Dana nailed it when she mused that even though they have known Walter Sergei Skinner for years, they don’t really know him.

SAME.

This episode clarifies some stuff, and gives us an almost sniff-worthy Aw Moment between our intrepid FBI agents and their boss.

It really feels like an old-school TXF episode in a lot of ways. Opening with Skinner and his war buddy, Kitten, as they fly with a crate full of secret government gas (MK Naomi) to a hut in Vietnam in 1969. A crate full of gas that disperses as Skinner runs out to help their guide, and causes Kitten to hallucinate a horrible monster, and then he subsequently kills all the innocent villagers hiding in said hut.

Not only is that scene awful enough, but it turns out that exposure to the gas changes Kitten greatly, and when he comes back from the war, he is one of many who are shuttled off to a government institution outside Mud Lick, Kentucky. His son, Davy (Haley Joel Osmet plays both both parts very well), insists that they kept up the experiments on his father while locked away, and are now dosing all of us with chem-trails and the like. (Once Davy veered into nutjob chemtrail territory, Mulder practically rolls his eyes out of his head and ends the visit. Heee.)

Mulder and Scully are called into Director Kersh’s office, where he shows he still has no love for the duo, and accuses them of being in on Skinner’s AWOL status. Not only that, but he tells them that it is their fault that Skinner hasn’t risen through the ranks at the FBI. Comments that seem to weight heavily on both Dana and Fox. That Director Kersh is kind of an ass. Still!

After checking out Skinner’s sparsely decorated apartment, and finding an envelope addressed to Lieutenant Skinner that contains an ear(!!!), Scully and Mulder head off to Kentucky in search of their boss. Their boss who has been caught on a deer cam, leading the local sheriff to assume that Skinner is the dude killing people in his town.

I like the sheriff, he’s very helpful, but he is so very wrong here. And Mulder and Scully head off to try and figure out what the heck is going on in this town full of toothless weirdos. (Yet another episode that doesn’t speak kindly of, shall we say, rural folk.)

Once Mulder figures out that Kitten is a person, not an actual kitty, they head over to Davy’s trailer in the woods, not long after Davy has trapped Skinner in a pit with his dead father. Davy is cordial, puts on some music to drown out the calls of Skinner-In-A-Pit, and rambles on about his own version of what nefarious nonsense the government is up to, and how the issues with his dad ruined his family.

(Who cuts faces out of pictures and then puts them back on the wall? Crazy people do!)

Mulder sees a pic of Skinner and Davy’s father, John, in an old photo album, realizes that Davy has been lying to them, and hustles Scully right out of the trailer. He tries to do the heroic thing, and sends Scully off to find cell reception, while he scurries back through the woods, and sneaks into Davy’s trailer.

After finding a creepy monster suit in the closet, the record that was still playing finally ends, and Mulder hears calls for help in the distance. He run out the trailer to the sounds in the woods, and the creepy monster suit comes to life!

As Mulder is discovering Skinner in his pit, the DavyMonster comes running up and pushes Mulder into the pit! And then he pours gasoline into the pit, and just as he is about to light them on fire, Scully pops out of the woods and shoots Davy!

While everyone is escaping the pit, Davy stumbles off into the woods, and Mulder and Scully follow behind. Skinner makes his way out of the pit, and confronts Davy, engaging in a scuffle that positions Davy under one of his own traps, which ultimately falls and kills him dead.

Back at the trailer, waiting for the ambulance, Skinner tells Mulder and Scully about his experiences in Vietnam, and how he was primed for skepticism because of them, and how the X-Files were the thing that helped him keep his sanity. He reassures Dana and Fox that they are the reason that he didn’t get swallowed up by the corruption of the government, and their pursuit of the truth is the thing that basically saved him.

This moment between the three FBI agents is super important this season, as Mulder and Scully have been suspicious of Skinner, and the wedge of distrust has been growing all season. For him to let them know that they are his salvation, lets them all work their way back to trusting each other again, which is vital for The X-Files to really work, in my opinion.

And then we end with a voice-over of Davy, talking about how the government is gassing us all, with shots of a crop duster flying over an orchard, spraying some suspiciously green gas on the tree. Classic paranoid The X-Files ending!

Next! Drones and robots and I don’t know!