Do you remember the time when we let TV shows find their footing and slowly grow to become really great? The X-Files almost disappeared after one season, but someone at Fox decided to cancel instead the fun steampunky Adventures of Brisco County Jr. I would have loved to have more episodes of the Bruce Cambell show, but at least we got a lot more of Mulder and Scully. It’s not the worst trade network television ever did by far.
Anyway, I just finished rewatching the third season of The X-Files and, if you look at the dates of the previous articles, I went through it faster than I did the previous two. The main reason is that I was in a hurry to rewatch some of my favorite episodes. So, let’s start with that, and then we will circle back to the mythology arc a bit later.
First, there are the uncontestable classics like Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose (3×04) in which Peter Boyle’s psychic character revealed that Scully will never die—Boyle rightfully won the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. It’s the perfect mix of self-deprecating humor that was slowly becoming a staple of the show combined with dark imagery and some quite interesting themes. It was written by Darin Morgan who also wrote the delirious War of the Coprophages (3×12) in which Mulder visits a small town to see aliens and ends up investigating what appears to be murders committed by insects. The rest is hard to describe. Pure gleeful chaos.
I know that Syzygy (3×13) is considered a failed attempt by Chis Carter to emulate Darin Morgan’s humor, but I still love it—and seeing Ryan Reynolds being killed in the opening is strangely fun today. On the other side, I never liked Jose Chung’s From Outer Space (3×20), it’s another classic from Darin Morgan, but its humor never worked with me, and the Rashomonesque style of the story only added confusion—I prefer a lot more the way Bad Blood (5×12) does it, but it’s a discussion for later.
Still light in some aspect (sorry Queequeg), I love Quagmire (3×22), the Loch Ness-type episode that quickly became a meditation on what makes Mulder and Scully tick. Their long scene lost in the night discussing Moby Dick to draw parallels to their own way of thinking is one of the greats.
In the most serious type of episodes, I always liked D.P.O. (3×03) with Giovanni Ribisi playing a young man who failed at everything and then got hit by lightning. Now, he controls electricity in a way and, with Jack Black at his side, starts killing those who cross his path. It works because Ribisi is so good in it, looking like he’s always on the brink of getting violent. A real menace.
In the same vein, Pusher (3×17) is even better. Robert Wisden is Robert Patrick Modell, an apparently average man who just manipulates people to kill themselves. The biggest twist is that he wants to get caught and starts playing an even deadlier game when Mulder and Scully enter the scene. It quickly becomes a tense-filled episode in which nobody is safe. The final Russian roulette scene is quite a memorable one.
Other episodes failed to really deliver as well on a similar type of story, like 2Shy (3×06). It’s gross and the seductive serial killer is creepy, but the way the story progresses quickly becomes too cliché. Still good though. Grotesque (3×14) fares a little better in the genre, in my opinion, mostly because it is visually striking. The use of gargoyles, the really dark photography, and the tense relationship between an obsessed Mulder and his mentor (played by the always great Jurtwood Smith) made for a disturbing hour of television, one that clearly laid the path for Millennium. In fact, I realized—I don’t know why I never noticed it before—that the series had a lot of serial murderers, it makes sense that Carter explored those kinds of stories in his next show.
Anyway, for the anecdote, Oubliette (3×08) with his disturbing story of a teenage Jewel Staite being kidnapped and the previous victim psychically enduring the same ordeal was not broadcast here in France at the time. It was a case of real-life events too similar to the fiction if I remember well. I had to wait a few years to finally see it. And I don’t really like it. Like a few other weak episodes this season, the paranormal elements felt forced—and this pushed Scully into an uncomfortable position.
It’s not as forced in Avatar (3×21) which starts with Skinner accused of killing Amanda Tapping. Mulder and Scully try to help him but he seems literally haunted. Turns out maybe he was, but it was all a conspiracy. It’s interesting to develop Skinner and to solidify his dangerous position, but the story barely works. And it’s not plain bad, unlike Hell Money (3×19) and Teso Dos Bichos (3×18)—the first one at least had good performances from BD Wong, Lucy Liu, and James Hong.
This third season counted 7 mythological episodes and they are for the most part pretty good. The first two open the season to deal with the Cigarette Smoking Man trying to fix his mistake. Mulder is fighting for survival while Scully tries to find out what really happened. The conclusion is a bit convenient, but the story helps introduce a more solid status quo than the previous episodes of this kind did.
Next came 731/Revelations (3×10/3×11) which deal with an alien autopsy that may not be fake. I don’t remember if the whole fake alien tape scam had come on the front pages of the tabloids at that time, but I suppose. The X-Files took this silly story and develop in a quite interesting new direction the Alien conspiracy storyline. Then Piper Maru/Apocrypha (3×15/3×16) added another layer and put Krycek in a complicated situation. What I like the most about these episodes, it’s that Mulder and Scully are not running after ghosts. They are more in control of the situation as their enemy are almost at a loss too, trying to fix their oversights. It felt less abstract than in Season 2.
I forgot a few episodes, but that’s mostly because they are averagely good, but not remarkable. And now, I’m going to start season 4, but I’m also thinking of revisiting Millennium as it was launched during that 1996-97 season). We’ll see.
