Spoilers

“War of the Coprophages”

Cockroaches.

This is a great X-Files episode that involves what appears to be killer cockroaches. It is written by the same X-Files writer that penned “Humbug” and “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” which meant that this episode had a humorous tone that worked so well with so many X-Files episodes.

One of the best parts of the first half of the episode was how Mulder would call Scully with a potential death from killer cockroaches and she would de-‘bug’ it over the phone. The interaction between the two agents on the phone was really hilarious. The writing is so very clever and popped off the screen.

I found the episodes of The X-Files that used humor to be some of my favorite of the series. This is almost a self-parody and it showed how people can become engrossed with hysteria and how that can affect their choices. This episode was inspired by H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

The resolution of the episode was somewhat lacking as we do not really find out anything that was going on, plot wise, which, in itself could be a parody of X-Files episodes. There is an implication that cockroaches had some tie to aliens, but it is only rampant speculation. There was also some hints that these insects had been part of a government conspiracy, but that is debunked immediately.

Scully’s snarky responses toward the character of Dr. Berenbaum, who was working for the Department of Agriculture studying cockroaches to develop more effective methods of pest control. Scully’s snark was directed at her first name, which turned out to be Bambi. Her snark felt almost like jealousy.

This had some great lines and felt like a successful episode even if nothing mysterious was really going on.