At least, we're pretty sure guest star Burt Reynolds is God in Improbable at any rate. A rather stunning surprise from Chris Carter, this episode is tremendous fun, though unable to escape more questions about why Reyes isn't fired for this sequence of events.

We talk about our own life-path numbers and how relevant they are; also how Mulder crazy contrasts with Reyes crazy...

Scary Monsters sees the welcome return of Leyla Harrison to the series in a amusing if still grisly episode that can't quite hide how much it resembles a rather famous The Twilight Zone episode.

We wind up talking about fandom given how Leyla views the X-Files staff and how Mulder might be becoming Poochy...

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One of them anyway...

Audrey Pauley feels more like a Twilight Zone episode, but is an interesting contrast to Steven Maeda's previous season 9 episode of 4D. And yet, somehow we end up talking about Dark Souls and Die Hard during the course of this episode. And how familiar the villain is.

Underneath is an episode we really did completely forget existed. And this despite it being the most The X-Files episode this season! A shame that Doggett is completely correct in this episode for a succession of completely wrong reasons.

Also not clear how he trusts anything after this...

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...mostly about the current state of the conspiracy here in Season 9...

Providence, wait, Provenance. No, Providence. Dammit, its Provenance!

Provenance has the Lone Gunmen for hilariously, almost futile inclusion and seems to want to hark back to one of the series more startling reveals - a half-buried ancient UFO off the coast of Africa. Except not we have one in Calgary, Canada.

We complain at length about what has been done to Scully's character and how weirdly certain people are that Mulder has died somewhere off-screen (made pointless given Carter's reported statement that Duchovny would be appearing in the finale).

Providence doesn't get much better as a weird alien prophecy means either Mulder or William has to die for... reasons, and how everyone acts like Mulder stopped the aliens taking over when he did effectively nothing of the sort.

The episode also reminds of us of better things. Babylon 5, The Tommyknockers. Quatermass and the Pit...

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Vince Gilligan has failed us!

And apparently only us as the critical reception to John Doe is strikingly positive. We speculate how much of this is due to snobbishness around sci-fi/fantasy/horror and how much is because we're well acquainted with Gilligan's later productions.

Also a waste of a memory vampire...

Hellbound is not The X-Files take on Hellraiser, but that film inevitably comes up as a point of comparison given such focus on skinned corpses. And also ask high-brow philosophical questions such as when does the soul enter the body - and The X-Files' apparent inference being potentially hours after birth...

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With Lord of the Flies, we wonder why The X-Files is now about a group of British school-children trapped on a desert island-

Wait...

We actually get curious as to whether the show's allusion to Jackass makes any sense anymore and the horror of body lice as a concept. At least we have an unscrupulous entomologist in the form of Rocky to provide entertainment in an episode reminiscent of Rain King but... Well, things are different now.

Trust No 1 demands the question of did Chris Carter actually want to still be involved in this series? Mostly because he seems quite intent on torpedoing Scully's character in a deeply frustrating and seemingly pointless episode.

Well, there is the introduction of the super-soldier's weakness, but there's some... hilarious complications with it.

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Daemonicus is Kim's most hated episode of the entire run of The X-Files. Fun times!

A good start leads into an increasingly dissatisfying experience and we once again discover how different intent was to how we wound up interpreting the episode on both watch and re-watch. Inevitably we also end up talking about Hannibal and also Hannibal.

Also; its clear the writers don't quite know what to do with Reyes...

4-D is better though bleaker and depressing and should probably have shown up in the series later. But the series struggles to know what to do with Scully, these initial episodes seemingly written before her return was confirmed.

And really, why ask about vampires of all things?

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We're not entirely sure if Scully buys Jigsaw brand mobiles for her baby or the foley-artist made a strange choice for season 9's opener, but when baby William seems to use telekinesis to make his mobile move... It does sound like something out of Saw...

Welcome to Season 9! It all looks and sounds and feels a lot better than another series we've been struggling through. And in a possible bid to get more viewers both episodes involve Lucy Lawless not wearing anything.

We discuss how the tone of the series has changed dramatically after real world events and how much more serious things have gotten. Despite the super-Soldier stuff.

But at least Reyes is now part of the main cast. New intro feels wrong though.

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...it won't attract the worm!

Weapon of Choice used (for no particular reason) in All About Yves is one of the high points. We get into why even with the writers throwing every trick in the bag to get a second series, even the revelatory answers were never going to be exactly great by way of Star Wars and Twin Peaks.

Plus, Kim has a far better plan to capture Yves than anything Morris Fletcher has dreamt up and its really hard to overlook how much simpler and effective and quick her suggestion would be.

As is usual we get into an overview of the series, along with best and worst episodes and look forward to returning to The X-Files.

Farewell The Lone Gunmen! You could have been a fun series if you consisted of episodes like The Unusual Suspects, Three of a Kind, or Pilot. Alas, you made Jimmy Bond a mainstay of the series and kinda wrecked everything. Kim even has a far more interesting use for him in the series too...

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