"Biogenesis"

"Scully, you packing any latex?"
Originally Aired 5/16/99

When I watched the Season Two finale, "Anasazi", I felt that episode was a melting pot of ideas and it launched the series into new territory. The conspiracy which was seemingly lead by the Smoking Man was now linked to Mulder's family, Krycek killed his father before he could divulge any secrets, there was an appearance by the Lone Gunmen, Mulder threatened Skinner and almost lost his job, and not only that, Mulder was left for dead in a train car. It was intense. However, four years later, Season Six's finale "Biogenesis" feels like the opposite. It's a hodge-podge of half-baked ideas.

Actually, it isn't that terrible, because it starts off with an intriguing mystery surrounding an artifact found on the coast in Africa. Mulder and Scully don't even appear until well into the episode, around the ten-minute mark. Before they arrive, Dr. Merkmallen arrives in America with the artifact, which is now fused with a similar artifact. He intends to present it to a fellow Biology professor, Dr. Sandoz, who also has an artifact, however he's killed by a man posing as the doctor. The two doctors believe that life originated outside of our planet, which as we know could be true, since the alien oil seems to be a source of life for the Colonists. I like that the series is trying to tackle something as large as the "ancient astronaut" theory, since Season Six has a running theme of stretching the series in new and interesting directions. Where it became a "hodge-podge" is because they seem to use the Cigarette Smoking Man and the Syndicate as a crutch; while we know the Smoking Man is still lurking in the shadows, his presence seemingly serves no purpose here. Krycek should be "the man" now and assume the role as the series' top villain, he's earned it, I just feel like even a hint of the Smoking Man lurking in this episode has kept him from achieving his rightful spot.

I haven't used enough pictures of Scully this season.

Aside from that nitpick, "Biogenesis" actually feels like a subject that should have been tackled in the fifth season. During a conversation in an elevator between Mulder and Scully, she questions their role in this investigation with Mulder adding that he's a "hired gun." That scene feels like it was plucked out of the fifth season when Mulder was refusing to believe in aliens after realizing his quest for the truth was the cause of Scully's cancer. Not only that, he mentions wanting to find his sister, whom he last saw in "Redux II." The questions of God and aliens were also raised in Season 4's finale, "Gethsemane", when Mulder asked Scully if she would prove God existed if she had the means to do so. I get the feeling that this is indeed where the fifth season would have went if they weren't building to the movie, and would have been a more believable way for Mulder to become a believer in extraterrestrial life again.Instead, Season Five introduced Agent Spender, Diana Fowley, Cassandra Spender, and the Alien Rebels; perhaps Chris Carter kept this story idea on the back burner for a year.

Not only does the alien artifact levitate and cause monkeys to freak out, it is seemingly causing Mulder to have a migraine and read minds. Is he becoming just like Gibson Praise? Mulder's headaches increase, causing him to pass out, and somehow becomes under the care of Diana Fowley. She has him committed, which was a rumored plot thread that Morgan & Wong presented in Season Four, yet that was actually Scully having Mulder committed in a season-ending cliffhanger. Was Carter using an idea he had on the back burner or just recycling previous plots? I guess that will be answered in Season 7.

Contrary to my previous belief when I was a young X-Files fan, I love this season's collection of episodes. I love it so much that I am having a hard time narrowing down my list of favorites to only five episodes. Previous seasons had clear favorites and duds, while this season was the most consistent from start to finish, which is a shame that it ended on such an uneven episode like "Biogenesis." I created a list of favorites but I'm sure that'll change even before Season Seven rolls around in November.

Season 6 Top Five
1. Dreamland II
2. The Unnatural
3. Two Fathers
4. Drive
5. Triangle

Honorable Mention
S.R. 819

"Field Trip"

"It sounds like crap when you say it."
Originally Aired 5/9/99

Season 6 is almost over!? Say it isn't so!

Finally, a return to the classic X-Files format in which Mulder presents a case to Scully with his trusty overhead projector. However, it's off-center and he says, "I don't know what they did to this thing", possibly referencing Spender's time as an X-Files agent along with Diana Fowley. The case Mulder shows Scully is that of a missing couple's skeletons which have been found in the woods near Brown Mountain, but not only that, they've been stripped down to the bone. Scully's theory is that it has "ritualistic overtones", while Mulder argues his case about "Brown Mountain Lights" and historical UFO activity in that area. I'm with Scully here; random UFO abductions were so 1993.

