Season 3, Episode 17
Director: Rob Bowman
Writer: Vince Gilligan

After providing an actor’s showcase for Tony Shalhoub in “Soft Light,” Vince Gilligan returns with his second X-Files-penned episode in “Pusher,” a clever cat-and-mouse game that smartly focuses on human interactions over supernatural thrills. The main character of mind-control expert Bob Modell (Robert Wisden) – nicknamed “Pusher” – provides an interesting foil for Mulder and Scully, particularly considering his lasting motivation, making for an above-average episode that culminates in a fantastically dramatic conclusion that is completely unlike anything The X-Files has done before.

The prologue starts with Modell shopping in a grocery store as the FBI quickly surround him. Locked in the back of a police car, Modell begins to have an odd conversation with the driver, convincing him through mental suggestion to pull out in front of a speeding semi. The commanding officer, Burst (Vic Polizos), takes the case to Mulder and Scully, claiming that “Pusher” has killed dozens of people over a two year span with all murders tagged as suicides. Over the course of the episode, “Pusher” leads the FBI along, planting clues to his identity along the way, ultimately killing two agents – one by dousing himself with gasoline and lighting himself on fire and another by inducing a heart attack through the power of suggestion. In the end, it is revealed that Modell / “Pusher” is suffering from a once-operable brain tumor that apparently gave him these abilities yet caused Modell to refuse treatment, wanting to remain a powerful person. Mulder and Scully attempt to apprehend him, but Mulder is forced into a game of Russian roulette. With Scully’s help, he overcomes the mind control and shoots Modell who closes the episode in a coma.

This episode is one of my personal favorites in a very long time. Vince Gilligan knows how to write anti-heroes (clearly from his legendary writing on Breaking Bad), and you can see the perhaps unintentional early seeds of Walter White in Bob Modell: the deplorably ordinary cancer victim who wants to be greater than the sum of his parts. It’s all there – just on a much smaller scale. Aside from that, Gilligan is able to do wonders with the Modell and Mulder/Scully dynamic. What really sells the material is the focus on the human components of the thrills rather than the outwardly supernatural elements. I’ve said this before, but The X-Files really sings when they don’t let the otherworldly elements of the series take control. The heart of every story lies in the impacts of such activity on the human spirit, allowing the series to explore the implications and outcomes.

A few more things I love about the episode include a few sly nods to X-Files lore (namely, the Fluke Man tabloid cover) and the fact that Skinner’s mind is too strong to be controlled by Modell. These are the slight nuances that make geeks like me obsess over the great storytelling. Not just great storytelling, but storytelling pushed forth by someone who not only has the chops to tell a great story but is also at heart a huge fan of the show.

You can’t fake enthusiasm, and Gilligan’s passion for the series shines through in his expert writing.

Season 3, Episode 16
Director: Kim Manners
Writer: Frank Spotnitz, Chris Carter

The conclusion of the most recent (recent to me anyway) X-Files 2-parter is called “Apocrypha,” which is a reference to a famous Biblical conspiracy of sorts about a section of the Bible that existed between the Old and New Testaments. Writer Chris Carter refers back to these excluded pages in this episode because, according to the episode’s Wikipedia page, the “Apocrypha” stands for “the episode’s thematic concerns – hidden documents and truths not brought to light.” I call bullshit on this one. The only hidden documents within the episode are contained on the mysterious digital tape they’ve been chasing around for a few episodes now, and even that’s not the focus of “Apocrypha.” At any rate, badly titled or not, the episode nicely wraps up the 2-part arc, giving us a tiny amount of additional information about the infamous Black Oil.

The major events of “Apocrypha” are mostly related to the hunt for Alex Krycek and the digital tape he supposedly controls. The prologue gives us the last bit of backstory on the Black Oil as the last surviving member of the original expedition to retrieve a downed UFO tells his version of the events on that submarine. He tells of the Black Oil leaving their commanding officer and floating into the sea below. We see the substance flow from a body into the drain, and we’ll see that repeated at the end of the episode. In the present day, Mulder and the possessed Krycek leave the airport but are sideswiped by two men with whom Krycek quickly dispenses. Mulder survives the car accident, but Krycek has gone missing, having sought out the Smoking Man to exchange the digital tape for the location of a dormant UFO. In the hospital, Mulder finds out that Skinner has been shot, but he will live. Scully has also determined that Luis Cardinal, the man who shot Skinner, is also the man who shot and killed her sister. Cardinal attempts to break into the ambulance transporting Skinner but finds Scully inside. After arresting him (only to find out later he was killed in prison), Scully and Mulder fly to North Dakota to follow Krycek but are quickly apprehended by the Smoking Man’s men. Inside a bunker in North Dakota, Krycek vomits the Black Oil, and it oozes into the dormant UFO, leaving Krycek trapped inside the bunker with the UFO.

