The X Files: Young at Heart

Yet again, Mulder gets hunted by someone from his past. This time it is one John Barnett. During his very first FBI case, Mulder had the possiblity to shot Barnett, who held a gun to a hostage. Going by the book, Mulder did not take the shot, which cost the hostage (actually, Barnett's original complice) and an FBI agent (father of two) their lives.

Not Barnett is back from the supposed dead - with certificate stating that he died of cardiac arrest four years previously - to take his revenge on Mulder. In the wake of the hunt - the FBI's for Barnett or whoever this may be claiming to be him, Barnett's for Mulder and his assorted friends - Mulder's fromer mentor falls victim to the culprit and Scully gets this close to being killed, as well.

As if this were not enough going on already, there is also the question of what really happened to Barnett and why is he not dead as he is said to be. Dead, cremated, ashes spread. In comes a Dr. Ridley (aka Dr. Mengele aka Dr. Frankenstein - so called by his peers), who has secretly been conducting human experiments in order to reverse aging.

Barnett is his only success story, young and healthy looking - except for the eyes, they look pretty dead. Somehow he had to grow a new arm for all this. They do explain the connection in a very civil and quite discussion, but the details escape me. Barnett's right hand - previously removed by Dr. Ridley - did grow back, but looking more amphibian than human. This has nothing to do with the story of the episode, really. It looks pretty weird, though.

In the end, Mulder does kill Barnett like he should have all those years ago.

6/10

The X Files: Lazarus

Again, the title tells you everything you need to know. No beating around the bush. A man dies and gets resurrected. In this day and age (meaning the mid-1990's) of advanced medicine, people are brought back to life all the time. What is rather unusual is that two people die at the same time and when one body is resucitated, the spirit/soul/personality of the other comes back to life. So, the first of a few body switch/shape shifting episodes The X Files have brought us over the years.

The formerly dead guy is Agent Jack Willis, a former lover of Scully (yes, former used to have a love life, as well). He has been hunting a thieving/murdering couple for a long time and gets shot along with Warren James Dupre, who now inhabits his body.

Mulder suspects something is wrong, of course. He knows that Scully and Willis share a birthday for example and Willis is right-handed. He tests this new Willis by asking him to sign Scully's birthday card (two months early) and Willis does so with his left hand.

Dupre is not really interested in pretending to be Willis. He just uses this situation as a means to an end. He want to find his wife again and when he does so, the duo decide to make a quick buck by trading Scully for 1,000,000 $. Dupre's wife, Lula, however, had actually planned to get rid of her spouse and sold him out to the FBI and that is how he got shot in the first place.

The moment she choses to reveal this to Willis/Dupre and Scully is when Scully is about to give him an insulin shot. Willis is diabetic, which Dupre doesn't know and he has drunk enourmous amounts of soda, and is now in dire need of the medicine. Lula steps on the saving bottle of insulin but makes a mistake eventually, when she believes Willis to have died and gets too close to throw the wedding ring at him. Willis snaps awake, takes her gun, and shoots her just as the FBI is taking down the door to rescue him and Scully.

The second death takes.

6/10

The X Files: Gender Bender

This is what it says on the tin - a person that can change from female form into male and vice versa. Of course, this is an alien we are talking about.

Oops. Did I just give away the ending there?

After five victims along the coast (starting up in Massachusetts and going South) are found that apparently died right after sex, Mulder and Scully start investigating around the town a case with the MO occurred. It just so happens that a group of the citizens of the small town they travel to are members of a sect called The Kindred.

Now, The Kindred have a certain touch. This is not a euphemism. They touch your hand in a certain way, you will let them bed you no questions asked. Scully gets dangerously close to one of them, who turns out to be the killers former best friend.

Other strange things happen around the group, like Mulder swears he recognizes some of the people from a photograph that is supposedly from the 1930s. Also, the members of the sect don't die, they are just prepped up for some sort of hibernation that brings them back good as new.

This case the agents do not solve. Or they do, but the culprit escapes them, because the sect "takes care of their own" and they do. They collect the wayward member and disappear into thin air.

Upwards.

This episode sees the first appearance of Nicholas Lea, but not as the role X Files fans will get to know him (and love him or hate him) in, Alex Krycek. Here he is a would be victim that gets picked up in a bar by the murderous man/woman/alien.

