Then there's "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man," which is easily in the top 10 overall episodes but too mythology-heavy to list here. Season 4 went heavy on the show's own mythology, leaning on an increasingly intricate shadow government / alien / black oil mythos and leaving room for fewer few monster of the week stand-outs (although "Home," "The Field Where I Died" and "Never Again" are creative, fantastic, and among the best episodes of the series). It's a sort of prelude to the Season 5 theme: Maybe there were no aliens, and UFOs are a cover-up for something much bigger. It's an experiment in mind-control, possibly using elements of the (real life) MK ULTRA, in which the CIA used LSD for experiments in mind control. "Wetwired" serves as a better version of Season 2's interesting but inconsistent "Blood." It's also one of the episodes that doesn't quite fit into the alien mytharc, but provides an intriguing path that widens the scope of the shadowy government conspiracy, something hinted at but never explored in depth.Įssentially, the episode is about the government using television signals to drive people to madness.
Some of the best episodes served as better revisits of previous installments. Smith portrays a former mentor disappointed by his current direction, and helps fill in Mulder as a character while also creeping everyone the hell out. "Grotesque" is creepy and unusual, showing a different side of Mulder-the side that gave him a high profile career in the FBI before he turned to The X-Files. Lovecraft, with "Pickman's Model" coming specifically to mind. The episode seems to be heavily influenced by the works of H.P. As copycat crimes emerge, all eyes are on Mulder, who's testing his criminal profiling past to get to the bottom of the case.
In the episode, Mulder becomes wrapped up and obsessed with a serial killer who claims his crimes are the work of an evil gargoyle spirit. I could stop at that as a reason to watch, but there's more.
(If you don't know his name, you know him as Red Foreman on That 70s Show and the dad in Dead Poets Society). Grotesque (Season 3, Episode 14)įor one, this episode has Kurtwood Smith in it. As an "I should sit down and watch just one episode" choice, it's hard to go wrong here. It's a funny, quotable, breezy episode that knows it's ridiculous and just goes with it.
Once again, the series deals with Satanism, witchcraft, and the occult by refusing to take it too seriously. The episode also features a cameo from pre-fame Ryan Reynolds, who dies almost as soon as he's introduced. It's hokum, but incredibly amusing hokum, taking teenage witchcraft as deadly seriously as any teen rattling off "Hate him, wouldn't want to date him" can be. This episode was as much Heathers as it was a slight Dario Argento riff, dealing with teenage witches who see their magic powers kick into overdrive during a rare planetary alignment.