'The X-Files' Review: It Gets Better And Better

Remember how I told you that the first new X-Files episode, airing Sunday, isn’t very good? Well, that’s still true. But I’ve now seen the next two episodes, and they are pretty wonderful. The second, in fact, airs the night after the premiere, on Monday.

If Sunday night’s first hour, written by creator Chris Carter, is required to do a lot of narrative throat-clearing and reintroduction of Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully and David Duchovny’s Fox Mulder — unnecessarily long, tedious reintroductions — the very next episode out of the gate, Monday’s “Founder’s Mutation,” gets the action moving. Written and directed by X-Files vet James Wong, episode 2 is an excellent, suspenseful outing that manages to unite both kinds of traditional X-Files installments, the mythology and the monster-of-the-week entries.

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Wong’s “Founder’s Mutation” finds Mulder and Scully investigating a mysterious, Department of Defense-funded doctor who is experimenting on children with various degrees of genetic abnormalities. The subject brings to the surface painful memories of the child Mulder and Scully had and gave up for adoption in the final, 2002 season of the original X-Files. The episode manages to be gravely moving and intermittently quite funny — yes, Wong manages to make a bleeding-from-the-eyes line amusing.

Even better — I’d go so far as to say an episode that can stand among the X-Files’ best “monster” episodes — is the third entry, “Mulder and Scully Meet The Were-Monster,” airing Feb. 1, written and directed by Darin Morgan. It’s startling, constantly surprising, and extremely funny without devolving into ridiculousness — exactly the hallmarks of other Darin Morgan X-Files eps such as 1996’s classic “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space.”

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I don’t want to spoil a minute of this one, but I’ll say a couple of things about it. First, there really is a were-monster in it (in other words, the title isn’t a joke, and the show pays off on its promise). Second, Duchovny and Anderson play the laughs and the scares with pitch-perfect performances, never milking a joke or being too deadpan-solemn. Third, a key character dresses exactly like Carl Kolchak. Who’s he? He’s the title hero of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, the terrific 1974-75 show that Chris Carter has often cited as one of the inspirations for The X-Files.

I’ll also — what the heck — quote a line. Scully says at one point, “This is how I like my Mulder: You’re bat-crap crazy.” Amen, sister!

Season 10 of The X-Files premieres on Jan. 24 at 10 p.m. on Fox.