Season 2, Episode 1: “Little Green Men”
Original Airdate: September 16, 1994
Have you ever seen this show called The X-Files about two agents who used to work on something called the X-Files and now they…don’t? Hah-hah indeed, but I’m serious about this. It’s scary when a show takes its premise away from itself. “Little Green Men” is a new pilot, a vision of a show that doesn’t have any of the things the show had when it began. It doesn’t have a sardonic FBI agent who is driven to find the truth, it doesn’t have a skeptical FBI agent who is determined to let science rule her, and it doesn’t have a basement office full of mysterious files. Instead it has a super-depressed FBI agent on wiretapping duty, an FBI agent who stares off into space while teaching new recruits, and no files at all. How long could this possibly last, you wonder. Surely they will re-open the X-Files at the end of this episode. Surely things will go right back right on track. Right?
[Good thing it wasn’t a Double Jeopardy question]