The Truth Is Out There X-Files Rewatch: Season Four

The X-Files: The Fourth Season

The fourth season of "The X-Files" premiered on October 4, 1996. The season found the show getting even more popular. It shifted from Fridays to Sundays, which was a huge deal. In the '90's, Sunday night was the big night on Fox. It was the night that "The Simpsons" and "Married... With Children" aired. These were some of the networks most popular shows and with the fourth season "The X-Files" officially joined them. It was also chosen as the program to air after Super Bowl XXXI.

The fourth season of "The X-Files" gave the two leads some meatier stuff to tackle. This is the season that introduced the Scully cancer storyline and it ended up winning Gillian Anderson an Emmy. The mythology episodes continued to be tight and the Monster of the Week episodes continued to be a mix of scary, funny and frustrating. Just like we've been doing with the previous seasons, let's take a look at the mythology, the best MotW and the ones you can skip if you're trying to binge in a hurry.

Mythology

"Herrenvolk" - The fourth season picks up right where the third left off. Mulder and Scully are facing down the Alien Bounty Hunter to protect the mysterious Jeremiah Smith. After escaping him, Smith takes Mulder to Canada where he finds multiple clones of his sister, Samantha. This episode does a lot. It introduces the bees, which will show up later on in the season and feature heavily in the first feature film. The Syndicate tires of X's double dealing ways and the Grey Haired Man takes him out, but not before he scrawls SRSG in blood on the floor leading Mulder to his new informant, Marita Covarrubias, the assistant to the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations. The CSM ends the episode by having the Alien Bounty Hunter cure Mulder's mother. It's maybe too much. The episode is fast paced, but almost too fast paced. I always feel like this opener should have been two parts to really give these plots some room to breathe. 

Chain link face masks are so in.

"Tunguska/Terma" - The next two mythology episodes reintroduce the black oil and the oily Alex Krycek. A stolen diplomatic pouch lead Mulder and Krycek to Russia where they are captured and placed in a gulag. People in the gulag are being experimented on, doused with the black oil, including Mulder. It turns out that they have also been given a black oil vaccine and Krycek is a double agent, working with the Russians. The Syndicate is also working on a vaccine for the black oil, but the Russians send an assassin to kill the chief scientist working on it, an assassin sent by Krycek. These episodes really showcase the worst traits of the mythology episodes. They are convoluted. Scully is sidelined for much of them. The in media res opening doesn't amount to much. It's one episode of story stretched between two and it takes a cool concept like the black oil and makes it kind of lame.

Shippers swoon.

"Memento Mori" - This episode confirms that Scully does indeed have cancer. She has an inoperable nasopharyngeal tumor. The agents handle the news like you would expect. Mulder believes the cancer is a result of Scully's abduction. This theory gains traction when the agents visit the MUFON group from last year and find that all but one of them have died from various cancers. While Scully seeks treatment, Mulder works with the Lone Gunmen to get more information and Skinner makes a deal with the CSM. This episode lives and dies based on the strength of Gillian Andersons performance and it should come as no surprise that she slays it. She plays everything about Scully's reaction to her diagnosis just right and her scenes with the final surviving member of the MUFON group are some of the most affecting. It's no surprise that this episode won her the Emmy.

"Tempus Fugit/Max" - While celebrating Scully's birthday, the agents learn that blast from season one past, Max Fenig has been killed in a plane crash. While investigating, Mulder comes to believe that Max was being returned from an abduction when military aircraft interceded in an attempt to shoot down the UFO, taking the plane with it. Now this is some mythology goodness. There is shady government stuff. A nice human element with Max. Scully is still dealing with her cancer and poor Agent Pendrell pays the price for having a crush on Scully. The showdown between Mulder and the shadowy government guy on the plane is also top notch.

Daddy.

"Zero Sum" - Focus shifts to AD Skinner when he is called in by the CSM to clean up a dead body caused by the bees from the premiere. What follows is a game of cat and mouse between Skinner and Mulder with the former trying to stay one step ahead of the latter. 

I love Walter Skinner. Mitch Pileggi does an awesome job and it's great to have him get another chance to shine. The writers decided to put the focus on him because Gillian Anderson needed an episode off to shoot the film "The Mighty." Remember that? It was also a nice call back to the bees, which I had totally forgotten about until they showed up in the cold open. It's a smart episode that feels like a mythology and MotW episode all rolled into one.

"Demons" - Scully meets Mulder at a motel when he wakes up covered in blood with no memory of the past 48 hours. Is he responsible for the deaths of a couple he visited in regards to their abduction experiences? Of course not. Mulder went to the same therapist who subjected him and the murdered couple to aggressive therapy to try to retrieve their abduction memories. We learn a little more about the time leading up to Samantha's abduction, but we're not sure if we can trust Mulder's recollection, which is one of my favorite things about the show. Even our protagonists can be unreliable narrators.