5/10

The X Files: Beyond the Sea

The kidnapping of two college students co-incides with a family tragedy. Scully loses her father (after having a vision of him sitting in her living room trying to tell her something without actually making a sound).

As if that alone weren't enough to keep the agents busy, a conviced serial killer, Luther Lee Boggs, awaiting his execution, offers up information on the recently kidnapped kids. How does he know? Through his 'psychic powers'. Mulder, knowing Boggs, does not believe for a minute that the guy knows anything other than what he may have learned simply by being involved in the actual crime.

He wants to be granted a permanent stay of execution, but Mulder does not play ball. Scully, however, has some rather weird encounters with Boggs, who channels her late father and speaks out warnings against certain symbols that are a little to close to actuality. Like, he would talk of a waterfall that Scully later sees (sort of, it is acually a sign for the Niagara Hotel) and warn Mulder to stay away from the cross (he doesn't, which doesn't end well for him).

So, for once, Mulder is the sceptic and Scully is the believer.

It is interesting to see their roles reversed. Mulder can't believe that after having witnessed so much unexplained phenomena, she choses to believe in psychic powers where he believes that there are none. Scully is uncomfortable with going against Mulder, with having to deal with supernatural signs, her father's passing.

Emotionally, she is a wreck, but once again she is left holding the reigns, because Mulder was shot and is in the hospital for the better part of the episode.

My favorite bits are the two times Boggs is shown going to the gas chamber, a walk during which he sees every person he killed standing in the corridor in a pretty b/w shot.

Hey, isn't that...?
Scully's father is played by Don S. Davis, whom I have only ever seen in US military uniform. He played Major Briggs, father of Bobby Briggs, in Twin Peaks. Looking through his list of credits, it looks like he was very comfortable in that uniform. He always appears to be a kind of authority figure, friendly enough but not willing to take shit from anybody (see the scene in Twin Peaks, when Bobby lights up at the dinner table and Major Briggs slaps him across the face without breaking stride and sends the cigarette flying onto his wife's dinner plate).

Luther Lee Boggs is portrayed by Brad Dourif. When this episode of The X Files aired he was best known for playing young Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a role that got him an Oscar nomination. He has since had a small role as Wormtongue in the second installment of The Lord of the Rings.

7/10

The X Files: Fire

It has been 8 months since I last watched an episode of The X Files. Which is to say it has been much too long. So, onwards to the next one in season 1: Fire.

Here, we learn a smidge of Mulder's past, back when he apparently had a social life or, more to the point, a love life. Onto the scene comes an annoyingly British agent from Scotland Yard, Mulder's former lover Phoebe Green. And, no, I don't much care for this character. She's not even all that nice to look at, with a destinctly 1990's tough-girl hairdo, often regarded as a lesbian tell (not by me).

The case is one of fire, that looks an aweful lot like spontaneous combustion but is definitely murder. The culprit is a man who appears to control fire, Lighting a cigarette, his hand, a building, or a person, through his thought. His targets are English gentlemen of distinction. He poses as 'Bob', the local caretaker at a house in the States (New England, near Boston).

Now here is another thing we learn about Mulder: he hates fire. So, this is not the best case to be working on, least of all with the tricky Phoebe, who rather enjoyes making Mulder squirm. Scully doesn't like Phoebe from the get-go. Bless her.

Anyway, in order to save some British Lord and his family from the previously mentioned 'Bob' (no, this is none of the FBI's business, really, but such is the power of Phoebe) Mulder will have to overcome his fear and literally go through fire.

The hero of the piece, however, is Agent Scully. Initially, she is excused from the case, because Mulder doesn't want her wasting her time on Phoebe's little games. But Scully being Scully, she cannot stay away and has a sneak in the file. She goes off on her own and follows her hunches and eventually finds the evidence that leads the team to the elusive killer.

Overall, an uneven episode, since the addition of an outsider to throw a wrench into the works of Mulder/Scully is just that: an outsider. There have been other, better guests before and after.

5/10

The X Files: Eve

No aliens, no government conspiracy, but a weird, questionable experiment.

It all starts with a 10 year old girl named Tina, whose father is sitting on a swing in the backyard, drained of blood. She says something about bright lightning (Mulder loves that!). The agents fly in to talk to the girl and then get information about another case of the same nature - thousands of miles away. They go to meet with little Cindy and her mother. The husband/father died in the exact same way at the exact same time as victim no. 1. When the girl opens the door, Mulder and Scully are flabbergasted, thinking that Tina is standing before them. Tina, meanwhile, disappears from social services.

