The X-Files - The Complete Fourth Season

Rating:
Summary: Dark, cumulatively powerful fourth season of THE X-FILES
Review: This fourth season of THE X-FILES is actually a lot better than I had remembered. Some of the standalone episodes this season are admittedly rather lackluster compared to the best of the previous three seasons, but when the show was at its best during Season 4, it could be either quite powerful or, in the case of "Small Potatoes", quite funny.

First, the mytharcs. As far as the central mythology is concerned, things take a darker turn than before when Scully discovers she has an inoperable cancer midway through the season, which leads to the emotional highlight episode of the season, "Memento Mori". Scully's final speech, in which she resolves not to let the cancer beat her, is as moving as Mulder's tearful breakdown towards the end of Season 2's "One Breath".

Meanwhile, we have the two-part mytharcs, "Tunguska"/"Terma" and "Tempus Fugit"/"Max". Of the two, the latter is, I think, slightly better: more intense, more gripping, more moving. But "Tunguska"/"Terma" is still a pretty good adventure tale, bringing Mulder and his hated enemy Krycek to Russia in search of the so-called "black cancer". That said, I always found the black oil piece of the X-FILES mythological puzzle to be kind of a silly one, and its extension here to include suggestions of a Cold War-type race to find a cure for the black oil disease is only slightly less laughable. At least "Tempus Fugit"/"Max" deals with more believably sinister phenomena: a tragic airplane crash that may have been the result of our government shooting down a UFO and then trying to cover it up. Harrowing, immensely suspenseful stuff indeed.

The opening episode "Herrenvolk"---a continuation of last season's "Talitha Cumi"---introduces to the mythology the killer bees, and later, in "Zero Sum", we learn that the bees may be carrying smallpox, and that the Consortium may be using it to carry out tests on unsuspecting humans (what is being tested is never made clear). "Zero Sum" also plays with our ambivalent feelings toward the character of Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), whose loyalties have always been rather foggy: he seems to have great respect for Mulder and Scully, yet here still seems to interact with the Cigarette-Smoking Man (William B. Davis) on occasion for God-knows-what.

As I said before, the standalone episodes of this season are hit-or-miss. Some are simply dull, like "Teliko" and "Unrequited"; others are much too heavy-handed about social issues, like "El Mundo Gira" and "Kaddish"; and some others rise above its unpromising paranormal phenomena, like "Never Again", which involves a silly talking tattoo (voiced by Jodie Foster!) and yet turns into one of the more revealing X-FILES episodes regarding Dana Scully. There are still some magnificent standalones to be found in Season 4, though: the disturbing "Home" (so disturbing that it was banned from television for many years after its initial broadcast), "Unruhe", "Paper Hearts", "Leonard Betts", the wonderfully funny satire of "Small Potatoes" (with Vince Gilligan following skillfully in the footsteps of Darin Morgan, who guest stars in the episode), and "Demons". As ever, these standalone episodes rise above the rest in exploring the characters of Mulder and Scully in depth, and, in the case of Mulder in "Demons", bringing him to the edge of madness. That said, I didn't find "The Field Where I Died", in which Mulder discovers he may have had a past life, nearly as powerful as a lot of people said it was: it seemed way too sentimental and overblown to me. And "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man", which purports to divulge some secrets about the reprehensible CSM, turns out to be a disappointment, making him more mysterious than ever by the end, even if we do feel a bit more sympathy for the way his life has turned out than before. Still, even by its fourth season, THE X-FILES still had a knack for turning in some good standalone mysteries, and these fourth-season episodes have the added distinction of being more personal than most.

And finally we come to the finale of Season 4, "Gethsemane". Though hardly a bad episode---it ended the season on a reasonably gripping note---I feel that it is with this episode that the mythology began to go off the rails and turn into the kind of overblown sci-fi soap opera that many people remember the X-FILES mythology to be. Were we really supposed to wholeheartedly believe that everything Mulder had seen in the previous seasons had ALL been a big engineered government lie? Everything??? Even that fearsome Alien Bounty Hunter spouting the toxic green blood---all calculated to fool Mulder into believing in the existence of alien life? I don't think I was the only X-FILES fan to find that a bit too incredible. It was by Season 5 that it became clear that Chris Carter was basically making the mythology up as he went along, and it led to a really big mess of loose ends by the show's final season, where the mythology had begun to feel overstretched and the standalone episodes were the only glories of the show left.

Still, that is a fault that would afflict later seasons. On its own, Season 4 is still a remarkable achievement, daring to go darker and deeper into the characters of Mulder and Scully more than any other season before it. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are still as wonderful as ever here, Anderson especially continuing to impress with her brand of intensity and strength. The standalone episodes are variable, but there are still some great mysteries to be found among this season's 24 episodes. This may not be THE X-FILES' best season, but it is perhaps the most emotional season of the show yet. Recommended.