The X Files / Paper Clip / Notes

 Carter really went for it big. A three part arc involving CSM trying to recover the digital tape with evidence of alien information Mulder desperately wants made public. But Mulder and Scully's safety ultimately is more important than that truth coming out. CSM must back down because Skinner, of all people, negotiates a deal with help from Albert Hosteen as leverage (he broke that code and shared what he knows with Navajo associates of his). What proves to be a major hiccup is that CSM has two of his hitmen set up Krycek, since he had the digital tape in his possession after attacking Skinner in the stairwell of the hospital near the Intensive Care room as Melissa, Scully's sister, was shot by Krycek and now is near death. I really liked that Carter brought back Albert Hosteen one more time, but I figure his opening monologue with the mother buffalo producing a rare white offspring as it parallels Melissa's condition and Scully's predicament will frustrate or repel some viewers not really into the Navajo spiritual aspects of the episode. But "Paper Clip" sure does give us some fascinating developments such as Bill choosing Samantha to be taken over Fox (and how their mother hated Bill for it) as leverage against going public with what he knew. And the alien-human hybrid information Neville provides to the agents when Mulder and Scully visit a Nazi scientist named Victor Klemper (a regular in James Bond films, Walter Gotell), explaining the boxcar full of corpses killed. The hidden room at an abandoned industrial warehouse with rows and rows of files with tissue samples and medical information, including Scully and Samantha's. These were collected from anyone with small pox vaccinations. With Mulder and Scully having to avoid a small army sent by CSM to kill them, they needed Skinner's help to bring them out of hiding, back to the FBI, and safe from further attempts on their life by him or the Syndicate. Skinner outsmarting CSM is quite a particularly thrilling scene while Scully's grief at the empty bed where her sister once occupied prior to a surgery that wasn't successful in removing the bullet in her cranium as Mulder arrives to offer his condolences, affection, and embrace further emphasizes so much loss for the two agents. Both Mulder and Scully have indeed suffered so much and so the X files (and whatever truth that is in there) provides an avenue of escape and something to fall back into. And Krycek is still out there, so the hopes of sweet revenge against him is still a possibility while CSM convinces the Syndicate the tape was blown up with Krycek in a car...Krycek makes sure CSM knows he's still alive, too.