Spoilers

“The Beginning”

The opening “previously on The X-Files” showed that this season six takes place directly after the movie, The X-Files: Fight the Future, the feature length film that had been released in theaters, and the story told in that movie is included in this season premiere.

However, it is only part of the story as the episode also included details that were introduced in the fifth season finale, “The End.” Specifically, the use of the little boy who could read minds, Gibson, as well as agents Jeffrey Spender and Diana Fowley. These two agents were assigned to take over the work of Mulder and Scully, who were reassigned within the FBI with explicit instructions to not work on the X-Files again.

Fowley is one of my least favorite X-Files characters because she is such a sell out and feels as if she exists only to put a stress on the connection of Mulder and Scully. You can see that stress in this episode and Scully argued with Mulder and at one point asks him to trust her. I seem to remember a time when Mulder said that Scully was “the only one he trusts.” That seems to have been chipped away as the new Mulder only wants to hear from Scully if she agrees with him.

Diana Fowley becomes a major character over the next few seasons and it is part of the slipping of The X-Files.

The horrors that the show has put the character of Gibson through is shocking and terrifying, and not in a good way. The treatment of this kid has been very distasteful by everyone and I do like how he just calls the adults out because he knows what they were thinking.

Spender, of course, is a horrendous person too, because he is taking direction from Smoking Man, who continues to be the one character that has to have a bullet in his head. I am consistently stating how much I hate this character, which should go to show what an amazing job William B. Davis had done with this role.

However, the opening scene of the episode featuring a carpool, had some of the worst dialogue that I ever remember in an X-Files episode. It was shockingly bad and did not start the episode off well. Thankfully, an alien ripped out of someone’s chest and made things a lot better.

My memory is that The X-Files becomes difficult to watch over the next few seasons, so we will see how this rewatch progresses.