SEASON 1

SEASON 2

SEASON 3

SEASON 4

SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

SEASON 6

SEASON 7

SEASON 8

SEASON 9

Written by Howard Gordon, and directed by Rob Bowman

Original airdate: October 7, 1994

Recap by RhymePhile

Teaser: At 700 East 56th Street in New York City we see an older man in comfy black jammies on his couch watching TV. Suddenly he smells smoke, and sees it coming from beneath his apartment door. The dummy immediately opens the door, and of course there's a wall of flames behind it. Jeez, everyone knows you're supposed to touch the doorknob to see if it's hot, old dude! Anyway, Dr. Saul Grissom (hey, he's not related to the CSI guy, is he?) calls 911 and tells the operator there's a fire outside his apartment, and that he's trapped. He's in apartment 606. Eek, sixth floor. Unless he's jumping a couple of storeys, he's in trouble, I'd say. Then the door catches fire, so Dr. Grissom paws through his closet, passing up a fedora, a tennis racket, and a tennis ball to get to the fire extinguisher. Cue the stunt man as the entire wall of the apartment goes up, engulfing the lovely Victorian-looking chairs that are seated right next to the door. As he's [coughing] and [wheezing] (according to the closed captioning), we see New York City's Bravest, the NYFD, come barreling up the stairs. Oh, and look here, on the way up they pass a large black man (Tony Todd, aka Worf's brother Kurn from Star Trek: The Next Generation and the Candyman from the horror flicks) wearing green fatigues who has a very noticeable horizontal scar on the back of his neck. Lt. Regan from the NYFD gets to apartment 606 and notices there's neither smoke nor fire, and after climbing six flights in all that gear he sounds remarkably good-natured about not seeing flames all over the place. He radios in to confirm the apartment's location, and then touches the door and doorknob and notices that they're cold. See? Go NYFD! The squad busts in the door, and after entering, they find Dr. Grissom sitting slumped on the floor, looking rather dead.

YAY, here comes the title screen! Ahh, good times. Let's buh na na na na na na na, doo doo doo for old time's sake, shall we? Woo woo woo woo woo woooooooo!

Our first shot is a worm's eye (as opposed to bird's eye, I know from all them there camera po-sishuns) view of a newspaper outside an apartment door. Feet move into the shot (with a sloppily tied right shoelace hanging) and we pull back to see OUR HERO!!!! Okay, it's just Fox Mulder, with his Season 2 weed-whacker hair cut, sporting a red T-shirt and jeans. He brings the paper in, and a cassette tape falls out of it. Remember those? Cassette tapes? Man, it feels like 1994 in here again. An article of the newspaper, "Prominent Doctor Dies," with the subhead reading "Pioneer in Sleep Disorders" has been circled in black marker. That subhead could really use another word to fill out the first line to make it look better. The second named guest star to come up is Nicholas Lea, huzzah! Mulder fishes around under his desk until he finds his cassette player (I don't even think they make them anymore!) and puts the tape in. It's a recording of the 911 call we heard previously in the teaser.

The tape continues as we jump into Skinner's office (and I should look up the proper script term for this, but it's Saturday, sue me) where our gruff yet loveable Assistant Director sits listening, his hand up to his chin in thought. Mulder tells Skinner that the article made no mention of the fire, and Skinner snarks back that he can read. Hee. Go Skinner. Mulder goes on to say that Grissom's company had a number of government contracts, which places the case under Bureau jurisdiction. Remember when they used to care about this kind of stuff, before Mulder would just run out on his own whenever he damn well felt like it? Skinner is quick with his wily agent though, and accurately tells Mulder that he knows Mulder wants the assignment for something more than just he fact that it falls under FBI jurisdiction. He's a smarty, that one. Mulder's caught of course, (and mostly because you can read pretty much *any* emotion that passes over David Duchovny's face when he's really trying) and tells Skinner that the circumstances surrounding Grissom's death warrant a closer look. Mulder says the NYPD won't talk to him unless Skinner gets the attorney general to sign off on it. Hmm, something's up. I'm sure when that happened Mulder's spidey-sense started to tingle. When asked where he got the tape, Mulder is hesitant, and tells Skinner that his only source is dead. That would be Deep Throat, for those of you playing along at home. Skinner promises to look into it, and dismisses Mulder by reminding him that he has 24 hours of wiretap tape to be transcribed.