The X Files - Unrequited

 There is a final line at the end that gave me chills: Mulder tells Skinner, Nathaniel Teager could be him, denied his life and his death. This is a GREAT episode about "POW cover up", the kind you used to see in action movie 80s. I get that the way Teager (LaCroix) moves invisibly (direct line of sight is his way to move past you, losing him), and Mulder adopts a theory that he learned this while in 'Nam, might be seen as preposterous but it makes for quite an extraordinary challenge to the Feds, led by Skinner who was put in charge of protecting a General Bloch (Hylands), preparing to give a speech among a very patriotic audience. The episode opens with Bloch's speech while Scully, Mulder, and Hill (Michael) are assigned to look for Teager among the crowd in attendance...Teager can be seen among the crowd at different points but right in his line of sight he can disappear. That is a setup for the credits as Mulder sees Teager and then loses him.

The "abandoned POWs" story has always left an impression on me. I think it is downright horrifying leaving behind your fellow soldiers, so Teager's rage, his purpose to get even feels palpably visceral. Being found by The Right Hand's Denny Markham, a paramilitary conspiracy group who considers the government criminal and corrupt, Teager now had a new mission: to take out generals who left him behind and failed to look for him. Signing off on his death, among others (Teager meets a fellow soldier at the speech, leaving with him names of other POWs), the generals seemed okay not seeking out the lost POWs they trained as human killing machines. So when Mulder confronts Skinner (who has talked to Mulder about his own experiences in Nam as an eighteen-year-old) about finding those POWs Teager knew about, that final line about Skinner possibly being one of the lost, that had serious impact.

The Pentagon scene might be the most memorable. How Teager goes through the scanner without the officer there not seeing them. Able to get inside the general's Pentagon office, leaving the Bloody Sabre death card on the desk, Teager eliminating another target despite Mulder leaving Federal officers with him, that is quite a covert assassination. Skinner and his team were up against one hell of an assassin. 3.5/5

***This episode has a random appearance from Laurie Holden's Marita Covarrubias, as Mulder seeks some information on why the generals would be such a target by Teager. Sometimes X and Deep Throat were also randoms in episodes that don't really feel like there are of  "arc"  importance.***