SEASON 1

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SEASON 3

SEASON 4

SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

SEASON 6

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SEASON 8

SEASON 9

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We're now at Jackson University in Raleigh, North Carolina . A hunch tells me we're really in Canada, but you can never really know about these things. Ah, that joke never gets old. Although, I guess it will when they move to L.A. The camera pans across a dark lot as we hear a young lady seducing her boyfriend with really bad dialogue about wishing he were under the tree on Christmas day. A car comes into frame, its windows all steamed up. Inside, the girl is straddling the boy and they're makin' out like a couple of, well, college kids. Go figure. There's a knock on the window as a flashlight beam invades the darkness of the car. The kids instantly separate, buttoning buttons and zipping zippers as the boy rolls down the foggy window. The flashlight-wielding man tells College Boy to get out of the car. College Boy tells Flashlight Man that they'll be on their way, but he insists the boy get out of the car. College Boy does, and Flashlight Man shines his trusty beam directly at his face. Flashlight Man asks for ID, but College Boy, who must be learning something because he notices that the man's wearing jeans and, duh, cops rarely wear jeans while on duty, is all, "No, you ass. Stop bothering me and my girlfriend. I was almost to third base." He actually asks to see the guy's own ID, but Flashlight Man decides that this is taking too damn long and Golden Girls is on, so he hits the kid with the Mag Lite and the kid drops like an anvil. The girl, still in the car, freaks out, as we cut to:

FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C. We're panning up from an empty envelope on a desk to Mulder reading a "federal profile". He's concentrating very hard, which gives me the opportunity to stare at him, with his pretty, pretty face and youthful enthusiasm, for a few seconds (okay, I paused the DVD) before he's interrupted. Scully peers over his shoulder (well, more like around his arm, since she can't really see over his shoulder at her height) to see what he's reading. "The last time you were that engrossed, it turned out you were reading the Adult Video News," she snarks. Seriously? There's a magazine about porn movies? He couldn't just be reading Hustler like normal men? Anyway, Mulder's all concerned for her. He thought she wouldn't be in due to the, y'know, death, and all. He's so concerned, he calls her Dana. She fiddles with something on another desk, not looking him in the eye, as she repeats his, "Dana," and chuffs mirthlessly. She's probably thinking, "Great. Now he's trying to relate to me. Ugh. I don't want him to relate to me. I just want to do my job. This is creeping me out." Naw, just kidding. She probably wants to jump his bones. She tells him she's fine and quickly changes the subject to the file in his hand. Sensing that she doesn't want to talk about it (good call, Mulder), he moves on to the case.

He hands her the file as the exposition fairy swoops in. It/he tells Scully that Elizabeth Hawley and James Summers, the make out twins from the previous scene, were abducted from school two days before. This is the second abduction of its kind. The first, he explains, was a couple of college kids exactly one year prior, from Duke University, and they were found dead a week later. "They were kept alive, tortured during that period," Scully reads. Lovely. Looks like a serial incident. This means that they have five days to find these kids before they're killed. Which is, apparently, one of two "grim deadlines" that they are worried about. There's this guy on death row who's going to the North Carolina gas chamber in five days, too. He claims to have intimate knowledge of these two kids through psychic ability, which leads me to believe that he probably spies on people in the shower when he's bored. In which case I'm kinda disgusted. Anyway, this guy, Luthor Lee Boggs (because evil people always have three names. Didn't you know that?) wants to be downgraded to life without parole, thus opting to die slowly instead of quickly. Mulder, who wrote the profile on Boggs back in the dizzay, thinks he's in cahoots with the killer, not a psychic. Mulder, skeptic? What are we watching, Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose? I thought not. He believes in psychic ability, he just thinks this guy's full of shit. Oh, that makes more sense.

According to Boggs, Mulder explains, he received a first stay of execution when he was already strapped in the chair. And at that moment he developed the ability to channel spirits and demons. Oh, yea. That'd make me a believer, too. Isn't it more likely that, in Boggs' fear and panic of returning to the electric chair, he came up with a way to get out of it by faking psychic-icity? Psychosis? No, that's not right. Psychic ability? And that he's working with the kidnapper to prove that he's not faking, using a last-ditch, "get out of the electric chair" card? That's what Mulder thinks, anyway. Mulder sits at his desk as the exposition fairy struggles to keep its wings from crapping out under the weight of this long-ass monologue. Scully follows suit in her chair across from him (wow, this is way before she had a desk. Keep waiting, Scully. It'll take four years and a badly timed one night stand to get that requisition order in.), and Mulder tells her that Boggs likes killing. A lot. He killed his entire family over Christmas dinner and then sat down to watch the last quarter of the Detroit/Green Bay game. And why did they get this case, you ask? Well, because Boggs asked Mulder to come down and investigate, that's why. Boggs feels that Mulder is the only one who "truly understands what he is." Joy. And with that, Mulder grabs his coat and heads toward the door, but not before I notice that there is a picture of an astronaut where the I Want to Believe poster should be! The hell?

Anyway, Mulder leaves for Raleigh this afternoon. Good, because that fairy could sure use a break. Scully wants to tag along but Mulder's concerned about her emotional state as a result of her father's death, and thinks she should take some time. This is a far cry from the Mulder of six years from now, who asks Scully to do his mother's autopsy for him. I think I like this Concerned Mulder Model better. Anyway, she insists she needs to work to keep her mind occupied, and he tells her how sorry he is about her father. He actually cups her cheek in his hand and does this little rub thing, and I remember this moment well because it is the exact point at which I became a shipper for life. What a long, hard road it's been for me since, let me tell ya. Anyway, she seems to appreciate the sign of affection, but she's understandably preoccupied. She nods thank you and he walks out the door.

With him gone, she skulks over to a nearby file cabinet and starts flipping through the X files. She pulls out one marked "Visionary Encounters W/ the Dead," stares at it for a second as though considering it, then quickly puts it back and shuts the drawer. That's right, Scully. Just rationalize it away. It's a little hard to do at first, but by the time you get to season 5, you'll be just missing alien spaceships that fly right over your head like a pro.