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