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The Sheriff's Secret Police
05 Mar 2026
00:56:47
Watch as Dale Cooper fends off Audrey's attempts at seduction in order not to bring the FBI into disrepute shortly before making use of the Bookhouse Boys because they need to do something across the Candian border! Not saying he shouldn't have resisted Audrey, but the latter also feels distinctly dodgy.
At this point in the series everyone seems to be converging at One Eyed Jack's or about to commit arson. Or making *checks notes* Laura Palmer's cousin dress up as her in order to lure her psychiatrist out of his office in order to steal an audio cassette made by Laura Palmer...
Twin Peaks continues to tease that a solution to its central mystery can only be imminent! Birds singing and perpetual music get their explanations here!
But in the meantime, we continue to complain about James, continue to enjoy every time Bobby shows up on-screen, and remain hopelessly fixated on Maddy and who's playing her in this series. Also the mill-arson plot is just getting more tangled by the minute.
We're not wild about this episode of Darkplace, but as discussed it contains some of the more quotable lines. Also the episode has the absolutely incomprehensible production mistake of Thornton Reed actually acting in the episode!
Otherwise, as is our way we meander off into other avenues of the 80s and in particular 80s horror...
The first of this week's episodes doesn't involve war in Ba Sing Se. Or Unobtainium on other planets. Instead we get a weird hybrid monster of the week/conspiracy episode where the forces of the supernatural help Skinner in perhaps the least helpful way.
This is Avatar apparently.
We discuss the curious merits of framing Skinner and getting him fired after the attempted murder back in Piper Maru.
Quagmire also seems to be an episode struggling with its premise; part lake monster story and part intense Mulder and Scully character relationship piece. Where Mulder completely flubs his empathy on numerous occasions.
We would (quite seriously) love to see James Hong be cast as a CSM equivalent or just be a member of the syndicate in general, but in the likely absence of that, we will take his fantastic turn as the Hard Faced Man in Hell Money. Which features a good number of actors who have also been in Mulan.
We discuss the episode's kind of back-door pilot feel and why the body-part lottery supernatural cover-story feels kinda redundant in the end.
The X-Files has dabbled a few times by this point with implying alien abductions are in truth covers for some other shady goings on by the government. Jose Chung's "From Outer Space" offers the wonderfully silly next step by asking what happens if, mid-faking an alien abduction, an actual (stop-motion looking) alien showed up and captured the disguised air-force pilots and their would be teen abductees?
If only the story could be remotely as simple and not make everyone look very, very silly. We find it tremendously hard not to gush about all the surreal comedy this episode provides, the assorted guest stars and cinematic flourishes to sell the unreliable narrators.
Fear not though! Even with this episode Nick manages to come up with some complaints and nuisance slips on the part of the episode.
Pusher is that rare thing - an episode Nick is unable to find much of a fault with at first. Blackly comedic and engaging, this cat and mouse encounter between Mulder and the titular Pusher is so good.
We do get into Mulder's pretty incredibly specific knowledge of the Japanese language and how this episode might have damaged whatever burgeoning relationship Mulder and Scully have been building.
We struggled to say much about Teso Dos Bichos ultimately. Other than we could totally watch The Relic (the 90s monster movie, not the more recent housebound horror about dementia) for a similar (very similar) setup and have a far better time.
Piper Maru brings us the very sinister, very dangerous Black Oil. Whether the alien in truth or - as Mulder conjectures - a medium for transference, its still damned cool as a new threat.
Anyone, anywhere might be infected! Though just watching their eyes for a bit tends to give them away.
And, you know, that the Black Oil is perhaps one of the worst stealth operatives in the world except for the times it is.
Apocrypha is probably the best second part of a two-parter we've had to date, even if Cancer Man's suggestion to Skinner digging too deep into Melissa Scully's death is sending the same assassin to shoot Skinner and when that doesn't work, sending the same assassin to shoot him all over again.
Still we get some tremendously creepy moments, a potential reworking of the power dynamics in the Syndicate and are left wondering if Cancer Man shouting "You saw nothing" ever works for him.
Aside from a few fun moments (and pre-fame Ryan Reynolds), Syzygy has little to recommend it. Mulder and Scully are out of character and kinda annoying and increasingly unprofessional.
Still! It oddly provided the origin point of the Keystone Cops footage we found in our Let's Play of The X-Files Game (part 1 available on Patreon). We get to talk about 90's teen culture and how we would rather the episode focused more on ostensible villains Terri and Margi.
