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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Ratboy gives Mulder some cryptic clues, and Mulder invites him to step outside, but Marita grows weary of the testosterone trio and drops the bombshell that Cancerman is dying. She and Krycek tell Mulder about the UFO in Oregon and that Cancerman wants to rebuild the conspiracy, but that it won’t be there forever and the Schwarzenalien is mopping up the evidence, which means taking former abductees. Mulder asks Ratboy why he’s telling him all this, and Ratboy answers that he wants to ‘damn the soul of that cigarette-smoking son of a bitch.’ Ratboy knows how to hold a grudge. Of course, Scully picks right now to turn up. She seems rather put out by the meeting to which she hasn’t been invited and gives Marita the stank-eye.

The camera pans over the remains of a large fast-food dinner and YAY! It’s The Lone Gunmen! They’ve been brought in to try and track the UFO. They techno-babble for a while, as Scully looks on, sceptically. Skinner asks them to put it in English, and essentially, it’s that you’d never know it was a UFO. Which I guess would be the point of a cloaking device, duh. Ratboy loses patience and says that it’s not going to be there forever, and Marita backs him up, saying that it’s rebuilding itself. I wish I had a car that could do that – it would be cool, and would save a lot of money. Mulder looks undecided, looks at Scully and she turns and walks out into the hall. Wow, her heels are super-high. Her toes must be killing her. Mulder follows her, and she confronts him, saying, “Mulder, if any of this is true…” Mulder cuts her off: “If it is or if it isn’t, I want you to forget about it.” Mulder’s not going to let her go back out there because he thinks that she’s in danger of being abducted again and not returned. He straight out tells her: “I’m not going to risk…losing you.” The little break in that sentence speaks volumes, volumes I tell ya! Seeing the truth in his eyes, Scully steps forward and puts her arms around his neck, hugging him, and telling him that she won’t let him go alone.

Dark, back in the woods, and Skinman gets out of the driver’s seat of a Chevrolet Malibu. At least it makes a change from all the Tauruses (Taurii?). He bitches about it feeling like a snipe hunt. We discover that of all the incredible things Mulder does believe in, snipe isn’t one of them. Mulder pulls some equipment out of the boot and they set off into the forest, Skinner telling Mulder his ‘ass is on the line here too’. Sigh. I can hear the typing from here.

Meanwhile, Scully’s back in DC, staring aghast at some evidence. She’s looking at the medical records of all the people abducted in Bellefleur with TLG, and it appears that they all suffered from anomalous brain activity, electroencephalitic trauma, exactly like Mulder did, earlier that year. Dun dun DUNNNNN! Now Scully says there was something out there in that field, something that threw her back like an undersized fish at the Barramundi Fish-off. Frohike catches on first - oh no! It’s Mulder who’s in danger of being taken! Scully gives Frohike a sort of pleading look, then faints, TLG lowering her gently to the carpet. Wow. Who gets to tell Mulder this?

