Happy Halloween!
Look, confession time.
I’d never seen an episode of X-Files until a few months ago. Since then, I’ve binged the entirety of the X-Files franchise, including the movies, The Lone Gunmen spin-off, and the revival seasons. That’s despite me being an absolute wimp when it comes to horror, let alone my traumatic past with “aliens.”
>> Cut to flashback: When I was about 10 years old, my family used to do the 16-hour drive from Durango, Colorado back to SoCal in a single shot. That meant cutting through the flat, desolate Arizona desert in the dead of night, without seeing the flash of another car’s headlights for hours on end.
During one long, quiet stretch, my mom rotated around to me in the backseat and, in a gravely serious voice, confessed that she was an alien. My grandmother then had to spend the rest of the night reassuring me that my sweet mother was not, in fact, an alien wearing human skin.
To this day, my mom has still not recanted her statements. 👽
Anyhoo, what better reason to kick off Halloween than a deep-dive into the top 7 best-written episodes of the X-Files (plus one dark horse contender).
For the X-Files fanatics out there, it’ll come as no surprise that the episodes written by Darin Morgan and Vince Gilligan (creator of Breaking Bad and co-creator of Better Call Saul) dominate my list.
Both of these guys are masters of weaving horror, humor, and the fantastical through their stories. They keep viewers off-kilter, never letting you know if a shock, a twist, or a joke is coming at you next.
(Warning: plot spoilers ahead)
#7 Humbug (s2e20)
Writers: Darin Morgan
In “Humbug,” not only do we get your standard Florida Man, we also get Florida Pincushion, Pretzel, and Parasitic Conjoined Twin. Scully and Mulder arrive at a trailer-park town of former sideshow freaks (affectionate) to solve a series of strange murders. Of course, Mulder’s first thoughts leap to the “Fiji mermaid,” while Scully argues there are more than enough suspicious suspects literally stalking them.
Prior to s2e20, X-Files had established itself as a deeply unsettling show that probed viewers’ discomfort regarding the unexplained. But in “Humbug,” Darin Morgan bucks the show’s deadly seriousness by presenting its first comedic take on a spooky mystery. Mulder and Scully crack jokes throughout; Gillian Anderson eats a live cricket (to the horror of David Duchovny); the cast of side-show “freaks” are all a lil’ sus and simultaneously endearing.
David Morgan not only delivers on comedic tone, unique setting, and a genuinely engaging mystery, but he also nails the ending in a way that’s both satisfying and consistent with this Floridian micro-society. Mulder and Scully discover that the murderer was the malformed baby twin of one of the freaks, who could pop out his brother’s stomach and burrow into others. The episode concludes with Conundrum, one of the performers who can and will eat literally anything, possibly having devoured the parasitic twin. Mulder and Scully depart the town, suspecting what happened but content in letting this part of the mystery remain unsolved.
#6 X-Cops (s7e12)
Writers: Vince Gilligan, Jeffrey Bell, Greg Walker
This X-Files crossover with COPS involves Mulder and Scully tagging along with the Los Angeles Police Department as 911 calls pour in about a monster on the loose. Descriptions of the monster vary from witness to witness, upending Mulder’s revolving theories as to which cryptid it could be.
Similar to “Humbug,” this episode paints a number of endearing portraits of Angelenos living within a sketchy neighborhood. Mulder and Scully chase after a skittish sex worker for her story, listen to the marital disputes of a gay couple, puzzle over the Freddy Krueger suspect sketch by a wailing abuela, and tag along with a brave but out-of-his-depth cop. With each of these characters, Vince Gilligan makes the chaotic community feel lived-in and vibrant.
Gilligan also brings a hilarious new dynamic to the friction between Mulder and Scully. Mulder traipses around with the sheriff’s department, clearly having the time of his life and aping it up for the diligent cameraman. Meanwhile, Scully ducks out of frame when the spotlight turns to her, and whenever the cameraman follows her, she chases him off like a territorial pit bull.
Both “X-Cops” and “Humbug” succeed by portraying the cultural microcosms of these L.A. and Floridian communities through the lens of flawed yet charmingly dynamic characters.
#5 Monday (s6e14)
Writers: Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, David Amann
Gilligan’s “Monday” combines the soul-crushing doom of a new workweek and marries it with “What if you were time-looped inside of a bad Monday?”
In this episode, Mulder repeatedly wakes up late due to his waterbed having sprung a leak and shorting out his alarm clock. To the chagrin of the tenant below him, his apartment floods, and he desperately needs to deposit his paycheck to cover the damages. At the bank, a robber in a suicide vest threatens to blow everyone up, and Mulder and Scully always attempt to intervene. However, every time they do, the robber detonates the vest, killing Mulder and Scully. The robber’s girlfriend is the only one who knows there’s a time loop, and she must figure out a way to stop the two FBI agents from bungling the situation.
Gilligan’s writing not only combines a great concept with high stakes, it also effectively plays upon the horror of a bad Monday, taking it to its extreme.
#4 Dreamland I & II (s6e4-5)
Writers: Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, Frank Spotnitz
In “Dreamland” (a two-parter), Gilligan takes the classic trope of body-swapping and adds a mischievous spin to it: what if Mulder swaps with a morally bankrupt “Man in Black” and Scully doesn’t notice?
Morris Fletcher runs the subterfuge campaigns that keep the ultra-covert operations at Area 51 a secret. His kids hate him. His wife wants to rekindle their marriage, but he wants to chase sexier prospects. He’s shuffling through his midlife crisis when a weird spacecraft phenomenon shunts him into Mulder’s body (and vice versa). Morris quickly discovers that he’s now a young, hot FBI agent with a young, hot FBI partner. Meanwhile, Mulder is gifted the perfect disguise to infiltrate Area 51, but Morris frames him as the mole the agency has been hunting.
