Don't promise us the Lone Gunmen being back and then do... that.

Babylon was quite notorious on first broadcast and the intervening years have done little to aid the fact it feels the wrong fit for The X-Files in general and specific for Mulder and Scully. We also get into what the whole point of Einstein and Miller probably was...

My Struggle II uses the phrase "alien DNA" way too many times (we counted) and made Kim quite angry with its rather flippant - if typical - attitude to how medicines work and what certain terms actually mean in real life.

But what a cliffhanger! Oh, how can they possible resolve it....?

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We struggle to say much about Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster, broadly because the episode is an absolute delight and revisiting it has not diminished how starkly it contrasts with the rest of season 10. It is still a fantastic episode.

Home, Again on the other hand is part fantastically acted Scully drama, part serious Arcadia remake and part mystifying Candyman-a-like. One of these things feels distinctly out of place and we struggle to make sense of why the episode is formed like this...

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Welcome to season 10! And plots we could swear we saw in Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'. And Gethesmane...

Still! The X-Files is back. Skinner is back! Cancer man... is somehow back! And now we're trying to retcon seemingly 9 seasons of plot out of the backstory. We discuss how strange the apparent project to discredit Mulder is and how odd some of the choices with the revival are.

Founder's Mutation is at least a better episode. Though all these mentions of William are concerning. They're not going to do anything with him, right?

...right?

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We reach the second The X-Files film and are beset by questions. Many of them "Why this?" and "Really?"

While the acting is fine, we are not so taken with the plot or the any of the new characters. We also learned a fair amount from the synopsis we are not sure we even got hinted at in the film itself...

Somehow we can even pick fault with the end credits...

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So here we are. What once was the end of The X-Files is a bit too much like how Seinfeld ended for its own good...

We end up talking about Franz Kafka for hopefully good reasons as well as continuing to observe that Mulder should never be allowed in any kind of court-room.

We also get to our best and worst episodes of the season.

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Release wraps Doggett's running backstory up perhaps a little too fast and a little too without warning (and that's not getting into Reyes' questionable decision re: seeing people taking bribes). But. There is an answer - its bleak and awful and does not involve whatever happened to Samantha. We are however obliged to point out that supernatural force continues to drag its feet in these kinds of episodes...

We disagree on just how supernatural the episode is and discuss the implausibility of walling fresh murder victims with clay.

Sunshine Days could easily be the last episode of The X-Files ever. Sure, Mulder's not present and the whole super-soldiers - let alone alien aspects of the series - would remain unresolved, but it makes a point about the quest for the truth and the cost of that pursuit that with the whole series in mind is extremely persuasive.

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A strange description of Jimmy Bond, but accurate nonetheless.

After our hiatus, Nick is trying to be more positive about The X-Files. Each episode must have some positive points. Unfortunately, he is trying this on Jump the Shark and William of all things.

Jump the Shark does have a lot of sharks and Morris Fletcher. We get into why concluding a series in a different series feels like a terrible plan and how most of the regular X-Files lot seem to be largely absent. Still a shame to say goodbye to the Lone Gunmen, if not so much The Lone Gunmen, though some behind the scenes stuff makes the decision more comprehensible. Though... we'll be back to this in future.

William (the character) is also far from done, despite this William (the episode) seemingly determined to tie up a plot-thread before the series runs out of time. The make-up and prosthetic effects are absolutely phenomenal and we're in two minds bout how the series seemed to toy with expectations given leaving guest star names off the start, but making real clear about the writers and director being one D. Duchovny...

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At least, we're pretty sure guest star Burt Reynolds is God in Improbable at any rate. A rather stunning surprise from Chris Carter, this episode is tremendous fun, though unable to escape more questions about why Reyes isn't fired for this sequence of events.

We talk about our own life-path numbers and how relevant they are; also how Mulder crazy contrasts with Reyes crazy...

Scary Monsters sees the welcome return of Leyla Harrison to the series in a amusing if still grisly episode that can't quite hide how much it resembles a rather famous The Twilight Zone episode.

We wind up talking about fandom given how Leyla views the X-Files staff and how Mulder might be becoming Poochy...

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