Spoilers

“Quagmire”

This was a great episode of the X-Files. A monster-of-the-week episode that sees Mulder and Scully in search of Big Blue, a supposed lake monster that is killing humans.

It turned out to be a killer alligator, which, by the way, is one of my biggest fears. We lose Scully’s dog Queequeg to the alligator.

The best part of this episode was when Mulder and Scully wound up stuck on a rock after their boat sinks in the pitch black and they have an amazingly meaningful conversation. Scully compares Mulder to Captain Ahab from Moby Dick. The truth=the white whale.

This scene just makes this episode special. The 10 pages of dialogue for that scene was one of the best Mulder/Scully interactions of the series up to this point.

There was a lot of tension, not only when they were trapped on that rock, but also when the alligator was rushing at Mulder and he unloaded his weapon at the beast. I remember that tension from the first time I watched it.

There was some good humor in this too, as Darin Morgan, who was the writer of all of the classic humor episodes this season, did some touch up here and you can tell.

A slight story, but really enjoyable.