"Zero Sum"

"Bees! Bees! Bees in the car! Bees everywhere! God, they're huge and they're sting crazy! They're ripping my flesh off! Run away, your firearms are useless against them!"
Originally Aired 4/27/1997

Another episode I watched only once before, however, it was well before I was a fan and I guess at that time I assumed Skinner was always a bad guy. I'm sure I missed a lot of the dialogue about a "deal" Skinner had made for Scully's life, among other things.

F...B...I.

I noticed at the core of this episode, its the same "run around" story they've done before with "E.B.E." and "Little Green Men." They spend the whole episode trying to figure things out but wind up at the same place they started. However this episode leaves Mulder with a sense of betrayal, Skinner is more than pissed off, we know more about bees and Marita, and a few people died from a lethal amount of bee stings. I really liked the entire opening sequence with Skinner performing these tasks for the Smoking Man, where he had to clean up the entire bee accident, including burning a body!

I remembered reading once about the possibility of a Krycek-centered episode, yet it feels a bit unnecessary after this episode. I imagine this is the exact thing all of the Smoking Man's unwilling associates have to do; X had to do a lot of "dirty work", its just sometimes he enlisted Mulder to help (like in "Wetwired".) I imagine if they did a Krycek episode it would be the same circumstances, just change the scenery. Krycek probably kills someone for the Smoking Man (rather than bees), then has to clean up everything, discard the body, only Smoking Man chastises him for messing up one minor detail. However, instead of telling Smoking Man to "suck it" like Skinner did, Krycek would probably kiss up to keep his status in the Syndicate.

Mitch and David were great here at conveying frustration towards the Smoking Man and he's just as evil as ever. I suppose I had started to forget just how evil he could be since he's been absent for so long, combined with realizing he's just a "clean up crew" for the Syndicate, not the actual head of the organization. I think if he were in charge that their meetings would be a lot quicker; that Elder guy is so fat it takes him awhile to spit out words. "Where....is the progress....of the project?" Those meetings must be so boring.

One other quick note, its weird that in back to back weeks, two people have pretended to be Mulder. And about Marita, she seemed really pointless to me as a character but here she served a purpose. The Syndicate guy asked Smoking Man for reassurance, so a few scenes later we see her show up and pressure Skinner to report the bee incidents. It was just a ploy to keep Skinner on track. This was a good episode but also a necessary episode. They needed to hit the cancer storyline again, especially this close to the end of the season. What makes it better is that AD Skinner was at the center of it.

"Small Potatoes"

"They don't have trailer parks in outer space."
Originally Aired 4/20/1997

I believe this is an episode I originally watched once before, so I was eagerly waiting for a chance to watch it again. It's worth the wait because it could actually be the perfect episode to sell a new fan on the series. Usually if I mention The X-Files, it seems to have the reputation for being just a television series about aliens, except fans know that's just scratching the surface. It's more than that; there are mutants, insects, psycho killers, parasites, ghosts of senior citizens, and comedies like "Small Potatoes." While I love the Darin Morgan episodes, you have to be a fan to truly appreciate his style, like the "Jose Chung" episode which spoofs the alien abduction episodes. Although Gilligan's humor here is just as subtle and smart. It's really hard to pick a favorite moment; I honestly think I laughed the hardest at the Star Wars comment when she said she has watched it 368 times but might hit 400 by Memorial Day. Scully's eye roll as she walks away seals it. I'm especially a fan of self-deprecating humor and this episode has loads of it.

Knock knock, I'm here to rape you!

I was drawn to The X-Files because of the creative plots but the more I watch, the more I enjoy the performances the most. "Small Potatoes" is especially fun because David Duchovny gets to play someone else playing Mulder. I almost take for granted how good David is because Mulder is relatively the same in most episodes but this really shows his range as an actor. The scene where Eddie Van Blundht (the h is silent) first becomes Mulder actually took me a few seconds to realize that it wasn't Mulder. The picture he had of Eddie was perfectly cheesy. What a goofball expression! I even started to feel sorry for Eddie after the girl he dated for so long knows he's a loser, too. But then I remembered he did technically rape those women.

Another great thing in this episode I noticed was that Vince Gilligan has a knack for referencing past episodes- the moment where Scully and Mulder realize it could be a shape-shifter, they mention that they've seen that type of thing before. Also brief mentions that Mulder doesn't sleep in his bed and he uses phone sex lines. So maybe he really is the true loser and not Van Blundht, though I'd rather think Mulder is just too dedicated to his work.

Finishing "Small Potatoes" means it onto the final disc of Season 4, with just "Zero Sum", Elegy", "Demons", and "Gethsemane" before the summer break. At least 3 of those 4 are episodes I have yet to see. Since I'm into the final stretch, if I had to choose the top episodes of the season so far, I'd definitely put "Small Potatoes" among the best of Season 4 and even the whole series!

I wish there was a better picture of the hat he's wearing.

"Synchrony"

"Well if he's already dead, then he's got nothing to lose."
Originally Aired 4/6/97

Scully has a lot of great facial expressions this season.

I've only watched this once before, in fact, it was one of the very first episodes that I watched after I bought the complete series box in 2007. I thought that an X-File about time travel would be pretty neat, yet time-travel is used as the basis for the story, its not about time-traveling. I guess it just sets the story into motion. The how and why is just assumed by the viewer.

At this point in the series they never have what you would call a bad episode, just a dull episode, which is what "Synchrony" is. David and Gillian know their characters; the directors and the rest of the crew are always creating first-rate visuals either through camera angles, set pieces, or effects work; so what makes for a bad episode either falls on the guests that week or the writing staff. I think "Synchrony" is a bit of both. I felt it was only interesting when someone was becoming an icicle or bursting into flames. At the beginning of the episode a man is accused of pushing a colleague in front of a bus, however he was just running over to save him. Yet when we see a close-up of his face, I can't tell if the actor is supposed to be stunned when he realized the old man was right or if he actually did push him to make the old man's prediction come true. Then he makes the same face later, so I think the guy is only capable of one expression.

Mulder seems equally intrigued by fire. In a first season episode he had a fear of fire, yet here when two people are set on fire, he actually looks like he wants to sit back and roast marshmallows. Oh, Mulder.

"I wonder if I can fit a hot dog on a stick through this hole."