To Start the Vacay with The X Files - A BBC Marathon.

Well, the best laid plans…took a hit thanks to fucking Tropical Storm Alberto, delaying my family’s vacation to Florida, so the weekend (well, Saturday and a wee bit of Friday night…) was given to BBC America and its “48 Hours of The X Files”. Today was primarily 3^rd and 4^th season (yesterday and early morning seemed to be the 6^th season, but I just recollect bits and pieces, truth be told, as I was in and out of sleep), and a few episodes in the latter were new to me as I haven’t quite delved into my complete season set of that yet. Particularly enjoyable was the 3^rd season finale, Talitha Cumi (where an alien in the warm presence and face of Roy Thinnes heals a shooter and his victims in an eatery putting himself in danger due to the publicity) and its partner, the 4^th season opener, Herrenvolk (where grim-faced heavy Brian Thompson, alien bounty hunter, pursues Thinnes with orders from William B Davis’ CSM to kill him), as Mulder sees Samantha clones (in the form of her child self when he last remembered her), a farm dedicated to pollen and bees where “drones” are bred and left to work it, locates a weapon that is used against (and supposedly kills) aliens, and dukes it out with X (Steven Williams, making his heroic exit in Herrenvolk, putting to rest his shaky alliance with Mulder despite some question left when he has a conversation with CSM). In the 3^rd season, I had seen Pusher in the past but this fresh viewing was still rather worthwhile as the brain tumor mind control villain of the episode (reminding me of Kilgrave from the first season of Jessica Jones), Robin Modell (played with smarmy malevolence by Robert Wisden), has a battle of wills with Mulder while forcing a member of law enforcement to set himself on fire, another government employee to mace Skinner and kick him, and a detective to have a coronary. Avatar (Skinner episode where he must overcome suspicion in the murder of an escort, potential divorce, and loss of his assistant director job in the FBI, while defying the nuisance/presence of a possible succubus!) and Quagmire (one of my favorite episodes regarding a possible creature in a lake named Big Blue chomping on locals looking to exploit its notoriety, as well as, fishers/swimmers) are repeat viewings while the big surprise was an episode called Wetwired, regarding a “foreign signal” introduced into televisions through a particular red-and-green color pattern thanks to a device implemented by a member of CSM’s shady taskforce working “behind” the government through the guise of a cable installer driving a van about the neighborhood which causes those who receive it to go psychotic, seeing their worst nightmare given form. Normal folks all of a sudden kill others, believing what they are seeing even if it is all just a hallucination. Scully seeing Mulder and CSM in a car together and gradually believing Mulder is one of those responsible for her traumatic kidnapping and implant-in-the-neck experience becomes quite a harrowing development…when Mulder is led to believe they might have found the body of Scully, who had went missing after a Gene Hackman/The Conversation episode where she had taken apart all her devices because she felt there was someone spying on her, it is quite wrenching even if we know it isn’t her. With Mulder worrying about his mother in Herrenvolk and depending on Scully’s mom to halt her from shooting him in Wetwired, failing to convince novelist Chung (Charles Nelson Reilly) not to publish his novel on a possible UFO incident (Jose Chung’s From Outer Space) which would perhaps besmirch the movement towards uncovering the truth about extraterrestrial life and contending with Scully’s gradual despondency towards his quest for the truth in Quagmire after her doggy is eaten by the monster (ultimately an alligator); it has been quite a roller coast marathon for the FBI agent in regards to his various FBI X-files experiences. And don’t even get me started on Mulder and Scully’s near fatal end thanks to flesh-eating mushrooms in Field Trip that cause them to hallucinate entire events in great detail or a baseball story set in Roswell (in the 40s) involving a police officer eventually taking up with an alien disguised as a black ballplayer who eventually succumbs to the Bounty Hunter seen in earlier episodes (attacked by bees and stabbed by the alien stab weapon but seemingly impervious to death and responsible for healing Mulder’s mom at CSM’s request), The Unnatural. And the two parter today bends over backwards to point out an affair between CSM and Mulder’s mom! That would later explain a major detail that shakes the foundation of Mulder’s world. So a Saturday spent well with my second favorite show…if I’m lazy, why not at least waste the day with a show I truly love?