The X-Files: Monday (6.14)

I adore time-loop episodes out of principal, so this unsurprisingly worked well for me. The fun in episodes like this is in the gradual differences that pile up on every additional visit to the same moment in time, and that concept ended up fitting beautifully into the rest of the hour. Writers Vince Gilligan and John Shiban also add a level of heart to their script, creating an episode that opens as a fun and interesting experiment episode, before becoming something that's affecting and emotional towards the end.

It's Pam who is at the heart of Monday. While we don't know a whole lot about her, we can assume that she'd grown tired of the criminal lifestyle she shared with her boyfriend, and got stuck in a time-loop as a result of her survival. It's the universe giving her that freedom and escape, only Pam never realized it and kept missing out. She was also resourceful and inventive, targeting both Mulder and Scully separately during different loops to try and change the outcome. It's a tender element to what is already a great hour.

The show also plays around with our pre-conceived perception of movies and TV episodes like this. Each day is different in its own little way, even moments removed from the Pam/Bernard saga. The waterbed springs different leaks, Bernard's notes at the bank are always different, Scully describes her boring board meeting differently each time she sees Mulder, the shoes create different trip-ups. Monday doesn't so much feature Mulder reaching a conclusion to break the loop, more so that the universe simply ends up breaking the spell with a series of slight changes that trigger something big. In that way, the episode becomes something far more ambitious and heart-warming than what it easily could have been. A+

Credits
Guest stars Mitch Pileggi (Walter Skinner); Carrie Hamilton (Pam); Darren Burrows (Bernard Oates)
Writers Vince Gilligan, John Shiban Director Kim Manners