Mulder has gone and Scully is left looking after baby William. Doggett has launched an investigation into Kersh's activities, which has made him wildly unpopular. Reyes' former boyfriend, Assistant Director Follmer, seems to want her back and she must choose sides. Meanwhile, Skinner tries to get Doggett to drop his investigation into the deaths of Krycek and Noel Roar but is met with resistance and a strange woman turns up on the scene and starts drowning people.
Another season of The X-Files, another bunch of unanswered questions, disappearances, backtalk, nonsense and general obfuscation. Just as you thought things couldn't get any more murky and contrived, suddenly Chris Carter is left to clear up his own mess and resorts to the same old policies he did the last time: wipe away the evidence, clear the slate, leave nothing explained and carry on with the incoherent babble. This time it's just not acceptable. There's no need to have Mulder disappear when he could just be 'at home' and never mentioned. The sudden closeness between the three main agents seems a little odd, with 'Dana', 'John' and 'Monica' banded about left, right and centre, and while it's good to see the Lone Gunmen pop by, it would have been nice to see their story wrapped up first.
Lucy Lawless's character is a complete oddity, with the story of her drowning people seemingly nothing whatsoever to do with the FBI, Kersh, Mulder, alien replicants, Scully's baby or anything. I'm assuming all will become clear in part two, but I'm not counting on it. Rather than kicking off a new era with a new less inexplicable set-up, we're thrown into more mysteries than ever before and it's gone way beyond a joke now. Reyes and Follmer's past relationship adds little to the story, and there's not a whole lot of sexual tension there anyway, and while Doggett's determination is impressive, I don't see why he's so keen to keep pushing until someone gets killed. Why Skinner accompanies him on a search for some files is a total mystery, especially after telling him to leave well alone.
Scully is sidelined to a ridiculous degree, as if without Mulder there's no room for her in the show any more, and the fact that her baby seems more than human is yet another twist we don't need. We thought everything was cleared up at the end of last season: Mulder's alien genes had somehow allowed Scully to have a child, born out of love and sex. Now we're back in the 'genetic anomaly' category and it seems we've backtracked once again. The story is confusing, plotted at an incredibly slow pace when half of the next episode could have been easily spliced in to pick up the pace and it's another poor start to the season. Why couldn't we just have a bunch of standalone stories this year and leave all this crap behind? Or better yet, why didn't Fox kill the show before it reached this point? Now that's what I call unexplained.
**
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