Week of Review - X-Files S6 Episode Guide

Season 6 was a very different time for The X-Files.  The season is still in shock after the impact of X-Files: Fight the Future and the season 5 finale, which saw the destruction of the X Files that Mulder had been pulling from and the agents getting reassigned to a new assistant director.  As such, a lot of the episodes ended up with the agents stumbling into an X-File type situation, Mulder pulling together old fragments of the burned cases, or actively seeking out weirdness other agents had written off.  Eventually this fell away as the status quo was returned to normal but it was still a major shift when it happened.  As such, some of these one-off episodes are a little difficult to jump into if you don’t know who like AD Kresh or Agent Spender are.  However, if you just role with those punches there’s a lot to like this season.

S6E2                        Drive

Fun fact: this episode is the first project between Brian Cranston and Vince Gilligan, the actor/creator duo that would eventually give us Breaking Bad.  The episode is a brilliantly simple premise, with Mulder ending up trapped in a car with a man who can’t slow down or his head will explode.  Seriously, for a premise as incredibly goofy as that the episode is really good and really grounded, mainly thanks to how much gravitas and pathos Cranston infuses into his role as the man who can’t slow down.  There’s lot of cool conspiracy stuff around the margins dealing with the government testing and sonic weapons as Scully scrambles to figure out a way to save them but it’s Mulder and Cranston who really steal the show in the lead focus.  It’s a dynamite episode that did a lot to establish the agents’ new status quo, especially with how much their new boss is trying to sabotage them. 

S6E3                         Triangle

Come on, it’s one of the world’s most famous mystery spots, of course there’s a Bermuda Triangle episode.  This is another instance of the agents, specifically Mulder, seeking out a mystery in progress rather than digging through the files or letting people come to him.  In the Bermuda Triangle, a cruise ship has drifted into satellite view seemingly out of nowhere so Mulder rushes down to investigate.  He ends up transported back in time onto a version of the cruise ship in the 1940s packed with weird, world war 2 analogs to the agents, their allies, and enemies.  It’s thoroughly surreal episode but still enjoyable, especially since we get the adventures of 1940s OSS Dana Scully, which is the greatest thing.  The whole thing is basically an excuse to throw everybody in period costume and play world war 2 for 45 minutes but it’s a fun ride.

S6E4                        Dreamland

This is another quasi-mythology episode, revolving around strange goings on at Area 51.  There’s nothing really in the episode that explains the broader conspiracies or alien invasion plan so it’s fine to watch by itself if you’re just looking for some fun X-Files shenanigans.  The story is that Mulder ends up swapping bodies with a high ranking official from Area 51, forcing the two men to walk in each other’s shoes for a time.  The Area 51 guy, Michael McKean, is a blast in Mulder’s body as he realizes how much of a loser Mulder really is despite his good looks and well built form.  Meanwhile, Muler tries to use his time in McKean’s body to discover the secrets of Area 51 only to discover its yet another false figurehead of conspiracy theories filled only with more lies, cover-ups, and untruths.  I really love the how subversive the episode is to the idea of conspiracies, that they’re so big and convoluted no one knows what’s going on. 

S6E7                         Terms of Engagement

This is a good episode for getting a handle on the collection of weirdness that informed season 6.  Firstly the central case is one the agents had to steal from someone else who wrote it off as garbage.  Beyond that, the episode is a quasi-comedy, revolving ideas that feel more adjacent to humor rather than being actually funny.  Finally, just to complete the surreality of it all you’ve got Bruce Campbell in the lead role as a demon in human form looking to conceive a human child.  The whole thing plays as a sort of spoof of Rosemary’s Baby that got lost on the way to serious town and ended up stranded somewhere between seriousness and tongue-in-cheek affects.  Despite that oddness the episode is still enjoyable and memorable.  A good part of that comes from the effects work, by this point in Carter’s production history the team had nailed doing demon make-up and effects and this episode is a great showcase of it.  What’s more, the ending is an interesting twist on expectations that’s striking and memorable, a good episode to check out if you’re more forgiving. 

S6E13                        Agua Mala

Another Arthur Dales episode though this one is set in modern times and revolves around a hurricane striking Dales’ home in Goodland, Florida.  The hurricane has brought with it some form of deadly sea monster lurking through the building and the ancients are forced to try and capture it.  It’s a very dark episode and I mean that literally as the agents stalk the creature through the dripping and water logged apartment building as the storm rages outside.  This is one of the few X-Files stand outs without a villain, as the creature is just a monster rather than an actor to give it a humanoid face and emotions.  As such a lot of tension comes from how little we see it and how it doesn’t make a ton of sense from the start, seemingly able to move at will through the apartment building despite its incredible size and devastating poison.  Rather than unnerving creepiness or fun adventure this episode is a lot more horror/action, which is a hat X-Files rarely wears but does so with skill and confidence.

S6E14                        Monday

This is another episode where the agents really aren’t the focus but it’s a very interesting exploration of the idea.  The episode follows a young woman caught in a time loop of as her boyfriend carries out a botched bank robbery over and over again.  This kind of a plot can be tricky to pull off as it runs the risk of slipping into annoying repetition like Vantage Point but ‘Monday’ limits itself to only a handful of failed robbery scenarios.  You’ll probably guess the ending to the time loop mystery if you know anything about emotions or screen writing pathos but it’s the journey not the destination and the journey is a very smart and well-written one.  One of the weirdest elements is the idea that the time loop isn’t just impacting the young woman, that everyone is stuck reliving the same day over and over again it’s just she’s the only one to realize it, good strong sci-fi stuff.

S6E15                        Arcadia

Something that filtered through a lot of X-Files episodes was a kind of manic obsession with the artificiality of middle class life in the ‘90s.  Things like cosmetic surgery, call centers, 24-hour cable news and etc. tended to pop up a lot as sort of plot-adjacent ideas, window dressing around a core concept.  Arcadia is a great example of that, revolving around a series of brutal murders at a planned community.  The creepy obsessive itch here is the patently unreal nature of the Arcadia facility and its strict insistence on following rules and regulations.  It’s a weird idea but the episode is suitably paced and kind of junky fun when the ultimate situation is revealed.  The situation also forces the agents into going undercover as a married couple in the community, which is a really nice touch.  Not necessarily a very meaningful episode but a stand out just the same with a very creative monster and a lot of fun character interplay. 

S6E21                        Field Trip

‘Field Trip’ is a lot like some of the earlier X-Files episodes that featured unreliable narrators and bizarre happenings only cranked up to 11 with a great big dollop of surrealism.  The episode revolves around a mysterious field where people have been disappearing.  The agents eventually discover a massive fungal colony and then things get weird, almost unexplainably weird.  I can’t really broach the stuff that goes on without spoiling the whole episode for you but trust me to say it’s a massive trip to watch and does a good job blending the lines of what’s real and what’s not.  It’s definitely not an episode to dive into if you’re desperate for strict logic, straight forward narrative, and a neat and tidy conclusion that wraps everything up perfectly but if you’re willing to go with the flow on the creepy dream sequence affect of the story it’s well worth your time to check out, especially given the guided tour we get of both Mulder and Scully’ psyches. 


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