Both agents are wrong, as the "monster of the week" this time is actually a fungus. As they arrive separately at the base of the mountain, both Mulder and Scully are seen stepping on a mushroom, which releases spores that cause hallucinations. I enjoyed the "poof!" sound effect that it makes when they crush the mushroom under their shoe. That, along with a cave that Mulder encounters, reminds me a lot of the first season of the original Star Trek series. There was an episode called "This Side of Paradise", which the crew of the Enterprise were under the influence of similar spores. Mulder and Scully's fungal foe actually causes hallucinations while it digests you, which were much more deadly than that of what Captain Kirk encountered. These hallucinations actually cause an alternate-reality that takes place in 3 acts- the first is Mulder's, then Scully's, and finally a shared hallucination.

I remember when I first watched this episode on the Sci Fi Channel one afternoon and I was glued to the TV, wondering just how Mulder and Scully would get out of this impossible scenario. I hadn't noticed the time until the episode was just about over; "there's 5 minutes left of the episode!" The trick was that they don't actually make it out on their own- Skinner and a search party save the day. It reminded me a lot of the endings used in the early seasons, such as "Darkness" in Season One, when Mulder and Scully narrowly escape being cocooned. I felt like this was almost a cop-out, as the concept was so good, yet they relied on using an ending that had been done before. Being the new fan I was, the significance was lost on me. I was looking too much at the ending and how Mulder and Scully would escape, than actually "digesting" the content of the story. "Field Trip" began in typical fashion, with Scully and Mulder having opposing theories, yet this time Mulder points out that he's right about many of their X-Files cases. That leads into Mulder's hallucination, which reveals the married couple have actually been abducted so they could be tested on by aliens. It seems a bit too convenient that everything Mulder predicted turned out to be true and he starts to question it when even Scully agrees that he was right. I guess Mulder is so used to the dichotomy between his theories and Scully's. Suddenly the story shifts to Scully's perspective as she finds that Mulder's skeletal remains at Brown Mountain; he's suffered the same fate of the couple they were investigating. Scully should've realized something funky was going on when not only was Mulder's wake in his apartment, but that there were so many extra people paying their respects to the deceased. It's long been established that Mulder doesn't have a social life outside of FBI work with Scully and visiting the Gunmen. Speaking of them, I loved the part when Frohike says he could use a drink, then every time the camera cuts to him, he's taking a swig straight out of a bottle of liquor.

Scully comes to realize things aren't as they seem, and it bleeds into a shared hallucination when they both escape...or did they? "Field Trip" is actually much better than I realized, although I feel like this is likely the point where Duchovny was coming to the realization that he wanted out of the series. Hallucinating from mushrooms does seem a bit far-fetched, even for The X-Files. The conversation between Mulder and Scully in his apartment would have seemed very cheesy if it weren't for the talent of David and Gillian. The standalones have been a mixed bag since the destruction of the Syndicate in "One Son" and we haven't had another conspiracy episode since then. Whatever was lacking in terms of plots for episodes, the production crew was certainly making up for it with creative visuals. The yellow melting computer effects are seriously outdated by today's standards, but the sight of Mulder and Scully emerging from the underground cave while covered in dirt and goo was pretty damn cool.

"Three Of A Kind"

"Hey man, you wanna 'Thunderdome'? Let's go!"
Originally Aired 5/2/99

Many episodes of The X-Files have opened with a narration from Mulder and Scully, but also her mother in "One Breath", and even earlier this season when Morris Fletcher (guest star Michael McKean) gave a funny description of the life of Fox Mulder to open "Dreamland II." But nothing has been as unique as the opening teaser for "Three Of A Kind." Byers (Bruce Harwood) of the Lone Gunmen tells of a dream he has in which the political landscape of our nation is different, also he appears to have never been a member of the Gunmen as he has a wonderful suburban home, and he's living the American dream with a family. His wife is a familiar face- Susanne Modeski, who we last saw in the Gunmen's origin episode, Season Five's "Unusual Suspects." However his dream life drifts away and he's left with a cruel reality. I liked how the teaser not only focuses on a member of the Gunmen, but I like its dream-like filming quality, which is truly another sign of the move to California, and I've still seen minimal signs of this move. Other than sweeping crane camera angles like this, I've rarely noticed anything that would tip off a viewer to the series' new surroundings.

