SEASON 1

SEASON 2

SEASON 3

SEASON 4

SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

SEASON 6

SEASON 7

SEASON 8

SEASON 9

Recap by Namarie

Okay, first of all, I'm extremely excited to be recapping this episode of The X-Files, since it is one of my favorites. Second of all, I want to let you all know that I was wounded in the line of duty for this recap. On the way home from work the other day, I was thinking about how I would do this recap as I walked, and I missed the edge of the curb and tripped into the (thankfully empty) street. This probably also has something to do with me being severely sleep-deprived, but anyway.

We open with a young couple who are returning from a hiking trip. As soon as they get inside the cabin, the wife begins complaining about mosquito bites, and blisters from her new boots. She tells her husband that he was hiking too fast for her, and "for future reference, me running through the woods after you for an entire day is not my idea of a good time." Then abruptly she rubs her temples, clearly having a headache. Her husband, I am pleased to say, does not start talking about how much of a spoilsport or whiner she is, but simply apologizes and says she can hit him on the head with a rock if she wants, to make her headache feel better. She smiles, and says she's going to take a shower. Uh oh. Showers on this show hardly ever end well.

As the wife is taking her shower, in fact, Mark Snow's quiet Strings of Impending Doom begin to play. Suddenly we see from her perspective that the shower walls are covered in yellow goo. Just as suddenly, everything is back to normal. The wife looks understandably freaked out. Then abruptly the music crescendos and we flash to her underground, covered in that same yellow goo, screaming, and after it goes back to normal she looks even more freaked out.

Next scene. The wife is in her bathrobe, sitting on the edge of the bed. She still has the headache and is rubbing her temples. Her husband asks if she's still mad at him, which she denies. They lie down facing each other, touching each other on the side, as the husband promises that they'll never go hiking again – it's "indoors forever from now on." Then he asks what's wrong, and his wife tells him to just hold her. It's very sweet. (Actually, they're in almost the exact position Mulder & Scully are in at the end of "The Truth," which probably has no deeper significance.) Slowly, the scene changes to two skeletons lying in a field, in that exact same position. Um, much less sweet. Credits.

FBI headquarters, basement office. The image of the two embracing skeletons is on the slideshow that Mulder is showing Scully, on a map of South Carolina. Mulder moves the projector so it's now projecting onto the blank wall, and fills Scully in that these two skeletons belong to Angela and Wallace Schiff, a young married couple that were last scene hiking in the vicinity of Brown Mountain, North Carolina (so what was up with the map being of South Carolina? Did I miss some joke here?). The catch is, Mulder informs us, that they were found in this condition after only being missing three days, in temperatures that never got over 70 degrees.