At the end of last season, Mulder appeared to have died. Season 3 starts with “The Blessing Way” (S3, E1) in which a dead Mulder talks to his dead father and his dead father figure, Deep Throat. I like that we get a lot of minor characters in this one. Scully meets with Mulder’s mother who was strangely absent last episode. Krycek is also here and he shoots Scully’s sister. At this rate, neither Scully nor Mulder will have any family members left by next season. It’s too bad their family members exist merely to be killed off. We also get the first appearance of The Well-Manicured Man, another member of The Syndicate which keeps aliens a secret.

Mulder has his shirt off for much of this episode. I’ve been surprised upon rewatch that Mulder gets objectified more than Scully. The show reminds us that Mulder loves sunflower seeds by having the Navajo gift him a bag after they resurrect him using their special powers. We actually did need a reminder about the sunflower seed thing since the last time this was mentioned was last season’s opening episode. I think we do see Mulder eat sunflower seeds in a few episodes this season, so they do a better job of remembering this unnecessary character trait going forward.

“Paper Clip” (S3, E2) is a continuation of last episode. I don’t know why the Smoking Man thinks he killed Mulder. As far as he knows, he found an empty train car and burned it. He didn’t know Mulder was hiding in the train car. Despite that, this is actually a really good episode. Mulder and Scully find millions of medical records in an underground vault which are used to make alien-human hybrids. (Which gives us a good explanation for all the monsters-of-the-week episodes. All the mutants they encounter could be part of the alien-human hybrid program. Why not?) Unfortunately, there’s a bit of an anti-vax implication since they got the medical records from inoculation records. Mulder sees a spaceship and Scully sees several aliens. It feels really momentous. (Scully really shouldn’t remain a skeptic after this episode, but she does.) The usually calm Smoking Man gets really emotional in this episode as he keeps failing to get the tape and Mulder fails to stay dead.

Skinner’s initial plan to keep the Syndicate from killing Mulder and Scully doesn’t make sense, since the Syndicate could easily just kill Skinner too. The Smoking Man tries to kill Krycek, but fails at this assassination attempt as well. At the end, Skinner reveals that every Navajo has memorized the tape the Smoking Man wanted to keep secret, so the Smoking Man has to stop trying to kill Mulder and Scully or his secret will be out. I don’t buy it, but overall, this three-part episode is actually really cool, especially this last episode.

“D.P.O.” (S3, E3) features a young Giovanni Ribisi (who has the power to control electricity) and Jack Black (who plays his friend). It was delightful to see these famous actors when they were younger and unknown. I was really into video games when this episode originally aired, so it was annoying that they showed Ribisi playing Virtua Fighter 2, but the sound effects were from Sonic the Hedgehog! I guess they didn’t think their audience would notice.

However, I was impressed that they played a currently popular song (“Hey Man, Nice Shot” by Filter) in the episode. Usually, TV shows in the ’90s wouldn’t play ’90s music because the creators of the show pick music that was popular when they were younger. At the time, I loved that they played one of my favorite songs. This episode also references Mulder’s porn addiction by having him check out a nudie mag. I really liked this one.

“Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” (S3, E4) is a humorous episode, although not as funny as last season’s “Humbug”. Someone is killing psychics. The police hire a television psychic to help solve the murder. The TV psychic gives the police vague information anyone could have come up with, but the police are nevertheless impressed by him. Mulder finds an insurance salesman who actually is psychic, however, the real psychic doesn’t think he can change the future, so knowing what’s going to happen is more of a curse than a blessing.

The insurance salesman predicts Mulder will die of auto-erotic asphyxiation which is on-brand. (Is this a reference to the death of Stephen Milligan which was in the news around this time?) If Mulder ever does die in the upcoming X Files sequel, hopefully, this is how he goes out. The psychic also says Scully won’t die! Scully gets a dog in this episode which will actually appear again in a couple future episodes. So far, this season is much better than the first two seasons.

I don’t have much to say about “The List” (S3, E5). A prisoner vows to get revenge before being put to death, then the people who wronged him start dying. “2Shy” (S3, E6) is a gross-out episode. A mutant meets overweight women in online chat rooms and dissolves their body by regurgitating digestive acid onto them, then he eats their fat. Yech.

This is followed by another gross-out episode called “The Walk” (S3, E7) which starts with a suicidal man trying to boil himself alive but surviving. Also, a kid dies in this episode. This episode does remind us Mulder likes sunflower seeds and it deals with soldiers having PTSD so it’s at least saying something interesting. “The Walk” feels like a repeat of “Excelsis Dei” (S2, E11) in which a feeble elderly man terrorized people using astral projection, except this time, it’s a quadriplegic using astral projection.

