The X-Files: Requiem (7.22)

For all intents and purposes, this could have been the series finale. It works well as both an enjoyable mythology hour, as well as an earnest throwback to the very first episode, and its that cyclical tone that raises a couple of moments of well-deserved angst. The one problem is that there are two whole seasons left after this episode, and you can't help but feel this is just another cog in an already long-tired machine that makes little sense as it is. Are they really going to resurrect the Conspiracy? Are we going to see more Alien Bounty Hunter hijinks? Will we spend two years following Scully as she pursues Mulder in between nursing? Gah.

The X-Files: Je Souhaite (7.21)

There's a beautiful simplicity to this episode, Vince Gilligan able to maneuver around a potentially destructive idea by casually undermining the very implausibility of it. Mulder eventually comes to realize that there's no such thing as wish fulfillment -- and that no matter how he words his wish, there would always be some gray area that throws the whole thing off. The genie, played with sardonic enthusiasm by Paula Sorge, has always remarked of the holes that appear in people's wishes, but everybody that's come into contact with her in the past fails to listen. It makes for an intriguing moral to the story.

The X-Files: Fight Club (7.20)

Fight Club has one of the strongest, most absurd openings this show has ever done. Immediately we're aware that this is one of those goofier X-Files episodes, from the strange Jehovah's Witnesses riding their little bicycles to the exact same woman appearing at two separate houses one after another. Then we see two people who appear to be Mulder and Scully -- only they're not, and it's another example of the show depicting the old adage that everybody has a twin out there somewhere. Unfortunately, from that point until the closing credits, Fight Club becomes a rapidly nonsensical mess.

The X-Files: Hollywood A.D. (7.19)

This is one hot mess of an episode. David Duchovny's first trip behind the scenes occurred with last season's The Unnatural, a sentimental hour that was generally pretty pleasant and moving. Hollywood A.D. is a far more ambitious episode, similarly lifting from reality for its principal mystery before all of a sudden tail-spinning into industry satire at the end. There are some amusing moments here and there, but the stunt casting overwhelms, and most of the humor comes off as more than a little embarrassing and unfunny.

The X-Files: Brand X (7.18)

Brand X is an episode that probably required a little work. There are a ton of strong ingredients here, but somewhere along the line they kind of bottomed out in execution. It does have an interesting central conceit, though: powerful tobacco companies and the greed-fueled desire to alter tobacco itself, in the process creating super-sized tobacco beetles that infect people's lungs and eventually make them explode with insect-y goodness. There's also a neat contrast between the polished interiors of boardrooms and science labs with the run-down poverty of the test subjects smoking this new form of tobacco, but the story eventually peters out midway through the hour.

The X-Files: all things (7.17)

This is a little unfairly maligned. It's by no means perfect, and Gillian Anderson's subsequent lack of further behind-the-scenes work implies that she's aware it isn't her forte, but all things is undoubtedly intriguing as a Scully piece. For so long, Scully has been pretty defined by her Catholicism as well as her belief in science. Here we begin to see different shades to her character, and the deeper emotions that drive her every decision. There's a man from her past that reflects the naive girl she once was, as well as a spiritual awakening that makes her question certain characteristics about herself. It's an episode that seems to be asking how much of our lives are of our own making, or if fate evidently pushes us in certain directions.

The X-Files: Chimera (7.16)

Another peek into suburbia for this show, playing around with soapy themes of marital infidelity, middle-aged disappointment, secret love children, town outcasts and gossipy housewives, while at the same time throwing in an elaborate raven monster that materializes out of mirrors and tears up some cheatin' soccer moms. Naturally. Chimera is one of those old fashioned X-Files hours -- nothing is particularly remarkable, but the central demon conceit is intriguing and the multiple red herrings that occur throughout the episode keep you alert. I haven't been a huge fan of David Amann's previous work on this show, and while this is suspiciously similar to his season six effort Terms of Endearment, it's something of an improvement on his past scripts.

The X-Files: En Ami (7.15)

There's a remarkable simplicity to this story, even if it concerns mythological elements that became tired a long time ago. En Ami is a lengthy tête-à-tête between two characters, an elaborate ruse orchestrated by the Cigarette-Smoking Man in order to get hold of answers that are important to him. Scully is initially distrusting, but gradually comes around to seeing the human behind the smoker. In the end, Scully believes that she's been betrayed again, but the journey getting there and the ambiguity of the ending are both extremely perceptive.

The X-Files: Theef (7.14)

Remember how season one featured constant repetition of bad guys seeking revenge through supernatural means? Theef is a late entry to that type, and an episode that ends up being far more interesting than it probably has any right to be. Most notable are a couple of ridiculously entertaining horror set pieces derived from the deus ex machina of the episode. Billy Drago's vengeful Appalachian carries around his own freaky little voodoo doll, and there are some wonderful fright moments as he sticks pins in its eyes to make Scully temporarily blind, as well as that awesome moment where throwing the thing in the microwave causes one character to be cooked to death during a CAT scan. Eek.

The X-Files: First Person Shooter (7.13)

Season five's Kill Switch was a gorgeous meditation on identity, cyber-crime and artificial intelligence, something that brilliantly fused cyberpunk action with X-Files intrigue. First Person Shooter, on the other hand, is loud, dumb, occasionally amusing, but mostly fug. It's disappointing to see William Gibson and Tom Maddox responsible for something that generally amounts to nothing but thongs, guns and strippers. There are a couple of attempts to make the episode somewhat deeper, but nobody can deny that this is an awkward misfire.

