After watching last night’s episode of The X-Files, I finally feel like I’m starting to get it.  You have to realize that I came into this revival with only a casual knowledge of what the whole show was about.  Since I didn’t watch the show when it originally aired and have only seen a few reruns (and the movies, neither of which did much for me), I’ve often felt rather detached from all the excitement that’s been generated by the revival.

And the previous two episode did not help.  My Struggle was a mess.  The second episode was a definite improvement but still, it did not exactly blow me away.  I watched these episodes and I assumed that The X-Files was one of those revivals that would largely succeed only on the strength of nostalgia for the show it once was.

But then I watched last night’s episode, the wonderfully titled Mulder & Scully Meet The Were-Monster.  After two episodes that occasionally felt as if they were straining a bit too hard to be taken seriously, Mulder & Scully Meet The Were-Monster was a comedic deconstruction of the whole “cult-show-about-paranormal-investigators” genre.  While never quite slipping into the realm of self-parody, the episode had a lot of fun with the conventions of the show.

It also had a lot of fun with David Duchovny’s performance as Fox Mulder.  Duchovny is one of those confident actors who is always more likable when he’s befuddled.  A good deal of the pleasure of last night’s episode came from watching Mulder literally stumble through the plot.

As for the plot itself, it was wonderfully nonsensical.  Someone is murdering random people.  Is it a frightening lizard-like creature that some of the locals have spotted?  Well, there is a lizard-like creature but he’s not the murderer.  The murderer is Pasha, a sociopathic animal control officer, played by the always welcome Kumail Nanjiani.  You pretty much know that Pasha is the murderer from the minute you see him, if just because there’s no other reason for him to be played by a familiar actor.  When Pasha is unmasked as the killer and arrested, he starts to give the usual lengthy explanation for his crimes, just to be ignored by Mulder.  Mulder mentions that he’s sick of serial killer profiling.  Take that, Criminal Minds!

The Were-Monster of the title was played by Rhys Darby, who we all remember and love as Murray on The Flight of the Conchords.  It turns out that the Were-Monster was a lizard creature who was bit by a man and who now cursed to turn into a man whenever the sun rises.  Whenever the Were-Monster transforms into Guy Mann (that’s the name it uses!), he has to worry about stuff like holding down a job and impressing other people by lying about his sex life.  Poor Guy!  But, at least he wasn’t a murderer and at least he wasn’t successful in his attempt to convince Mulder to kill him.

(You can’t kill Murray!  He was the last Bret!)

Hopefully, the quality and sheer fun of Mulder & Scully And The Were-Monster is a sign of things to come as far as the remaining episodes of The X-Files are concerned.