“Oubliette” (S3, E8) was a fairly forgettable episode, however, it was fun to see a young Jewel Staite before her more famous appearance in Firefly. She plays a kidnapped girl who shares a psychic connection to a previous kidnapping victim.

“Nisei” (S3, E9) and “731” (S3, E10) is another two-parter. It starts with Japanese men doing an autopsy on what appears to be an alien. Scully remarks that it’s not Mulder’s usual form of entertainment, referencing Mulder’s porn addition. Scully says it’s hokier than the alien autopsy they showed on the Fox Network and Mulder says it was fake because they showed too much. I never watched the alien autopsy special they’re referring to, but I remember watching lots of commercials advertising it. It seemed to be a big deal at the time. It’s fun that The X Files, like The Simpsons, likes to poke fun at its own network.

Skinner shows up to tell Mulder and Scully to stop investigating. Why did he fly out there when a phone call would have sufficed? Scully meets with an abduction support group and remembers her own abduction. It wasn’t by aliens, but by the Japanese. Apparently, Japanese doctors performed horrible experiments on people during World War II just like the Nazis did and just like the Nazis, they were trying to create alien/human hybrids. And they’re still doing it.

Agent Danny Pendrell, the tech guy analyzing Scully’s implant, uses the word “app” to refer to a computer program. I thought everyone used the word “application” back in the 1990s, but I guess “app” is an older word than I thought. Since everyone in the support group removes their implants, it makes you wonder why the Japanese bother putting them in. Mulder does a lot of running, jumping, and sneaking around in this episode, ending on a cliff hanger when he jumps onto a moving train. It’s very cinematic.

During the opening credits of “731” (S3, E10), we get the message “Apology is policy” instead of “The truth is out there.” They occasionally have a different tagline in the opening credits which is fun. Mulder ends up stuck in a train car with a ticking time bomb and a man who wants to kill him. Scully visits a leper colony where people get experimented on, then massacred. The people appear to be aliens or at least hybrids, but she thinks they’re just deformed people. We find out the implant she had removed can read your mind.

“Revelations” (S3, E11) features R. Lee Ermey (a real life drill instructor who famously played a drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket) as a preacher. It would have been interesting to see more of him, but he dies before the opening credits. A man with burning hands is killing anyone with stigmata and is going after a young boy next. I was surprised to learn Fox Mulder is only six feet tall. I’d thought he was taller due to the way he towers over Scully. He calls another character Homer Simpson’s evil twin. This episode aired about a year before Mulder and Scully appeared on The Simpsons. This is another episode in which Scully is the believer and Mulder is the skeptic. The first time they did this, it was interesting, but now that it happens more often, it’s kind of annoying. Mulder acting skeptical of anything is out-of-character for him. It’s interesting that the events of this episode transform Scully from a nominal Catholic into more of a believer.

Next, we get a funny episode, “War of the Coprophages” (S3, E12). This one features killer coach roaches and is absolutely hilarious. It must have been written by the same writer who did “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” because we see Scully’s dog again! There’s a reference to killer bees, which the Fox Network did a special on like their alien autopsy.

It’s fun that Scully initially stays at home eating ice cream, giving her dog a bath, and reading books while Mulder investigates solo. Mulder flirts with an entomologist and has his shirt off in a few scenes so they were trying to be sexy too. Teens get high off of something they call “good crap” (the censors wouldn’t let them say “good shit”), then later we find out it’s literally manure! (There was even a hint in the title of the episode.) There’s a manure business that has the slogan, “Waste is a terrible thing to waste.” Ha! Scully and Mulder end up covered in dung at the end and the sheriff tells them they look pooped!

A young Ryan Reynolds dies before the opening credits in “Syzygy” (S3, E13). This is another Satanic Panic episode. I like that the show acknowledges the McMartin preschool case wasn’t real (along with most, if not all, satanic ritual abuse accusations). A couple mean girls (one played by the sister in That 70s Show) are terrorizing their town using superpowers. Mulder and Scully uncharacteristically fight with each other throughout this episode. Scully smokes and Mulder gets drunk. The townspeople act like a caricature of an angry mob. It turns out everyone is acting antagonistically due to planetary alignment. I think they were going for another funny episode, but it didn’t quite work as a humorous episode or a serious one.

Speaking of That 70s Show, Kurtwood Smith, who played the dad, appears in the next episode, “Grotesque” (S3, E14). He’s a criminal profiler tracking down a serial killer who’s obsessed with gargoyles. Mulder gets obsessed with gargoyles himself. I don’t have much to say about this one. It’s an okay episode.

