"That's why murder nurse was so over the top, but somehow you could still sympathize with her point of view more than the bomber."

"You don't like that the Lone Gunmen are dead? Good. You don't like that they died in a way that felt unsatisfying? Good! Life can be like that, sometimes"

As I read it, Homeland Security were there out for revenge. They wanted to finish the kid off. And I assume that speaking to each other in Arabic was just them trying to talk amongst themselves in a way that Scully and Miller wouldn't be able to understand.

And that would have been better, would it?

I would rather see Gibson Praise back as a child prodigy turned teenage burnout turned middle-aged checkout bag-packer who occasionally uses his magical powers to inhabit the mind of his neighbours' cat so he can watch them bone. Sort of a Gen-X Granny Weatherwax.

Not sure what you mean by Islamophobia. There was no suggestion of that in the episode. In fact it treated the issue with more nuance than it usually gets, by making sure it was clear that the harassment that Sharaz got at the crossroads was racially driven.

The weird thing is, this is actually the SECOND time that Chris Carter has written in a duplicate Mulder-and-Scully - the first being "Fight Club". It's kind of a thing for him.

Oh cmon, did you even WATCH the original run? There was way worse than this in there.

"You just don't go from the seriousness of a hot-button issue like a Muslim character immolating innocent civilians (having them run out of the building, BURNING ALIVE, live for Christ's sake) to Mulder line dancing amongst shots of tight asses filling the screen."

Y'know what returning character cameo New Files needs?

I'm assuming that having your stomach pumped on shrooms isn't much fun.

See, I'm supposed to think that it's terrible for Muslims to be portrayed as terrorists, even though every plausible effort was made to qualify that. I'm supposed to be angry that terrorism didn't turn out to be werewolves from the future.

Yeah, I had to look up who he actually played.

Get William Gibson back in, imo.

Yeah, but it's not PC to call them that anymore, apparently.

It was a bit jarring but I thought it worked okay here.

First episode had the Indian nurse, the Japanese scientist at the ARV, and whatever Sveta was meant to be - some kind of Polish, maybe?

Wow, so since I brought it up in last week's comments, the Indian speaking role quotient of the new X-Files is up, what, seven in four episodes now? Weird.

It's definitely hard to imagine that Johnny Mathis was ever NOT creepy as hell. And this combined with the episode title means that I'm relieved that this wasn't a sequel.

Looking good is less important than being able to look different ways. Actors tend to stay fit because it's a lot easier to make someone up to look fat than to look thin; and it's easier to make someone look older than younger; and also because they have time on their hands and want to bone.