Summary: In season four, "The X-Files" continued to expand the breadth and complexity of the mythology established in the previous two seasons while developing a deeper, romantically ambiguous relationship between its photogenic leads, FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). New players such as United Nations official Marita Covarrubias and virus-carrying bees joined familiar faces like Cigarette Smoking Man, Alex Krycek, the blockheaded Alien Bounty Hunters, and the Consortium in the growing cast of a global struggle involving multiple factions of alien forces. It was a season in which Mulder and Scully seemed to lose ground to the global forces surrounding them, in which Mulder was infected with the black oil and Scully discovered she had cancer. With even the loyalties of Assistant Director Skinner and Mulder's mother in doubt, Mulder and Scully learned to trust only each other in their pursuit of the truth.
The show also continued to take breaks from the dizzying, heavy mythology to serve up standalone episodes with the show's unusual blend of sophisticated humor and creepy paranormal explorations. In "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man," the show parodied the scope of the public's conspiracy paranoia, implying that Cigarette Smoking Man was involved in everything from JFK's assassination to the Buffalo Bills' four straight losses in the Super Bowl. The three previous seasons had not exhausted the list of popular paranormal phenomena to tackle, and season four covered a wide range of topics from invisibility ("Unrequited"), past lives ("The Field Where I Died"), and inbreeding ("Home") to shape-shifting ("Small Potatoes") and golems ("Kaddish"). "The X-Files" proved, again, to be that rare science-fiction show that could both frighten and touch its audience, telling intelligent stories that resonated with the skeptic in each of us, all the while sprinkling in a few laughs. "--Eugene Wei"
The X-Files: The Complete Fourth Season
(1993)
