THE X-FILES: What we Loved & Hated about My Struggle IV

X-Files 11.10 My Struggle IV

I can’t say that I had high hopes for this episode as the other “My Struggle” episodes in the series were not my favorites of the past two seasons. My low expectations didn’t really lessen my disappointment, though. Basically, we got to see Mulder chase William, and then Scully chase both of them and then a showdown with CSM. A number of bad guys died along the way. It’s actually kind of impressive how little happened in this episode. We saw Tad O’Malley again, but other than being an obvious link to My Struggle I & II, his appearance and the discussion of the alien plague had absolutely nothing to do with this episode. Not that I loved the alien plague story, but I had assumed that it would all make more sense when the season was over, but it makes if anything less sense now. There wasn’t a ton I liked about this episode, which is disappointing because in general, I think the stand-alone episodes this season were as good as any in the prime years of the series.

What we loved:

• Scully’s pregnant (“It’s impossible!”) with Mulder’s baby (or so we are led to believe)
• Skinner referring to Tad O’Malley’s show as fake news – I’m digging all the political references this season
• A lot of bad guys met their makers (“I had some payback…to pay back”) although how is Mulder going to escape homicide charges?
• Cigarette Smoking Man is actually dead?? (of course we’ve thought that before!)

What we hated:

• Non-linear timeline – maybe it makes things more interesting in some ways, but it makes things a heck of a lot harder to follow, especially when the time/date captions were only on the screen for a second when they were used
• William exploding people with his mind – ewwww!
• Scully never really got to talk with William (at least with him as him, not pretending to be someone else)
• Mulder and Scully thinking that William had been killed when they’ve seen him shot and “resurrected” before! Or was it more that Mulder couldn’t believe CSM would kill him point-blank and Scully now knows that William isn’t hers and so that was the shock they were showing?