Grotesque manages to change some of Mulder's backstory and be inconsistent with its own plot. As one of the admitted major inspirations on Millennium it is not without interest for future detail, even if Nick wanted a more supernatural-edge to the episode, while Kim would rather the Seven-like aspect got more focus.
Wherein Kim is very keen on Bambi Berenbaum's bug talk in War of the Coprophages.
But that's after Revelations which seeks to invert the usual Mulder and Scully dynamic by making Mulder staunchly sceptical and Scully open to less scientific conclusions. I only wish Scully applied her new-found beliefs to every other episode going forward.
Also; tip for demons/agents of evil/other nefarious agents - booking rental cars under known demonic names makes you pretty obvious.
War of the Coprophages is the latest by Darin Morgan so we have a new funny episode with some pointed jabs at Mulder's entire belief-system. And Sculder shippers get some unexpected food in this installment.
We've also got a Let's Play of The X-Files Game in the works over on Patreon!
...and you too could own a.... lacklustre alien autopsy video.
Nisei starts with what looks an awful lot like an alien autopsy on a train and ends with Mulder leaping onto a completely different train. Which may or may not contain... something.
We get quite taken with the "red-haired man" as he is known, though according to one DVD somewhere, he does have a name. The episode is pretty exciting with Mulder doing stunts, avoiding armed soldiers and swimming in a harbour at night. But Scully might be on the verge of finding out what happened after Skyland Mountain. While Mulder sparks an international incident.
731 seems to forget that Mulder caused an international incident (or Skinner was just lying for some reason) and goes in some odd directions to turn Scully back into a hardcore sceptic all over again. Because Reginald FirstElder said so.
We make note of some lazy props and are so very taken with X's turn this time around.
Content warning: Both episodes contain depictions and discussions of suicide. The Walk contains child death and Oubliette contains depictions of mental illness. Listener discretion is advised.
And we're back.
The Walk is basically Excelsis Dei version 2 but much less skin-crawlingly gross and with a more compelling villain. Who has way more scruples than the elderly patients in the former episode. Not above killing a load of people.
We once again have some issues picking out character names but otherwise this is an effective monster of the week episode.
Oubliette rambles into a discussion about Jack the Ripper at one point. If there is a simple note about the episode its that it should be a little longer. Not a two parter, but the episode feels a tad rushed as is.
I had been anticipating this episode as a huge Scully Killed Another One with Bad First Aid, but it turned out to be nowhere close to as bad as her prior stunts - and Kim will confirm its not a bad depicition of CPR. That said, there's a weird failure to help keep someone warm and Scully's apparent exasperation at the medical impossibility of drowning in river water in a car a mile away...
Content warning for 2Shy - stalking, emotional manipulation of women
We continue the monster of the week portion of Season 3!
The List is a killer ghost plot for whom the supernatural menace is less impressive than the one in Shadows. In one sense this is to heighten ambiguity of just how supernatural the episode is (until the ending sting anyway). In another, why Neech is bothering with smothering people with pillows when surely he can crush their throats from the inside?
Kinda feels that maybe the episode would be better as a ghost POV thing. Still! The guest stars are good and the series got a set that got reused a bunch of times. And we get to talk about the discomforting working with insect larvae one of the actors had to do.
2 Shy! Not just a song by Kajagoogoo (also I managed to mix up The Lion's Mouth with The Lion Sleeps Tonight (they were one after another on a cat-themed mix-tape in the 90s and I got the bands completely wrong). Kajagoogoo did not sing the latter) but the identity of a gross fat-eating vampire.
Virgil Incanto has one of the least plausible X-Files' names to date (and Kim is on hand to explain why) and is a thoroughly unpleasant villain for the week. There is fun to be had in the shaky 90s notions of how the internet worked and the semi-justified naming of a sex worker as "Holly McClane".
The X-Files takes a hard left turn back to monster of the week goodness!
Somehow we wound up discussing the sadly never arranged Fire vs D.P.O. face-off which would pit a recovered Cecil L'Ively against the still seemingly still-powered Darin Peter Oswald. As far as we know no one's tried this in any official release...
Kim is pleased with unexpectedly accurate defibrillator depiction but disheartened by the utterly implausible fulgurite scene.
Does Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose need anything more to be said about it? It tends to either top or come very close in lists of the best X-Files episodes, and its incredibly hard to argue against that. We make our best efforts to say anything new...
Revisiting the episode reveals a thoroughly downbeat and bleak episode riddled with black humour, great jokes and characters. And some setups for the future. Scully has a dog now and apparently doesn't die. Mr Bruckman is somewhat less accommodating towards Mulder...