“Piper Maru” (S3, E15) is named after Gillian Anderson’s daughter who was born during season 2. This is another two-parter and continues the storyline from the two-part season opener. This is the first black oil episode. Black oil is an alien substance that possesses people and gives them the power to blast people with radiation. You can tell someone is possessed because the whites of their eyes go black. Black oil is a big part of the first X Files movie. We open with French sailors discovering a WWII plane underwater. One of them gets possessed by black oil and gives the rest radiation poisoning.

I like that the show remembers Scully’s father. Also, Scully is seeking revenge against Krycek for killing her sister. Mulder just randomly runs into Krycek in Hong Kong. Mulder wants revenge against Krycek for killing his father, but needs him alive to get the disk. (Didn’t every Navajo memorize the disk? Why does Mulder need it?) In a flashback of the submarine it’s obviously a model and the shot lingers on the fake-looking submarine for too long. Skinner gets shot by Krycek’s partner for investigating the death of Scully’s sister.

“Apocrypha” (S3, E16) is the second part to “Piper Maru”. It opens with a flashback to Mulder’s father and The Smoking Man investigating the black oil back in the 1950s. Krycek gets possessed by the black oil and meets up with The Smoking Man in the present day. The Lone Gunmen appear in this episode and aren’t annoying for once. Mulder is able to get a meeting with The Well Manicured Man. I enjoyed this one.

“Pusher” (S3, E17) is about a man who uses his mind-control powers to make people kill themselves. Lest we forget he’s a porn addict, Mulder wears a miniature camera at one point and jokes about getting the Playboy channel. It’s a pretty good episode, although one sequence felt off. A man is about to light himself on fire. Instead of stopping him, Mulder and Scully instead prepare to put out the fire that hasn’t happened yet. When he does finally set himself on fire, they put the fire out immediately, but the man looks like someone who’s been on fire for awhile. Sloppily done.

In “Teso Dos Bichos” (S3, E18), an ancient burial is disturbed and people start getting killed by a jaguar spirit. An archeologist being well-off enough to afford to drive a Jaguar is almost as unbelievable as a jaguar spirit. Upon learning that a murder victim had eaten sunflower seeds, Mulder approves, reminding us he’s supposed to really like sunflower seeds. There are some good flashlight scenes with intense music playing in this one. Unfortunately, Scully and Mulder get attacked by a herd of cats at the end. It’s supposed to be scary, but instead, it’s just silly.

“Hell Money” (S3, E19) features both a young B. D. Wong and a young Lucy Liu as guest stars. It opens with a man getting burned alive in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Chinese people are having a lottery in which they bet their organs, including possibly losing their heart, but they’re desperate enough for money to do it. It’s not entirely clear that anything supernatural happens in this one, although there are references to ghosts.

The next episode is a funny one. “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” (S3, E20) opens with classic gray aliens abducting a couple teens, but then the grays get abducted themselves by a red stop-motion cyclops. Good stuff. Jose Chung is a famous writer writing a book about the incident. (He’ll later appear on an episode of Millennium poking fun at Scientology.) He interviews different people who give hilariously different versions of events.

I like that they acknowledge hypnosis creates false memories, although they also act like hypnosis can help you remember so-called repressed memories, an idea which has lead to a lot of harm in the real world. Being on network TV, The X Files couldn’t use certain swear words. In this episode, the foul-mouthed Detective Manners (based on series director Kim Manners) says things like, “You bet your blankedy blank bleep I did!” because Scully is censoring his language in her retelling.

The Men in Black appear in this episode. I don’t know if they ever appear again, although it would make sense for such an organization to be an integral part of the world of The X Files. In this episode, they’re played by the wrestler Jesse Ventura and the game show host Alex Trebec. They try to convince a witness that he saw the planet Venus, not a spaceship, and claim that President Jimmy Carter’s UFO sighting was the planet Venus. (It was actually a barium cloud produced by a rocket launched from Eglin Air Force Base, but many people thought it was the planet Venus at the time.) The witness hilariously responds with the non sequitur that he’s a Republican!

A different witness thinks Mulder and Scully are Men in Black! In his version of events, Mulder screams like a girl upon seeing a dead body. Scully performs an autopsy on the gray alien and footage is presented on TV, hosted by the TV psychic who previously appeared in “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” (S3, E4). I like when the monster-of-the-week episodes aren’t completely stand alone, but tie in with previous episodes. They have a couple references to Close Encounters of the Third Kind in this one too.

