SEASON 1

SEASON 2

SEASON 3

SEASON 4

SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

SEASON 6

SEASON 7

SEASON 8

SEASON 9

Recap by Lurkey

I blame myself; I asked for this episode, on purpose. First, I relished the thought of a challenge, trying to bring the funny to one of the all-time stinkers, rivaled only by "Space" and maybe that one with the possessed fake kitty hand puppets. Second, in Real Life, I work for a ginormous Pacific Northwest software company it's remotely plausible you may have heard of. Computers! Somehow I thought this would be, you know, relevant. And finally, I wanted to get in on some of the S1 sartorial hilarity, because oh, early X-Files, you were cleverly disguising some very, very pretty people in some seriously jacked-up clothes.

My habit, in writing these recaps, has been to watch the episode once straight through, maybe jotting a few notes on potential jokes before I do the actual writing pass. I did that. Oh my God, you guys, this episode is terrible. Buckle up; I don't know if I can get us safely through it again. This seems as good a place as any to note that rumor has it that way back in the day, young David Duchovny, after allegedly sampling…uh…British Columbia's second-favorite export, decided to take a gander at this little TV show he was involved with. And this is the episode he saw. Can you imagine? I feel you, buddy. I suspect he wondered whether it was too late to get back to that PhD dissertation. (Which begs the question: what if he had, y'all? Imagine THAT MAN, conducting your literature seminar. I would totally stick around for my own English doctorate, if it included an eyeful of Professor Blistering Hotness every other day. I'd be writing little messages on my eyelids like the girls in Dr. Jones's archaeology lecture, because damn.)

I really have to watch it again, don't I? Oh, all right.

A glassy, nondescript office building is identified for us as Eurisko World Headquarters, Crystal City, Virginia. Inside an office, a schlubby, bespectacled software-engineer-looking type is agitating in front of a tie-clad executive dude's desk. "Why do you think our stock's in the toilet?" he frets. "Because you're cutting research and development in half! You've forgotten what the adventure's all about!" Executive Dude is unmoved, offering up some buzzword bingo about industry changes and hard choices and stockholders' meetings. "You're killing me! You're killing my company!" NerdBoy melodramatizes. The boss man brings the hammer down, though: Eurisko's no longer his company, and he'd better get used to it. NerdBoy flounces out like a 12-year-old girl, muttering ominously about regret.

Another shot of the looming building, which is…not that menacing, frankly. Executive Dude, for some reason, seems to be taking his own dictation in his office, transcribing a letter about NerdBoy's departure. I guess this is so we can hear him declaiming the letter out loud, instead of just watching a guy type, but…oy. I'd better not slow down to note every time this episode is stupid; we're only about 90 seconds in. Anyway. A security camera swivels to regard Executive Dude, and then we see the footage on a monitor that's apparently attached to a big computer mainframe of some sort. You can tell it is an important Mainframe-y SuperComputer Thing because it has lots of little red blinky lights. Executive Dude drones on, noting the immediate termination of the COS project, which has been a huge time-sucking waste of money, with "projected losses well into 1994." Hee. Waitasecond—the blinky mainframe has a label: COS, Central Operating System! Dun dun dunnn! Blinky blink blink! Executive Dude checks his watch hammily and shuts his laptop. He's about to call it a night when he hears something: water running. He heads into the private Executive Dude Washroom adjacent to his office to find water spilling all over the floor from the overflowing glossy black totally 80s sink. Grumbling, he rolls up his sleeve and reaches to unclog the sink when the phone that's, like, three inches away, starts ringing. "Hello?" Executive Dude barks into it, but there's no one on the line, just an automated "at the tone, the time will be" message. Suddenly the restroom door slams shut behind him with a mechanical whirr, and the lights go out. "What the hell?" Executive Dude wonders aloud. He sloshes over to the door and attempts to run his ID through the card scanner. You need ID to get OUT of the bathroom? No, no, not slowing down for stupid! Move along! The card won't scan. Dude pulls a big honking metal key…conveniently…out of his pocket…I said no! Keep going!...and inserts it in the keyhole next to the scanner. KA-ZAMM, there's a huge electrical surge of sparks that blows Executive Dude across the room, where he smashes into the mirror and falls to the floor. The security camera refocuses, "ominously." The big COS mainframe blinky blink blinks. "FILE DELETED," it says in mechanical Evil Computer Voice. Oho ho ho, COS, you made a funny! Except not so much. Credits. Everybody whistle along!

FBI Headquarters. A jowly male agent strolls through some random bullpen, stopping to snag some candy from a plastic jack-o-lantern head on a bookshelf; it must be Halloween. Every day is Halloween in the X-Files, though. Agent Pudge calls out to Mulder, who with Scully and others is gathered around some sort of bagel basket/sandwich cart in the middle of the room. Scully, get the real cream cheese! "Jerry?" Mulder says happily, and gives Agent Pudge a manly hug. Lord, Duchovny's so young here I gasped a little. Agent Pudge correctly identifies Scully, introducing himself as Jerry LaMotta. Too late, you're Agent Pudge to me. Pudge was Mulder's partner in Violent Crimes, he tells us; both Mulder and Scully look a bit uncomfortable at this revelation, standing around awkwardly holding their deli-cart sandwiches. Pudge springs for lunch. I bet he wants something!