Spoilers

“Roland”

Roland is a decent episode that feels like several of the other episodes of season one.

This is yet another episode from this first season that I have not seen before. I am not sure why there were so many episodes in this first season that I missed. I am also curious when I start into season two if there will be fewer episodes that I have not seen already.

The most standout aspect of this episode was the performance by Željko Ivanek as Roland. His performance as the intellectually disable janitor Roland, who was separated from his identical twin when he was young. His brother was in an accident and died, though they were keeping his brain alive. This was a way that he was able to control Roland and get him to finish his work and kill his enemies.

Interesting, and okay.

“The Erlenmeyer Flask”

And then there was this one.

Whoa, this was so much better than Roland.

The X-Files mythology went into high gear as we see the death of Deep Throat. The way the mysterious governmental agents systematically destroy the evidence and manipulate the situation can become very frustrating. You see Mulder and Scully come so close and yet everything is pulled away.

The whole episode is centered around the use of extraterrestrial bacteria, bacteria that does not exist anywhere in nature. This episode gave a lot to Scully, who normally does not get to see the evidence outside of Mulder’s testimony. When she pulled out the original source of the bacteria, it makes it more difficult to believe that she could still be a skeptic.

At the end of the episode Mulder tells Scully that Skinner had told him that the X-Files was being shut down and they were being reassigned. Mulder dedicated himself to keep searching for the truth.

The season one episodes were a little more inconsistent than I remember about the rest of the series. It may have been a season to see how to make this series, what worked and what did not. There were some outstanding episodes here too.