A Review of "The X-Files" (season 4)

Happy 2019 to all who continue to give me those pageviews. Your attention is most appreciated. Well, I was going to do reviews of all of the Harry Potter movies, but feedback I've gotten was less than stellar. So, in typical 'me' fashion, I'm canning that idea and rerouting to future ideas. I need something else to write about, but in the meantime, I forgot about the seasons of The X-Files I need to finish. So I'd better get resuming those. I have so many different shows I'm trying to watch that watching The X-Files, probably my favorite hour-long TV show of all time, had to be put on hold. No longer! I finished season four, and I'm ready to review it. Let's roll into 2019 with a bang!

When the evil government organization known as the Syndicate suspect that one of their members is passing information to FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), they organize a canary trap to find the leak, using information about the safety of Mulder's mother as bait. X's (Steven Williams) role as an informant is discovered, and he is shot dead, although he is able to pass along the name of another informant who can be of use to Mulder—Marita Covarrubias (Laurie Holden), the Special Representative to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. This was one of Laurie Holden's earlier roles and she's not as aggressive as she is in The Walking Dead. In fact, compared to that, it's pretty laid back. As Andrea, she was brunt, attacking and demanding. As Marita, she's cold, calculating and intelligent. Covarrubias' aid is sought when Mulder attempts to reach Tunguska in Russia to investigate the source of a further black oil contamination. Whilst there, Mulder is held in a gulag and used as a successful test subject for a black oil vaccine. He escapes and is able to return to America, having found that his old buddy Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea) is working with the Russians.

While all that is happening, after having been diagnosed with cancer, Scully is unsure of her future with the FBI. Mulder is convinced that her condition is a result of her earlier abduction (The TV Episode "Ascension"), and is prepared to make a deal with the Syndicate to find a cure. He is dissuaded by everybody's favorite side-character badass Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), who secretly makes such a deal instead. Way to steal Mulder's thunder. While being pursued by an assassin responsible for a hoax alien corpse discovered on a mountaintop, Mulder fakes his own suicide, mutilating the assassin's face to provide a decoy body. He uses the distraction this offers to infiltrate The Pentagon to find a cure for Scully's cancer, while Scully is able to uncover and reveal a Syndicate connection within the FBI.

Now that's what's happening in the show's mythology arc, but what about those stellar "Monster of the Week" episodes? The ones that make the show just as 'worth watching' as the standard episodes? Well, they're probably some of the best episodes the show has ever had since season one. Season's two and three were pretty weak, but season four brought the power of the MOTW episodes back at 100%, and it shows. There are quite a few classics int his season, and I'll lay out my favorites and the ones I recommend.

• "Home": In a small, otherwise peaceful town, the agents investigate the death of an infant with disturbing birth defects, and the trail leads to a clan of inbred, genetic mutants. "Home" also just so happens to be my favorite episode of The X-Files, for how creepy it is. It's the only episode of the show to ever receive a 'viewer discretion is advised' warning prior to airing.
• "Teliko": Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate the unexplained deaths of several African and African-American people whose skin color has turned white as the result of either a rare medical disorder or a bizarre curse. This episode contains one of the creepiest shots of the show, where Scully finds a cursed person staring at her in a viaduct with purple eyes. Spooky.
• "Unruhe": Agents Mulder and Scully investigate a group of bizarre kidnappings in which the only clues are inexplicable photographs. But when Scully is the next intended victim, Mulder must get into the killer's head.
• "Sanguinarium": Bizarre murders in a hospital's plastic surgery unit lead Mulder and Scully to suspect a supernatural force may be responsible.
• "El Mundo Gira": Deadly rain in a migrant workers camp sends Agent Mulder and Scully on the trail of a mythical beast—El Chupacabra. Another real creepy one, especially in the last five minutes. Some of these episodes are just downright spooky.
• "Never Again": On a solo assignment out of town, Scully meets a man whose tattoo does not want to share him—especially not with Scully. This one's not really creepy, but it's an interesting take on possession. Also, the tattoo is voiced by Jodie Foster. So you know... that's some merit right there.
• "Small Potatoes": A small town is "blessed" by babies being born with tails. Mulder and Scully arrive only to encounter a suspect who proves nearly impossible to identify. This episode, while entertaining, dumbs down the 'creepy' factor and ups the 'humor' factor, something more MOTW episodes would do in the future. Still fun, though.

All in all, season four in my opinion is on par with the series' first season. Many of the critics who reviewed the show were very dismissive of it, stating that while it had its high moments it really didn't secure such a huge following as much as the first three seasons did. While it's true that season four really was the last season of the show that was all-go, no-quit good, I do believe it was just as good as the first season. Some of these episodes are really thought-provoking in terms of exposing government conspiracy OR downright terrifying for the "Monster of the Week" episodes. "Home", as I said is a show that aired once and was so controversial that it wouldn't re-air again without a 'viewer discretion is advised' tag preceding it. It, to my knowledge, is the only episode that does so. An episode regarding Mulder & Scully trying to stop a family of inbred, genetic mutants from terrorizing a small town. There's some genuinely creepy scenes in that, such as the scene where the car rides around with Johnny Mathis's song "Wonderful, Wonderful" blasting at ridiculous volumes.

Other episodes just have twisted imagery that lingers in your head. "Small Potatoes" has the infamous scene where the girl claims that the baby's father was Luke Skywalker, the character you might have heard of in Star Wars. To poke fun at the situation, she even hums the Star Wars theme tune just to hit the point home. Scully's reaction is priceless. "El Mundo Gira" is another one. It starts off relatively tame with a village in Mexico getting rained on by acid rain or some kind of weird yellow rain, but it mutates a man's genes and he slowly malforms into a twisted creature that grows fungus on everything he touches, or as his fellow townsfolk call him, "El Chupacabra".

I believe season four of The X-Files is the best since the first season. The Government conspiracy is spiraling out of control as the Syndicate moves to expose the leak they have in their group while the agents move to expose the Syndicate's influence on not only the FBI's offices but the United States Government as a whole. With Scully's skepticism and Mulder's mumbo-jumbo conspiracy talk, this season still boasts as one of the best. There's quite a few episodes here I would use as 'introductory' episodes to the show. Give it a watch.