Beyond the Sea

It is so sad that Scully has to be the first to lose a parent.

It's even sadder knowing that Scully's sister, and Mulder's whole family also die by the end of the series.



The opening scene shows Scully parents just as they are leaving her place, where they had dinner. According to her mom, Scully is an excellent cook :)
Unfortunately, Scully's Dad dies before the credits roll, and Scully sees an apparition of him before getting the phone call from her Mom, bringing the bad news.

Seeing this vision opens Scully up to extreme possibilities in this episode. It's nice to see her so open minded, even if in this one, Mulder isn't.




In a surprising show of genuine caring, Mulder is truly sympathetic about Scully's father. He calls her 'Dana' for the first time (then second and third in this episode) which is even more surprising to her. He endures some gentle teasing from his partner, is surprised to see her at work and encourages her to take some time off. He even gently caresses her cheek when he tells her he's sorry about her father.






Mulder suggests she take time off, but Scully feels like she needs to work, and joins him right after her father's funeral. Work is a great distraction; it keeps you busy and keeps your mind off of things. Scully later tells Mulder that she loves her job, and equally I think she could use Mulder to lean on right now.




That's why she takes it so hard when Mulder is shot. She has this heartbroken look on her face like "Oh God I can't deal with this right now".





That's also why she is so intense in the scene where she confronts Boggs about setting them up to get back at Mulder for putting him on death row. And then threatens to be the one to "throw the switch and gas you out of this life for good you son of a bitch!!!" if Mulder dies.



Hard. Core.

Of course, Mulder does not die, Boggs plays plenty of head games with Scully, and by the end of it, Scully has talked herself out of believing in Boggs after all.

Boggs is easily one of the best villains on the show ever. He's believable, scared of death, underhanded, and perfectly acted. The scene where Boggs does his channeling, and Mulder whispers to him "I tore this off my New York Nicks T-Shirt; it has nothing to do with the crime" gives me chills.



The tender scene at the end is a nice touch as well. Good episode.

Fire

Most people think that their exes are complete psychos.

Was your ex psycho enough to break into your parked car, leave you a tape implying that you have just triggered an explosive, and then rip your door open making you think you are going to blow up? No? OK, then Mulder has you beat for craziest ex ever!


What this episode manages to accomplish, is let us know that Scully's apparent 'crush' on Mulder is not entirely in our heads, because she is crazy jealous in this episode. And teases Mulder mercilessly.

Any way, so Phoebe the Ex shows up and asks for help on this case, which mostly involves protecting a rich couple with poor survival instincts, and their two sons. Mulder tells Scully she's "off the hook" on this one, claiming to not want her to have to deal with Phoebo's mind games. (Ya-huh...) And then confesses his life long fear of fire. So.. he'll go it alone on this one.

So Scully does what any other girl would have done; she gets herself involved anyway! :P When she cracks the case, she calls Mulder, who's ended up in Boston. "I'm coming up there", she says. Mulder, hoping to score with his ex says "uh, I'm anticipating having my hands full".



Scully goes to Boston anyway. She saves the day when she notices a fire on the 14th floor of the hotel; the floor the kids are on. In a dashing display of bravery, Mulder runs up the stairs to rescue them. Then remembering his fear of fire, he starts coughing, falls to the floor, crawls towards the kids' room... and turns around and crawls away before totally collapsing. Lame! ("brave brave brave brave Sir Robin ran away"?)

Because she actually cares, and isn't playing him (unlike someone else in this episode) Scully comes to his rescue, then sits with him in his room until he finally wakes up. "Where's Phoebe?" he asks.



*facepalm*.... you are an idiot.

Blah blah blah, Scully solves the mystery... blahblahblah... house goes up in flames, Mulder finally finds a backbone and saves the kids. Actually what bothers me the most about this ep is the two rich parents: the insufferably annoying wife, and the worthless cheater of a husband (guess who he's caught with! That cheater of an Ex, Phoebe! Looks like Mulder's been had once again- he has bad taste in women!). Plus, when their house burns down, everybody is in the bedroom watching the walls catch on fire. When they finally think they should probably exit the burning house, they all run downstairs to the front door... then yell "what about the children?!?!" who are still upstairs in their bedroom (they live in a mansion but the two boys couldn't have separate rooms? Not fair).

I can't imagine any parents, even bad ones, would run from a fire, past their kids' bedroom, and not go in to retrieve them first. Maybe these guys deserved to burn :P Mulder runs back the way they came to go get them.