The X-Files: X-Cops (7.12)

It's easy to forget during an era of 'found footage' shit-shows that disappoint crowds of moviegoers every couple of months that there was a time when steady-cam horror film-making was actually pretty groundbreaking. X-Cops is an episode that obviously breaks formula, but also produces something actually thrilling and dynamic as a visual art form, taking the genre histrionics of traditional X-Files episodes and sending them hurdling into the trashy FOX reality series Cops. Vince Gilligan's script doesn't just satirize that show, instead making the spoofery form the entire hour of X-Cops, ending up an actual Cops episode that just so happened to feature two plucky FBI agents investigating the supernatural.

The X-Files: Closure (7.11)

Outside of Paper Hearts, I don't think I was ever hugely invested in the Samantha arc. Then again, I've felt more and more over the years of watching this show that it's been pretty easy to not get invested in The X-Files. Because Samantha's story was just one of the more obvious examples of the series letting a story run away from any kind of logic -- the character getting wrapped up in increasingly obscure mythology hijinks and sometimes losing sight of the overall simplicity of her disappearance in the first place. Closure, while not an episode I particularly enjoyed, does at least bring the story back to its origins: as a means to give Mulder the hope and drive that he needed to engage in the X-Files in the first place.

The X-Files: Sein und Zeit (7.10)

I've always liked episodes of this show that aren't overtly science-fiction, in which Mulder and Scully investigate mysterious phenomena that feels just a little outlandish but still entirely believable -- instead of horror movie monsters and aliens, like the wackadoo that occurred last week. Sein und Zeit reaches back into X-Files continuity with the return of one lingering plotline from the past: the disappearance of Samantha Mulder. What the episode does well is have the girl actually lingering in the background for at least half the episode, allowing the audience to see the clear similarities between the disappearance of a young girl and Mulder's long-lost sister, as well as allowing us to watch in understanding as Mulder becomes far too wrapped up in the case than is presumably recommended.

The X-Files: Signs and Wonders (7.9)

If you had never watched The X-Files but thought you had a decent idea of what to expect, Signs and Wonders is probably the hypothetical X-Files episode you would come up with. It's gross, there's a ton of strange supernatural phenomena, features women in peril as well as a reliably ambiguous ending -- but it's also this show running entirely on autopilot, and besides a couple of decent scares, feels a little too gratuitous to truly work.

The X-Files: The Amazing Maleeni (7.8)

The X-Files had been on the air for over seven years by this point, so it's not entirely surprising to see the writers lifting ideas from real-life concepts instead of creating fresh monsters or new forms of intrigue. Like the use of the Rube Goldberg inventions as a jumping-off point several episodes back, here we have an exploration into the world of magic, and more specifically the idea of distraction as a means to creating what we interpret as magic. It's a wildly fun mystery hour, full of plot twists and double-crosses and secret agendas straight out of an old caper movie.

The X-Files: Orison (7.7)

This is another episode about spiritual faith and the sometimes blurry distinction between good and evil. It marks the return of Donnie Pfaster, one of the squickier X-Files antagonists, and on that front the episode is fine if a little too familiar to entirely work. What makes Orison atypical to regular 'Scully gets terrorized' hours is the insight into spirituality and the acts men commit in response to what they believe is God's will. It's a theme present in Reverend Orison's mission to exterminate incarcerated felons, and it's also in the final coda with Scully. Both are presented powerfully, and raise the bar for what could have been a pretty mundane episode.

The X-Files: The Goldberg Variation (7.6)

Rube Goldberg's fascinating Mouse Trap machines provide the groundwork for this episode, all about cause and effect and how the cosmos engineers seemingly random events to conspire at just the right time. It's a cute standalone hour and another X-File that shines a light on a kind of ordinary sadsack character, this time Willie Garson's lovably cursed apartment super who happens to have the greatest luck in the world.

The X-Files: Rush (7.5)

Super-speed, like flying, always looks pretty terrible on film, regardless of how big the budget is. If there's one thing I should praise this episode for, it's how the show depicts the super-speeding teens at the center of the story. We don't get a whole lot of CGI gimmickry, instead we see the events occur in what we consider real time, so a gun suddenly vanishes, or chairs are thrown seemingly out of nowhere. I also loved the jittery stop-motion glimpsed when Tony stepped into the beam of light. Rush is pretty unremarkable, but the powers seen here are beautifully realized.

The X-Files: Millennium (7.4)

Millennium is a show that I own on DVD but have never gotten around to watching. I always seem to get to around the middle of its first season and then never tune into again, which is annoying. So my memory of the series involves a lot of standalone mysteries about squicky serial killers and the charismatic enigma investigating them. Which, I believe, is not at all what the show would eventually become, some kind of biblical end-of-the-world masterpiece. Or something. With that in mind, I'm not the greatest person to critique whether or not Frank Black has a great send-off here, or if his actions in this episode really reflect the same person his own show spent so long developing.

The X-Files: Hungry (7.3)

The conventions of The X-Files have now become so familiar that it's not surprising the writers have been experimenting with different modes of storytelling of late. Hungry follows the lead of other recent experiments like Field Trip, Bad Blood and Milagro in exploring the different perspectives of various characters. What makes this episode even more striking is that it's told entirely from the perspective of a guest star, Rob Roberts being a cripplingly mundane burger joint employee who lives in a curiously empty apartment, has few friends, and unfortunately has to eat folks' brains to survive.