They learn that the two girls with help of a fertility clinic. When they were conceived, a woman named Dr. Sally Kendrick worked at the clinic but was dismissed because she carried on secret experiments. She tempered with genetic material. In the motel room that night, Scully picks up the phone to a weird clicking sound - the way of Deep Throat to contact Mulder. The two meet up and Mulder learns about the so-called "Litchfield Experiments" of the early 1950's. This was based on a Soviet program to crossbreed top scientists. The US results were groups of genetically controlled boys and girls called Adam and Eve, respectively. The learn that one of the Eves ("Eve 6") that is institutionalized. Eve 6 tells them that the Adams and Eves are prone to suicide and the only ones left beside her are Eve 7 and 8, one of which must be Dr. Kendrick. Nobody knows whether the two Eves may actually be working together.

Then Cindy gets kidnapped by an Eve and the agents learn where they are staying due to a tip they receive from a motel owner, who notices that a woman with a child comes to the motel, leaves alone and returns with apparently the same child.

In the motel, with the agents on the way, the Eve talks to the two girls (who become attached right away). She kidnapped them to raise them properly. It turns out , Cindy and Tina killed their fathers with poison at the same time ("We just knew," how and when to do it). Eve states that her generation showed first signs of erratic behavior showed at 16 and they only became homicidal at age 20. She is disappointed with the girl's early start but intends to help in their further development.

The girls, however, have other plans. They laced Eve's soda with foxglove and when the agents arrive, they find her dead and the girls hiding in the bathroom, claiming that the two remaining Eves tried to poison them. Mulder and Scully take it upon themselves to bring the girls to safety (road trip!). The girls suspect that the now orphaned Tina will be put into foster care, splitting them up again. They make a bathroom stop during which one of them poisons the agents' drinks. When Mulder goes back into the station to pick up the car keys he forgot on a table, he notices traces of an organic substance (possibly foxglove again) and keeps Scully from drinking more of her poisoned soda.

After initially running off, the girls are captured by the agents and are put into the same institution as Eve 6, and are now referred to as Eve 9 and Eve 10. In the last scene, the last free Eve (Eve 8) comes to call, as the girls "just knew" she would.

7/10

The X Files: Fallen Angel

One of many UFO/alien abduction/government conspiracy episodes over the years The X Files aired.

Mulder has gone rogue after hearing about a downed UFO from Deep Throat himself. The military is already in the process of covering up the incident and frantically looking for the creature that manned the aircraft. The first person on site (a local deputy) and the fire crew responding to the forest fire caused by the crash have all died from severe body burns (we don't officially learn that until later in the episode, though).

Mulder, breaching protocol as usual, is making pictures of the crash site when he is discovered and thrown in jail. In the next cell over is Max, a fan boy and fellow UFO enthusiast. Max has already been released when Mulder wakes up the next morning to Scully coming in to take him with her - preferably back to D.C. where a hearing on the future of the X Files and Mulder's general (mis) behavior) is to take place the next morning. She has been fed the "top secret" cover story of a downed Libyan fighter jet carrying a nuclear device. Hence the military involvement and "securing" of the site.

When the agent get back to Mulder's motel room they find it in a mess and Max stuck in the bathroom window, trying to flee the scene. They join Max in his RV - parked right outside the motel - which is full of literature about aliens, scanners and other technical stuff and lots of medication.

The alien that the military and Mulder are searching for is invisible and very, very dangerous. When it is cornered by a group of military (they detected it with a heat camera), it takes out a good few of the men. Mulder and Scully are in the hospital, trying to find out information on the deputy and fire crew from the doctor who treated them. The man is reluctant to talk, but so pissed off at the military's arrogant behavior that he does let on about the burns. As the agents are about to leave, the injured military men are wheeled in. The head honcho is trying to have both of them removed, but the disgruntled doctor stands up to him and insists Scully stay, as she is an MD.

Mulder, back at the motel, finds Max having an epileptic episode and - when he helps him to bed - discovers a mark behind his ear that he has seen before on - you guessed it - alien abductees. When Scully returns and urges him to get packing to go back to D.C. and save their department, he asks her to take a look at Max. Max, however, has disappeared. In a previous scene he appeared to have been taken over by the alien. The scanners in his RV is on and Mulder and Scully overhear that the military is closing in on the creature they have been looking for. They rush to the scene - much to Scully's annoyance.