Episode 2 of Darkplace has perhaps one of the more obvious inspirations from a famed horror author's work and perhaps quailing from the maddening reality of that we talk about why where horror is set seems to dictate what kind of horror you wind up with.
More fake lost media and horror projects that intend to hide their actual horror nature and how thin the border between horror and comedy is; all derived from Mr. Marenghi's work.
Look, we like Samantha here. Doesn't feel like Bill Mulder was exactly hugely invested in his daughter based on the implications Paper Clip sets up.
But that's after The Blessing Way which has some great stuff for Scully, and some... screentime for Mulder. Questions about of how Mulder got out of a (for want of a better term) hermetically sealed room, for which Camoflauge Man (no, really, we're pretty sure that's his name) can find no trace of him minutes later.
Yes, there are some explanations of how Mulder's escapology works but none are exactly satisfying. Still, this episode introduces Well-Manicured Man and 1st Elder leading to a wondering of why didn't Bill Mulder get a similarly themed name (or did he?!).
Paper Clip is back into the real conspiratorial mode however and gives us some intriguing hints of what the shadowy forces are up to as well as making Cigarette Smoking Man human in a way we've not seen previously.
Mulder remains a bit of a jerk (we could blame the lingering after-effects of being drugged I suppose) and Scully loses another family member as we try to puzzle out what the hell the presumable aliens at Strughold mining facility were trying to do.
You Can Tell When Cigarette Smoking Man is Lying Because He's Talking
13 Apr 2023
01:07:58
The end of season 2!
Anasazi seems to make clear that CSM is just in a perpetual state of lying. Not entirely sure you could even find out what he wants for breakfast.
We're not completely convinced by the encryption on the Thinker's downloads - nor where this guy has been for most of the season after getting name-checked in One Breath.
We also get to find out what our Twitter/Mastodon followers thought of the season in terms of best and worst episodes. And best villain, though thanks to the one person who really threw us a curve-ball on the answers...
We're pretty sure people aren't too fond of Soft Light, but really it's a good episode with a great guest star in Tony Shaloub and exposes a whole other depth to the character of X otherwise not even hinted at.
Sure, the science makes no sense, but this hasn't ever really stopped any other episode of The X-Files. Plus, this is the first episode written by Vince Gilligan who'll go on to produce some notable future episodes and some reasonably popular mega-successes.
We've started keeping track of the genesis of X-Files episodes, and in the stakes of being as disgusting as possible, Our Town does win out. Currently at any rate. Not wholly sure what to make of Mulder's initial theory that is obviously wrong from the cold open.
And maybe this should have lent into the blackly comic aspects of the premise...
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...
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...
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.
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)
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.
They're Waiting for you Mulder. In the Mushroom Chamber
23 Feb 2023
01:07:23
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.
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.
In a surprising move, we change our focus to something quite different: Garth Marenghi's Darkplace! A comedy, sort of horror series from the early 2000s.
We get into how it all works and talk about how it belongs to the weird sub-genre of fake lost media. Also the bewildering cloud of comedy projects the various cast are involved with.
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.
Krycek Would Not Take the Left Turn at Alberquerque
02 Feb 2023
01:04:27
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...
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...
Season 2 of The X-Files begins a whole new era for the series.
Little Green Men is perhaps the series's third pilot - a great jumping on point and a great episode all round. Just why do the aliens dance during abductions and how much of this episode really happened? Just how bad at their jobs are the Blue Beret Crash Retrieval Team?
It is perhaps a bit of a shame the episode prevented us from seeing Mulder vainly trying to get a dead body through customs...
The Host is a wonderfully gross monster of the week episode. Was getting your own name tattooed on your arm the done thing back in the 90s (in Russia anyway?). Also the Flukeman is absolutely a ninja given his ability to attack from stealth.
Episodes 24 of The X-Files season 1 asks a lot of questions - and while Fox might once have worried audiences would conclude the series was over - for season 2 to pick up.
The Erlenmeyer Flask finally, finally has Scully seeing something with no wriggle room and very little other interpretation. And she'll be hard pressed to argue the object she decides to pickle doesn't have some supernatural implications.
Mulder on the other hand possibly is not remotely paranoid or cautious enough and things don't go so well for him.
We sum up the season as a whole and get into favourite episodes as voted via social media alongside our own. Also least favourite episode and favourite villain.
Episodes 22 & 23 of The X-Files season 1 really do show the variances of the series.
Born Again's major revelation is that Scully gets a front-row seat to some supernatural happenings. Which... she probably writes off as something mundane. Oddly, we don't get to hear her version of events in what feels like a re-do of Shadows.
