The X Files / Anasazi / Notes

 This episode has everything that hooked me forever to this show. "Anasazi" even includes Floyd 'Red crow' Westerman as a wise old WWII codebreaker who assists in helping Mulder and Scully cracking an encrypted code Mulder gets a hold of from an anarchist/hacker, unearthing the docs from the Department of Defense that pertain to over fifty years of UFO information. Scully later learns she is on the docs, too, wanting Mulder to find out why. Mulder's rivalry with the Cigarette-Smoking Man heats up big-time as he tells the "dark-lunged" cancer man he'll expose all of their secrets. Immediately, of course, Cancer Man hops on a chopper with the military and heads off to New Mexico to locate Mulder...and possibly kill him. CSM made sure to send his hitman, Krycek, to kill Mulder's father, Bill (Peter Donat), when Mulder was in the other room. Mulder holding his dying father, bleeding in his arms, as he weeps is just heart-wrenching. The term "merchandise" has this mortifying revelation when Mulder hears his father say it, later told by Scully that this was mentioned within the encrypted code...in a boxcar, Mulder believes he has found a whole stack of dead aliens. And these dead aliens have small pox vaccination scars. The term "vaccination" was also mentioned within the encrypted code. Bill's conscience tormented him and it is too bad Mulder couldn't get the complete truth about all he knows. While it was thrilling to see Mulder get some licks in on Krycek, it was too bad he couldn't have put some bullets in him. But much like CSM, Krycek is too good as a monster to be bumped off so soon. CSM having the military drop a burn bomb in the boxcar, buried under the sand in New Mexico, where Mulder was supposed to be (soldiers couldn't find Mulder inside), that is a hell of a cliffhanger. I think Chris Carter and Duchovny put together a hell of a story. Especially with the drugged water that was causing Mulder to lose sleep, suffer a type of psychosis, punch Skinner, and yell at Scully (telling her he didn't trust her!). It took some serious investigation by Scully (and nearly a bullet to the head, through Mulder's window!) to determine that a water tank was being installed with drugs in it.

All the credit to Scully for even transporting Mulder to New Mexico, rightfully stopping him from shooting Krycek with Krycek's gun, which would have implicated him in the murder of Bill. Mulder's safety was Scully's top priority and the information on the DOD docs including her own kidnapping certainly provides incentive in discovering the truth. A special meeting with Skinner regarding Mulder's future and files he might have gotten a hold of, Scully misses, jeopardizing her own career in the process.

This episode is just loaded to the gills with all the good stuff X Files fans know and love. It has the villains we love to hate, Mulder and Scully's lives in constant jeopardy over too much truth within their grasp, buried secrets that weren't destroyed are uncovered, an important character to one of our heroes murdered by the villains we love to hate, and some more questions (the boxcar of possible alien corpses, what is still on the encrypted files, how will Mulder and Scully be able to keep their jobs, and how will Mulder and Scully even survive considering CSM now really considers them a threat to everything he's been hiding for years and years).