"Paper Hearts"

Aired December 15, 1996

Hey, the nose kinda looks like a heart, too!

Ever since I bought the complete series box set back in 2007, I've seen that image on the cover of Season 4 and always wondered which episode it was taken from. Its eerily similar to a scene from Season 3 of Millennium. This was my first time watching "Paper Hearts" and my thoughts on it are mixed.

It feels a lot like the recent "Tunguska/Terma" two-parter in that I need to sit back and relax to fully enjoy the episode. Its not that the story itself is bad, I felt its one of the best ideas for an episode, just the way in which it unfolds took me right of the story. Mulder's behavior would get him fired from the FBI but instead its probably okay in the end since he saved the day. His saving grace is that this is not a crime procedure series, so they don't get into details like that; we're here for the monsters and aliens, not people pressing charges! There are some other contrived moments, like when Mulder realizes where the bad guy is hiding, and that he just happens to be sitting there waiting for Mulder to find him.

However when a series is as great as The X-Files is, these details are easy to overlook. Mulder and Scully are excellent and well-developed characters, so when you get an episode that's personal to them, it becomes something special. Also the villain, John Lee Roche, played by Tom Noonan, has been one of the best so far this season. I knew he was playing a game with Mulder the whole time, as Mulder always wants to believe, yet it was presented in such a believable way. In past episodes we've learned Mulder had to be under hypnosis to remember details of his sister's abduction, so maybe this was something he forgot or blocked out. Like Scully deduced, its easy to assume Roche used the internet to discover details about Mulder, yet how did Roche know the vacuum would be that same model?

I think of this episode as being Mulder's version of "Beyond the Sea." Instead of a song and Scully seeing her father, we get Mulder's dreams. The filming of the dream sequences were excellent and showed how the series was on top of its game; this season seems to have the definitive look of Mulder and Scully, while Rob Bowman always has the best directed episodes. Its no wonder The X-Files was one of the most popular shows ever and coming up they'd receive the post-Super Bowl timeslot by FOX. So despite my mixed thoughts while watching this for the first time, "Paper Hearts" is one of the best (and the most tragic!) of the entire series. As if Season 4 wasn't already a bleak year...