They find badly burned bodies of military and Max inside a warehouse, in pain. Mulder stays with him while Scully goes back outside to try and reason with the head honcho. She learns that three bodies are inside the building, as detected by the heat camera. This means, that the alien is with Mulder and Max, putting the two in grave danger.

Inside the warehouse, the alien throws Mulder across the room and takes possession of Max again. Mulder sees his hanging in a light beam in mid air (again, Scully misses the good stuff). Then the military realize that suddenly only one body appears to be inside the warehouse. They force their way in to find only Mulder, telling the head honcho that "they got to it first" - another alien ship has been sent to recover the downed flyer. E.T. has, apparently, returned home.

During the hearing the following day, Mulder tells the head of the committee that "No one, no government agency, has jurisdiction over the truth." In the last scene, the head storms off to confront Deep Throat (who's position within the FBI is not quite clear but must be very high up) who has overruled the decision to close down the X Files.

6/10

The X Files: Space

Mulder meets one of his childhood heroes, Lt. Col. Marcus Aurelius Belt (what an awesome name...Marcus Aurelius). However, first he is being contacted by one Michelle Generoo, who works at the space center, where two weeks ago the start of a new shuttle had to be scrapped mere seconds before lift off. The woman presents Mulder and Scully with an X ray that shows hints of sabotage.

They go to investigate and are allowed to stick around for the second attempt of the start, this time it is successful. Mulder's hero is the one that makes all the crucial decisions on the ground. But he hasn't been the same since his own outer space travels. Apparently, he was attacked by a ghost/shadow with a weird face, also apparent on a photo transmission from Mars. The image hunts him to this day, mostly at night in bed.

The current shuttle flights experiences trouble soon enough, cut communication, falling oxygen levels and all. The ghost face appears repeatedly, but not only to Lt. Col. Belt. Michelle sees the face before running her car off the road and the crew from the shuttle calls in 'somethings outside the shuttle', bumping against the outside wall.

While Mulder and Scully find more conclusive evidence pointing to a sabotage, the drama for the astronauts heats up and they need to be brought back to an emergency landing. The one person that can keep them save with all the troubles they are experiences is Lt. Col. Belt, whose own troubles are accelerating, as well. The agents find him one the floor, seizing, but get the necessary information out of him in the nick of time. The shuttle lands safely. In the press conference following the landing it is announced that the shuttle performed their mission 'without incident'.

Lt. Col. Belt, once again haunted by the ghost face gives up and kills himself.

Hey, isn't that...?
Ed Lauter, who was one of those character actors that we all have probably seen in something a few times before but don't know the name of, portrays Lt. Col. Marcus Aurelius Belt. Mr. Lauter passed away earlier this year.

6/10

The X Files: Ice

I once read that David Duchovny said that it was with this episode that he realized that they were involved in creating something special. The agents see a video of a man, visibly in distress, recording the final message from the crew of the Arctic Ice Core Project. A group of scientists has been sent to Alaska and celebrate having drilled deeper into the ice than anyone ever before (also documented on video). The final message sent is, "We are not who we are. We are not who we are. It goes no further than this. It stops right here right now." Right after he and a fellow scientist first points handguns at each other before pointing the guns each at himself and committing suicide.

The agents, together with a trio of specialists in different fields, are taken to the station by one Bear, apparently the only pilot willing to take them in unsure weather condition. It is the weather, as well, that will have the group confined to the station for longer than they like.

The group finds bodies of the entire Core Project team and some samples of the ice they brought up. The start putting the pieces together but only get ahead when Bear and Mulder are attacked by the station's pet dog. Bear gets bitten and infected with what it was that initiated the team's downfall. From way down in they ice they brought up something looking like a worm that uses a warm blooded body as a host, making the person or animal very aggressive towards their fellow creatures.

The weather, the situation, the desolation winds the group up in ways that could be a symptom of the virus or bacteria or whatever that worm thing is. By accident (one of the scientist infects an already infected sample) they realize that two worms inside the same host will fight and kill each other - thereby saving the host.

