The X Files - How the Ghosts Stole Christmas

 I had no intentions of watching this 6th season episode of The X-Files--set on Christmas Eve at a haunted house with suicide pact lovers, Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin (both an absolute hoot), toying with Mulder and Scully, looking to trick them into shooting each other (Mulder does mention that a series of double murders have happened in the house in the past), because I had actually never seen it!--but a fan on the series' subReddit brought it to my attention. During this season, in 1998, I was newly married and had stopped watching the show for a brief period. That is rather exciting to me, though, because I always love knowing that I have plenty of X-Files episodes like this left to watch for the first time. This episode is a lot of fun...just a blast. Scully actually very anxious and terrified--the skeptical scientist always questioning everything--inside a haunted house with Mulder encouraging her (in actuality, she loses her keys and follows Mulder into the house to see if he has them) to help him look into a rather curious noise upstairs...all she needs is Fred, Daphne, Shaggy, and Scooby and the Mystery Machine. She's reluctant, to say the least. Mulder considers ghosts "apparitions" and the idea of investigating a haunted house on Christmas Eve gives him something to do. Asner's apparition does a psyche eval on Mulder...yes, that cracks me up just writing it. He's onto something, though. Mulder is lonely. I think all X-Files fans feel that he needed someone to love, someone to have a serious relationship with besides his pursuit of alien evidence and for the truth to be told to everyone. Of course, once the second X-Files film came out and Mulder and Scully were made "official", all of us (well, I'm just guessing) rejoiced. No matter if they later sort of broke up, I think we feel they will always be there for each other...they love each other. At the end of this episode, Mulder and Scully excitedly open a present they gifted each other. Prior to opening those presents, before Scully knocked on the door, Mulder was plopped on his couch, depressingly propped up with his head barely able to hold up on his hand while Sim's Scrooge, with a big smile on his face, talks about how he doesn't deserve to be so happy.

Asner and Tomlin spend their time at Christmas Eve trying to either convince Mulder and Scully to shoot each other or recognize why they need each other. Why is Scully always with Mulder so many years after her assignment to him was to recognize why the X files wasn't worth remaining active? Why does Mulder want Scully to follow him on investigations, especially on Christmas Eve when she has presents to wrap and plans to visit her relatives the next day? The episode fills Asner and Tomlin with lots of psychobabble they use to get inside Mulder and Scully's heads. They have guns pointed at the ghosts and can't seem to find their way out of a study...a study with dead bodies under the floorboards that look exactly like them. So the episode has Mulder and Scully needing to realize this whole ordeal is a trick and to get out of the damn house. It is fun for Asner and Tomlin, although they dislike this taking place on Christmas Eve...this is the one night they prefer to have alone. The mental mindfuck the apparitions use to rattle Mulder and Scully (a brick wall keeps Mulder from Scully; Tomlin and Asner take turns on Mulder and Scully when they are separate to test them; Asner's talk with Mulder about how his kind are all the same really has Mulder questioning his very personality; Tomlin has Scully realizing just what Mulder means to her) do eventually come to an end, but it takes the agents plopped on the floor, with "gunshot wounds", crawling, to finally get up and go.

They rush to their cars, drive off as fast as possible, and go to their respective homes. And eventually Scully ends up at Mulder's home, the two smiling as they exchange presents and sit on a cold early morning in DC together. It is a break from the pangs of the Cigarette-Smoking Man tormenting them, and the two of them do realize that they aren't alone when they are with each other. How could I, such an X-Files fan, not enjoy that? 4/5

***Mulder and Scully's reactions to how dead Asner and Tomlin are couldn't be more amusing. Scully actually collapsing from a faint, later asking Mulder if what they experienced was just all in their heads was such a memorable scene.***