Roland features perhaps the most cold and vicious of the villainous characters to date, but is a very touching and affecting episode with a possibly dark sting come the end. We agree this one is very good, if oddly the series could nail down fake-beard technology.
Episodes 20 & 21 of The X-Files season 1 are both excellent!
Darkness Falls is a wholesale tribute to Ice (or possibly Chris Carter deciding he could also do a bottle episode with paranoia and in-fighting) just set out in the wilderness with bugs for enemies and an apparent inadvertent environmental theme.
Tooms is the unexpected sequel to near universal favourite episode Squeeze. Eugene Victor Tooms is back, but damn, is his doctor in love with him or not? Highly unprofessional. We debate whether the episode should really be centred more on Scully than Mulder. Also returning is Cigarette Smoking Man who has taken up residence in new on-going character Walter Skinner's office.
Episodes 18 & 19 of The X-Files season 1 seem to continue the series's struggle to find its own identity.
Miracle Man has been described elsewhere as something you'd expect in Murder She Wrote - which is not wholly unfair. Scully continues her proud tradition of inadequate or non-existent first aid skills, while Mulder unexpectedly gets some weirdness regarding Samantha.
Shapes is an absolutely by the numbers werewolf story. But at least it has Hawk from Twin Peaks in a guest star role. Scully has to be wilfully misremembering events in this one. And does this episode have foreshadowing for a season 9 episode (no).
Episodes 16 & 17 of The X-Files season 1 continue an uneven run.
Young At Heart should be a good monster of the week episode with a man with a salamander hand! But somehow that never really factors into anything, least of all the villain's new career as a piano tuner. We're pretty sure Scully's losing another one of her friends after the events of this episode.
E.B.E. is a gloriously good episode and filled with conspiratorial goodness. We get a little hung up on our own separate ideas of what was where in the truck (and why you would ship an alien body to Washington state for killing when surely that can also be done in Turkey?) and when, but can agree we like The Lone Gunmen and the increasing murky levels that Deep Throat is operating in.
Kim's Conspiracy Corner finds us wondering about potentially another type of alien who don't quite match any from previous encounters.
Episodes 14 & 15 of The X-Files season 1 could not be more different!
Gender Bender has us discussing how aliens don't appear to have previously had any anthropological interest in humanity. What the Kindred actually are up to is open to serious debate as is how often does Brother Martin - Marty to friends and lovers - actually shower if they still have white clay under their fingernails by the time the fifth dead body is left in their wake.
Lazarus on the other hand prompts some questions about Scully's previous personal life and her exes. Also what kind of staff Maryland University keeps on their payroll. We note once again the strangely long shadow that Exorcist III seemingly casts over the series.
Kim's Conspiracy Corner notes that this may be the first time we've seen corporeal aliens in the series - even if that red string is only connected in the final seconds of the episode.
Episodes 12 & 13 of The X-Files season 1 offer quite the contrast of tones for the series.
Fire was for some reason once seen as particularly frightening, but we both had a grand time re-watching this episode. Not sure it was supposed to be quite as funny as we found it. Among the weird revelations on this rewatch was the easily overlooked detail that the villain is literally using cans of rocket fuel while repainting a house.
Also so much Sculder content for those so inclined. You might not have made it to series regular, Phoebe, but you certainly spurred things on.
Beyond the Sea by contrast is a much more sombre affair and our first Scully-focused episode. The heady mix of Silence of the Lambs, Exorcist III and Zodiac is pretty effective all things considered. And of course, this would not work without Brad Dourif as guest star.
Also our first Twin Peaks cast member in Don S Davis as William Scully.
...wait, do Mulder and Scully both have fathers with the same first name?
And for the first time, no Kim's Conspiracy Corner. No aliens, no hint of government involvement. Unless Nick's bizarre theory about Cecil L'Ively being the origins of the Fire Nation in Avatar: The Last Airbender somehow pans out.
We both enjoyed episodes 10 & 11 of TheX-Files season 1. Not that we don't have a few observations. Questions. Criticisms...
Fallen Angel offers some sort of Predator-like thrills (just be glad you can't see what it actually looks like... Not in a Bird Box sense, more in a 'You might die laughing' sense), hints at much vaster conspiracies but also has us asking awkward questions about what the presumed unseen alien at the centre of all this is up to - while Deep Throat's allegiance is now somewhat questionable.
Eve has Mulder's least logical jump to conclusion ever and on top of that he's incredibly wrong! What initially looked like maybe vampires, but Mulder insists is cattle mutilation turns out to instead be eugenics. Scully remains terrible at talking to kids though.
(but seriously, where did the 8 litres of blood go?)