Gilligan raises the stakes in “Dreamland” by having Morris hold all the cards and leverage his insider knowledge to sabotage Mulder. But what elevates this concept is the twist: Morris will do everything in his power to stay in Mulder’s body and not swap back to his shitty old life.
#3 Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’ (s3e20)
Writers: Darin Morgan, Frank Spotnitz, Jeff Vlaming
In this episode, Darin Morgan brings the “Rashomon effect” to The X-Files via a cast of potentially unreliable narrators, who recount the same tale but with wild contradictions. For those who don’t know, the eponymous effect derives from the 1950s film Rashomon, in which witnesses tell incompatible stories about a rape and murder in feudal Japan. Every witness’s testimony is clouded by self-interest, subjectivity, or faulty memory.
In s3e20’s episode, an author named Jose Chung documents Scully’s account of her investigation into alleged UFO abductions. Two teens report having been abducted, but one’s story changes as she undergoes hypnosis. Meanwhile, a lineman claims to have witnessed the abduction but is threatened to keep quiet by Alex Trebek (yes, really), who’s allegedly a “Man in Black.” And an air force pilot recounts how he was abducted by real aliens while on a secret mission to create false UFO sightings. Scully dishevels as the “truth” becomes increasingly convoluted.
The entire episode parodies known UFO culture, where rumors of government disinformation, interference, and secrecy cloud pursuits of first-contact truths. X-Files is at its best when it’s not only telling its own in-universe story, but when it’s touching upon the polemics of real-world conspiracies.
#2 Bad Blood (s5e12)
Writers: Vince Gilligan, Tim Minear, Billy Brown
In “Bad Blood,” Gilligan takes a more intimate, character-portrait spin on Morgan’s dash at the Rashomon effect in “Jose Chung’s.” In this episode, Mulder and Scully recount what led to Mulder murdering a Texan teenager, whom Mulder believed was a vampire. We witness the same events but through the wildly opinionated perspectives of both agents.
The story plays heavily into Mulder and Scully’s core friction: Mulder’s fantastical, overconfident theorizing versus Scully’s straightlaced but myopic science-mindedness. In Scully’s version, Mulder is an overenthusiastic maniac who impulsively leaps at any clue that the murderer might just be a vampire. In Mulder’s, he’s demure and reasonable as he presents his arguments to Scully, who’s relentlessly dismissive and short with him.
At another point, Luke Wilson plays a helpful local sheriff. In Scully’s tale, he’s handsome and competent, while in Mulder’s, the poor sheriff is a toothy, unintelligent redneck. (Ultimately, we learn that the sheriff is a clever vampire intent on keeping his vampire town a secret.)
#1 Clyde Bruckman’s Final Response (s3e4)
Writers: Darin Morgan, Frank Spotnitz, Jeff Vlaming
Not to follow the crowd, but s3e4 is the #1 top-rated X-Files episode on IMBD for good reason. The heart of this episode is Clyde, a curmudgeonly life insurance salesman who seems to be a genuine but reluctant psychic.
In this episode, a serial killer is murdering various types of psychics, and police bring on a famous TV psychic to solve the case. But Mulder believes the flamboyant TV personality to be a fraud while stumbling upon Clyde, who demonstrates a remarkable ability to predict the nature of one’s death. The problem is that Clyde is otherwise a terrible psychic, who’d strongly prefer not to be tortured by his gruesome visions.
At the heart of this episode lies the question: if Clyde can predict someone’s death, doesn’t that mean death can be averted? At one point, Clyde predicts Mulder’s death (he steps onto a pie and has his throat slit by the killer). The moment occurs as predicted, but Scully shoots the killer, saving Mulder. Only in retrospect does Clyde realize he had predicted the killer’s death, not Mulder’s.
Darin Morgan closes the episode in a thematic, bittersweet way: Clyde commits suicide (asphyxiation) to escape the traumatic visions while Scully comforts him in his passing. The episode is a masterclass in studying how the supposed “gift of clairvoyance” would turn out to be a curse for a life insurance salesman.
Bonus Contender: Milagro (s6e18)
Writers: Chris Carter, John Shiban, Frank Spotnitz
Okay, hear me out. As a writer, my love for this episode may be biased, but this is one of those sticky stories. By that, I mean that its alluring characters and bewitching mood lingers long after you’ve watched it.
“Milagro” follows Philip Padgett, a gifted writer who’s obsessed with his writing muse: Scully. He’s moved into the apartment next to Mulder’s to get closer to her. The murders he describes in his magnum opus keep coming true, leading Mulder to suspect Philip. Meanwhile, Philip’s fierce attention intoxicates Scully, drawing her into Philip’s bed (and we’re left to make our own assumptions as to what did or didn’t happen).
Strangely, while Chris Carter resisted giving fans the Mulder-x-Scully moments they craved, he had no problem writing one of the most seductive, titillating episodes in the franchise. …Just not with Mulder.
October’s Cat Photo
Speaking of aliens, I’ve been tearing through Martha Wells’s The Murderbot Diaries, which is a collection of novellas centered around SecUnit, who’s half-organic / half-killing machine. The books are fast-paced romps through alien planets, abandoned science stations, and conscious spaceships. I highly recommend them!
See you next month! May you gobble all the candy and scare the beeswax out of the children this Halloween,
— Autumn
P.S. Here’s one last X-Files meme to send you off. Be sure to tag yourself, fam!