors the game of it.

[This is no place for an entomologist.]

Season 3, Episodes 9 and 10: “Nisei”/“731”
Original Airdates: November 24 and December 1, 1995

A common criticism of The X-Files is that at some point, the mythology outgrew us all. Motives became convoluted, conspiracies too complicated to track. As a fan, way back when, I’ll admit that I gave up a little. Quit trying to piece it all together and instead enjoyed the episodes as discrete entities. As this rewatch has developed, I’ve been on the lookout for the moment that the show would start to push me back. So here we are, “Nisei” and “731” and all of a sudden I’m feeling the old pain, the struggle to stack the pieces together.

[You mean I might get my $29.95’s worth after all?]

Season 3, Episode 4: “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose”
Original Airdate: October 13, 1995

A man named Clyde Bruckman buys a bottle of Scotch, a lottery ticket, and a tabloid paper. He’s not a particularly unusual man. He lives in St. Louis. He sells insurance. He lives alone. He’s not a particularly unusual man except that he’s a little bit psychic. And even that part isn’t that unusual, at least not to him. It’s a nuisance, a curse that plagues him. In “Humbug,” writer Darin Morgan brought us to a town full of sideshow performers, men and women making a living off of their abnormalities. In “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose,” we meet a man who would sooner die than trade on his.

[There are hits and there are misses. And then there are misses.]

Season 3, Episodes 1 and 2, “The Blessing Way”/“Paper Clip”
Original Airdates: September 22 and September 29, 1995

There is an ancient Indian saying that characters only die as long as the summer hiatus. My people have come to trust season premieres over season finales. So even when the season begins and Mulder is still dead and the Cigarette-Smoking Man is beating up Albert Hosteen and some black helicopter types are stealing the newly-translated files from Scully, surely there is no way this is the end of the world. It can’t be. It’s the beginning of a new season.

[I see you’re a friend of the family.]

Season 2, Episode 25: “Anasazi”
Original Airdate: May 19, 1995

There’s an earthquake, and an old Navajo man says to a younger Navajo man: “The Earth has a secret it needs to tell.” Well, guess what, Earth, you’re not so special. In our season two finale, everyone has a secret to tell. Everyone’s got something that could blow the lid off of something else. Only the trouble is, even with the lid gone, it is very hard telling what exactly is inside.

[Nothing disappears without a trace]

Season 2, Episode 20: “Humbug”
Original Airdate: March 31, 1995

Behind this show’s cool exterior, beneath its layered mythologies, its paranoia, and lingering sense of dread there lies...comedy? Absolutely. Flip a drama as intense as this and you’re bound to find it has a soft, giggly underbelly. Usually when The X-Files deals in humor, it’s of the gallows variety — Mulder’s quips and Scully’s dry retorts can cut the tension when the tension desperately needs cutting — but every so often we get an episode that’s straight-up fun.

“Humbug” was the first episode written by Darin Morgan, who up to this point had been better known to you as The Flukeman. That’s right. The Flukeman wrote an episode, and it’s funny, and it’s also great. What have you done with your life?

[Do you recall what Barnum said about suckers?]

Season 2, Episodes 16 and 17: “Colony”/”End Game”
Original Airdates: February 10^th and 17^th, 1994

We’re in the Arctic! You guys we’re in the Arctic! You can always count on a cold climate X-Files episode. This is where things freeze forever, where shady motives and shifty aliens go to chillllll out. Where Mulder goes to make bad decisions and Scully goes to keep him breathing. It’s a frantic cold (HAH) open, Mulder passed out on a gurney and people yelling STAT and Scully busting in to tell everyone that the cold is the only thing keeping him alive! What! Well! Thank goodness we’re in the Arctic because it is pretty cold here!

[How hard do you want to make this?]

