I am going to review every single episode (and all feature-length movies!) of this show. I regret nothing everything!

Picture it: Colorado, September 10, 1993. An overly tall chubby girl child sits on the floor in front of her TV watching a new TV show premier on the FOX network. There are aliens and shadowy government conspiracies* and two super attractive FBI agents out to expose it all to the naive citizens of America. She, like a lot of people, was immediately hooked.

* I’ll get into this, I promise. We have 201 episodes (and two full-length movies!) to get into it. For now, let’s just award it exactly one yike. 

That young fat girl was (obviously) me. And god damn did did I fucking love the shit out of The X-Files.  I don’t know if I can pinpoint what I loved about the show back then – Mulder being so devastatingly handsome? Scully being smart and kick ass and awesome? The idea that we aren’t alone in this vast universe? That it was the early ’90s, I was 13, and The X-Files represented the limitless potential of Life with a capital L? I can’t say. What I can say is that even back then I recognized that the Pilot episode of the show was one of the finest episodes of TV ever put to film.

This episode does not start with the classic theme music that became a cultural touchstone during the show’s run. Instead, we start with the show’s title card and then another card informing us that the following story is inspired by actual events. In 1993 I was really excited by this. Now I understand that this could mean literally anything; but back then, this shit was REAL. AS. FUCK. (I was 13 and stupid. I am much older now but not much smarter.) We open on a teenage girl in her classic long “I am a Victorian child who will die of consumption in two years” nightgown. She’s running through the Oregon woods. She stumbles, falls, and then, there’s a light and a man walking toward her. They vanish and – uh oh! – the next morning this chick is capital D dead. RIP, one of the many (many many) redheads in this series. (Seriously – why are there so many? Is the number of redheads in this show higher than the number of redheads that two actual FBI agents would encounter over the course of seven years? What does it mean? Is it…a CONSPIRACY???? :cue X-Files theme:)

A completely hapless cop who is the first of many hapless cops calls out to the detective that IDs the dead girl as Karen Swenson – “It’s happening again, isn’t it?” Oh, Hapless Cop! Let us discuss X-Files rule #1 – IT IS ALWAYS HAPPENING AGAIN. In fact, it, whatever IT is, never fucking stops happening until our heroes swoop in to “Mulder, it’s me”/ “SCUUUULLLLLLAAAAYYYYY!!!!” all over the god damn place. Please enjoy the ride.

Speaking of our heroes – Special Agent Dana Scully is on her way to a meeting with Section Chief Blevins to learn of her new assignment. She’s wearing this:

These early seasons were so very unkind to Scully when it comes to fashion. Like, those pants are far to big for her, they don’t even kind of match the jacket, and those shoes look like they’ve been stolen from a witch who believes she can only connect with her powers by wearing shoes that give her one giant foot blister. I lived through the 90s…did we all look like this? Could we not match colors back then? The only saving grace is that Gillian Anderson is so beautiful that she’d look amazing even wearing, well, THAT.

Scully meets Blevins and a dude who cannot stop chain smoking cigarettes. Oh well, I’m sure that guy isn’t in any way important to the overarching mythology of this show! Moving on!

Blevins is all “Have you ever heard of an agent named Fox Mulder?” And Scully is all, “That’s not a real fucking name, right?” and Blevins is all, “Yeah, totes real, also he’s like obsessed with aliens and shit? And you, a scientist, are now his partner.” And Scully is like, “Dude, I don’t believe in aliens and this isn’t April Fool’s Day so, like, I think there has been a mistake?” And Blevins is all, “Nah, we’re serious. We need you to send us reports about how full of shit he is so we can, idk, have enough shit to get HR to fire his weird ass?” And Scully is like “Jesus fucking Christ, I gave up a career in medicine to work here but I’m a team player who is dedicated to following The Rules – and I really love doing assignments –  so, yeah, I’ll send you reports.”

So Scully goes to the basement to meet her new partner, one Fox “Spooky” Mulder. This is what she finds:

Congratulations on your face, sir.

So they introduce themselves and we get to the crux of their dynamic – Mulder BELIEVES (in pretty much everything) and Scully believes in Science. They argue in a professional way, talk about poor dead Karen Swenson and her Victorian nightgown, and say the word “plausible” out loud more than any two people ever have before! Then we’re off to Oregon!

Oh, and they flirt like fucking crazy.

Here’s the basic rundown of the case – 4 dead classmates. The latest victim has giant mosquito bite-like marks on her back and a strange organic compound has been found in the surrounding tissue. The medical examiner of the first three bodies didn’t note weird marks or strange chemical compounds in the other victims. Is the medical examiner a suspect? Let’s dig up a dead guy to find out!

Also, neither one of them are wearing seatbelts in this scene:

I’m guessing their complete disregard of the Rules of the Road is why the aliens start fucking with their radio. This is the only PLAUSIBLE explanation, don’t at me, I am obviously correct and very smart.

Mulder, who for some reason has spray paint in his luggage (pre-9/11, you could pretty much pack whatever – spray paint, liquids, America’s future), marks the spot where the aliens told him to put his seatbelt on by spray painting an X on the road.

At the cemetery the medical examiner really wants to fight Mulder but his Wooden Daughter is like “daddy….please. Let us go home…please.” The medical examiner leaves, the strap lifting the coffin out of the ground breaks, causing the coffin to go go rolling down the giant hill where the townspeople have built their cemetery. Guess what, there’s a fucking weird ass alien-looking body in that coffin!