What I enjoyed most about this episode might actually be the bad guy Cecil, who is utterly charming and totally funny. And kind of reminds me of Robbie Williams :P
Also, I just like this actor, who you may remember from other sci fi shows such as BSG, and Firefly :)




Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy Scully being all catty. She cracks me up.



Phoebe: (to Mulder) "She hates me."




M: "I was merely extending a professional courtesy."
S: "Oh is that what you were extending?"

Eve

In my eyes, one of the classic episodes! It's creepy! It has twins! It takes you all kinds of places you don't expect!

To begin with, they make it look like a vampire episode. A man has two puncture wounds on his neck and is found drained of blood, then we learn an identical murder occurs at the same time on the other side of the country. In fact, Mulder believes it's related to cattle mutilations (and Scully thinks that's worth teasing him about). The two of them seem surprisingly lighthearted about the case to begin with, until it gets really messed up and we discover it has nothing to do with vampires or aliens, but actually a government experiment with cloning! Cool!

DT: "The boys were called Adam and the girls were called Eve".

Naturally. But it is good to see DT in this episode too. As we'll see later in the series, experience with cloned humans will come in handy when they are manufacturing alien-human hybrids.

Charming part of the episode: M & S are hanging out in Mulder's room (uh, as always?), and Scully picks up the phone, and tells Mulder it's just a couple of clicks, must be a wrong number. Mulder knows it's Deep Throat trying to contact him, and he jumps into action. LOL suddenly Mulder is physically, and not at all subtly, rushing her out of the room.



S: "Do you have a girl coming over?"
M: "What's a girl?"

So the two creepy twin girls are being kidnapped by one of the grown up 'Eves'. What no one knows (but Scully suspected briefly) is that they orchestrated the two identical patricides. Naturally, they kill the Eve that has them hostage, and set up the scene as if they were all supposed to drink poison, and that there was a second Eve who escaped. You know, they are pretty smart girls, and they probably would have gotten away with all of it if they hadn't been homicidally greedy, and tried to kill Mulder and Scully the same way.



Other charming moment: Mulder realizes what the girls have done, and runs back out of the restaurant calling for Scully "...uh...I just wanted to hold the door open for you."
*snort*

I love the weirded out look she gives him. Then he knocks her drink out of her hand, and the weirded out look turns into the 'WTF Mulder?' look. Hilarious.



I think it's worth mentioning that I think this episode is super eerie, and I love how it's shot. I do, I love all of the shadows, especially in Eve 6's cell. I think of this as one of the stronger season one episodes, for sure. Lots of cool plot twists, but not the kind where you feel like you're getting a sledgehammer to your head. (In the realm of X-F anyway) pretty believable twists.

Fallen Angel

I want to believe in this episode, but I just can't. They just couldn't really make sense of this one, but some fun plot elements were there. Portraying Deep Throat at the end of the episode as someone -to say the least- who doesn't have Mulder's best interests in mind make him a slightly more interesting character. Is he playing Mulder, or is he playing the shadowy consortium that he's become disenchanted with?

DT: "Keep your friends close Mr McGrath; keep your enemies even closer"

The actual X-File itself is flawed (imagine me saying that in season one... better get used to it). An alien crash lands his ship, waits for a rescue, abducts Max... OK so far. But it also appears to be made of, I dunno, pure energy or something, goes around killing people with bright flashes of light, then.. I dunno, somehow inhabits Max for a little while.



They probably could have kept it simple and it would have been a great episode, but they had to try and push it too far... on a budget! We watched the 'special effect' clip, filmed before the effects were added in; sounds fun, but there are some things you can't unsee!! OMG. Bad.

Mulder begins the episode going it alone on this wild goose chase for the remains of the ship, or the alien flying it. They look on Scully's face when she has to bust him out of jail is priceless, classic Scully. We also have the first instance- I think- of the X-Files being threatened with being shut down. Apparently Deep Throat must've stepped in, because the hearing at the end of the ep sure didn't go in Mulder's favour!



My favourite scene in the episode is after Scully has been up all night playing doctor to a bunch of soldiers with burns all over them (from the alien.. ok fine). She walks into Mulder's hotel room, goes straight for the fridge, and finding nothing inside, she slams it shut and leans against the counter. The whole time she's talking about what a horrible night it was, losing all but two patients. When she's done, proving that he still cares more about himself than about his partner, Mulder asks if she is convinced yet. Oh brother! Lol!




Scully does her best to stand by her partner throughout the ep, even when she's trying to get him to fly back for his hearing on time (cute that back then you could still catch a flight that's leaving in an hour, if you are still in your hotel..)

Space

I interrupt this X-Files rewatch to give you...