When one of the scientists is killed and everyone gets defensive, the group agrees that it must be Mulder who is infected. He was, after all, attacked by the dog. With only one live worm left, they want to insert it in the agent to 'save' him, but when Scully checks him for sign of infection she realizes it cannot be him. The agents, however, are unable to convince the rest of the group of this fact. In the physical alteration that ensues, they find clear signs that it is actually one of the scientists that is infected and she gets saved in the nick of time.

8/10

Hey, isn't that...?

Two of the scientist with Mulder and Scully are played by Xander Berkley (Red John himself) and Felicity Huffman (of Desperate Housewives fame).

The X Files: Ghost in the Machine

At the beginning, Mulder loses his friend (former partner?) Jerry to the machine in the title. He is inside an elevator, hurrying after one Brad Wilczek, who created the machine that runs the entire high rise the two are inside. Wilczek went in to destroy his creation, because he realized that it got out of his hands. The machine now thinks and runs the place, trashing the agent by dropping the elevator.

While the government tries to understand the machine and get any information concerning it out of its creator, while Mulder wants to help Wilczek destroy his invention by planting a virus in the mainframe. He appears to be pretty much on his own until Scully comes to his aid because her computer has been accessed from the machine controlled building. They sneak in but are immediately detected thanks to the elaborate security system. When they are stuck in the stair well and Scully tries to get in through the air ventilation system, the machine tries to blow her into the massive ventilators.

Mulder, meanwhile, is let into the offices by the apparent nightwatchman Peterson, who pulls a gun on Mulder as soon as he realizes what is about to go down. Peterson really works for an agency himself, tasked to figure out how the machine works. Then - as happens so often - Scully comes to the rescue and Mulder gets to install the virus.

In the aftermath, Wilczek disappears. Mulder meets up with Deep Throat for any sort of information who simply tells him that 'they' can do anything they want. In the last scene, a short time before the remaining parts are about to be scrapped, we see the lights of the machine come back on again.

6/10

The X-Files: Shadows

The intro to this episode revolves around a secretary, whose boss recently died of an apparent suicide. She is attacked by two men while standing by the ATM machine but comes away unharmed. The two men are found dead above a dumpster in a backstreet.

Mulder and Scully are called in by an unnamed agency, represented by two agents that do not move a muscle, to consult in the autopsy of the two bodies. The corpses do not cool off as they should and the men appear to have been strangled from the inside. As the two mysterious agency are not very forthcoming, neither is Mulder, who clearly has an idea about what's going on (as he always does) and steals away with a fingerprint on his glasses to start his own investigation.

When he suggests the possibility of psychokinesis to Scully, she responds with, "Psychokinesis? You mean how Carrie got even at the prom?" And I love her for it.

The fingerprint belongs to a suspected member of a middle eastern group with terrorist tendencies and the agents head off to Philadelphia to further investigate. There, they discover the ATM security video that shows the aforementioned secretary being attacked and a blurry figure in the background, that may or may not be an accomplice to the secretary.

The secretary (I think her name is Lauren) has a vision of her boss' death, realizing that he was murdered by his partner because he was upset about their dealings with that terrorist group and ready to blow the whistle on his own company (hence the involvement of the mysterious agency figures).

Now here is the part worthy of an X file: the blurry figure and apparent protector of the secretary is the ghost of her former boss. In the end the entity is the one to help with the FBI investigation by leading them to the prove that was about to escape the FBI team searching the company office. It is a disk (old school!) hidden behind the tapestry.

The running gag of Scully always missing the supernatural stuff comes into play twice in this episode. The first time a culprit is suspended in the air while being choked by an invisible perpetrator, the second a letter opener, led by an - again - invisible hand, hurled towards the wall. Also, the creators of the show put another nod to supernatural films in Scully's mouth. They have her sing-song, "There he-ere!"

6/10

The X Files: The Jersey Devil

A body found in the woods near Atlantic City has Mulder taking off to New Jersey with Scully in tow. There is an old myth about a savage (nearly) human living in the area.

When they arrive in town, however, local law enforcement is less than thrilled and asks the agents to leave. When Mulder finds out that a few homeless people have seen the mythical beast digging through the trash cans, Mulder spends the night in the outskirts of town, hoping for a sighting. And he does see a creature, but before he can get too close, he is taken into custody and thrown in the drunk tank for the night.

