Soul prospectors Maurice (Ed Asner) and Lydia (Lily Tomlin) are patiently awaiting new victims, and wouldn't you know it, Mulder has his eye on their haunted house, abandoned for decades but reputed to be the location of various murder/suicides over the years. It's not the kind of premise you'd expect for a Christmas story, but this is The X-Files, so just like Scully, you have to give in to your curiosity and imagination and make the best of it.
You know what just struck me? I kept thinking about those brick walls that Mulder kept running into and then it hit me. That was a perfect metaphor for Mulder's frustration in pursuing his ET's and UFO's across the country, only to be confounded by government conspiracies and a preponderance of conflicting evidence along the way. I don't know if that was intentional on the part of the writers, but either way, it was a brilliant idea.
Also brilliant was the way Maurice sized up Mulder as a narcissistic, overzealous, single minded, obsessive compulsive workaholic, while Lydia pinned Scully down as his codependent, even while trying to prove he was wrong most of the time relative to his theories on the paranormal. Maurice in particular managed to push all of Mulder's buttons, with the one about his being afraid of loneliness striking a chord. You could see the wheels of Mulder's mind turning as he took it all in.
What I didn't quite get was the manner in which Scully and Mulder turned on each other at the behest of their haunted house hosts. It was all imaginary of course, so no harm done, but it just seemed so out of character for both of them. But things ended on a feel good note with the exchange of Christmas presents between the two agents. Didn't they look just like two little kids who couldn't wait to unwrap their gifts? Sure would like to know what they gave each other.
You know what just struck me? I kept thinking about those brick walls that Mulder kept running into and then it hit me. That was a perfect metaphor for Mulder's frustration in pursuing his ET's and UFO's across the country, only to be confounded by government conspiracies and a preponderance of conflicting evidence along the way. I don't know if that was intentional on the part of the writers, but either way, it was a brilliant idea.
Also brilliant was the way Maurice sized up Mulder as a narcissistic, overzealous, single minded, obsessive compulsive workaholic, while Lydia pinned Scully down as his codependent, even while trying to prove he was wrong most of the time relative to his theories on the paranormal. Maurice in particular managed to push all of Mulder's buttons, with the one about his being afraid of loneliness striking a chord. You could see the wheels of Mulder's mind turning as he took it all in.
What I didn't quite get was the manner in which Scully and Mulder turned on each other at the behest of their haunted house hosts. It was all imaginary of course, so no harm done, but it just seemed so out of character for both of them. But things ended on a feel good note with the exchange of Christmas presents between the two agents. Didn't they look just like two little kids who couldn't wait to unwrap their gifts? Sure would like to know what they gave each other.