We get really hung up on the implications of Jackson Van De Kampf's life in Ghouli and how people just ignore the less than great series of events that would have lead to this episode's events. Not really helpful that Jackson clearly used to have a quite different and significant name. We get heavily into how what was clearly a monster of the week episode morphed into something else...

Kitten feels a bit Wetwire, a bit Blood and a lot another Skinner episode about his time in Vietnam. Despite an interesting reason for the episode existing, it feels a real strange thing to throw into what everyone anticipated The X-Files' final season being...

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*if you want to end the series in the best possible way...

Plus One is a fun episode, possibly a little overshadowed by the sterling guest-star turn and the efforts of the make-up department. Also suspect the entire point of the episode was less doppleganger hangman game and more getting Mulder and Scully into bed together...

The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat is not actually the final episode of the series, but like Sunshine Days, the perfect note to go out on. An episode that at last uncovers the true villain of the series, that rocks everything you thought you knew about every previous episode... and makes a surprisingly good argument against Season 10 and 11 existing at all...

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We reach Season 11 and find that the chosen way to resolve the massive, massive cliffhanger season 10 left on is.... lacking.

My Struggle III spends a lot of time undoing some of Season 10 but not all of it and as a result leaves some weird debris behind. We talk retcons and wave goodbye to the nominal replacement Mulder and Scully...

This is one of Kim's most hated episodes, and its hard to ignore that being written and directed, the thoroughly nihilistic episode is being inflicted on Langely as seemingly creator really out to hurt his own creation.

And for those confused by our episode title, we will explain quite what that means too...

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Don't promise us the Lone Gunmen being back and then do... that.

Babylon was quite notorious on first broadcast and the intervening years have done little to aid the fact it feels the wrong fit for The X-Files in general and specific for Mulder and Scully. We also get into what the whole point of Einstein and Miller probably was...

My Struggle II uses the phrase "alien DNA" way too many times (we counted) and made Kim quite angry with its rather flippant - if typical - attitude to how medicines work and what certain terms actually mean in real life.

But what a cliffhanger! Oh, how can they possible resolve it....?

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We struggle to say much about Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster, broadly because the episode is an absolute delight and revisiting it has not diminished how starkly it contrasts with the rest of season 10. It is still a fantastic episode.

Home, Again on the other hand is part fantastically acted Scully drama, part serious Arcadia remake and part mystifying Candyman-a-like. One of these things feels distinctly out of place and we struggle to make sense of why the episode is formed like this...

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Welcome to season 10! And plots we could swear we saw in Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'. And Gethesmane...

Still! The X-Files is back. Skinner is back! Cancer man... is somehow back! And now we're trying to retcon seemingly 9 seasons of plot out of the backstory. We discuss how strange the apparent project to discredit Mulder is and how odd some of the choices with the revival are.

Founder's Mutation is at least a better episode. Though all these mentions of William are concerning. They're not going to do anything with him, right?

...right?

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We reach the second The X-Files film and are beset by questions. Many of them "Why this?" and "Really?"

While the acting is fine, we are not so taken with the plot or the any of the new characters. We also learned a fair amount from the synopsis we are not sure we even got hinted at in the film itself...

Somehow we can even pick fault with the end credits...

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So here we are. What once was the end of The X-Files is a bit too much like how Seinfeld ended for its own good...

We end up talking about Franz Kafka for hopefully good reasons as well as continuing to observe that Mulder should never be allowed in any kind of court-room.

We also get to our best and worst episodes of the season.

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Release wraps Doggett's running backstory up perhaps a little too fast and a little too without warning (and that's not getting into Reyes' questionable decision re: seeing people taking bribes). But. There is an answer - its bleak and awful and does not involve whatever happened to Samantha. We are however obliged to point out that supernatural force continues to drag its feet in these kinds of episodes...

We disagree on just how supernatural the episode is and discuss the implausibility of walling fresh murder victims with clay.

Sunshine Days could easily be the last episode of The X-Files ever. Sure, Mulder's not present and the whole super-soldiers - let alone alien aspects of the series - would remain unresolved, but it makes a point about the quest for the truth and the cost of that pursuit that with the whole series in mind is extremely persuasive.

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A strange description of Jimmy Bond, but accurate nonetheless.

After our hiatus, Nick is trying to be more positive about The X-Files. Each episode must have some positive points. Unfortunately, he is trying this on Jump the Shark and William of all things.

Jump the Shark does have a lot of sharks and Morris Fletcher. We get into why concluding a series in a different series feels like a terrible plan and how most of the regular X-Files lot seem to be largely absent. Still a shame to say goodbye to the Lone Gunmen, if not so much The Lone Gunmen, though some behind the scenes stuff makes the decision more comprehensible. Though... we'll be back to this in future.

William (the character) is also far from done, despite this William (the episode) seemingly determined to tie up a plot-thread before the series runs out of time. The make-up and prosthetic effects are absolutely phenomenal and we're in two minds bout how the series seemed to toy with expectations given leaving guest star names off the start, but making real clear about the writers and director being one D. Duchovny...

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