While the previous Gunmen episode in Season Five told of their origin and how they met Mulder, this time around they're paired with Agent Scully when they dupe her into assisting their investigation in Las Vegas. The Vegas setting is another sign of the L.A. move and they're really embracing it now in the home stretch of the season. Not only are they embracing the sunny West coast of the U.S., this episode is also reveling in geekiness and references to past episodes, thanks to the pair of Vince Gilligan and John Shiban. I just love how The X-Files decides to center an episode in Vegas and they do the opposite of every other television show by centering it around a convention called "Def Con", meaning the Gunmen have met their match in geeks. There's even a Lord Manhammer reference! Michael McKean makes a cameo as Morris Fletcher in a nod to "Dreamland", Signy Coleman returns as Susanne Modeski, and I also loved the "Thunderdome" line from Frohike. As for the plot of the episode, I wasn't begging for the return of Susanne Modeski, though it is a pleasure to see the Gunmen used as more than just a tool for Mulder to gain classified government information. They were a blast in "Unusual Suspects", so why not reward the trio with another episode centered around them?

However, I can't stop thinking that this would have been the perfect opportunity for another Skinner episode or even one featuring the Cigarette Smoking Man. We haven't seen nearly as much of the Smoking Man this season as we have in past years and it's an especially opportune time to show what he's been up to following the destruction of the Syndicate. Skinner was already given center stage in "SR 819", but what ever happened to Krycek and his nanobot device that gives him control over Skinner? The conspiracy has been non-existent in the second half of Season 6, which seems like a bad sign to me because the creative juices were flowing fast and furious in the early portion of the season.

Even though this episode may lack elements of the series' alien mythology, it is a fine conspiracy episode that features an assassination plot that uses brainwashing, possibly in a nod to The Manchurian Candidate. The Gunmen encounter geeks like themselves in Vegas, such as geeks named Timmy and Jimmy. Jimmy is wearing a shirt which says "Government Patsy" (I want that!!) and he explains the entire plot of the episode, only to be laughed on by the Gunmen. Yet in delicious, ironic storytelling from Shiban and Gilligan, he could have actually become a patsy, only Langly is chosen instead. In the past I doubted Shiban's storytelling ability, but he surprised me with back to back episodes ("The Pine Bluff Variant" and "SR 819") which were knee-deep in government conspiracy elements. I think I can thank him for delivering another such episode, although this one is technically a satire. And then there's Gillian Anderson, who is hilarious when Scully is drugged by the bad guy's brainwashing serum. The neat thing about it is we've had plenty of Scully autopsy scenes before but throwing Langly into the mix was an inspired bit of comedy. "Three Of A Kind" is another home run in a season of fine comedic episodes.

"The Unnatural"

"But to be a man is to have the heart of a man. Integrity, decency, sympathy. These are the things that make a man a man. And Ex had them all. Had them all, more than you or I."
Originally Aired 4/25/99

When I first watched this episode in 2007, I ranked it among my top ten, although I had only watched around half of the series' episodes. It seemed like a touching fairy tale, something I didn't expect out of the series. At the time that I was becoming a fan of The X-Files, I felt it was very similar to the The Twilight Zone because each week there is a new story and they would range from aliens to monsters and even an episode with a repeating day scenario. There was also a sentimental side to a few episodes of The Twilight Zone  and here The X-Files ventures into that territory as well. It's a fantasy involving aliens and baseball that may seem too out there even for this series, though it works, and it also comes from an unlikely source- series star David Duchovny.

David's name had been attached to episodes in the past, although they were mostly story credits, but with "The Unnatural" he's contributed not just the script but also directed it. It's quite a feat that the star of the show has also written perhaps it's most creative episode. The story is about an alien who has taken the form of a black man in the negro baseball league after he fell in love with the sport, and allows him to hide in plain sight as a black ball player. It's told through flashbacks by Arthur Dales, however this time Dales is not the same one played by Darren McGavin. That is actually the only flaw with the episode, since it was clearly written for McGavin, though his replacement M. Emmit Walsh does a bang-up job as his brother who's also named Arthur. He tells Mulder they even had a sister and a goldfish named Arthur. The only thing I can't figure out is why Mulder didn't remember that he had already visited Dales in Florida, so he wouldn't be living in that same apartment anyway.