Meanwhile, Scully - in an attempt to have anything resembling a life - is back in DC on a date but returns to Atlantic City to spring Mulder loose. A park ranger Mulder has previously met with in New Jersey calls to inform the agents of the discovery of a male body. The agents, the ranger and an anthropologist go back to where Mulder initially saw the creature and he encounters it again, seeing that it is a woman.

Local law enforcement, well aware of a wood creature threatening the thriving tourism business is roaming a little close to town, hunt her down and shoot her, much to Mulders disappointment, who saw an opportunity to study her.

The last scene shows a small child pocking a head out of a cave in the woods.

7/10

The X Files: Conduit

Sioux City, Iowa, is the location of this particular episode. Ruby Morris, a young woman whose mother has been involved in a UFO sighting when she was a girl, disappears from a site where she has been camping with her mother and little brother. Ever since, her little brother Kevin has been painting a series of zeros and ones on a pad, from clues he is taking from the white noise on the TV (Poltergeist anyone?).

Local law enforcement does not take the disappearance seriously because Ruby has been known to runaround with every other boy in town. Then one Tessa shows up to tell a tale of Ruby's relationship with a no-good boyfriend, who has not been showing up at his job for a few days. Then his body is found and it turns out that Tessa killed him because she was pregnant with his child and offed him in revenge for him hanging out with Ruby.

The ones and zeros little Kevin has been painting turn out to be top secret information, consequently getting him and his mother in trouble. She blames Mulder and Scully for the unwanted attention and does no longer want to speak with them. Mulder, of course, is not willing to give up and when he and Scully come to look for them in their house they are not there. What they find instead are more sheets of paper laid out on the ground floor. When Scully goes to the first floor and looks down she sees that they are actually a picture of Ruby.

Mulder takes this as a sign that the mother and boy must have returned to the site where Ruby disappeared. When the agents get there they find the two as well as a bruised and beaten Ruby, that may or may not have been returned from an abduction. Ultimately, her mother encourages her to not speak about her experience on account of herself having been ridiculed for speaking up all her life.

6/10

The X Files: Squeeze

The first episode that lands Scully in grave danger. This time it is Mulder's turn to save his partner.

But back to the beginning. Scully is contacted by a friend from the bureau, Agent Colton, who asks her for help in a case of serial killings he is working on. What has him stumped is that the victims have nothing in common and are often found in rooms without any sign or, indeed, option of any point of entry. Colton does sort of want Mulder on the case but fears for his reputation if he requests Mulder's assistance, directly. Also, he is very territorial and doesn't want any interference that what make it look like he did not solve the case himself.

This leads to Scully's loyalties being tested. Turns out her attachment to and trust in Mulder is very strong after only a short period of time of working with him. His theory is, as expected, out there. He retrieves a fingerprint from the latest crime scene that is to long and narrow to belong to a human. But when he alters the prints they take from a suspect they catch at a site of interest, one Eugene Victor Tooms, by elongating and narrowing it through the help of a computer program, it is a 100% match. Obviously, nobody believes him until the two locate a former agent that worked on a series of murders with the same MO 30 years previously. His suspect then was Eugene Tooms and he has the stake out photo to even make Scully believe that there may be something to Mulder's theory of a genetic mutant that is more than 100 years old, although she thinks more along the lines of a generation of mutants.

To complete the cycle pattern of 30 and even 60 years ago, Tooms has one more kill to go before going into hiding - or rather, hibernation - for another 30 years. Mulder's theory is that he spends that time in a nest they discover make from scrap paper and bile, while the livers he takes from his victims sustains him for his hibernation. Unbeknownst to them at the time, Tooms steals Scully's necklace, hence staking her out as his next victim. Small items have gone missing from the all the crime scenes and the agents have discovered the loot in a building that Tooms already lived in in 1903.

After a blowout with Agent Colton, who called off a surveillance team that Mulder and Scully requested, Scully is furious. Mulder returns to the collection of tidbits to find Scully's necklace and realizes the danger she is in. Meanwhile, Scully is drawing a bath when suddenly a drop of bile falls on her hands form an air duct above her. She arms herself and fights Tooms after he dashes at her from another air vent in the wall. Mulder comes in the nick of time and together the cuff Tooms to the tub.

The final shot shows Eugene Tooms smiling as he realizes that there is a slit in the door to his cell where the food gets pushed through. This is not the last we have seen of him.

