SEASON 1

SEASON 2

SEASON 3

SEASON 4

SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

SEASON 6

SEASON 7

SEASON 8

SEASON 9

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Casa de Mulder. Scully’s knocking on the door and not getting an answer, so she lets herself in with her key. No really, they’re not sleeping together, I swear! She turns the light on in his foyer and walks through to his lounge-room, where the circling camera makes it clear that Mulder has begun to take his decorating tips from John Mostow, the Creepy, Sweaty Serial Killer. In a nice dissolve from one picture of a gargoyle to the next, we’re with Mulder in Mostow’s studio. He’s revisiting the portrait gallery and apparently there are unearthly whispers on the soundtrack, or so the closed captioning tells me. Mulder is staring intently at one of the pictures, and running his fingers over it. Now it appears Mulder has decided to take up sculpture. He’s a Renaissance Man! The camera pulls back and he’s surrounded by creepy torsoes sculpted in clay. Weird. It’s now 3.43am and Mulder has fallen asleep there. How? I’d be afraid something would come to life and freak me out! Oh no! A shadow falls over him and he wakes with a gasp! A chase ensues through the poorly lit warehouse, so that all we can see is that Mulder is chasing a humanoid figure with a bald head and pointy ears. Is it Skinner? Our mysterious friend could also do with some Body Shop Hemp hand lotion if the camerawork is anything to go by. Mulder chases him up ladders and across catwalks, and it’s making me a little tired just watching it. Mulder’s gun is still in the holster (if it had been Scully, she would have just busted out her loudest “Freeze! FBI!” and fired a warning shot at his head). At least this time he won’t have a chance to drop it. Oh, I spoke too soon. He’s drawn his weapon at last, but the intruder was hiding behind some boxes and leaps out, cutting Mulder on the face and pushing him off the catwalk into some conveniently located drop-cloths or something. At any rate, they’re soft and they break Mulder’s fall nicely.

Mulder is now being patched up by a paramedic while Scully berates him about turning off his phone and she actually tells him she was scared when she couldn’t contact him. The paramedic finishes the butterfly sutures and Mulder doesn’t even thank him, just gets up and flounces off, leaving Scully to say “Thanks” and if I was the paramedic I’d be feeling pretty unappreciated right about now. Talk about being in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel, which is exactly how this plays. Mulder is shrugging on his coat, and walking very quickly out of the warehouse, but Scully is like a little terrier, following him doggedly and nipping at his heels. She is not going to let this go. Apparently Scully has been unable to get hold of Mulder for two days – he hasn’t been returning her calls. He attempts to distract her from this line of questioning by saying, “This thing exists Scully. It’s real.” Scully is getting really exasperated by this stage, reiterating that Mostow is the killer and that there is a copycat. Mulder asserts that whatever attacked him wasn’t a person, but when Scully asks him if he actually saw it, he refuses to answer, instead rolling his eyes and looking as though he is barely restraining himself from saying something to Scully he’ll truly regret later. She says that maybe he’s only seeing what he wants to see, which tips Mulder over the edge and he yells at her: “What makes you think I would want to see that!” Scully is a little taken aback, but keeps on going. She tells him that he should listen to himself and admits to him that she went to his apartment when she couldn’t reach him and that she saw his new wallpaper. Mulder picks up quite quickly that she thought it in bad taste. Then she drops the clanger that B-Pat is testing Mulder and that he asked for him on the case specifically. Mulder just gets into his car without another word and drives off. Scully looks pretty annoyed at this point, but at least she knows he’s alive and relatively sane, right?

Her primary target fled, Scully looks around for someone else to take out her temper on. And look, it’s B-Pat and sidekick lurking in the alley. How convenient. Get ready for a dose of Hurricane Scully boys – you’d better batten down the hatches. She asks B-Pat for a minute – in private. Sidekick, realising he has just been handed a golden opportunity to save his genitals from serious damage, leaves B-Pat to Scully’s tender mercies. She bails B-Pat up about requesting Mulder on the case, and of knowing exactly how deeply it would affect him. B-Pat squirms a bit on the hook, saying that Scully should take up Agent Mulder’s conduct with Mulder himself. Scully says that he knows she has already done that and B-Pat asks what she expects him to do about it. Scully accuses B-Pat of trying to payback Mulder for quitting the ISU to work on the X-Files and B-Pat denies that his motivations are that petty. He all but admits he needs Mulder to solve the case for him, and Scully softens at the compliment, but then B-Pat spoils it all by giving Scully a warning to let Mulder do what he has to do, telling her not to get in his way or to try to hold him back, because she won’t be able to. Why she’s taking advice on her love life from B-Pat, I’ll never know. Sidekick has been watching all this from a distance, stroking at his stitches. That must be itching like hell by now. Resigned, Scully makes her way back to her car. She gets in and starts it, just happening to look over at the tyre of another car parked next to her. Dun DUN DUHHHNNNN!!!!! There’s a blade from an Exacto knife stuck in the rubber! She grabs her trusty flashlight and goes over to investigate. Pulling some latex from her pocket, she removes it from the tyre and looks at it closely. She decides further investigation is warranted and looks underneath the vehicle, finding the rest of the Exacto knife, sitting in an oil spot. Isn’t that always the way?

Bzzzztttt. Mulder’s back at the prison. He asks Mostow why the creature didn’t kill him like it killed the others. Perhaps because you had a gun, Mulder? Mostow continues his runaround bullshit and looks extremely greasy in this scene. Eeeewww. Mulder wants Mostow to help him get inside its head so he can understand what it wants. Mostow just keeps giving him his Eastern-European Vincent Price impression, which is not helping at all. Mulder quickly reaches the end of his tether and indulges in some police brutality. Moist! However, it doesn’t help. Mostow probably thinks Mulder’s a bit of an amateur compared to the KGB, so Mulder leaves.

Meanwhile, Scully’s over at the FBI Sci-Crime Lab, in the Latent Fingerprint Section. Wow. I wonder if the FBI really is that specific? Unlike Mulder, Scully knows how to play nice with the other agents, and the Sci-Crime lady has worked hard and gotten some results for Scully. I sometimes wonder how much of the missing X-Files evidence has to do with Mulder pissing off his fellow agents, and how much is actually conspiracy-related. Sci-Crime Lady dusted the blade with Redwop (Scully goes Wha?) and Sci-Crime Lady has to admit to a geek in-joke – it’s powder spelled backwards. Oh, the yuks in the Sci-Crime lab must be something to see! She and Scully are wearing some rad sunglasses, possibly to protect their eyes from the UV. Apparently the real name for Redwop is fluorescent lycopodium. You learn something new every day in this show. You can tell Scully’s storing that little bit of information up so she can impress Mulder with it later. There’s a partial index on the blade, and a full thumb on the haft of the handle. The prints are oriented where someone would grip the knife, which is why Sci-Crime Lady thought she had Scully’s guy (oh, really), but it turns out that the prints were Mulder’s. Scully is rather disturbed by this information, but I’m thinking that if Mulder were the killer, he’d have enough knowledge of forensic science not to be so sloppy as to leave his fingerprints on a murder weapon. Unless he was being extra clever, but this could go round and round in circles.