Michele and I have been watching through The X-Files, starting with season 1, and are a dozen or so episodes into the show. It’s a great show, and even the earliest episodes have aged fairly well.

But like all great shows, it can lay claim to a handful of abominably bad episodes. One of the episodes we watched this weekend (“Space,” about midway through season 1) fit easily into the Worst Episode Ever category.

And for the record, the addition of “Space” to my Worst X-Files Episodes Ever list brings the total to three:

• “Home”–the infamous episode that was BANNED ON TELEVISION! When I first got my hands on this episode, I eagerly popped it into the VCR and hit play, excited to finally learn what those censoring network executives didn’t want me to see. Oh, if only I could rewind my life and choose otherwise.
• the baseball-playing alien episode. Oh man.
• …and now “Space.”

It’s a great show, though, despite a few bad episodes (and more than a few mediocre ones). Once it hit its stride–around season 3 or so–it was the best thing on television, no question. It went on longer than it should’ve… but mostly, it was pretty darn good.

update: Other Worst Episodes Ever, which have since come to mind:

• any episode about Scully having a cloned alien baby
• the one with a circus freak who had a mutated Siamese twin or something which would detach from his torso and eat people. Yeah… that ep was every bit as good as it sounds.

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