THE X-FILES Check it, Scully! Using my flashlight, I found the bathroom!
  • THE X-FILES "Check it, Scully! Using my flashlight, I found the bathroom!"

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. Last night the fourth episode of the X-Files revival aired, and—just like in in past weeks—I've got some thoughts. Spoilers, obviously.

• HMMMM. So an episode featuring harassed homeless people that features not only an evil, money-hungry real estate developer but also a self-important, self-interested NIMBY? I know this episode theoretically took place in Philadelphia, but it also probably happened in Portland. HOWEVER. One thing we DON'T have in Portland is Battlestar Galactica's Lt. Felix Gaeta, who shows up here to do two things: 1) Be a real piece of shit to Philly's homeless population, and then, about 20 seconds later, 2) GET HIS ARMS TORN OFF, WOOKIEE STYLE, BY THE TRASHMAN. Those who've been paying attention this season will know Gaeta's appearance is the second by a Battlestar alum—Chief Galen Tyrol swung by a few episodes back! I'm fine with this trend continuing, so long as Cally doesn't show up.

• Speaking of the Trashman, good luck ever thinking/reading/hearing the name "the Trashman" without hearing Skatman John sing "I'm the Traaaaashman!" You're welcome!

Yep, just embedded a Beavis and Butt-Head clip in a post about The X-Files. WE'VE REACHED PEAK '90S EVERYBODY, HOPE YOU'RE ALL ROCKIN' THAT HYPERCOLOR

• Okay, so reaction to this episode has been all over the map—I've seen some say it was their favorite of the miniseries so far (these people are wrong, their favorite should be "Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster"), and I've seen some say it was the worst so far (these people are also wrong, as "Home Again" was better than "My Struggle" and about on the same level as "Founder's Mutation"). I land exactly in the middle on this: "Home Again" is totally, completely fine. It had some creepy stuff (Mulder touching a used band-aid! GROSS!) and it had some boring stuff (Scully's family, who just are never going to be interesting), and it had some some eye-rolling stuff (like the line "I want to believe—I need to believe—that we didn't treat him like trash," which the always-amazing-but-particularly-amazing-in-this-episode Gillian Anderson deserves a goddamn Nobel Peace Prize for delivering without rolling her eyes out of her skull). So it was, you know... fine. Had this aired during The X-Files' original run, it would've slid right on by without much notice. But with only six episodes in this miniseries, it's hard not to feel like each episode should be better than fine. Maybe that's an unfair expectation—I'll always take a "fine" X-Files episode over a non-existent X-Files episode.

• There are things I like about these newer episodes, like that the cast seems to have aged into comfier, kinder, more likeable versions of their characters (think of this as the Star Trek effect, where the crew of the Enterprise gradually turned into huggable space-grandparents). There's some winking to this effect in "Home Again"—

"What? I wasn't gonna shoot the kid, and I don't do stairs anymore."
"Mulder, back in the day, I used to do stairs—and in three-inch heels."
"'Back in the day.' Scully, back in the day is now."

—but for the most part, it's been charmingly understated. But even as the show seems to welcome its characters' aging (these new episodes are a lot more continuity-based than I think anyone was expecting them to be), it's also happy to bring along some of the more wearisome aspects of the original show—like the fact that in an episode featuring an ARM-RIPPING HOMELESS GOLEM WITH A BAND-AID FOR A NOSE WHO GETS AROUND IN A GARBAGE TRUCK MURDER-MOBILE, we're also expected to care about Scully's boring mom and her boring siblings and a mysterious coin necklace and... no. Again, maybe this goes back to the six-episode thing: If we're only gonna get six of these, why have an episode where it feels like we're wasting time with an entire boring subplot? I'm not saying The X-Files can't do drama—it can, and it often does it exceedingly well. It just didn't do it very well here, and especially when combined with arm-rippin' golem murder, the two halves of this episode never seemed to mesh.

• I wrote down the exchange where Scully said, "You're a dark wizard, Mulder," and Mulder said "What else is new," mostly because—like Scully's immortality—I would like this to become a subtle but recurring theme that Scully, deep in her heart, believes Mulder to in fact be a Saruman-style dark wizard.

• When "Home Again" started, I thought writer/director Glen Morgan might use the episode to say something interesting about America's busted social support systems, or our cities' failures to deal with income inequality. While there were a few nods to this early on—I mean, both Gaeta and the NIMBY got taken out by the Trashman*, so that was nice!—by the time things wrapped up, there wasn't much there besides "Scully's mom died and maybe had a seeeeecret" and "there's a homeless artist whose terrifying creations can come to murderous life but now he's just off wandering somewhere, don't worry about it, it'll be fine." Don't get me wrong: I liked the Trashman, and I enjoyed "Home Again." But overall, it was hard not to wish for something a bit more.

We've only got two of these left! This is going fast. See you next week, dark wizards.

*sorry