Things Are Getting Strange

The Calusari is absolutely the nastiest episode to date but loses points because real life Calusari dance a lot more than the store-bought exorcists in this episode. Outside of Samantha, has The X-Files managed to cast a child actor who does not have the (oft-quoted) "cold, dead eyes of a killer"? Not so far. Then again, the child actor here is the same one from Conduit.

The genesis of the episode is somewhat bewildering too... and why are the walls coated with honey?!

F. Emasculata has a load of gross-out moments and some worrying implications in how Mulder handles his eternal quest for the truth. Meanwhile Scully's inability to conduct basic first aid seems to be tampering with her handling of biohazardous material and if she wasn't a main character, there's no way she was getting out of this episode alive.

Skinner admitting there is a conspiracy feels like it should be a bigger thing, but its kind of incidental...

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Død Kalm cannot really escape how it feels - an episode written to make use of a set. The set in question being the ship the production crew hired for Colony and End Game. Also it feels very much like another entrant of an Ice-style episode (see also: Darkness Falls and Fire Walker) and associated in-fighting but less exciting than any of them.

The other problem is it has a great knack in suggesting and shooting down far more interesting ideas than the episode actually contains. Its a very slow, very tiring episode.

At least Humbug is a wonderful contrast. Darin Morgan's first episode was reportedly cut down from its highest comedic moments (Kim relates how the novelization picks up the discards), but this is still a tremendously entertaining episode.

Successful mostly because the The X-Files has not been intentionally funny (while we laughed all the way through Space, we are pretty sure that was not the idea) so far. An inversion of just who is the outsider while also notable for Scully disappointed at the midway mark that the explanation is so mundane. Definitely feels like Mulder is rubbing off on her...

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Turns out you just can't trust aliens. Whether its multiple clones of your sister or the bounty hunter who can look like anyone. Everyone likes to insist Samantha is fine but they either have a vested interest in getting Mulder to do something or just don't care.

End Game is a great follow-up to Colony though suffers a similar weakness of not being quite as energetic or thrilling as its first part. Not sure how Scully just overlooks guy who looks identical to Mulder who walked into her hotel room so easily. We are so very pleased with Skinner though, who like Rupert Giles, has that quirk of when he takes his glasses off, you know he's serious.

Fearful Symmetry is probably the most absurdly car-crash, nonsensical episode of the series. Not only does an episode that opens with invisible elephant and has invisible tiger (and caught on tape) in the middle somehow not involve invisibility towards the ends, it also really begs awkward questions about the alien's accuracy.

If the aliens have a plan, this one is really beyond us.

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While just blurting out "He's a ghost" at the start of The Sixth Sense would have somewhat undermined the final twist, its not at all clear why one character in Fresh Bones is unable to make a fairly fundamental quirk of Chester Bonaparte's existence clear to Mulder and Scully.

Still, its nice to have X back even if his presence here is something of a surprise. We also find out the novelisation makes a lot of the episode's more nebulous plot details much clearer.

Colony is an amazing fast-paced episode. That also demands we refer back to Gender Bender in season 1 for our shape-shifting aliens and the implication. There is of course an implication that literally no one in The X-Files universe can be trusted now this concept has been introduced.

The final twist of Scully being a shape-shifting alien will be quite the doozy. Wait. Are we absolutely sure Scully is the one who came back in One Breath!?

(We are pretty certain. But you never know! Maybe this will factor into her decision to not be in any potential future seasons past 11)

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Content warning for Irresistible - implied necrophilia
Content warning for Die Hand, Die Verletzt - mentions of rape, child abuse, death of infants

Aside from some odd depictions in the cold open, Irresistible is a tremendously creepy yet mundane (in the sense of not being supernatural) episode of Season 2. A creepy and unsettling monster of the week. We make the case of this being a far better follow-up to One Breath than Firewalker ever was and critique Mulder using the case as an excuse to watch a football game.

Die Hand, Die Verletzt is somewhat at odds with Irresistible in how Scully deals with dead bodies in this context, but otherwise Season 2 goes from strength to strength with a story about lapsed Satanists. Blackly comical (premise, the tendency of the satanists to loudly denounce satanism, the tabloid version of satanism depicted a few times) but also quite disturbing with some practical effects.

But we love Mrs. Paddock and Kim absolutely has a more accurate idea of how snakes work than is depicted on-screen.

