The X-Files In 97 Episodes Worth Watching, #4: Apocrypha

This season is heavy on the overarching conspiracy theory, so get ready to spend a lot of time with Skinner, X, Krycek, Byers, and the Syndicate (featuring Smoking Man and friends!)

Episode 31: Apocrypha
(Mulder, Scully, Smoking Man, Skinner, Krycek, The Lone Gunmen, First Elder)

We open Season Four with The Syndicate (Smoking Man, Well-Manicured Man, and their associates), The Lone Gunmen, and Krycek. This is super continuity and conspiract heavy and has some very juicy?...oily developments.


Episode 32: Jose Chung's From Outer Space
(Mulder, Scully)

It's Monster Of The Week time! It's a relatively funny one, too, with alien abductions, a foul mouth sherrif whose profanity is amusingly handled for prime time network television, and The Best Cameo of the series, if not the best cameo in all of 90s TV.


Episode 33: Quagmire
(Mulder, Scully)

Frogs. You're already on board, right? The investigation into a decreasing frog population leads to one of the longest and best Mulder/Scully scenes for the entire series.


Episode 34: Wetwired
(Mulder, Scully, Smoking Man, Skinner, X, The Lone Gunmen)

Despite the cast involved in this, this episode isn't focused on the series' long-arc about alien abduction and everybody's past. Instead, we get an investigation into the relationship between television and violence with X, members of The Syndicate, Skinner, and The Lone Gunmen all helping piece together a relatively smaller scale conspiracy.


Episode 35: Talitha Cumi
(Mulder, Scully, Smoking Man, Skinner, X)

Here is the overarching conspiracy episode with some awesome character development between Mulder and Smoking Man.


Episode 36: Herrenvolk
(Mulder, Scully, Smoking Man, Skinner, X, First Elder, Marita Covarrubias, Samantha Mulder, Teena Mulder)

This is the beginning of the X-Files official season four. It's one of those great Build Your Longtime Story By Destroying Part Of It episodes. Also, there's a creepy new wrinkle to the mystery.


Episode 37: Home
(Mulder, Scully)

This is more Friday The 13th than X-Files, as the Monster Of The Week is humanity. Horrible, distorted humanity.


Episode 38: Musings Of A Cigarette Smoking Man
(Smoking Man, The Lone Gunmen)

There is a phenomenon in Doctor Who called Doctor Lite Episodes, wherein the Doctor is either barely used or not at all. This episode has barely any Mulder or Scully, as we see the career of Smoking Man through his own eyes.


Episode 39: Tunguska
(Mulder, Scully, Smoking Man, Skinner, Krycek, The Well-Manicured Man, Marita Covarrubias )

Everyone is turning on everyone, as the US Government demands to know Where Is Fox Mulder? (No, there was no reason to think he was missing before this episode.)


Episode 40: Terma
(Mulder, Scully, Smoking Man, Skinner, Krycek, The Well-Manicured Man)

Where is Fox Mulder? Russia? Why? We end the season trying to find that out.