SEASON 1

SEASON 2

SEASON 3

SEASON 4

SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

SEASON 6

SEASON 7

SEASON 8

SEASON 9

Recap by Lurkey

Oh, Paper Hearts, how I love you. Maybe it's odd, that this is one of my absolute favorite episodes, because it actually defies most of the conventions we've come to expect from an X-File. It has only the subtlest hint of the supernatural; it flirts with the mytharc, and then turns it on its head and encourages us, and even Mulder, to doubt it entirely. On the other hand, it's absolutely crammed with layer upon layer of self-referential nods to previous episodes and plot threads, and it gifts us with a singular moment of nakedly emotional character development that absolutely blows the doors off as far as I'm concerned. And, finally, it features the worst, best kind of monster: not an alien, not a mutant or manbat or garbage golem or exploding pustule person. Just…a guy. A creepy, cruel, sick and batshit crazy guy, just one of the everyday monsters that we don't recognize when they walk among us. It's perfect, and it destroys me every time.

It occurs to me, belatedly, that this episode is not exactly rife with the chuckles. I'm all snarked up with nowhere to go: dammit. Carrying on.

Night, Mulder's apartment. Mulder's sacked out on the couch, but he opens his eyes suddenly and looks up at the ceiling, where there's a little red laser dot like that from a pointer or one of those laser cat toys. Or a gun sight. Considering how many times Mulder et al have been or will be shot at, in his pad, he doesn't seem the least bit perturbed. Used to it, probably. He watches as the dot spirals around the ceiling and glides down the wall, where it flickers suddenly into a word: FOLLOW. Mulder rises and obeys, as the dot slides away across the floor. Speaking of cat toys, Mulder, there's this adage? About cats and curiosity? Maybe you should—Mulder? Hey? Aw, screw it.

Outdoors, at what a sign tells us is the entrance to Bosher's Run Park. The dot lingers on a white El Camino parked nearby, and flashes the words MAD HAT. Buh? Mulder trots along after it in his Seinfeldian getup of jeans, t-shirt and very white sneakers as the dot wavers into the woods. It slithers down a tree trunk and Mulder creeps up, hypnotized, to see a very gray-faced little girl in flowered jammies, lying on the ground. The dot pauses on the motionless little girl's chest, flares into the outline of a heart—and then the child sinks silently beneath a swirling carpet of leaves. Yikes. Mulder thinks so, too, gasping awake back on the couch.

In quick succession we see him look up the park address in the phone book, and then pull up at the entrance and repeat his jog into the woods, this time accessorized with his flashlight and leather jacket (yay, to both!). He kneels and parts the fallen leaves with his hands…and we fade into daylight, where a forensics team is carefully digging and sifting the area while Mulder paces and micromanages around them. Pretty, pretty Season 4 Scully calls out to him, arriving with her pretty, pretty Season 4 hair looking longer than I remembered it; it's brushing her collar. Mulder's got the floppy bangs going on. They are both a whole lot of pretty juuust on the verge of needing a haircut. Scully asks for the bullet: he's called for a forensic excavation at 5 a.m. on a Sunday? Mulder hedges, admitting that he's been having a recurring dream about the little girl; Scully's just warming up her dubious look when one of the crime team calls them over. They've exposed a little skull, buried in the dirt. The ridge of bone around the nasal cavity is shaped like a tiny, perfect, upside-down heart. Credits.