Send us a Text Message.And thus we learn the final fate of Samantha Mulder!Is it satisfying? No. Closure is very touching and quite beautiful and well acted. But as a capstone to a question that first appeared in the very first episode this is not what anyone wanted. We get into how this fails to make much sense with seven years of other conspiracy (we know the aliens habitually lie, but why bother to claim Samantha was alive back in End Game?) and why this is basically just Redux's solution with some extra steps.Still, that's one answer down. For those keeping score: aliens are real, CSM fathered all the Mulder children, and Samantha was dead the entire time.Not even sure if there is anything left to go. Other than whatever CSM was up to in The Sixth Extinction Part 2.X-Cops on the other hand is the bizarre The X-Files/Cops mash-up and it works far better than it should. We get into how much it reminds us of Ghostwatch and how The Blair Witch Project near certainly had some influence on its presentation.Also implies Mulder deals with the reveals of the previous episode by hunting werewolves in downtown LA.Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.Content warning: mentions of animal abuse, implied incest, child deathSigns and Wonders is somewhat diminished when we learned about the various animal cruelties on set during the filming of this episode.Getting past that, we are left with a succession of questions about what and why this episode happened. Its pretty fun though and we learn about how auditions were done for the episode and which members of the cast and crew were more than three blocks away whenever the snakes entered proceedings.Some despairing at the theme of the episode but at least we had more fun than...Sein und Zeit sounds like it should have something to do with Signs and Wonders. At a quick enough glance, you could be forgiven for thinking its the same title just in German. But no!Sein und Zeit is hard to talk about for a number of reasons. Not least is the similarity to a real life murder case - and how much of it will hinge on next week's Closure given its hard to get away from the reveal that this episode serves to finally resolve what happened to Samantha.We get hung up on all the other Samantha's variously pinballing through the series and what the implications of this episode seem to be leaning into. Kim offers the thoroughly entertaining idea that the episode is in fact a follow up to Folie a Deux and thus offers a much weirder take on procceedings.Ultimately, its Paper Hearts again - an issue that doesn't initially hinder it too bad - aside from we've seen this already Chris, but then rapidly spirals into weird decisions as it sets up a cliffhanger.Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.It is hard to watch Orison without immediately concluding that Scully is totally getting fired right after the climax of the episode. And yet - based on The Amazing Maleeni - somehow shooting an unarmed man, pointblank while he is being arrested by her partner is not enough.Weird how it was Scully who'd finally wind up killing someone like this. Mulder kept trying but never managed it. Still, we are supposed to have some empathy given the man in question is Donnie Pfaster, once again determined to murder Scully. Just... None of this got setup or even hinted at as some deep psychological scarring for Scully.We inevitably get into how this wasn't meant to be about Donnie Pfaster in the slightest, and the original (Millennium-esque) episode was changed into an unnecessary follow-up to Irresistible. At least there won't be another...The Amazing Maleeni is a lot more fun, even if Kim does reveal a rather gaping plot-hole that renders the whole episode a little moot in the end. At least some of the magic is real - or at least performed by actual stage magicians.We discuss other fictional magicians and implausible bank heists. And how Scully should wear a top-hat from now on.Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.At this point, it is quite impossible to talk about Rush without also mentioning Chronicle. And we can't! We get into how similar the two instances are and how they diverge quite wildly.We talk about the villain's lack of imagination, the welcome reappearance of Chuck, and how Mulder doesn't get really obsessed with the impossible shot pulled off in the climax. Definitely puts the JFK conspiracy to shame.Also how network censorship makes things nastier.Imagine if you will, reading this post. You go to click the link and knock over your coffee, right onto your keyboard. You stand up abruptly and knock your chair backwards and it collides with the bookshelf. It sways and a box on top topples over and lands heavily on the ground.The thump dislodges the plaster in the ceiling of the room below you and kills the armed gunman coming to murder you.Implausible? Maybe. But that's the Rube Goldberg-ness of this episode where we discover weirdness like how scratchcard payouts work and Shia LeBeouf's early career.Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.Mulder may often feel like a jerk, but Hungry kinda paints him as a predator playing with his food as he takes his sweet time doing anything about poor old Rob in this episode. If Mulder was a bit quicker than likely three people might still be alive...Still, this is a monster-eyed view of The X-Files and pretty good. We get into the contrast to Terms of Endearment and how Rob might be a proto-Walter White all things considered. Not sure why people quibbled about finding out who the killer was so fast with this one...Millennium is the second actual (if you count The Unusual Suspects) but intended third crossover into The X-Files. And comes courtesy of Chris Carter's other show that outside of one nod to The X-Files and an appearance by Jose Chung had trundled on quite happily without intersecting. It doesn't entirely work here and we get hung up on crossovers as a concept for quite some time.But Sculder shippers win out! Here (after cuts, parallel universes/dreams and Mulder's inexplicable dream-marriage to Fowley) is the first kiss the pair get onscreen. At least Mulder wasn't cock-blocked by a bee this time.Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.Taking a brief break from Season 7, we try to give an overview of the first X-Files game - The X-Files Game.We get into FMV games as a whole and the specific drawbacks in general and here specifically. There's not a lot of Mulder and Scully in this game, but you can die in a bewildering and often funny succession of odd occasions.We try to make sense of the plot and end up concluding you're far better off just watching Piper Maru instead. However, if you are curious, our complete (though edited) experience is up on Patreon!Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.While it might be a metaphor for the loss of the "truth" in The Sixth Extinction,  it is impossible not to interpret the order of events wherein Dr. Barnes kills a man, that man comes back to life and kills Dr. Barnes, and later when events return to the same beach, the entire UFO is now missing as Grand Theft Spaceship. By zombie.Quite how Scully will cope with standing on and studying the hull of a downed UFO remains to be seen. Elsewhere we talk questionable science and dubious science.It is concerning that Mulder's idealized alternate world fantasy of The Sixth Extinction Part 2 - Amor Fati involves him marrying Diana Fowley while she has a distinctly Cennobite-like look. Marries her but not Scully. In a fantasy dream sequence while undergoing brain surgery....Welcome to the new phase of the conspiracy. Its a lot like the previous...Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.This then is the end of The X-Files.No. Really.Fine. The point is we can't actually be sure that anything that happens after Field Trip in fact happens in series. It could all be a fungal hallucination as Mulder and Scully are dissolved in yellow goo in an underground cave.Something of a dramatically bleak ending but hard to argue against.(Though in reality, we know the universe resets if Scully dies because she can't so this probably isn't strictly true).There is probably a good reason Scully is on the Ivory Coast at the end of Biogenesis. Probably. Otherwise welcome to the new conspiracy! Where Bibles are magnetic and looking at rubbings of metal can give Mulder migraines.We are very interested in how Scully is going to excuse what she sees at the end of the episode, but surely there's some explanation.We also sum up season 6, cover the best and worst episodes - and debate the best villain as always. Tune in next time for season 7!Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.Nick has to insist quite a lot that he likes this episode though is not sold on baseball. Which it very much what The Unnatural is all about. A love letter to baseball that's also an X-Files episode that's also a lovely monster of the week episode that's also (sort of) a conspiracy episode and also makes a bit more sense of how the aliens work.Nothing short of amazing really. We discuss how the episode works so well and how the replacement of a guest star somehow makes the whole situation less awkward than it would have been despite having two different characters with the same name in  the series.Three of a Kind while not the most important episode and pretty fairly judged as filler content, is at least great fun to watch. Effectively pilot #2 for The Lone Gunmen, its great to see a continuation of The Unusual Suspects with a hilarious guest turn from Scully and the Lone Gunmen themselves in great form.Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.Startlingly the first episode this week Scully actually suggests Spontaneous Human Combustion as a possible cause of death. Which if we're honest shouldn't be a huge surprise after the events of, say, Fire back in season 1.Trevor is a curious monster of the week episode suggesting tornadoes can give you super-powers. But what really floored us this week was the comments from director Rob Bowman about how we apparently completely misunderstood the episode. And really don't accept his stance on this one. Seriously, man, what the hell?We are not sure if Milagro has a deliberate or completely accidental JD Salinger reference in it. Or if it started as a deliberate nod and then something got muddled because the alleged reference its making is to a sitcom. This despite an episode about a writer.We're not wholly sure why any of said writer's moves work on Scully or even how the episode works, but we do have an important question: where has Skinner gotten to?Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.Content Warning: multiple dog deathsArcadia is satire with a capital S. Perfect community built on top of a landfill. Oh and enforced by a trash golem! Or tulpa maybe. Mulder does do a lot of conjecture in this episode...We discuss the alien nature (to us anyway) of there gated communities and the conformity therein and also the state of Mulder and Scully's fake marriage on display. There's a good deal of fun to be had in this episode despite the more horror-y than normal sting.In software development, before you get to a release (generally version 1.0) there are few prior steps. Testing something before release is generally done in the beta stage - the thing works generally and shouldn't fall over, but there are things missing and its not at its most stable. The initial version is called alpha and might explode if poked too hard.This next episode really needed to be held back until the beta version was complete.Alpha wastes its guest star (Andrew Robinson - Garak in Deep Space Nine) and is borderline incoherent. We discuss all the hits! Like how the villain's plan is basically impossible, how massive dogs are made small, the bewildering ramblings of a suspected otherkin, Scully being jealous (again), and the better AND WORSE alternate intended ways the episode could have gone.We can even make a case for this being worse than Tesos des Bichos....Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.Back to the monster of the week(s)!Well, monster of the week anyway. Agua Mala is a comedic bottle episode with a unnerving monster, some amusing character moments and a lot of water. Oh so much water just all the time.We discuss the somewhat odd implications about how Mulder talks about Arthur Dales in this episode and depictions of entomologists on film.Back to the monster of the week(s)!Well, monster of the week anyway. Agua Mala is a comedic bottle episode with a unnerving monster.... Wait a minute.Monday might allegedly be inspired by The Twilight Zone, but its impossible not to drag Groundhog Day, Happy Death Day and Haruhi Suzumiya into a discussion about it.While there is a pretty clear point to the time-loop, we've got a different one building off of Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose and Tithonus.Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.Could this be the end of the conspiracy? Is the planned for day here (about a decade early)? We discuss much of the conspiracy's tangles in Two Fathers. And also make a weird Xenogears connection for kicks.We try to make sense of the episode's new claims while not being thrilled about CSM point blank talking to the audience through so much of the episode. And get amused by the rubber masks the alien rebels are now resorting to.One Son really does feel like the end of the conspiracy. Mostly. At least its hard to see this part continuing much longer with the ending in place.But we can't escape questions that plague us. Like how do the rebel mask things work? Why do people want to share a planet with a species that is quite keen on obliterating everyone there and can do so with impunity? Why is Cassandra Spender actually special?Despite all the answers we still have questions and the series is instead prepared to move right on...Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.SR819 features nano machines and a decidedly confusing plot about Skinner! Until it stops being about Skinner with extreme rapidity and we wonder how Mulder and Scully get to go on this adventure without Kersh throwing yet another book at the pair.We discuss a certain returning character's career trajectory in The X-Files and his somewhat bewildering actions of late. At least we have Mulder's pet senator back in the action. And still not helping Mulder much at all. We get into just how diplomatic immunity works since it keeps coming up.Tithonus is an episode that demands discussion of Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose. So much later and possibly inadvertently, one line from Season 3 pays off here. This is a great gothic episode with Scully unaccountably taking some huge risks and plunging herself into danger in a case away from Mulder.Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.Content warning: child death, forced abortions, animal abuseAfter a run of comedic episodes, season 6 swerves hard into perhaps the darkest plotline The X-Files has ever had. But somehow any description of what happens in Terms of Endearment paints a picture of a bleak and thoroughly depressing episode which is somehow really fun to watch.Some of it is probably Bruce Campbell, but the episode performs a startling trick of going so dark but somehow making everything bounce along at a good clip. It never lets go of the horror but it never gets too heavy. Not so much a comedy as extremely light-hearted.The Rain King prompts a typical objection (why is this at this point in the season) but otherwise provides the first X-Files romcom episode. As one reviewer put it, cute but not excessively.Aside from one dead cow, the episode is otherwise a strange deviation from the normally at least partly harrowing supernatural aspects to instead deliver an examination of Mulder and Scully's relationship reflected elsewhere.Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.Dreamland II continues with some possible stake-raising. Can Mulder and Fletcher get back to their original bodies? And what might be the fallout if they can? Not that Mulder learns a huge amount during his somewhat brief visits to Areas 51. Meanwhile Fletcher sets his sights on Scully...We discuss the weirdness of extending the joke episode out this long and how a fair amount of it doesn't really make sense. We completely forgot that Fletcher - like the rest of Area 51 - knows less about aliens that Mulder at this point. And Samantha is referenced and apparently we're continuing to ignore what Redux II had to say about her...It is a bold choice to continue The X-Files with Michael McKean in place of Mulder after the events of Dreamland. Okay, so the body-switch did get reversed in time for this Christmas special of How the Ghosts Stole Christmas.Which is a much better Christmas special than the last time The X-Files did something so seasonal. But while the episode is fun, the weird limitations of the episode hamper things - and we note how weirdly blunt Chris Carter is being in this episode.Where has the darkness in The X-Files gotten to?Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.Triangle is the second X-Files time-travel episode!Maybe.It could be the first Wizard of Oz X-Files episode which does make everything a lot weirder. And if we're honest, its a bit more likely. It doesn't help that the ship is less than accurate, the German is less than accurate and even the code names are inaccurate. Still this is a popular episode from Chris Carter himself.It feels a bit like a Doctor Who episode at points. And does deliver a Sculder kiss. Sort of. More of a surprise was the Skinner/Scully kiss we'd completely forgotten about.If venturing near Area 51, try to do so when malfunctioning US made UFOs aren't overhead. Then you won't get body-swapped with a genuine MIB....Dreamland has a lot of great gags and a lot of not great other monster of the week stuff. While One Breath might have given us a glimpse of how CSM spends his days not at work, Dreamland gives us a whole MIB family for Mulder to make everything worse for.Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.The X-Files returns to TV with season 6. And a new locale. One these first two episodes are not remotely subtle about...For The Beginning, we talk about apparent Grey alien lifecycles and Chris Cater's pettiness. And where is Krycek even now? Its so hard not to contrast the black oil as it exists back to Piper Maru and how different everything was. We just don't talk about bees.Drive kind of gets overwhelmed by its big guest star - not least this is a major part of how he was cast in Breaking Bad. But its a great episode - and as far as Nick was concerned for the longest time; the series opener.For a change its Mulder's turn to get kidnapped but we do have to ask how he still doesn't get how to operate within the FBI on non-X-Files stuff without lashing out constantly.Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.We're off to the movies!The X-Files film (or Fight the Future - however rightly or wrongly it is so named) still holds up really well all these years later. Actual concrete details about the whole conspiracy are unveiled! Backstory! The threat! The slim hope of salvation!Just... We get into how much the Black Oil has changed since its introduction in Piper Maru. And how the Syndicate have gotten very kill Mulder in this film. Also its hard not to notice some weird echoed plot-beats to season 5 episodes, how rapidly Well Manicured Man pivots depending on situation and episode and ask where the hell is Krycek?Support the Show.

Send us a Text Message.The inevitable episode where Mulder gets himself committed.Folie a Deux is a great creepy episode that is almost a black comedy, but remains a fine creature-feature for the tail-end of season 5. There's some Philip K Dick in this episode - as well as a touch of Lovecraft.We are admittedly in danger of just praising Vince Gilligan all the time, but this is a really good penultimate episode that has nothing to do with the conspiracy.The End is the end. Or at least was going to be when The X-Files - like Star Trek - shed any mundane ideas about being a TV series and would instead metamorphose into a film series. That came crashing down to Earth pretty fast, but this episode at least seems prepared for all change and soon.Shame its a bit of a mess and stuff happens and people do things and Nick is still better he was charged fuil-price for one VHS tape of this episode as it was allegedly vital to the film's setup (Spoiler: barely).Since we've hit the end of a season we do the usual best and worst episodes - along with best villains.Support the Show.