Oregon woods – Mulder’s setting up some sort of laser light show. Perhaps Skinman doesn’t have Scully’s attention span and he needs something cool to jazz up his presentation. Mulder and the Skinman don’t exactly know how the laser thingy works, but Mulder just can’t help using his pretty, pretty mouth to smart off and snarks: “…budgetarily, I’d say we’re looking pretty good.” You’re looking pretty good in all sorts of ways, Mulder. I’d follow you around too if I got to admire that arse regularly. Mulder takes his little box that goes ‘beep’ and walks through the field of criss-crossing laser lights. Wouldn’t it be cool if he did that thing that Catherine Zeta Jones did in that crappy movie she was in with Sean Codgery? I’m betting with all that yoga, Duchovny would certainly be flexible enough to pull it off. I should write to Chris Carter immediately and suggest it as a scene in XFII. Weird, Mulder looks up and finds a spot where the laser lights just stop. Physics, I hardly knew ye. Of course, being Mulder, he doesn’t tell the Skinman what he’s found, instead he just walks right up to it and sticks his hand in. His hand goes into the sped-up jerking around that happened to Scully earlier, but instead of being freaked, Mulder just looks at it. Back to Skinner, adjusting the equipment (heh, if it wasn’t for the gutter, my mind would be homeless), and calls for Mulder, only to realise that he isn’t there any more. Way to watch his back, Skinman. He walks through the lasers looking for Mulder, but can’t see him anywhere. Uh oh, then we get a shot from the other side of the anomaly, and Mulder’s just standing there, as if he’s in a trance. We can hear Skinner calling for him but it’s distorted, as is his image, like Mulder is underwater. Mulder is looking at the group of abductees, standing together in a bright circle of light. The gang’s all there, Billy Miles, Theresa Hoese, Ray Hoese. Mulder hesitates for a moment, then steps into the circle of light. They welcome him wordlessly. Mulder looks up at the huge spaceship hovering overhead. Scully’s never here to see this shit, never! Mulder looks away from the ship, and sees the Schwarzenalien step into the light and walk up to him. Mulder sort of blinks in fear, but the alien just looks at him and the light gets really intense and bleaches everything out. Cut to Skinner still on the ground, shielding his eyes from the intense white light, but looking nonetheless. The spaceship flies off into the night, taking Mulder with it. Skinner looks anguishes, no doubt already wondering how he’s going to break it to Scully and how he’s going to enjoy his new life without testicles.

Ack! CSM’s looking at himself in a mirror and there’s a knocking at the door. Evil Nurse Greta lets in Krycek and Marita. CSM tells them that they’ve failed, and accuses Ratboy of never meaning to succeed. Krycek just looks at him, although Marita looks a bit scared. CSM says, cryptically, of course, “Anyway, I presume the hour is at hand.” Krycek doesn’t answer him but goes around back of the wheelchair and starts pushing him out. Nurse Greta asks him what he thinks he’s doing, and Krycek answers, “Sending the devil back to hell.” Nurse Greta goes to stop him, but Marita, showing some backbone for a change, stops her. At the top of the stairs, CSM tries to bargain for his life saying: “As you do to Mulder and to me, you do to all of mankind, Alex.” Insinuating of course, that he and Mulder are the only defence for humanity against an alien invasion. With Marita looking over his shoulder, Krycek pushes the wheelchair and CSM down the stairs. Bumpity, bumpity, bumpity, ouch! He lays at the bottom as if dead, and Krycek and Marita just step over the top of him. Cold. They don’t even check whether he’s dead. What sort of an assassin are you, Ratboy? Where’s the quality control?

Cut to – Skinner showing up to Scully’s bedside at the hospital. TLG were obviously taking no chances with Scully and made her go to the hospital whether she liked it or not. She may have Mulder whipped, but Frohike is made of sterner stuff. Skinman’s trying to psyche himself up for this conversation. He asks Scully how she’s feeling. Of course, she tells him she’s feeling fine. It seems that only Mulder gets the truth, she’s still the same with everyone else. Skinner gets very uncomfortable, and can’t seem to start what he needs to say. He can’t meet Scully’s eyes, and she looks away from him too. This is hard! She looks back at him and puts him out of his misery – “I already heard.” GA puts this heartbreaking little catch into her voice and looks on the verge of tears – there’s something in my eye again, dammit! – and Scully reaches out and sort of rubs Skinner’s arm to comfort him. Skinner then blurts out that he lost Mulder and that he’s going to be asked what he saw and that what he saw he can’t deny. He and Scully are both fighting tears now. Scully’s voice breaks as she says: “We will find him. I have to,” and a perfect tear rolls down her cheek. Of course, I was a blubbering mess the first time I watched this episode. There was snot and everything. Skinner can’t take the emotion any more and he turns to leave, but Scully calls him back, as there’s something else she needs to tell him, but that he needs to keep it to himself. He looks stricken – does she need him to clean out Mulder’s porn stash from the office? No – “I’m having a hard time explaining it, or believing it.” She sort of laughs through her tears. “I’m pregnant,” she finally says, looking Skinner right in the eye, who looks like a stunned mullet.

Black screen – was that a season finale cliff-hanger or what?