"Gethsemane" - The fourth season of the show goes out with a bit of a whimper. It features the umpteenth in media res opening with Scully first identifying a dead body in Mulder's apartment, then meeting with an FBI disciplinary committee to firmly debunk Mulder's work. The episode then flashes back to show Mulder meeting with a group of scientists who retrieved an alien body encased in ice. At the same time, Scully meets with Michael Kritschgau, a Defense Department employee, who claims that everything that the agents have been searching for is just government trickery and that Scully's cancer was their way to make sure Mulder believed. Now, I'm a big fan of the show trying to twist thing and offer alternate explanations for the alien conspiracy stuff that Mulder believes, but at this point, we've seen so much, how can we take this seriously? How can Scully and most of all, how can Mulder? It sort of dampens the dramatic impact and makes the cliff hanger, the body Scully finds is Mulder(!) kind of lame.

Monster of the Week

The mother under the bed.

"Home" - When a baby is found buried in a backlot, Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate and what they find is a family of inbred mutants with a startling secret hiding under the bed. 

One thing I recall really clearly about this episode is all the hype surrounding it on Fox. There were promos about how they were going to only show it once and it definitely lived up to it. It's super disturbing, but there are moments of levity, which is important. Nothing will ever beat that moment of Mulder pulling Mrs. Peacock out from under the bed and you finding out what this family has been doing. Full body shudder.

"Musings of Cigarette Smoking Man" - Since the day Scully was assigned to the X-files a shadowy man has been trying to undercut the duo, a man we know very little about, until now. The Lone Gunmen believe that they have finally learned the truth about the Cigarette Smoking Man and are ready to divulge it, but do they know the whole story? This is a fun episode, which is not the word I thought I would use when describing an episode that focuses on the CSM. It's totally believable that he would have a hand in everything from JFK's assassination to the Bills never winning the Super Bowl. William B. Davis clearly relishes the material and gives his best performance to date and Chris Owens who plays his younger self is so good that the show eventually brings him back as a completely different character. But we will get to that later.

"Paper Hearts" - Mulder's belief that his sister was abducted by aliens is challenged when he begins to believe that she may have been the victim of a serial killer, John Lee Roche, who Mulder helped put away years ago. What happened to Samantha Mulder is such a cornerstone of "The X-Files" that a plausible explanation outside of alien abduction really throws everything for a loop. While this theory is basically disproved towards the end, it casts enough doubt that you're never quite sure.

Join me?

"Leonard Betts" - This is it folks. The big post-Super Bowl episode. Mulder and Scully are called in when a paramedic named Leonard Betts seemingly disappears from the morgue after being decapitated. It turns out that Betts is basically immortal, a status he keeps by consuming the cancer in other people. And Scully is next on his list.

This is the perfect episode to air after the Super Bowl. It's creepy and easy to follow. Paul McCrane, best known for his role on "ER", does a great job as Betts. There are some awesome visual effects, from Betts emerging from his iodine bath to him literally shedding his skin. The episode is a great jumping on point for new viewers, but rewards long time fans and that final reveal gets me every time.

"Never Again" - After meeting a shadowy informant of Mulder's who is an obvious buffoon, Scully decides to take a little break to find herself. Mulder's mission has become hers and she's not sure if that's what she wants. On her walkabout, she meets a man who seems nice enough, until she learns he's murdering women at the behest of his new tattoo (Jodie Foster). This episode was actually meant to air prior to "Leonard Betts," but they pushed it when they found out they got the Super Bowl slot. It's a testament to the writers that it works just as well as a follow up episode to Scully's revelation. Anderson of course kills it and we get to see a different side of Agent Scully. And come on, how can you not love an episode where Jodie Foster voices a murderous tattoo?

"Small Potatoes" - When multiple babies are born with tails, Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate. The trail leads to a shape shifting loser who tries to find fulfillment by trying on other people's lives. When he takes over Mulder, will he live his life better than Fox? Vince Gilligan may be the only X-Files writer that gets close to matching Darin Morgan when it comes to poking fun at the absurdities of the show and so it's not a huge surprise that he gets Morgan himself to play the shape shifting wannabe lothario of "Small Potatoes." The episode pokes a lot of fun at how Fox Mulder, a good looking, should be suave dude, is kind of a loser, illustrated especially well when he has a wine fueled night with Scully that almost culminates in a kiss.

You Can Skip These

"Sanguinarium" - Mulder and Scully are called in when patients at a plastic surgery center are gruesomely murdered by their doctors. This leads to a lot of gross out body horror and witch craft and nonsense. This is maybe the worst episode of season four. The episode was written by Valerie and Vivian Mayhew. Not a huge shock they were never asked to write another.

"El Mundo Gira" - Acid rain is seemingly killing people in a migrant worker camp, but they believe El Chupacabra is behind things. This is another episode where the show tries to mine social issues and other cultural aspects and doesn't do a great job. It all becomes muddled and could have been saved if we got a clear view of El Chupacabra or it was worked into the episode a little better, but alas, it never is.

Overall Grade: A-

The fourth season of "The X-Files" continued to showcase the strengths of it's leads and the introduction of Scully's cancer and who or what may have caused it made Mulder really wonder about the cost of his crusade. 

Next up, is season 5 and the lead up to the first "X-Files" feature film.