So, this episode is heavy on the things I generally don’t like about The X-Files mythology episodes – the Syndicate, the Lone Gunmen (who only exist to run random errands when Carter can’t figure out a logical path of resolution), and a general avoidance of any answers at all. Maybe I’m getting worn down by them, but I’ve begun to just surrender to the overall mythology and accept the presence of persistent conspiracies and double-double crossing. It’s becoming fun to see just how deeply the series can go into tying itself into a knot that it can never cleanly unravel. The Black Oil is a neat concept, and I particularly like watching it possess and later evacuate people (although I’m still wondering what happened to poor Gauthier’s wife when she woke up unpossessed in Hong Kong of all places).

Carter may claim the theme of the episode is “hidden documents,” but that’s not a theme – that’s a plot point. I’m not sure that there ever really was an overall theme or underlying message to the episode. And that’s really OK. The writers are far more interested in spooking us with clandestine missions and top-secret government agencies than in actually conveying a message with their writing. Some of the episodes do it. Some don’t. It doesn’t make the ones who don’t any worse. They’re just less interesting to me without something extra on the side to consider.

Season 3, Episode 15
Director: Rob Bowman
Writers: Frank Spotnitz, Chris Carter

I don’t really know what happened.

Maybe I was in a good mood. Maybe I was in a forgiving mood. Maybe I was burned by the last “monster of the week.” Maybe aliens swooped down and removed my brain. Whatever the cause, I found “Piper Maru,” a mythology-themed episode of The X-Files, to be a fairly compelling episode of television. It moves swiftly. It plays with film, delivering a different era of time using black and white footage. It managed to engross me in the overarching conspiracy of the series. Yup, it was a pretty damn good episode.

Much of that, I suspect, is due to a fantastic prologue where a French diving vessel sends someone down to explore a sunken P-51 Mustang from World War II. Down in the depths, the diver, Gauthier, finds the bomber and hears a persistent thumping noise coming from within. Further exploration uncovers a live pilot trapped in the fuselage with eerie, watery black eyes. After rising to the surface, Gauthier is freed by his shipmates and has contracted the same eerie, watery black eyes. Flash forward to San Diego where the ship has come to port, its crew dying from advanced radiation burns – their skin literally melting off their bodies. Gauthier, meanwhile, seems perfectly fine and checks himself out of the hospital. Later, he spreads the eerie, watery black eyes to his wife.

Running across detail of the vessel, Mulder contacts Scully, who just received news that her sister’s murder case is being closed due to lack of evidence, and the two head to San Diego to investigate. Scully visits a friend of her father’s who, after ensuring they are not being recorded, tells her of the original mission to find the same P-51 Mustang which resulted in the same eerie, watery black eye syndrome and the same advanced radiation burns. Mulder, meanwhile, manages to come into contact with a woman who is selling secrets on the black market. He follows her to Hong Kong where he finds Alex Krycek. After a gun battle with some mysterious men who are later radiated by Gauthier’s wife (showing the source of the advanced radiation burns), Mulder finds Krycek in the Hong Kong airport and makes a deal to fly to DC to obtain the stolen disk containing all of the American military’s data on aliens. Before they board the plane, Krycek is overtaken by Gauthier’s wife, and the black substance (known in X-Files mythology as “black oil”) passes into Kyrcek. Also, Skinner is shot back in DC. (Ha.)

Skinner’s random side-plot aside, “Piper Maru” (the name coming from Gillian Anderson’s real-life daughter) is an excellent episode because it balances the conspiracy of the series with small, intimate moments that remind the audience Mulder and Scully are still human beings. Most of this, however, comes in Scully’s section of the story where she fondly recalls playing hopscotch with her now-dead sister on the military base. This episode is a significant advancement for Anderson’s acting within the show – she is able to rage about the government’s inability to find her sister’s killer and wistfully gaze into the distance, teary-eyed and emotional. That may sound like sarcasm, but it isn’t. Truly. I loved Anderson’s performance here, which I think goes a long way toward making me buy a conspiracy theory episode. Also, I loved the claustrophobic opening, and the well-filmed black and white flashback sequence. It isn’t all about conspiracies and aliens in this episode. Instead, it’s first and foremost a compelling story well told.

That’s largely due to the fact that Chris Carter split the writing duties with Frank Spotnitz, I suspect, and together they developed a better offering that managed to bring multiple elements of The X-Files together into a cohesive whole. As we push forward into the conclusion of the 2-part arc, I genuinely find myself excited about finding out what happens. That hasn’t happened with a mythology episode in a long time.

Season 3, Episode 14
Director: Kim Manners
Writer: Howard Gordan

After a stretch of unique, playing, genre-bending X-Files episodes, the series returns to more of a regular beat with “Grotesque,” an outing that digs into the character mythology of Fox Mulder. I don’t have a lot to say about this one other than I didn’t find it particularly interesting or engaging. It’s not a bad episode, some scenes are well executed and produce a slightly jumpy reaction, but it’s not particularly memorable either.

The prologue features a art class sketching a live nude. In the back of the room, an artist is having a “moment” where, instead of drawing the intended figure, he draws a horrific gargoyle. Later, the model is attacked and murdered in a dark alley behind the studio. The next morning, the artist, John Mostow, is arrested by the FBI, led by Agent Bill Patterson (Kurtwood Smith from nearly every TV show you’ve ever seen). Having a previous connection with Mulder, Patterson calls in Mulder and Scully when Mostow claims to have been possessed, which may not be far from the truth given that more murders happen while he is in custody. Mulder goes into a rare trance-live investigative state and begins to operate on his own. Scully becomes alarmed with this new behavior and confronts Patterson who tells her not to worry – let Mulder do this thing. In the end, Mulder suspects Patterson’s 3-year obsession for Mostow led him to committing some of the murders, and Patterson tries to flee after being confronted. He is eventually arrested and imprisoned, persistently claiming his innocence.

