The X-Files - S6:E8 "The Rain King"

[ S6:E7 "Terms of Endearment" <<< Season 6 >>> S6:E9 "S.R. 819" ]

This episode opens with a lot of promise. It's a traditional X-File about paranormal phenomena. It doesn't waste time trying to explain why Mulder and Scully are still investigating X-Files even though they've been forbidden to do so (at increasingly less-convincing risk to their jobs). And it has a cool premise - Mulder and Scully visit a town in Kansas with anomalous weather conditions, to investigate the possibility of the pathetic fallacy being more than just a fallacy. We haven't seen a person who could control the weather since season 3's D.P.O. - the human lightning rod. This proves once again (as I mentioned last season in my review of Schizogeny) that at this late stage of the series it takes the outside writers to capture the essence of what the X-Files used to be. Or at least that's how it appears at first. The episode starts out with a little tongue-in-cheek humor that's fun, but ends up placing way too much emphasis on being funny, and highlighting the romantic schmaltz of its premise (this is, in many ways, a Valentine's Day episode of The X-Files) for my liking. I feel a tangent brewing about the budding romance in this season, but I think I'll post that separately from this episode's review.

Memorable quotes:

Cindy: Don't you all need a warrant, or subpoena, or something like that?
Scully: We usually just say please.

Holman: A huge, high pressure system is the primary culprit. There's no credible evidence that suggests that Daryl, or any man, can be held accountable for our predicament.
Scully: Thank you. (To Mulder:) Can we go now?

(I love Scully's smugness here. She's much better when she's being playful rather than vindictive about saying "I told you so").

Mulder: He wants advice - dating advice.
Scully: Dating advice? From whom?
Mulder: Yours truly. (Silence). Hello? Hey, Scully. Scully, are you there?

Scully: Well, it seems to me...that the best relationships - the ones that last - are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship. You know, one day, you look at the person, and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with.