Buzz Killington

Yep, this is kind of one of those episodes that you just have to get through. I actually find this one kind of boring, with a lot of pointless nonsense. Like, there didn't seem to be a reason for mission control chick to have a fiance on board the shuttle. You would think they would do this to create more tension and drama and fear, but she played it too straight, and seemed kind of bored even when all of the men on board were faced with certain death. It was kind of a black hole of drama.

Then there was also all of the space mischief caused by this guy:
Space Ghost

Actually, if you are going to have a space ghost, I kind of like that it looks like the Mars Face. Unfortunately, it was a neat idea that they didn't really run with all the way. In fact, the story made the most amount of sense this way:

Former astronaut sabotages the shuttle to improve NASA's TV ratings.

Instead we get:

Former astronaut is possessed by a space ghost that doesn't want men in space, therefore it sabotages the shuttle to keep them out (not knowing that sabotage will improve ratings?).

And then it makes said astronaut kill himself. Then suddenly at the end of the episode, Mulder thinks he must have been possessed... by something that he saw in space... because why else would he kill himself?

I think the space ghost would have been more effective as a dream that haunted our astronaut friend.. but then I guess it wouldn't be an X-File.

Watching this episode resembles how I wake up in the morning.. sleep *alarm* snooze button *sleep* alarm *snooze button*.

So here are some cute lines that kept 'waking me up' throughout the episode:

M: "Not to mention certain fringe elements who accuse our government itself of space sabotage. The failure of the Hubble Telescope** and the Mars Observer are directly connected to a conspiracy to deny us evidence."
S: "Evidence of what?"
M: "Alien civilizations."
S: "Oh, of course."



**Maclean had to remind me that despite unbelievable success later, Hubble did not work at first. Guess I need to brush up on my space history.

M: "You never wanted to be an astronaut, Scully?"
S: "Gee I must have missed that phase"

(after Mulder goes all fanboy on Col. Belt)
S: "Didn't you want to get his autograph?"



(after watching liftoff from inside mission control)
M: "Well that fulfilled one of my boyhood fantasies"
S: "Yeah that was right up there with getting a pony and learning how to braid my own hair"




And basically Scully just giving him a hard time for acting like such a geek in this episode! Which was also very cute:




PS- here's an X-File for you: As if the TV knew which episode of XF we watched last, the next show we watched was the Simpson's episode where Homer goes into space... a surprisingly similar episode! But much funnier.

PPS-
Wow they smile at each other a lot in this season! Cute!

Ice

One of the most classic episodes, well loved by all! If I had to pick a favourite... I can't. But his would be right up there. Maybe my favourite of the season, how about that?

This week, Mulder wants to take Scully to Alaska.


M: "Bring your mittens".

One of the real strengths of this episode (other than the first off-the-charts UST since the Pilot) is there was no 'informant' explaining the answers to them, and Mulder never 'read about it in an X-File'. The case is solved by observation, chance discoveries, and bouncing ideas off a room full of people. It made this episode so much more interesting and enjoyable to watch.

They have to learn on their own that the previous team killed each other as a result of a parasitic and territorial space-worm that causes violent behaviour in the host.



Also interesting is the pairing of M & S with a team that included another duo that also has a history of working well together. What you end up with is two duos that will stick by each other, even when it stops making sense to do so.

Like when they catch Mulder like this with a dead guy:



Now, we know he's innocent, but he sure as shit looks guilty when they walk in on him! Prior to that, they seem to suspect Scully might be infected with the worm. Scully defends him later "if he is infected, it's not his fault".

All kinds of tensions in this episode are just out of control; nobody trusts anybody else; dude is paranoid about working with federal agents, who he believes already know everything about this case before even coming up to Alaska.

Then this happens:





Woo! *wipes brow* Yep, this episode gets your heart pounding. Never mind this scene:







I think even more so than Scully ripping his shirt down when he presents his back to her, the thing that makes this the hottest scene in season one is the sound it makes when she does it!

Also cute: Scully going out of her way to say good night to Mulder (pretty sure we haven't seen this before). Not so cute: Mulder using that as an opportunity to reminds her that any one of them could still probably be infected, and they'd have no idea.



Way to give Scully nightmares, Mulder. She pulls a desk in front of her door for protection, and then probably goes without any sleep, which I guess for Scully, is normal.

PicSpam: Elevator UST

I don't know, maybe it's something about enclosed spaces.... This will be a work in progress, adding as I do my rewatch.

Shadows

Shadows


Ghost in the Machine

Ghost in the Machine

Ghost in the Machine


Young At Heart