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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It’s December 30, and Scully steps out of her black Taurus to a bright day. She’s wearing her favorite all-black festive post-Christmas suit, and her first conversation as she enters the crime scene at the cemetery does not impress her: The funeral parlor director is perturbed, and she doesn’t know who he is, or why he’s agitated. “I know he was one of your own,” he says, “but these rumors I'm hearing that I put a living human being into the ground...you people better get your facts straight real fast.” Scully starts things off well, with our first raised eyebrow, and nods at him. Then she does a patented licking-of-the-lips and looking-towards-the-side which, if you saw it, you’d completely understand her thought: My flighty partner is up to no good, and I’m going to get his facts straight real fast.

We are next looking up from the bottom of a dug gravesite, and Scully’s red head pokes over it. “Mulder?” she calls in a teasing way. “Have you been starting rumors?” Ooh, Scully, feeling sprightly today, are we? Mulder deadpans right back at her, “Why, you hear any good ones lately?” Scully gets tired of the game (too quickly, in my opinion). “Not particularly.” She asks about the grave, but Mulder’s not quite finished with his few minutes of banter and small talk before they dig into their last case of the calendar year. “Merry Christmas, by the way, Scully,” he says, still looking down into the grave. “Thank you,” Scully says in an adorably surprised and pleased voice. “Merry Christmas to you too.” With that, Banter Time is almost over – but I have to say, I’m a little sad that they haven’t talked since Christmas. Five days? I guess Scully was busy with her family, but I like to think that they talk every few days, maybe even every day. Boo to them not calling each other on Christmas (even if Mulder might not celebrate it) and saying hello. What? These are fictional characters, you’re telling me? And being sad that they haven’t talked in five days when they never actually talked in real life is weird? Well, look who’s feeling judgmental and bitchy today. You’re the one reading a recap online.

Over in a more relevant place, in the episode, they start going over the facts of the case: The body, that of Raymond Crouch, has disappeared from the grave, with the lining of the coffin all ripped up. There are fingerprints on the outside of the coffin and “a big juicy handprint” on the back of the headstone that matches Mr. Crouch, which has gotten some of the local PD jazzed up, thinking that the dead man sprang himself. Scully asks who did the digging, and Mulder replies that he guesses it was one man with a shovel, but last night’s rain has washed away most evidence. Then Mulder looks at his partner. “Well go ahead, Scully, naysay me. The body of an FBI agent gets disinterred only to climb out on its own and disappear into the Yuletide night.” He’s begging her to take part in their little banterdance. Scully even faintly smirks at this and says, “See, you had me up until there.” Mulder is more than a little surprised (as am I): “Really?” I think he’s just as tickled as we are that she just said that he ‘had’ her. Hee.

Scully thinks that it was just a grave robbery with a twist: that someone rigged the evidence to make it look like Mr. Crouch escaped alive. Mulder wants to know why, but Scully can only guess: “Publicity, fear, rumors – I mean, I don’t know what specific effect, but nonetheless it’s …” But Mulder is distracted by a series of bloody footprints leading away from the grave that apparently no one has noticed thus far. Good police work.

Perhaps concurrently, we see Mr. Important driving his pickup down a road in Georgia. He’s still saying his little catchphrase: “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” He doesn’t look very surprised when he sees a dead-looking man’s hand peep up behind him in the bed of the pickup; he just keeps on saying the phrase, a little bit louder now…. a little bit louder now…