8/10

Hey, isn't that...?
Eugene Victor Tooms is played by Doug Hutchison, who is now known as the creepy old guy that made the tabloid headlines for marrying then 16 year old Courntey Stodden. You know who I'm talking about.

The X Files: Deep Throat

The FBI gets contacted by the wife of a military pilot, who has been missing since being retrieved from his home some four months ago. Mulder digs up the file and he and Scully fly off to Idaho, where super-secret Ellis Air Base is located.

Before they do, however, we meet Deep Throat, who claims he wants to help Mulder and warns him off the case.

In Idaho, the only people that will talk to the agents are the wife of Col. Budahas, locals that may or may not have seen unidentified flying objects and a couple of stoner kids that illegally enter the air base to watch the 'light show'. This marks the first of many guest actors of note, a category I will call...

Hey, isn't that...?
Seth Green plays one of the kids who apparently know no other form of entertainment. It is, after all, an area that does not show up on any map.

Suddenly, Col. Budahas reappears (in a move Mulder calls a decoy) and cannot remember anything about his former profession as a pilot. His memory appears to have been wiped clean very selectively.

The agents clash with the military, represented by a group of what can only be described as men in black that destroy any evidence they may have gathered (of course!) and tells them to leave town immediately. Scully is ready to pack it in and this is when Mulder ditches her for the first time (and not the last). He reenters the forbidden air base and gets caught.

We then see him strapped down and getting injections and some sort of medical procedure. What follows it the first of many missions of one agent rescuing the other, when Scully forces a man connected with the air base at gunpoint to have Mulder returned. When they reunite, Mulder has no idea how he got to where he is and obviously cannot remember what it was he saw inside the air base.

The episode ends with Mulder out for a run and Deep Throat once again contacting him and warning him that his life is in danger. He identifies himself as a fellow truth seeker.

7/10

The X Files: Pilot

This year marked the 20th anniversary of the airing of the pilot episode of The X Files. Here is what happens.

Young agent Scully (those shoulder pads!) gets called into FBI headquarters where she is told that she is to work with an agent that she knows by his nick name 'Spooky' Mulder. Mulder, despite being considered the best analyst in the violent crime section, appears to his peers to have lost his direction and dug himself into the so-called X Files, that are often dismissed and ridiculed. 

They meet for the first time in the basement office and get to work on a case right away. The ingredients of it will be a few classic themes that will reappear often in the 9 series of the show: alien abduction (or not), time loss, air turbulence, car radio going weird, bright lights and the implant one will come to associate with little green (or rather, grey) men.

The setting is Oregon and the victims are all from the same high school class (class of '99). The fourth of the group has just died when Mulder digs up the case and the two agents fly across country to investigate. There they meet the defiant locals (of course), headed by the sheriff (of course), and immediately make their mark by exhuming a body - or so they think. What they actually find are the remains of what Mulder would like to be an alien and what Scully believes to be an orangutan, but (nearly) all the evidence they gather gets destroyed when the motel they stay in burns to the ground.

One key player in the deaths and possible abductions is Billy Miles, who is in a catatonic state that he only ever wakes up from when time stops and people die. And his father - the sheriff - knew it was his boy that kills or causes the deaths of those kids. In the end, he and Mulder intervene when Billy is in the woods with a would be victim, while Scully is too far behind to see what is actually happening. This will also be happening again and again.

Billy Miles will revisit the show much later for several episodes. One frequent player is also introduced, but wordlessly, the Cigarette Smoking Man, who in the end stores the one piece of hard evidence that Scully managed to bring back from their trip - the implant - in the huge storage room deep inside the pentagon (also, to be revisited again and again).

And so it begins...

7/10  

The Joneses

The family Jones is made up of a group of pretty people that practice stealth marketing. They represent everything their neighbors want to be and as a result, improve sales figures for whatever new product they are assigned to push.

The mother power walks in the niftiest new clothes, the father mows the lawns in the newest mowers, the kids flash all their great new stuff around school and for their new friends. And the friends and neighbors bite...whether they can afford to or not.

Of course, the marketing concept gets the proper Hollywood treatment - an illicit affair, the token gay character, real romance and the big tragedy that finally cracks the shiny front the family unit put up.

Personally, I would have preferred less shine and a little bit more grit to the story. In the end it is all just as shallow as the values the Joneses sell.

3/10