Yes. After the abomination that was “Space,” this episode was my favorite yet. It wasn’t perfect, but it was very gripping TV. After I think 7-8 non-myth episodes in a row, they finally returned to The Myth storyline about Mulder’s search for aliens. Nothing particularly crazy was furthered in the Myth, but it does show the level of government coverup involved.

Mulder runs off hastily to a site of a UFO crash, where an alien is on the loose. He is informed by Deep Throat, the guy from the first few episodes who had become his informer, that the site is being covered up by the military and he has 24 hours. After some silly scenes of Mulder riding on the underbelly of a military truck and crawling through the forest on his stomach, he gets to the site and then is caught. While in the prison he meets a UFO fanatic. Turns out the UFO fanatic had been abducted in the past, and something had been inserted in his head (like in the Pilot episode), so the alien can find him again. In the end, the man is abducted in Mulder’s presence! The whole story was framed with Mulder being chastised for running off to the site without permission; Scully is trying to get him back to Washington for a hearing so they don’t close The X-Files.

The episode was really good–dramatic, and creepy, and funny (the “crazy” UFO fanatic made a great contrast to Mulder’s non-crazy fanaticism). The bad stuff was twofold. First, Scully was particularly bossy. While she is supposed to be contrarian, and keep Mulder in check, this was a little much. And there was never a scene, like in many episodes, where she realizes Mulder’s theories could be possible. Also, I’ve noted before that the Powers That Be are always shown as being fairly incompetent, or mysterious and shady. Here, though, they were shown as strange caricatures–the head military guy covering up the UFO crash was like an alpha male gym coach, and the head agent at Mulder’s professional responsibility hearing was all red-faced and shouty. I didn’t like that.

But it was very impressive all the way around, especially after “Space.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under XFiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.