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Aliens, please abduct Chris Carter. Review by Brandon Wolfe One of the greatest pitfalls of our current recycle-bin culture is that some of the nostalgic curios being dusted off almost certainly belong dead, and The X-Files has sadly proved emblematic of this hazard. The idea of Mulder and Scully returning once more into the paranormal fray sounds fantastic at first blush until you stop to recall that The X-Files has already died a series of ignoble deaths. There was the slow decline of the original series’ run into a morass of wheezy misguidedness. There was the second feature film, quite possibly the most stillborn attempt at franchise resuscitation ever endeavored. And now, as this current six-episode revival comes to a close, it’s hard to argue against the notion that The X-Files is the bolt of lightning that is never going back into that jar. It’s far too damaged, too hopelessly ungainly and exhausted to endure as it currently stands. The truth is out of gas. The problem,

Mulder gets his groove back and so does the show. Review by Brandon Wolfe Writer Darin Morgan only wrote four episodes of The X-Files , yet he arguably made the largest impression of any writer to ever work on the series. Morgan brought a uniquely askew perspective to the series, opening doors that the show might otherwise have left to remain closed. His first script, Season 2’s circus-freak whodunit “Humbug,” was the first time an overtly comedic tone had ever been attempted on the theretofore straight-faced series. His next three scripts were the tragicomedy “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose,” often held up by critics as one of the finest episodes of television; “War of the Coprophages,” a squirmy-hilarious tale of killer cockroaches invading a small town; and Morgan’s pièce de résistance, “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space,” a mindbending hall of mirrors that satirized and deconstructed the series before the outside world even got the chance. Morgan never wrote for The X-Files again fo