10 Best Episodes That Make Bad TV Seasons Worth Watching

There’s a few seasons which could qualify as ‘bad’ for The X-Files. The first seven Mulder & Scully series are solid, but after that it gets trickier to tell. Season Eight was worse for Mulder’s absence, but Robert Patrick’s John Doggett fills in well and there’re too many good episodes there to isolate on a list like this.

Season Nine, on the other hand, is average to poor throughout with no major standouts. Season 10 was finding its feet after a long hiatus, so it falls to Season 11 to prove things were back to their best - or not, as it happened. The second of the comeback seasons proved that they were never going to capture the glory days, and stumbled its way to cancellation.

When picking out a truly bad season then, Nine and Eleven seem the obvious candidates. Where Nine is fairly bland, Eleven at least has The Lost Art Of Forehead Sweat.

It was written by Darin Morgan, the man behind legendary X-Files episodes Jose Chung, Coprophages and Clyde Bruckman, as well as Season 10’s best, Were-Monster. Like most of Morgan’s stuff, it’s as funny as it is creepy, dealing with the Mandela effect and fake news. It also takes a meta examination of The X-Files themselves. A must watch for sci-fi fans.