I said I loved this episode upon my first viewing in 2007, and now after watching all of the series up until this point, I appreciate it even more. It's very similar to Morgan & Wong's "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man" from the Fourth Season. They aren't similar stories but they share the same theme. Previous mythology tales had taken cues from real world events, such as "Operation Paper Clip" and the use of Nazi scientists following World War II, and I liked the twisting of history to enhance the sinister nature of the Syndicate. Morgan & Wong sought to try something even better, by taking those historical events, adding the roots of the conspiracy, and crafting an entirely original story. It was a genius move on their part because the building blocks were already in place, they just shuffled the pieces around and created a complete backstory for the Cigarette Smoking Man. Whether it's a true origin or not isn't the point; the fact that they took a risk is, and it's what opened doors for all of the experimental episodes in these past two seasons. David Duchovny used same method as Morgan & Wong- one part conspiracy, one part reality, and combined them into a fantasy episode. I feel like he actually outdid the "CSM" episode because while that episode was centered around an already established character (although in a younger version), this episode features an unknown character (Jesse L. Martin as Josh Exley) and a one-time guest actor (Frederic Lane as Arthur Dales.) I also support more opportunities to see The Alien Bounty Hunter, too (which is also a co-creation by Duchovny.) A funny thing is that while sitting in the theater last year watching that 42 movie about Jackie Robinson, all I could think about is that a year from now I could finally watch "The Unnatural" again. Nothing against the Jackie Robinson movie, though.

I'm not quite sure if "The Unnatural" returns to its former spot in my Top Ten episodes, even though I do feel it is the most creative episode that the series produced. Much like this is a very sentimental episode, I have my own sentimental favorites that I feel I can't move down a notch or two...yet.

"Milagro"

"I live in my head."
Originally Aired 4/18/99

Scully has been put in danger several times over the course of this series, from episodes like "2Shy" to "Never Again", so you would assume that she could spot a creep from a mile away. Well, not this time in "Milagro." She briefly encounters a man on her way to Mulder's apartment and they exchange glances. Later she discovers a charm, called a "milagro", has been slid under the door of the X-Files' office. Suddenly she's meeting this man once again at a church because he deduced she would visit a particular painting, a fact he knew because he has been stalking her. The man even admits this to Scully because he's "taken by her"; she has muscular calves, which mean she's a runner, also her government parking pass allows her to park anywhere. I have one word for Scully: run! Use those muscular calves and get away from him.

Perhaps I am missing the point of "Milagro". The reason why this man, Phillip Padgett (John Hawkes) knows these intimate details of Agent Scully and also where her office is located so he can leave the "milagro" for her, is because he imagined it. He's writing a story about hearts being removed from victims, which is the exact case that Mulder is investigating. Padgett began to fantasize about Scully after their brief meeting in the hallway, and now they're seeing each other again at the church. Scully's unusual behavior can be explained because she's been written this way by Padgett. It does feel a little too much like Season 4's "Never Again", which is an episode I really enjoyed, although this episode suffers a bit too much from Chris Carter's gift of overly-wordy inner monologues.

I actually do enjoy the character of Padgett and the dialogue he has between Mulder and Scully, such as the repeated use of the line, "anything I'd know?" It's usage during the conversation between Padgett and Mulder, when he asks if the case is anything he'd know, increases his creep factor because the murder case *is* something he'd know. He's the one creating the it. The conversation he has with Scully before entering his apartment is my favorite moment in the episode, especially the line that "loneliness is a choice." I can relate to that.

With Season Six winding down and only four more episodes remain, I really wanted to enjoy this episode more than I do. I watched it multiple times, trying to gain some meaning from it and understand the concept better. I feel perhaps it may have been too hyped since it was one of the "unseen" episodes from this season, I'd known it was a favorite episode among the writers and also actor Sean Penn, plus it's inclusion on an "Essential" DVD collection of episodes that was released before the feature film, I Want To Believe. Including it with fan favorites like "The Post-Modern Prometheus", "The Host", and "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" meant that it must be highly regarded. Maybe I'm still missing the point of this episode or perhaps Carter and company are too close to the subject, it's too personal, so they fail to see the flaws within. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and Padgett does tell Scully that motive is never easy and "sometimes it occurs to one only later", so perhaps I'll see the beauty of "Milagro" during a future rewatching of this episode.