3 thoughts on “The X-Files”

1. I wish I could help you more, but it MUST be a season with Mulder. He made that series what it was, imo. I think the last season or two had no Mulder, so go for earlier ones.
   If nobody helps you out here, try looking for fansites and Amazon and see if there are any recommendations on there for ones people seemed to like more than others.

2. I enjoyed the show for a while, and have seen a few dozen episodes. For the sake of my reputation, let me be clear that I have never gone to an X-Files chatroom. Thank you. Moving on…
   There’s a really great one with cockroaches. At one point, they have a cockroach appear to run across your television screen. Classic.
   Another favorite is when they go to research a mysterious death in the woods, and they end up finding a silicone-based lifeform that’s been living in a volcano.
   And of course, everything with aliens.
   A couple things you may want to know: The early seasons are driven by Mulder search for his younger sister, whom he believes was abducted. The middle seasons try to uncover a government cover-up by aliens. “Cancer Man,” as he was nicknamed, stood around looking mysterious and smoking lots of cigs. The late seasons sucked, and can be ignored.
   A popular group of techies called The Lone Gunmen inspired a short-lived spinoff series. They’d be perfect for spoofing.

3. Hey, Steph!
   Rick and I were huge X-Files fans. The X-Files had two types of episodes. The first type were the stand-alone episodes, each dealing with something weird or paranormal that Mulder and Scully had to investigate. One such episode was about a young man who could be struck by lightning and absorb its power. He could use this power to kill and/or control others. Another dealt with freaks in a circus, another dealt with swarming cockroaches, as mentioned in another reply. There were lots of these weird episodes.
   Then there were the “Arch” episodes. Those episodes were all connected and revealed a story about aliens who had a plan to colonize the earth, a government conspiracy whose leaders were working hand in hand with the aliens so that they would be allowed to live when the aliens took over, but really they were trying to develop a vaccine to kill off the aliens. The aliens propagated through a virus which spread through a black, oily substance, which could be absorbed through the skin. This same virus was also bred into corn, and carried by bees who had come in contact with the corn pollen.
   Actually, you don’t find out all this stuff until the last year or two of the show. Before that everything was a mishmash of aliens, a shadowy conspiracy and Mulder’s obsession with finding out what was going. There was something about cloning test subjects in these episodes too. There was a cirgarette-smoking man, who was never named, a series of insiders who would give clues to Mulder once in a while. (One guy was named Deep Throat, another was called X.) Mulder’s obsession began when his younger sister was abducted by aliens when Mulder was 12 years old. Scully was teamed with Mulder because she was a medical doctor. It was thought that Scully would debunk Mulder’s theories of the paranormal because she was the scientific one in the team.
   Unfortunately, the arch episodes were all interspersed with the stand-alone episodes. From week to week, the viewers never knew if they were going to get more clues about the alien/government conspiracy or just a weird, stand-alone episode. They don’t separate the episodes on the DVDs either. You have to watch them all or skip over the ones that don’t have anything to do with the aliens.
   The best place to start would be the first season.
   You will get a flavor for the show, especially the way all kinds of obscure clues were thrown around to make you wonder what in the world was going on. Then get the X-Files movie. It’s in this movie that all the clues are put together in a somewhat understandable way. I think these two things would be enough for you to get a good handle on the X-Files.