One of my biggest complaints with the episode is what I consider to be rather subpar cinematography. The episode primarily takes place at night, so it obviously requires the right mixture of shadow and light to become effectively creepy. But most of the episode is just plain dark, making it difficult to see anything let alone something scary. The story itself is a little muddled as well. I appreciate the expansion of the Mulder mythology, but there isn’t much meat there on which to hang an episode. You get a little backstory of Mulder’s time in the FBI Academy and his relationship to an authority figure, but nothing thus far has warranted Mulder’s (in my opinion) out of character dismissal of Scully’s involvement. I did love the concept of dead bodies cast inside clay gargoyles, which I suspect was the main driver for the episode, but it needed a better and more clearly defined central villain. On a side note, it did give Mulder to go full-on solo Ghost with some clay and a spinning wheel.

Overall, “Grotesque” is a weird combination of more of the same dusted with X-Files oddities, a combination that prevents it from becoming a fully effective episode. Maybe if the cinematographer had balanced light and dark a little better, then it would have been more visually interesting. As it stands, the whole thing becomes a very muddled affair.

Note: “Grotesque” won an Emmy for Outstanding Cinematography, which is the universe giving me the big middle finger.

Season 3, Episode 13
Director: Rob Bowman
Writer: Chris Carter

Apparently, The X-Files hit a string of extra (x-tra?) eccentric episodes in the middle of its third season. It’s not unusual for a long-running series to do something similar – to stretch its legs and try new perspectives, new avenues of entertainment. With “Syzygy,” Mulder and Scully head into a vortex of planetary alignment and astrological empowerment, which causes significant (and admittedly comic) friction between them. While it lacks the thematic strengths of better episodes, “Syzygy,” like the cockroach episode before it, entertains with pure weirdness, making it a far more memorable episode than any of the duller mythology episodes.

Imagine a cross between the little boy with limitless power episode of the 1983 Twilight Zone film and Heathers, and you’re in the ballpark of “Syzygy.” We open at night with a young Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) giving an eulogy at an impromptu nighttime gathering for a recently deceased friend. Grief-stricken, he attracts two blond girls – Terri Roberts (Lisa Robin Kelly) and Margi Kleinjan (Wendy Benson) – who ask him for a ride home. The ride becomes something of a comic soft-core porn film as they attribute the recent death to the presence of a satanic cult that targets virgins. Both girls look to Reynolds to save them from the cult by deflowering them, but he is found hanging from a nearby cliff the next morning. As Mulder and Scully arrive to investigate, the next few days sees more murders as anyone who crosses the two girls soon meet a gruesome ending. Mulder and Scully seem at odds as well, each unnaturally aggressive toward one another and demonstrating odd proclivities toward things they don’t normally do – Scully smoking and Mulder drinking excessively. We’ll just set aside his rampaging hormones.

According to a local astrologist, the events are all related to an unique alignment of planets, astrological symbols, and birth dates. We discover that both Terri and Margi are born on the same day, and the perfect storm of events gives them strange abilities they either cannot or choose not to control. At the end of the episode, the clock strikes midnight, causing their powers to fade as the astrological events have begun to subside. Mulder and Scully seem to operate on better terms, and the rampaging townspeople begin to put down their guns, still blaming satanic involvement for recent events.

The tone of “Syzygy” is truly a marvel here as it successfully pulls off the tricky balance of empathy and dark, dark comedy. As commonplace as these pitch black high school comedies may seem, only Heathers really traversed the same material as successfully as “Syzygy.” The actresses playing Terri and Margi parade through the episode with brilliant, bitchy aplomb in multiple set pieces that echo traditional high school settings – the nighttime gathering with letterman jacket-clad boys, basketball practice, and a slumber party complete with Ouija and Bloody Mary. You can’t really undercut the value of the actresses playing the girls because they have to carry the episode and allow you to simultaneously “fear” them and laugh at them. This is especially necessary since Mulder and Scully have been re-written to annoy and belittle each other in an aggressive manner, throwing the audience off the Mulder-and-Scully-will-end-up-together trail. That, too, is effectively handled as it gives a new spin on the typical romantic entanglements that befall main characters after several years of flirtations.

In the end, “Syzygy” isn’t a landmark episode, but it’s a damn fun one if you deeply love dark comedy. And, despite the comic overtones of the episode, there is definitely the presence of a commentary on the rampant child sex abuse cases that plagued America in the mid-to-late 1990s. Now, it seems almost quaint and of a different time, but, back then, we appeared to be entering another era of the Salem witch trials. “Syzygy” refers to it indirectly, but its atmosphere is pungent with alarmist and accusatory group think.

And I think that is perhaps the scariest thing of all.

Sure. Fine. Whatever.