Season 4, Episodes 16 and 17: “Tempus Fugit”/“Max”
Original Airdates: March 16 and March 23, 1997

As we become more aware of the scale and complexity of the conspiracy, it becomes more important to remember the individuals who are affected by it. “The government” “the people” “the aliens,” these are all large groups, faceless groups, overwhelming to imagine. The show is at its strongest when it is able to put a face on something, to show the effect on a person whose name that we know. The smaller the better, sometimes, the more intimate, the more affecting. The closer the conspiracy seems to home.

[I just thought it was a pretty cool keychain.]

Cars 2 is probably nobody’s favorite Pixar movie. It is the easiest to shrug off, anyway, a sequel to the other Pixar movie that is nobody’s favorite and a critical flop besides. Of course when I say “nobody” I am talking about us grown-ups, so maybe I am completely wrong. After all, Pixar movies are children’s movies, a fact that we totally understand but not really. As grown-ups we have decided that a Pixar movie has responsibilities: it must have a complexity, it must not insult our intelligence, it must be beautiful. We must be able to go see it with our other grown-up friends, no children in tow, and we must not feel like total weirdos. And you know what? It feels a little weird, as a grown-up, to watch an animated movie about a redneck tow truck who fights crime.

[If there ain’t no oil under ’em, there ain’t no oil in ’em.]

Season 4, Episode 14: “Memento Mori”
Original Airdate: February 9, 1997

Scully has cancer, and Scully is stoic. We wouldn’t expect anything less from her, anything less than a long shot of her studying her own brain, anything less than calmly instructing Mulder as to the nature—and inoperability—of this cancer, without another doctor in sight. Cancer is awful, and difficult, but cancer is not an X-File, so it is up to her to be in charge of it. Still, she must know, when she chooses to tell Mulder first, what his response will be. Not a tear, or an offer to hold her hand through the treatment, but a small smile and, “I don’t accept that.”

[Pick out something black and sexy and prepare to do some funky poaching.]

Season 4, Episode 13: “Never Again”
Original Airdate: February 2, 1997

Mulder and Scully are not having sex. Not with each other, no matter what the fanfic tells you, and not with anyone else either. On the rare occasions that we glimpse them in their downtime they are having a quiet evening at home, or sneaking onto UFO crash sites. You could argue that it’s because they’re desperately in love with each other, too in love with each other to act on any other impulses; you could argue that their lives are too often disrupted by alien abduction and gulag torture, but honestly. When it comes to sex, The X-Files can be remarkably quaint.

[Sometimes I wish I were more impulsive.]

Season 4, Episode 12: “Leonard Betts”
Original Airdate: January 26, 1997

“Leonard Betts” is a stunning episode. It’s at first a classic monster of the week,; well-structured and with interesting themes. But then comes the conclusion, with a genuinely shocking twist that both elevates the story and demonstrates the show’s core strength. At its best, The X-Files is not a show about monsters and aliens, but a show about fear: the fear of the unknown, the fear of the impossible, and the fear that once the truth is revealed, it will be impossible to believe.

[Blinked or winked?]

Season 4, Episode 10: “Paper Hearts”
Original Airdate: December 15, 1996

Do you believe that Samantha Mulder was abducted by aliens? Really, gut check, at this point in the show, where are we on this? Of course Mulder is driven by many things but the core of the reactor is Samantha, is that night when the two of them argued about what to watch on television and then he couldn’t get to the gun fast enough. It could have been aliens, it could have been the government, it could have been aliens on behalf of the government or government on behalf of the aliens. But wouldn’t it be something, at this point, if it was none of those things at all?

[Thirteen sounds more magical.]

Season 4, Episodes 8 and 9: “Tunguska”/“Terma”
Original Air Dates: November 24, 1996 and December 1, 1996

Okay, but what if the conspiracy wasn’t just at home. Sorry — we were talking about the conspiracy, right? I know things got a little confused last week, the did-he-or-didn’t-he of it all, but this is a two-part episode so it’s serious times again. Thus far the show has focused pretty solidly on keeping the conspiracy local, keeping the fight between our agents and the shadowy men behind the United States government. There have been international waters before — Japanese scientists and French salvage missions — but “Tunguska” and “Terma” have something else in mind, something big and dark and cold and (in 1996) only a little bit dated: The Cold War. All those who like hearing Canadian actors put on Russian accents, put your hands UP!

[Just think warm thoughts.]

Season 4, Episode 7: “Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man”
Original Air Date: November 17, 1996

So what’s it going to take for you to not take the Cigarette-Smoking Man seriously? Because this guy, he is serious. He’s been serious since day one, lurking in the shadows while Scully delivered some pro exposition. He’s been serious every single time that Mulder has shoved a gun in his face. He’s been serious when the Consortium didn’t believe him, he’s been serious when Krycek didn’t die, and he’s serious when Mulder didn’t die, either. So what’s it going to take? How about: a Lone Gunman.

[No more enemies.]

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?]