12 Best Comedic X-FILES Episodes
I recently finished watching the entire X-Files series again, and this show seriously never gets old. I always enjoy the time I spend with Mulder and Scully. I know there is a whole generation of younger people out in the world that haven’t experienced The X-Files yet. If you are one of them, the whole series is on Netflix, and I strongly suggest that you take the time to watch it. It’s better than many of the TV shows that are currently airing.
As I was rewatching the series, I kept a list of my favorite episodes. There were a lot of them, but for this list I managed to whittle it down to only twelve by focusing on what I thought were the funniest episodes. So this is my Top 12 list of favorite episodes of The X-Files that had some moments that made me laugh.
"Arcadia" - Season 6, Episode 15
“Wow. Admit it, all you want to do is play house. Woman! Get back in here and make me a sandwich!”
Scully and Mulder go undercover as a husband and wife in a gated, high-class planned community, where the penalty for breaking community rules and tacky lawn ornaments is death. There is a subset of the X-Files community called “Shippers,” who wanted to see Mulder and Scully in a relationship. This episode gave it to them in the most glorious way.
The aliases that Mulder and Scully use in the episode are Rob and Laura Petrie. These are the names of the characters played by Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
"Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" - Season 3, Episode 4
“You know, there are worse ways to go, but I can’t think of a more undignified way than autoerotic asphyxiation.”
Several local psychics in St. Paul, MN are found dead with no evidence left behind. To help solve the murders the police department hires a famous psychic to lead their case, and Mulder thinks he’s a joke. He comes across another psychic who helps him with the case, and I loved the conversations they had.
Peter Boyle played Clyde Bruckman in the episode, and the character has the same name as a famous Hollywood writer and director from the 1920's to 1940's who eventually fell on hard times and committed suicide in 1955.
"Small Potatoes" - Season 4, Episode 20
“Should we be picking out china patterns or what?”
The story focuses on five unrelated women in a small town who all give birth to babies with tails. The prime suspect is a man who can shape shift into whomever he wants. I love that one of the women thinks she had sex with Luke Skywalker, and that she's carrying his baby.
This episode was written by Breaking Bad’s Vince Gilligan, who said that he originally wanted wings to be the deformity of the babies instead of tails. Tails were easier to create digitally, though.
"Hollywood A.D." - Season 7, Episode 19
“Agent Scully, if I am carrying Marilyn Monroe's purse, do you assume that I slept with JFK?”
At the insistence of FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner, an old college friend of his named Wayne Federman is allowed to follow Mulder and Scully on a case involving a pipe bombing in a church. Federman is a writer and producer from Hollywood who's gathering material for an FBI-based movie he’s working on and Mulder and Scully turn out to be the reluctant stars of this movie.
At one point, Scully tells Mulder that she thinks Téa Leoni (who played herself in the episode) has a crush on him, and Mulder wonders how she could. In real life, Leoni was David Duchovny's wife at the time — they divorced earlier this year.
"Humbug" - Season 2, Episode 20
“I could be mistaken. Maybe it was another bald-headed, jigsaw-puzzle-tattooed, naked guy I saw.”
There’s a strange death of a circus sideshow attraction in Gibsonton, Florida that takes Mulder and Scully on a bizarre mystery adventure into the world of circus freaks.
Scully was supposed to eat a grasshopper in front of Mulder in a scene. There was supposed to be a cut so that the bug could be replaced with a candy looking bug, but before they could cut, Gillian Anderson put the real bug in her mouth and ate it. The scene made it into the final cut.
"X-Cops" - Season 7, Episode 12
“Unfortunately though, Deputy, you've been bitten. The skin is broken. Werewolf law pretty much universally holds, that someone who's been bitten by such a creature is gonna become such a creature himself, so…”
This episode was shot in the style of Cops. It was set in Los Angeles and followed the investigation of a local neighborhood werewolf.
This episode opened in the same style as the Cops series, and it included images of Mulder and Scully from the episode among the standard police scenes.
"Dreamland" - Season 6, Episode 4
“Don't you ever want to stop? Get out of the damn car and live something approaching a normal life?”
An anonymous tip finally brings Mulder and Scully to Area 51. But when the agents witness the flight of a mysterious craft, a weird event occurs that results in Mulder switching bodies with a “man in black” type character named Morris Fletcher. Mulder takes advantage of the the opportunity to infiltrate Area 51, while Fletcher uses the opportunity to escape his life.
They tried to get Gary Shandling, who was good friends with Duchovny, to play the part of Fletcher in the episode, but it didn’t work out due to scheduling conflicts. Shandling ended up playing Mulder in an already mentioned episode ("Hollywood A.D.") the next season.
"Jose Chung's From Outer Space" - Season 3, Episode 20
“That's a bleepin' dead alien body if I ever saw one.”
The episode revolves around author Jose Chung, who is writing a book about the claimed alien abduction of a young couple that was subsequently investigated by agents Mulder and Scully. What makes this episode so great was that each witness provides a different version of the same facts. I also enjoyed all the bleepin’ bleeps and Mulder’s scream.
Johnny Cash was briefly considered for the role of the Man in Black that ultimately was portrayed by Alex Trebek.
"The Unnatural" - Season 6, Episode 19
“I've seen the life on this planet Scully, and that is exactly why I am looking elsewhere.”
The episode starts out with a KKK member getting beaned in the head with a baseball and knocked off his horse. When the mask is removed there’s an alien underneath it. I couldn’t help but laugh at that. In the episode Mulder uncovers a 1940s story involving a Negro baseball player who played for a minor league team in Roswell. He finds a photo that has an Alien Bounty Hunter, and the baseball player in question is an alien.
This episode was Duchovny's writing and directorial debut. It’s also the only time in the series that the alien bounty hunter shows his true alien face.
"Je Souhaite" - Season 7, Episode 21
“I can't believe you don't want butter on your popcorn. Uggh. It's un-American.”
Mulder comes into possession of a genie who grants him three wishes. Unfortunately, the wishes come with disastrous consequences. At one point, Mulder wishes for peace on earth and the genie wipes out the entire population of Earth. I guess that’s one way to do it.
"Je souhaite" means "I wish" in French.
"Bad Blood" - Season 5, Episode 12
“I did not overreact, Ronnie Strickland was a vampire!”
The episode starts off with Mulder driving a stake through the heart of a would be teenage vampire. This is one of my favorite opening sequences in any X-Files episode. While the FBI agents are waiting to meet with Skinner, Mulder and Scully attempt to get their stories "straight" by relating to each other their differing versions of what happened during their investigation. I loved the different points of views presented.
Anderson has said that this is her favorite X-Files episode.
"Syzygy" - Season 3, Episode 13
“I am not going to be humiliated by you, in front of you, or by having to bring a teenage girl on her birthday of all days to identify the bones of her dead dog, Mr. Tippy. I see no reason to pursue this case any further, and not only that, I find your conduct and your comportment in this case not just alarming, but highly objectionable.”
In this episode, Scully and Mulder investigate a series deaths that involve teenage boys from the same high school. There are rumors of a satanic cult being responsible, and everyone in town seems to be acting out of character, including Scully and Mulder who have some wonderfully fun moments mocking each other.
A lot of the things that Scully and Mulder bickered over during the episode — how Mulder is constantly ”ditching" Scully, how Mulder always drives, how Scully's feet are small, etc. — was taken from the fans' online complaints about the series up until that point. Ryan Reynolds also had a part in this episode.