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'Regret is an inevitable consequence of life.'
Title: Anasazi
Season: Two (1995)
Duration: 44m
Written by: Chris Carter
Story by: David Duchovny and Chris Carter
Directed by: R.W. Goodwin
Rating: ***
The Cigarette-Smoking Man becomes quite the philosopher in this cliffhanging mythology finale of season two. With Mulder driven half insane after LSD is pumped through his apartment block's ventilation system, he goes on a psychotic rampage that leads him towards the heart of a government conspiracy.
In all honesty, time hasn't perhaps been that kind to Anasazi and its two follow-up episodes from season three, The Blessing Way/Paper Clip, and it's not just down to the slightly patronising depiction of Native Americans or the myriad of excuses to film Duchovny with his shirt off. The escalating number of murdered relatives that both Mulder and Scully possessed, combined with the ever-sillier and ever more meaningless mythology arc mean that it's become somewhat retroactively tainted.
Like the backbone driving the entire series (Mulder investigates the paranormal because he believes his sister was kidnapped by a UFO... she turns out to be dead all along) it's a story arc that ultimately peters out over the course of nine seasons, rather than having some stunning resolution. It's what makes the standalone episodes much more accessible on reruns, and what makes mythology episodes like Anasazi somewhat less than they were on first broadcast... they promised so much, but ultimately led to so little.
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Visit X-File On Main St.'s Online Store in association with Amazon for gifts on the series.
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