This was definitely among the most bizarre X-Files episodes in the run, and I'm glad it was intentional, because how weird is it when they do something bizarre that they actually tried to take seriously? (Remember 'El Mundo Gira'? Or 'Rain King'?) Also,
For the few days since I watched this episode, I've been trying to come up with the story I've seen or read where god is simply hanging around, watching things happen, but not interfering or even suggesting things to people, and you don't really know it's god until the very end, if you ever even do at all. And I don't remember what it was I was watching. I don't think it was this, because I'm pretty sure I'd have remembered this specific episode if I'd seen any of it before.
But it does make for an interesting story. As much as I don't believe in any gods, I can at least enjoy their fictional appearances, as here. Also, because Burt was a great and absurd character. Checkers! It's often the little scenes in this series that really stand out, and the checkers montage followed by Scully and Reyes playing against each other was definitely one of those. It was just so delightfully odd.
Despite 'Improbable's simplicity, I feel it opens up a lot of interesting existential questions. What if the universe is entirely deterministic and we only have the illusion of free will? Is it possible that our lives are literally just a series of absolute positions of subatomic particles? Obviously the episode went in a more religious direction with it, but I prefer the scientific take, myself.
From a religious perspective, it's an interesting view that god can be present and not involved. He knows how the story is going to end, but he does nothing to either encourage the killer or stop him because, as far as we can tell from the episode, he can't. He's merely an observer at this point.
Burt Reynolds's god character actually reminded me a bit of Clyde Bruckman. He knows what's going to happen and he's largely powerless to stop it (or maybe in this case he simply chooses not to interfere). The killer here is apparently driven by numerological combinations and values, but it's also possible that all of that is just a coincidence, which seems about as likely as god actually existing and playing checkers.
I look at numerology in pretty much the same way I look at religion. It's another form of confirmation bias. If you pray for success and then achieve it, how do you know it was the prayer that did it? If god did exist, and works in the mysterious ways everyone is so fond of claiming, what if, when you prayed for success on say, a test, instead of simply rewarding you with a good score, the god that you prayed to gave you the confidence in your answers and the slight guidance to study and remember the right material? Or if you pray for a good outcome when going for a medical treatment, what if god is simply guiding the doctors, but not simply 'making you better'?
Numerology is even worse, in a way. You can make numbers come out basically any way you want. Adding the letter values in the names doesn't work? OK, try removing the vowels. Or remove every third letter. Or remove the letters that lack symmetry. And so on. It's possible to find patterns in anything, just like it's possible to assume your prayer was actually validated and that it wasn't just human success that gave you the outcome you wanted.
It's the classic correlation versus causation argument.
My theory is that the killer in 'Improbable' wasn't really killing because of any pattern he had established, but the murders happened to fit - or rather, be forced into - a pattern that made sense to Reyes and her colleagues at the FBI (also, that was one of the most bizarre scenes in the series when she was explaining her theory - so much so that I assumed it was a dream sequence or some kind of fantasy vision).
And maybe that's all profiling is. Finding patterns where there otherwise are none. Maybe that's the true job of a good investigator, and Reyes did her job extraordinarily well to discover what no one else could see.
Or maybe it was all just a big coincidence after all and she got lucky.
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