My watching of The X Files‘s second season came quick on the heels of season 1. I had some extra time at home and what better way to spend it than binge watching a new obsession? Sadly there’s a bit less spare time available to me now so future reviews will be at a slower frequency but trust I am still maximizing my time to watch as often as possible. After season 1 I was interested to see more of Scully’s development but unfortunately thusfar there’s been little save for when it helps to serve Mulder’s development in some way. We did, however, get some good development of the underlying plot of the series, the pulling of strings that is happening in the shadows.
The season overall had some interesting concepts but was also a noticeable deviation from season 1 in a few ways. Where season 1 had notable interest in episodes surrounding sci-fi/extraterrestrials and reincarnation, season 2 had a lot of episodes instead revolving around the occult. It also felt as though the show had been given permission to remove its training wheels and took this as an opportunity to be edgy which wasn’t executed the best at times – there being a lot more instances of sexual assault in storylines (thankfully, offscreen at least) in contexts that seemed more for shock value than for narratively justifiable reasons. There were more episodes that had direct relevance to the larger story arc but not so many as to interfere with the Monster-Of-The-Week format too much.
Without further ado let’s get into the notable episodes of the season. Spoilers may be present from this point onward so proceed with caution if you haven’t seen season 2.
Highlights
Episode 2: The Host
The urban legends surrounding aquatic creatures in sewers are an entertaining concept, and this episode did well building on that and coming up with another idea for what could be down there. The episode contained a good balance of initial mystery and allowance of knowledge over trying to keep the audience in the dark for the sake of suspense – in fact, knowing what awaited in the water created far more fear than if the threat had remained faceless for longer as works for other episodes.
Episode 4: Sleepless
Though the dynamic duo being impacted by cases is nothing new, this episode added a new layer of vulnerability in seeing how far it can get, that an antagonist can not only emotionally affect the two but also had the potential to get into one or the other’s head at a much deeper level. The backstory of the week’s characters was engaging and the episode did well with balancing its standalone story with the broader one.
Episode 15: Fresh Bones
Though I’m not Haitian so can’t say with authority this is true, the episode does feel more respectful of Vodou than other episodes are of their respective religions/spiritualities involved. Chester Bonaparte (played by Jamil Walker Smith) was a standout of the episode, and I appreciate that the writers let the character blend into the story to allow the final twist to land better than if they’d been trying to hassle us with hints the whole time.
Episode 19: Død Kalm
I wouldn’t quite call this a capsule episode but it was still a good use of an isolated location. The vast majority of the episode focused on a small amount of characters restricted to one place but was still able to give them enough to work with without the runtime getting stale. I liked the exploration of different scientific theories and the struggle of how to survive them, and the poignant entry to Scully’s research notes.
Nadirs
Episode 10: Red Museum
This is one of the episodes that felt like it was trying to draw out the resolution too much behind a wall of red herrings. There were still good parts of the episode, it was just too ham-fisted in what it was trying to do.
Episode 18: Fearful Symmetry
An interesting concept that fell flat. A lot of episodes will have the same incident happen a few times over to emphasise that there is something going on worth their time to investigate, but this one did it too much without allowing further detail to come of each succeeding incident so it grew somewhat stale.
Episode 20: Humbug
The episode is against the exploitation of those considered different but brings this message through an exploitation of their features – ‘hey! Look at this person and how they are different! How dare you.’ The final line gave the vibe the whole episode was constructed just for that punchline. That still doesn’t explain the potato.
Episode 24: Our Town
Repetitive of episode 10, and part of the reason I’m keeping a tally on times Scully’s been kidnapped.
Final Thoughts
Though by all technicality The X Files is for stories of the unexplainable and occult occurrences would certainly fall into that category, the frequency of those episodes was a drastic change from season 1 which did draw out my focus as the sci-fi of season 1 is more what I’m here for. Though there is definitely space for it in the series, I hope in future seasons the frequency is reduced as its just not the theme of paranormal the show aligns itself with through its broader story construction.