Kim's Conspiracy Corner surprisingly starts connecting the red thread between episodes as we find that the ghost alien from Space and the seemingly stranded creature in Fallen Angel aren't all that different.
For Ice we take a trip to Alaska for the X-Files' version of The Thing complete with paranoia and probable alien life. As Kim notes this is the first time we've seen alien life on-screen in the series.
Then of course, we get ghost aliens, some confusing special effects and the apparent reveal that the FBI are essential help in space crisis' in Space.
Kim's Conspiracy Corner attempts to fit ancient aliens and space ghosts into the overall whole.
This week we're discussing episodes 6 & 7 of Season 1; Shadows and Ghost in the Machine. The former is the tale of the kindly boss of a weapons manufacturer and apparent nepotism for one of the secretaries. Will seat-belts plague Scully forever more and prevent her from ever directly seeing anything supernatural?
The latter episode has Nick going off on numerous computing tangents and Kim contributing some philosophical aspects. While its nice to see returning character of Deep Throat, the episode is definitely not one of the best so far.
Kim's Conspiracy Corner attempts to fit AIs into the tangle of red yarn...
This week we take on episodes 4 and 5 of Season 1. That would be Conduit and Jersey Devil. We ponder how alien spacecraft can be swift, silent things that hang in the air in Deep Throat but will cook an RV in Conduit.
Also Mulder is really into the not very Jersey Devil-like woman he encounters in Jersey Devil who we have dubbed 'Boobfoot'.
Kim's Conspiracy Corner tries to make sense of a very different alien abduction from Pilot to round things off.
This week we're talking about episodes 2 and 3 of season 1 of The X-Files - Deep Throat and Squeeze. We also touch on our Halloween decorations, Kim's current headwear and her success with Muldle.app - The X-Files wordle-a-like.
Kim's Conspiracy Corner can only draw on Deep Throat this week, but we'll retroactively include Squeeze if this does somehow factor into the series' grand conspiracies.
Nick and Kim chat about The X-Files' origins and inspirations. We then take a dive into the various elements of the first episode - Pilot.
Finally we have Kim's Conspiracy Corner where she attempts to make sense of what the aliens - or unseen force in the woods - is up to based on this episode's events.
Note: we apologise for any audio issues with the start of this podcast. This was very much our first try at any of this. We have things working much better by the time we get to The Colder Deader Eyes of a Killer.
Or at least, there are a surprising number of British people and accents in this series continuation! We discuss the implications and... probable influences on the direction of travel the book is taking. We're quite taken with the writing and how Scully is depicted.
(and realised after the fact - while we note that the timeline feels off in this book and comment that it has to occur within about 4 months of My Struggle 4 as per human biology, there are some references that are suspect...
What we mean is, typically the assumption is a series of The X-Files has to happen more or less concurrently with broadcast - something more or less borne out by Season 11, Seasons 10 and 11 have to happen in at least 2016 or charitably 2016 to 2018 at best. Its not impossible to take place after that, but its unlikely to be the intent. What we're getting at is that the references to WandaVision and Andor feel out of place given neither series would exist at that point in time unless My Struggle 4 occurs late 2022. Which, yes, is very pedantic, but surely that implies a hugely divergent timeline given Covid 19 ought to have a major bearing on the plotlines, so I don't think so?)
Somehow, Nick forgot the gore-fest of Nothing Lasts Forever existed at all, but is now painfully aware of the strange choice of penultimate episode. Not least that the original intent was much more meaningful, touching and appropriate at this late stage. And not involve nailing back-street doctors to the floor with fence posts for reasons the episode never bothers to even try to justify.
And My Struggle 4 suffers greatly thanks to My Struggle 2. We struggle to talk about the finale and how much is left unresolved, how many answers unanswered and how only now do we know its not the end but Perihelion is not starting from a position of strength per se.
It's man vs machine in Rm9sbG93ZXJz, though the robot wait-staff are also determined to make Scully pay. One way or another. We discuss the motive of the antagonist and how Scully could be plausibly tracked through her personal massager...
Familiar feels very old-school The X-Files but we get hung up on plot weirdness and suspect character design. Also why Mulder and Scully got involved in the first place.
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...
*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...
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...
Feels like everyone is turning out to be psychic in Twin Peaks... Laura Palmer, Sarah Palmer, Dale Cooper... Hank Jennings?! Or at least we don't have a good way for him to call right after the letter he sent (presumably days earlier) was opened.
But! For those who know the kind of things Twin Peaks is famed for may be interested that this is the first time an owl has an on-screen presence. Also Maddy looks very set to just make all the relationship tangle even more complicated...