(Season 1, Episodes 21-24)

Another fun guest appearance in these last four installments of Season One. And a welcome return. Doug Hutchison was truly one of the creepiest monsters of the week as Eugene Tooms (I’m still checking my vents every night before I go to bed), so it was great seeing his creepy performance again.

I was even more surprised, though, to see Zeljko Ivanek as a mentally challenged twin in “Roland.” He gave a stellar performance, so convincing that if I hadn’t already seen him elsewhere I might have thought they got a truly autistic man to play the role. It’s nice to know that he was just as good at giving the creepiest stares back then as he is now.

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(Season 1, Episodes 17-20)

Even though we do get a ‘MythArc’ installment (episodes that progress the larger saga), not much happened in a major way in this quarter of The X-Files. Still, we got a very solid hour of horror at the tail end, as well as a too-brief appearance by Doc Coddle (Donnelly Rhodes) from Battlestar Galactica in a less impressive chapter.

I thing we’re kind of spinning our wheels, as many American series do at this point in their season. They like to save the big dramatic stuff for the last few episodes so we tend to get fillers leading up to them. It felt like a lot of that, but with The X-Files, we kind of get those types of episodes throughout, so it’s not as disconcerting.

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(Season 1, Episodes 9-11)

There aren’t enough kid villains in the world. Thank god there’s The X-Files. Plus, I never knew anyone took that “face of mars” image and made it into a creepy mask on an old man’s face. All in all, these were pretty solid spook-em-up installments. I felt for Mulder trying to defend himself in an obviously crooked system. I’ve been there, man, try getting customer service on the line about your phone bill!

9 – “Space”
(Original Air Date: November 12, 1993) I recognized Ed Lauter right away, despite the horrible toupee they had on him in that flashback sequence. His is one of those faces we see everywhere in guest roles that’s always memorable. And he always plays those intense roles, this time losing his mind as Col. Belt, head of a NASA space mission going horribly awry.

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(Season 1, Episodes 5-8)

I guess after three of four episodes with a “MythArc” element, the creators wanted to relax and go for some fun, non-connected episodes for awhile. So all four of this week’s episodes are of the “Monster-of-the-Week” variety.

5 – “The Jersey Devil”
(Original Air Date: October 8, 1993) The most disappointing thing to me was that the people from 1947 didn’t speak like 1940s movie stars. “What you got here, see, is da Joisey Devil. What’s it to ya?” You have to say it fast, and yes, that’s how I picture everyone in the ’40s sounding.

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(Season 1, Episodes 1-4)

The X-Files is one of those shows that managed to transcend its genre to become a bona fide hit. It was one of Fox’s biggest sensations early on and became a supernatural phenomenon the likes of which hadn’t been matched, except perhaps for Buffy several years later. And somehow I missed it. And similar to my problem with jumping onto Buffy the Vampire Slayer after it had already started, this one premiered my first year in college and I generally had other things going on on Friday nights, so I missed it’s debut.

Then when I started hearing all these great things about it, I balked because I’d already missed too much of the “mytharc.” About one third of The X-Files episodes tied into this arc. It was the major driving thrust of Mulder’s obsession and the focus of the show. The rest of the episodes would be considered filler, though they also had some elements that were important from time to time. Still, the mytharc concept was so important that they released The X-Files Mythology, a 4-volume set of DVDs with just the “mytharc” episodes. But I’m not going to cop out on this one and go that route. It’s all or nothing, baby!

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