The X Files - Sleepless **

 I was really happy with my review for this not too too long ago (Sleepless) so this will just be a chill follow up to that. "Sleepless" could easily be some episode in the ether; with "Duane Barry" and "Ascension", two huge episodes that took Scully off the show leaving Mulder alone and emotionally tortured, this episode sadly and unfortunately gets lost even though it is a big "build up" to those pivotal early series episodes. And "Sleepless" is huge in introducing Cigarette-Smoking Man's interfering, insidious Krycek and Mulder's austere, unfriendly, cautious Steven Williams' Mr. X (in person, meeting Mulder in an abandoned stadium). Mr. X, unlike DeepThroat, isn't about long conversations and a more welcome, open dialogue...he wants to stay alive and what he does provide Mulder is breadcrumbs. Mr. X isn't hanging around any longer than needed, and Mulder is often left frustrated by him. Krycek is persuasive enough to gain Mulder's initial trust, quite a plus for CSM. Even as Skinner seems to be a somewhat ally of Mulder, CSM will throw roadblock after roadblock to thwart any efforts to get to the truth and offer that to the public. A government using a surgical procedure on soldiers in Vietnam that keeps them awake (Tony Todd, called the Preacher, and the likes of Jon Gries, haven't slept in 24 years, their eyes red, with this very tired look of wear-and-tear) and the results of killing women and children haunt them up until the present day of this episode; Mulder realizes it as does Scully (who performs autopsies on victims who show signs of dying by fire or gunshot without outright violence, their minds believing their hallucinations to such a degree their bodies are affected by them), but without the necessary proof needed, of course. Krycek gets information Mr. X provided to Mulder to CSM...so Mulder's adversaries know he's got secret support.