"This" (seriously, that's all they named the episode -- good luck Googling it) kicks off when the apparent ghost of one of the long-dead Lone Gunmen shows up on Mulder's phone to deliver a staticky message. Langly knows he's not actually alive, he tells them, but he needs help. Yet before Mulder and Scully can figure out what that means and how a dead man is contacting them, assassins arrive at the house to try to take them out. Soon the duo is on the run from everyone, trying to get to the bottom of the mystery.
There were some nice aspects to this episode. But there's also a big problem at the very core of how The X-Files is constituted in 2018. Sure, it was a predictable trope back in the day to have Mulder pitch some wild-ass theory and have Scully doubt it. Sure, at some point it strained credibility to have Scully keep reflexively doubt things after all she'd seen. But that believer/skeptic dynamic was necessary to anchor the bizarre stories in some semblance of plausibility. And in the original run, when Scully's "suspension of belief" could no longer be maintained, that's where the admittedly rocky characters of Doggett and Reyes at least served to help bring in a dash of realism.
Now it's just Mulder and Scully, and there's no skeptic anymore. That's the only way to be honest to Scully's character at this point, of course, but it also means that there's absolutely no tether to reality anymore either. Mulder and Scully just take turns spouting nonsense, which the other accepts immediately without question. They pluck exposition from nowhere, rocket the plot forward with impossible intuitive leaps, and generally avoid bringing any credible sense of "science" to the "science fiction." It's all a bit ridiculous now, at times such a silly parody of itself that it threatens to undermine the entire legacy of what was ever good about The X-Files.
But at least they're trying to be honest with how the two main characters would be after all they've been through. Poor Walter Skinner, and poor Mitch Pileggi, who has to play him. I can't even perceive a true core anywhere in that character anymore. He's just purposefully obtuse now, unable to say anything that might suggest he's clearly on one side or another, unable to serve as anything but a hackneyed plot device.
Still, even as the story trappings are unapologetically bonkers, at least there is some fun to be had this episode (unlike the premiere). That's the up side of Mulder and Scully being more on the same page than they've ever been. I don't think we've ever seen them work as a team as effectively as they did in this episode -- making an escape when triple-handcuffed together, tag-teaming an investigation with essentially no resources, making plans within plans, generally having each others' back.
I asked of the premiere what it was that could possibly have made David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson want to return to do more of this show. This would be it, I think. It looked like they were just having a hell of a lot of fun this episode. Their ruse to break in to the facility -- Scully calling Mulder a Lecter-type, and Mulder hamming it up with Anthony Hopkins' signature air sucking -- was no more tethered to reality than any of the rest of the episode, but it was at least funny. All the banter between the two throughout the episode was, really. So, that's something.
Is it enough? Hard to say. If I watch another of these X-Files episodes, I could easily imagine it taking another two weeks to get to it. If I reach some tipping point where the number of these piling up on me feels like homework more than entertainment, I might not ever finish the season. "This" was better than the premiere.... but I'd still only give it a C+. Fond feelings for the old days of The X-Files might carry me through in the fact of that, but let's be honest -- in this era of great television, who has time to waste on a C+?
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