“I wanted to believe but the tools have been taken away.” – Fox Mulder.
LITTLE GREEN MEN [Mythology] Aired September 16, 1994
Episode: 2×01 / 25 Overall
Director: David Nutter • Writer: Glen Morgan & James Wong
With the X-Files shut down, Mulder travels to Puerto Rico, where he attempts to uncover the meaning behind the sudden termination of a communications operation.
Little Green Men is the only season premiere not written by series creator Chris Carter, instead the task was given to fan favourites, Morgan & Wong and for the most part they deliver an enjoyable opening to the second season that’s not without it’s flaws. A new start brings with it significant growth in the titular characters. This episode serves primarily to explore Mulder’s new found state of mind, having been defeated by the department, he’s left humiliated and re-assigned to pointless busy work. With his deep cover contact dead, The X-Files unit shut down and forced to cease contact with Scully, Mulder is a broken man with little left to give. When we last saw him in the closing scenes of The Erlenmeyer Flask, he was defiant in his determination to seek the truth, yet he appears before us now disillusioned. It’s an interesting way to begin a season on such a low point for the characters.
The relationship between Mulder and Scully has seen significant development since the beginning of the series. Scully is distracted while conducting medical training and wonders about the emotional life of her patient, his dreams and fears that are locked away inside his mind. A student is heard describing her as ‘spooky’, an obvious reference to Mulder’s unwanted nickname at the F.B.I. Scully has become more open and perhaps more emotionally aware than her rather cold and scientific rationality that we witnessed at the beginning of season one. Her relationship with Mulder has begun to change the way she thinks, conversely, Mulder has become more sceptical and part of his struggle throughout this episode is about rediscovering his ability to believe. Though they are certainly still individual personalities that will often juxtapose each other, we can see already at the opening of season two, that these two characters are growing together and shaping the way each other think. It’s a steady and gradual development of character that, thanks to high episode count of the seasons, the writers were fortunate enough to dole out in small doses rather than have characters make sudden shifts in their mindset that sometimes feels forced in other shows due to time constraints.
This is also the first episode which features an on screen re-enactment of Samantha’s abduction. What we see here actually differs quite significantly to Mulder’s description of the abduction from the series pilot. For the sake of nitpicking we could argue that this is due to the unreliability of Mulder’s hypnosis induced recollection, and this is in fact Chris Carter’s justification for the change. Skinner and the Smoking Man make a welcome appearance in the season premiere and we’ll see a lot more of them this time around.
The only significant flaw in the writing from Morgan & Wong is that while Mulder experiences quite possibly his most profound and influential alien encounter so far, he’s ultimately left with nothing by the episode’s conclusion. At the beginning of the show one of his issues with the unit’s success so far is that they have not amassed any hard evidence. He has nothing to prove what he has seen or discovered since he began the The X-Files. It is for this reason, among others, that he feels like there is no point in trying to continue his work. He’s beginning to think that perhaps there really is nothing out there. He’s been lied to before by secret governmental organisations in order to cover up top secret military experiments and he’s beginning to think that maybe his theories are simply unfounded. The events of this episode are supposed to serve to reignite the fire by allowing him to experience something definitive, that he can not possibly discount. However we basically come full circle by the end as he still is left without a shred of hard evidence, beyond what he alone has seen with his own two eyes. It’s a bit frustrating to come so far only to feel like we’ve gone nowhere. Mulder is certainly more hopeful now but he’s also not bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm. It’ll be a little longer before we see him back in full swing. The strong point of the season premiere is the exploration of character as witnessed by the changes in Mulder and Scully since we last saw them and this is more than enough to make this episode an enjoyable experience and a decent start to season two.
★★★☆☆
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