Season 2, Episode 12: “Aubrey”
Original Airdate: January 6, 1995

I cannot yet tell you whether or not “Aubrey” is any good. It seems sort of good. I mean some parts really are. But “Aubrey” is also an episode that is sort of a terrible idea: you know how your ancestors did awful things? If you get pregnant (?) you may (??) repeat those things (!?). At its best, this is an episode about breaking the cycle of abuse, so that’s pretty good, except the cycle of abuse sort of involves weak genetic theory and a demon baby, and I’ll tell you guys one thing right now. I’m not a huge fan of demon babies. Though I am okay with weak genetic theory. 

[A woman senses these things.]

Season 2, Episode 8: “One Breath”
Original Airdate: November 11, 1994

For an episode about an abduction, “One Breath” is light on the supernatural. It is light on mythology-building. It is light, even, on sense-making plot developments. What it has instead is an emotional rock-bottom, a place from which a man can only go up. Mysteriously, Scully reappears. She’s in a coma, in the hospital, and she’s near death. Were this any other X-File, Mulder would solve it. He would find out where she had been, and how she had gotten there. He would study cameras and seek witnesses. He would use all of his resources to solve the mystery of her reappearance. But Scully is not an X-File. Scully is Scully. And so Mulder does not solve the case. Instead, he twists on the line, gasping.

[Because the lights aren’t on]

Season 2, Episodes 5 and 6, “Duane Barry”/“Ascension”
Original Airdates: October 14 and October 21, 1994

There’s a hostage situation. There’s a man, there’s an abductee. His name is Duane Barry and he’s been living out his days in a correctional treatment center. He doesn’t like his meds because he doesn’t like the way they make him feel, and worse, he is afraid that they’re coming again. When he says “they” there is no question who he means, because he means “them.” He means his abductors. There’s a man, an abductee, named Duane Barry, and he doesn’t want to be taken again, and so he grabs his doctor and he grabs a gun and he goes to a travel agency to get directions. It’s a hostage situation. The first of two.

[He started whistling “Stairway to Heaven”]

Season 2, Episode 4: “Sleepless”
Original Airdate: October 7, 1994

So let’s say you have a soldier. And let’s say you’re going to make that soldier a better soldier. And you do something to that soldier so that that soldier never, ever sleeps, and in never, ever sleeping, that soldier loses track of his humanity. That soldier focuses only on the barest of objectives. And it doesn’t matter what the war is about, or if it’s going on, or if it’s been over. That soldier doesn’t care, now, if he hurts people, or if he makes mistakes, because you have taken from him his ability to regroup, and reset, and return to the part of himself that has compassion and empathy. It’s a very bad way to win a war, but it’s a very, very good way to break a man.

[I’m surprised I put up with you so long]

Season 2, Episode 2: “The Host”
Original Airdate: September 23, 1994

This episode is gross, and we need it. We have grown complacent in our tangled conspiracies! In our search for alien life! We have forgotten that The X-Files has another side, another super, super, super disgusting side. And so we turn to the sewer, the place where all manner of things can grow and thrive and who’s to question why (because) or how (radiation). Except who’s going to investigate, with our ‘Files shut down and our agents deskbound? Who on earth would authorize this kind of assignment?

[Wouldn’t want to step in anything]

Season 2, Episode 1: “Little Green Men”
Original Airdate: September 16, 1994

Have you ever seen this show called The X-Files about two agents who used to work on something called the X-Files and now they…don’t? Hah-hah indeed, but I’m serious about this. It’s scary when a show takes its premise away from itself. “Little Green Men” is a new pilot, a vision of a show that doesn’t have any of the things the show had when it began. It doesn’t have a sardonic FBI agent who is driven to find the truth, it doesn’t have a skeptical FBI agent who is determined to let science rule her, and it doesn’t have a basement office full of mysterious files. Instead it has a super-depressed FBI agent on wiretapping duty, an FBI agent who stares off into space while teaching new recruits, and no files at all. How long could this possibly last, you wonder. Surely they will re-open the X-Files at the end of this episode. Surely things will go right back right on track. Right?

[Good thing it wasn’t a Double Jeopardy question]