It turns out the gray aliens are members of the Air Force in costume and they hypnotize people into thinking they were abducted by aliens for some reason. The case, as often happens, is unresolved at the end, although it was a lot of fun along the way. Scully tells Chung that this case has more of a resolution than usual. Maybe the strength of The X Files is leaving loose ends. They might get resolved by a later episode, they might not. It’s a way to make the audience stay tuned. Even if you know it won’t be resolved by a later episode, the lingering mystery stays with you in a way a resolved ending doesn’t.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute… Is Mulder pleasuring himself while watching the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot video at the end of this episode? Wow. Just… wow.

In “Avatar” (S3, E21) we learn Skinner has a wife, but they’re on the verge of divorce. Also, he’s been haunted by a succubus since his time in Viet Nam. Whatever. I do like that we get minor recurring characters like Danny, the computer guy, who appears in this episode as well as some others. Of course, characters like this tend to get killed off. Hopefully Danny will last longer than Queequeg.

Remember Queequeg? Queequeg is the dog that first appeared in “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” and reappeared in “War of the Coprophages”. Since Queequeg tends to appear in humorous episodes, I was expecting “Quagmire” (S3, E22) to be another funny one. They’re investigating a lake monster with some over-the-top characters and Mulder makes a few jokes, after all. However, it’s not really funny because Queequeg gets eaten by the monster! It’s a bit of a rift on Jaws. I like the philosophical conversation Scully and Mulder have while stranded on the lake in the dark. You’ve got to respect nature, because nature won’t respect you. It’s a good line.

“Wetwired” (S3, E23) is another episode about subliminal messages like “Blood” from last season, but this episode does a better job. The subliminal messages make people paranoid and violent. Affected individuals see reality glitch like a scrambled television signal. It’s a cool visual. Scully gets paranoid of Mulder after seeing a hallucination of Mulder joking around with the Smoking Man, or as Scully calls him, Cancer Man. (X also calls him Cancer Man in the next episode.) Is this the first time his character is named on screen? Maybe I should call him Cancer Man going forward.

Mulder is immune to the subliminal messages because he is red-color blind. Will this come up in another episode or is this the only time it will be mentioned? We learn X works for Cancer Man, but drops hints to Mulder hoping Mulder will uncover the truth before it gets covered up. Scully has been paranoid of Mulder before, but it’s fun to see the partners at odds with each other like this. Overall, a pretty good episode.

In the season finale, “Talitha Cumi” (S3, E24), we meet a man who can heal people, but the shape-changing alien from earlier episodes is trying to kill him. We also find out that Cancer Man knows Mulder’s mom. There’s even some hinting that Cancer Man might be Mulder’s biological father. Mulder’s mom ends up in a hospital and needs the healing man to save her.

I didn’t expect to see Deep Throat and Mulder’s dad this season (since they died) but not only did they appear in the season premiere (Mulder talked with them while he was temporarily dead) but they appear again in the season finale thanks to a shape changer taking on their forms. The shape changer also tells Cancer Man that he’s dying of lung cancer. Don’t worry. I have a feeling Cancer Man isn’t going away anytime soon.

Cancer Man reveals that his reason for covering up aliens and anything supernatural is to make everyone believe in science like a religion. Huh. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? First of all, aliens aren’t supernatural. Secondly, science isn’t a belief system, it’s just a method for eliminating bias. Third, in The X Files universe, supernatural stuff is real, so the scientific method would prove that it’s real.

Anyway, this being the season finale, we end on a cliff hanger. Will Mulder be able to save the healing man from the shape changer so the healing man can save his mother’s life? We’ll have to wait until next season to find out.

Episodes of the X Files often take place in different states, but most of them could really take place anywhere. There’s usually nothing distinctive about the look or feel of the location they’re in or the accents of the people living there. Also, Mulder’s jokes usually aren’t funny. The aliens turning out to be the Japanese in “Nisei” (S3, E9) and turning out to be the Air Force in “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” felt repetitious (especially since both episodes also jokingly referenced Fox’s Alien Autopsy special), but I guess that’s what happened back when shows were expected to have over twenty episodes a season.

I really liked the opening two-parter “The Blessing Way” (S3, E1) and “Paper Clip” (S3, E2) and the follow-up two-parter “Piper Maru” (S3, E15) and “Apocrypha” (S3, E16). The season finale “Talitha Cumi” (S3, E24) was enjoyable to watch as well. As far as non-Mythos episodes, “D.P.O.” (S3, E3) which features Giovanni Ribisi controlling electricity was really good. “War of the Coprophages” (S3, E12) is hilarious as is “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” (S3, E20). I remember being annoyed by the funny episodes when this was originally on the air, but now, the funny episodes tend to be my favorites.

With shape-changing aliens, black oil possessing people, and other things like subliminal messages affecting people’s behavior, the world of The X Files is one where you can’t really trust anyone. You need to always be suspicious, especially of those closest to you.