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Content warning for Excelsis Dei and Aubrey - mentions of sexual assault.

We weren't looking forward to revisiting Excelsis Dei and were not surprised by the experience of re-watching it. The base subject matter is off-putting; Mulder and Scully seem to have traded personality traits (since when was Mulder adamant about the most absolutely mundane solution?); and the episode seems decidedly confused about whether the mushroom crop reduces Alzheimer's symptoms and gives old people telekinetic powers OR the mushroom crop reduces Alzheimer's symptoms and energises the restless dead haunting the halls of Excelsis Dei.

Aubrey is a better mystery with only a little of the 90s magical computer program to keep the plot going. Tremendous guest appearances though in a tale of genetic memory and serial killers.

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Content warning for Red Museum - mentions of sexual assault.

Scully's going back into the field in the next two episodes of The X-Files season 2.

It is... not easy to talk about Firewalker without frequent allusions to Ice back in season 1. So we didn't even try to avoid it. Weirdly it also has an opening which doesn't match how it ends, but Ice does it so much better (and doesn't concern itself with people wandering around in temperatures three times the boiling point of water).

Also for an episode called Firewalker, the robot itself is almost incidental.

Red Museum is a confounding episode. Starting with a great cold open, the episode spends half its run-time setting up a lot of weird supernatural weirdness. And then without warning turns into a conspiracy episode which feels like it should be a much bigger deal all things considered.

But no.

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Season 2 of The X-Files continues...

Content warning - 3 involves descriptions of abuse and this comes up in our discussion.

We've had werewolves so far, how about some vampires? Assuming you don't subscribe to Kim's theory that most of the monster of the week entities are some form of vampire (needing to feed on livers, infect their host to continue and so on), 3 offers our first vampire episode! And from the writer of Roland! This should be great.

It... really isn't. A twitter poll failed to turn up any support for the episode and we struggle to care as events play out and the script's nature as an unmade season 1 entrant becomes more and more obvious as we repeatedly fail to note one of the guest star's names correctly.

One Breath is dramatically better, though feels a completely different genre to Duane Barry and Ascension as it was once distributed back in the 90s. Scully gets to sleep through this for the most part so its all Mulder again. We meet more of the Scully family - for which Kim advances a neat theory. Still kinda floored that the FBI once used the entire X-Files office for storing the photocopier.

Kim's Conspiracy Corner only has a little more to work on. Slightly frustratingly it seems all Scully's abduction stuff must be at the hands of humans. Unless the Grey aliens really were going to rifle through Mulder's apartment that evening. Or Melissa actually is the guilty party and turned up early to confound everyone.

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Season 2 of The X-Files reaches the first two part episode!

Duane Barry is an excellently tense, hostage negotiation episode with a guest star who's trustworthiness wanes as the episode goes on only for the final moments to call any doubts into question. We however find time to talk about Mulder's speedos and poke at just how relevant the whole Phineas Gage thing is to Scully's insistence Duane Barry himself can't be trusted.

Ascension sparks a continued debate over whether the first of the two objects with light beams in the sky over Skyland Mountain is a military UFO, a regular UFO or a helicopter. Since I get to write these bits I would argue one of the former, but I know on social media I am not getting anywhere with this argument and seemingly everyone else thinks its the latter. We do again wind up talking about how rushed Krycek's character feels in this little three episode arc.

Also; Skinner, you can like, just re-open the X-Files?! On a whim?!

Kim's Conspiracy Corner is caught up with no end of inconsistencies and ambiguities across the new reveals of what Duane Barry tells us and the glimpses whether real or imagined of the alien abductions...

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Season 2 of The X-Files continues!

Blood sees the welcome return of the Lone Gunmen and the first writing credit for Darin Morgan. We discuss how the novelisation makes a lot of aspects clearer and call into question guest-star William Sanderson's choices towards the climax.

Sleepless introduces a new partner for Mulder: Alex Krycek (returning and recast guest star Nicholas Lea). Bit of a shame it feels like someone forced the writers' hand about his function in the series but until the last 30 seconds he feels a lot like Mulder's younger replacement. Also Tony Todd is in this and great, though why his "your mind makes it real" powers don't outright kill Mulder is decidedly unclear.

No Kim's Conspiracy Corner this week; something tells us we're going to be very taken up with it imminently...

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