Side note – Mulder wants to know how a 20-year-old kid could die of exposure in the woods in July. Time for me to do my version of this brilliant tweet:

EVER HEARD OF THE EXPOSURE ALIEN, MULDER?

At the morgue, Mulder is all excited because this body is OBVIOUSLY an alien, what else could it possibly be? A chimp? Oh, Scully, you of the “let’s do a test first!” So naive, so unwilling to Believe! Jumping to conclusions is how Shit Gets Solved ’round these parts!

Again, congrats on your face. Dude has a lower lip a Kardashian would kill for. He’s a legit snack.

Side bar – I’ve written nearly 1200 words on this episode and I’m only 15 minutes in.

They find a metallic object in the nasal cavity of the body, the body that belongs to a man named Ray Soames. The next day they go to the psychiatric hospital to talk about Ray and, luckily for Mulder & Scully, HIPAA won’t exist for another three years because they learn that Billy Miles and Peggy O’Dell are currently being treated at the same hospital. Peggy has a fit and Mulder pulls up the back of her shirt to show Scully The Marks on her back.

Scully gets pissed because what in the ever loving fuck is Mulder trying to hide from her? This is where we are introduced to Scully Who Takes No Shit, even from her partner. She calls him out for hiding stuff from her, she won’t let him get away with playing the “er…I just guessed that she had the marks?” crap, and she will devastate you with Facts and Science. That’s right, Scully, you tell your arrogant partner that he doesn’t get to yank your chain. This is where Mulder realizes that if his work is going to pass any muster with her, and if her reports are going to stand up to the new scrutiny that he’s under, he’s going to have to cross his t’s and dot his i’s. “Aliens are real and these kids were abducted” ain’t gonna cut it. If I had to pinpoint a scene where Scully the Spy becomes Scully the Partner You Respect, it’s this one.

They go to the woods and run into the detective. He kicks them out of the woods because these woods are”private property.” The American people should own the woods not some rich fuck, eat the rich, etc. Back in the car, and at the exact spot where Mulder and his Traveling Spray Paint marked the road, they lose nine minutes. I don’t think Mulder has ever come so hard in his life, but he does it right here. Scully is just “…dude, I am getting rained on.” And they are – I don’t know if the production didn’t know how to do TV rain yet, or if it was actually raining when they were shooting and they just went for it, but I can’t think of another TV show where I’ve seen actors this wet.

Back at the hotel, the storm knocks out the power and Scully, deciding she’s just gonna get in the shower, discovers what she thinks could be The Marks on her lower back. Welcome to the scene that launched a thousand fanfics – Scully standing in front of Mulder in nothing but her granny panties and bra.

But no, no banging (yet!) Just a terrified Scully shaking in Mulder’s arms as he tells her that it’s just mosquito bites. She ends up hanging out on his bed while he sits on the floor and tells her about how his sister, Samantha, was abducted by aliens when he was 12. We also get what drives Mulder throughout the series – the government is hiding something that most likely has something to do with his sister, he has to know what it is, and “nothing else matters to me.” This is why this pilot is so damn good. We have two characters who both have their own way of looking at the world. They both have their reasons for acting as they do. And now they’re expected to work together to solve a case while still achieving their own goals. We as viewers know who they are and what they want, we understand their world and the obstacles in their way.

The phone rings – Peggy O’Dell is dead. The formerly wheelchair-bound woman ran into the road and got herself Pet Semetary’d. While Mulder and Scully at the scene, the lab is trashed and the body is stolen, their hotel is burned to the ground, and they lose everything they had from Ray Soames autopsy. Mulder throws a little temper tantrum that’s interrupted by Wooden Daughter, Theresa Nemmen, who feels like she’s in danger. (I call her wooden daughter because I feel like this performance is a little, well, wooden.) They go to a diner, she has a nosebleed all over the table, and we learn that the cop who kicked them out of the forest is Billy Miles’s father.

When they leave Mulder says, “You gotta love this place. Every day’s like Halloween.” God, I fucking wish. That’s my dream.

Mulder & Scully go back to the cemetery – the other two bodies are gone. Somehow, this means that Mulder figures out that Billy Miles is the guy killing everyone (summoned there by aliens/the forest?) The Marks are a test that causes some sort of mutation that makes their corpses look like monster monkeys and, oh, did I mention that time stopped?

I can’t imagine that this explanation would be accepted by a group of people who want to stop Mulder from continuing his work, but, whatever. It turns out to be right because of X-Files rule #2 – Regardless of how implausible the explanation, no matter how fantastical the theory, MULDER IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

Somehow Billy doesn’t kill Theresa, there’s a light in the forest, and he’s out of a coma. The Marks are gone. How? IDK. It’s over? Yep (see Rule #1.)  It’s back to Washington where Scully gets pulled back in front of Blevins and that cigarette guy that has no importance to the story. They think Scully is falling victim to the Mulder Whammy – except she has the implant. She kept it in her pocket so it survived the fire. The cigarette guy puts it in the Pentagon because GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY/COVER-UP/PATHOLOGICAL NEED TO STORE EVIDENCE OF A CONSPIRACY INSTEAD OF DESTROYING IT ALL.

Mulder calls Scully at 11:21 p.m., one of the first of many 11:21 references that make their way into the show.

And that’s it. That’s the pilot. It’s a great episode of TV and a wonderful introduction to the show as a whole.