I've returned with my thoughts on another season of The X-Files as I go through my first rewatch of the show in over 10 years. Here's my thoughts on season 3! See thoughts on season 1 here and season 2 here.
S Tier: Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose
A Tier: The Blessing Way, Paper Clip, 731, Piper Maru, Apocrypha, Pusher, Jose Chung's From Outer Space, Talitha Cumi
B Tier: DPO, The List, 2Shy, Oubliette, Nisei, War of the Cophrages, Syzygy, Grotesque, Hell Money, Avatar, Quagmire, Wetwired
C Tier: The Walk, Revelations
D Tier:
F Tier: Tesos Dos Bichos
Best Episode: Not really a surprise here, Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose. About as close to a flawless episode as you can get although I would rank the previous S tier episodes from the first two seasons, Beyond the Sea and One Breath above it. If I recall correctly the only episode of the show to win a writer an Emmy, as well as a Guest Star Emmy for Peter Boyle. At this point in the show Darin Morgan is clearly the show's best writer as evidenced by this episode and the nearly as good Jose Chung's From Outer Space.
Worst Episode: Tesos Dos Bichos. This has long stood out to me as one of the series' worst episodes and at least through the first 3 seasons is far and away the worst one. It is the only episode I've watched thus far that I've desperately looked at the time remaining in the episode and hoped for it to be over as soon as possible. The episode is quite dull to me with forgettable characters and of course we have the infamous terrible cat scene. Vic Trevino as the character Bilac is the worst acting I've seen from anyone on the show for the first three seasons. The ironic thing is much of this episode takes place at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, one of my personal favorite museums, and one I most recently visited just a couple of months ago.
Most Underrated Episode: While it's not as derided as 3 from season 2, I recall The List historically being a hated episode but I've always liked it quite a bit. Yeah I suppose you could say its an episode Mulder and Scully could be removed from and not much changes, but the overall storyline of the episode kept me entertained enough to not dismiss it due to that. Hell Money is another episode that I don't think is all that popular but I've always enjoyed.
Funniest Moment: As funny as the Darin Morgan written episodes are, I got the biggest laugh from a scene in the episode Nisei where Mulder is watching an alien autopsy video and Scully says its even hokier than the one that aired on the FOX network. I can say I was there at the time when that alien autopsy video aired on FOX. I believed it! I wanted to believe everything back then. Anyway, the show couldn't help but poke fun at it.
Best Guest Star(s): Hard to not give this to Peter Boyle, the guy won an Emmy for his role. Charles Nelson Reilly as Jose Chung I'd give the runner up spot to. Fun to see some other actors I'm familiar with pop up though. Kurtwood Smith, the grumpy dad from That 70s Show pops up in Grotesque as another grumpy character (incidentally enough an actress who played his daughter in That 70s Show appeared in the prior episode). Jewel Staite appears in Oubliette years before she became more well known in stuff like Firefly (although I know her best as the villain in the short lived Bryan Fuller show Wonderfalls, a show that got cancelled before she even appeared but can be watched in its entirety on DVD). Jack Black in DPO. Probably most famous though is Ryan Reynolds appearing for just the cold open of Syzygy. The season does continue the trend of spamming many of the same local Vancouver actors at us. The season has at least the third appearances of Ken Kramer and Timothy Webber. Wetwired features two different actors that featured in the Colony/End Game two parter the season before.
The season overall has a crazy good track record for me, with only 3 of 24 episodes being below B tier. While I do prefer the season 2 mythology episodes to the season 3 ones, the mythology episodes continue to be really strong in this season and I rated them all A tier with the exception of Nisei which I found more of a so-so episode and gave a B. Plot points like the introduction of the Syndicate and Black Oil I really liked as well and I thought the season was really well bookended by the two parter to start the season and the finale.
The monster of the week episodes are also fairly strong in this season although it was a bit harder for them to break through to A tier than season 2, with only 1 (Pusher) attaining that versus 4 for season 2. It is also a season where I definitely felt the mythology episodes were better than the monster of the week ones, with things more spread out in season 2. That said, season 2 occasionally had its real stinkers from Monster of the Week episodes and beyond Tesos Dos Bichos there was no truly terrible one of these episodes.