Season Two: "the truth is out there"

Overall Rating: 2.64 out of 4 (circa 2003)

I did not see any of this season's episodes during their first run, which means that I was a committed fan already when I eventually caught up with them through occasional reruns and later, via daily syndication. As such, I tend to see many of these episodes through rose-coloured glasses, because the feelings were so "high" when I originally encountered them. To put it in perspective, however — and as most long-term fans would agree — these really were representative of the days when the quality was obvious on The X-Files.

[This is a bit of an aside, but I assume I am not the only one out there supremely irritated by the fact that you can't skip over some elements of a DVD... the most significant being that ubiquitous FBI warning. Anyway, because I've been exercising on an elliptical while rewatching these eps, I have not bothered to fast forward through the show's opening sequence either. Needless to say, I've had a lot of time to look at it closely over the past couple of months and it's occurred to me that if not for that wonderful Mark Snow theme song (theme "notes"?), the TXF title sequence is pretty lame and borderline amateurish. Apart from the single shot of our intrepid pair working an early case and their FBI ID cards, the rest of it seems like an unrelated collection of offbeat images and cliches pulled out of some oddball's hat. I really wondered why it wasn't revamped after the first season.]

Worst / Best

There were many great episodes from this season and it remains the reason why I haven't sold my Season Two DVD set. (I only have two sets — this one and the previous. When my interest in TXF took an angry tumble, I briefly considered selling them. I've since changed my mind even though chances are, I'll probably never get around to viewing all the disks. I guess it's like keeping letters and gifts from an old boyfriend. My time in TXF fandom was a significant and unique part of my life, and for that reason, I see no reason to expunge all memory of it.) Anyway, it's impossible for me to choose one single best episode from a season that saw me rate seven — count 'em, seven — of them with the highest rating possible. Consider it a big tie among Ascension, One Breath, Colony/End Game, and Anasazi.

Worst ep? Hmmm... of the four eps that I gave a "poor" rating to (Red Museum, Fresh Bones, The Calusari and Our Town), I'd consider it a toss-up between the middle two. I have little feeling for either of them in the sense of wanting to view them ever again.

Most Disappointing / Most Surprising

Given that I'd heard so much about "the barbecue episode", I have to pick Red Museum as the most disappointing, because all in all, it didn't deliver much of anything interesting or exciting beyond Mulder wiping sauce from Scully's face... and even that scene was arguably not that enticing. It was one of those strangely "disconnected" mythology eps — and we all know how disconnected the connected myth eps became over time — that seemed to raise a bunch of unrelated questions with no possibility of resolution. (Maybe a typical CC production??)

My pick for most surprising episode from season two is Aubrey and I'm suspecting that some will be surprised by this selection. I more or less dismissed it on first viewing, but this is an episode that I like more with each subsequent viewing. Sure, it had holes galore in the plot and timeframes — as do many TXF episodes, by the way — but there was also something compelling about it, too — in a "human drama" sense, beyond an X-File.