The X-Files Season 4, Episode 24: Gethsemane

I refuse to believe the lie. That would be too easy.

Mulder is not dead. We were never shown the body in his apartment, and I'm not fooled for an instant. Scully is lying to her superiors and covering for Mulder in some way that we'll probably find out at the beginning of season 5. And we'll find out both where Mulder actually is and whose body Scully identified as his in his apartment.

The whole episode was set up to make us believe in and accept at face value the existence of a vast government conspiracy to fake the existence of alien life on earth to cover up for other covert activities they want to engage in undetected. While Mulder is off chasing aliens, what else are they getting away with?

And Michael Kritschgau tells a very believable story about the government perpetrating this huge alien hoax, including the abduction of Samantha Mulder (because apparently they thought when Mulder was twelve he was destined to want to investigate his father's work?) and Scully's cancer.

And this whole story is meant to be Mulder's undoing. We're led to believe that even he bought it and became so disillusioned with basically everything he knows that it utterly shattered his worldview. He's distraught in the final scene. But we've seen him distraught before, back in 'One Breath', and it's only strengthened his resolve. Well, eventually. In 'One Breath', Scully brought him back. That was all he cared about at that point.

But now, with an entire conspiracy set up to, among other things, give Scully cancer, to make Mulder believe there was some serious abducting going on. But besides that, how'd they fake the women of MUFON in Allentown? Were they all just actors? Hmm, I suppose that's possible, since they all mysteriously 'died' a year later - you know what they say about seeing the body, right? They just disappeared.

Except I don't believe the lie. Believing that lie would mean believing that Mulder really is dead and that the entirety of the first four seasons of the show were a part of that lie, and we as viewers would be complicit in it. And again, I don't want to believe this particular lie.

Also going on in this episode is about Scully's loss of faith. Serious illnesses and other traumatic experiences can cause people to gain or lose their faith, or at least question a lot of what they think they know about life. In Scully's case, she had grown up with a strong faith and seems to have gradually fallen away from it, especially as she became more involved with her work on the X-Files. And her recent ordeal hasn't really done anything to draw her back, but has possibly pushed her further away from it.

And it's also pushing her away from her family. We meet her older brother, Bill (doesn't she have another brother?) who is annoyed at her for apparently abandoning him and her mother, especially given everything else the family have been through to this point. But really, it's not any of their business. I mean, yes, it kind of is because she's family, but what she chooses to share and how she chooses to seek treatment or not is her business alone.

And all while this is happening, Mulder is reliving the first season episode, 'Ice'. Well, not exactly, but there were elements of 'Gethsemane' that definitely made me think of that one. Rather than seeking icebound worms that can cause extreme violence and paranoia, Mulder ... wait. Extreme violence and paranoia, you say? I guess another thing we can take from this episode, then, is that things buried in ice can cause extreme violence and paranoia.

I liked the way this story was framed, and unlike earlier season 4 episodes like 'Tunguska' and 'Terma' which were also done as flashbacks from Scully's testimony, this one actually worked.

And ifwhen Mulder turns out to be alive, well, the Oscar for Best Actor goes to one Dana Scully, because seriously, she totally sold it. Maybe she convinced herself that Mulder was dead to give further credence to her testimony, but either way, the FBI seem convinced of it, at least for now.

Will Mulder show himself at the most inopportune moment? Will Scully discover the real source of her cancer? Will the Cancer Man go back on the Patch? Will the X-Files be closed down for a second time, only to be reopened again when Skinner realises Mulder and Scully were telling the truth?

Those answers and more - more questions, that is - in season 5 of The X-Files, starting here, on Monday.