Doggett finds himself in a Mexican jail cell with no idea how he got there, or indeed who he is. Reyes, Scully and Skinner attempt to find him and help him.

Presumably the idea here was to get into and examine Doggett's character a little more, but it's difficult to do so when he has no memory. It seems all potential here has been lost merely in order to make the story an X-File. While it does admittedly look at Doggett's sad and difficult life and the tragedy of his son being murdered, we don't really discover any great secrets that we didn't know before. It's a nice performance from Robert Patrick as John relives his greatest pain all over again, but we need more than that.

It's a beautifully put together episode, with the Mexican climes nicely brought out with washed-out colours and dark oranges and reds, but like the stylishness of last week's episode, this too seems to have been designed to distract the viewer from the fact that nothing's happening. The difference here is that in Trust No 1 lots of things happened for no reason, and here lots of things don't happen for no reason. We're never clear on just why Doggett has been brought to this town (he uncovered a cartel, and one of them apparently decided instead of killing him they should be kind and take away a life of pain it seems) or what he's trying to do when he wanders the town and makes enemies of everyone. His phone call is never really followed through on, Reyes eventually arrives and flukily picks just where John is hiding, and Scully and Skinner stand about looking like they're superfluous to the whole thing. Which, in all honesty, they are.

Too much of this feels like padding. Doggett's continual fights and run-ins get tired rapidly, the FBI stuff is wholly unnecessary, and with vast chunks of dialogue in untranslated Spanish, especially earlier on, attention starts to wander as you realize they could be saying anything and you'd never know. It seems South American episodes are a big no-no for The X-Files, and neither El Mundo Gira or , to name two, have got the message through. For whatever reason they never seem to work, and from Vince Gilligan we expect a lot better than this.

**

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