10 TV Episodes That Should Have Jumped the Shark (But Didn't)

From the beginning, The X-Files had absurdity on its side. Dealing with extra-terrestrials, monsters and mysteries meant showrunners and writers could take it in interesting and discordant directions, anchored by the monster-of-the-week format.

Come season five, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were very comfortable in their roles as FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, and audiences were used to the show pushing boundaries and challenging preconceptions. But nobody expected it to go where episode five, "The Post-Modern Prometheus", went.

The episode begins in the style of a comic book, shot in all black and white, and proceeds with a wackadoo storyline about a mysterious creature named The Great Mutato that has impregnated a middle-aged woman. Amongst its many oddities, it features a special episode of Jerry Springer, and at the episode's end, Mulder breaks the fourth wall, demanding to see the writer. Thereafter, Mulder and Scully take Mutato and the townspeople to a Cher concert…

Not only does the episode depart from the series' style and tone, but it seemingly totally divorced from the established mythology and chronology of the show. While this ought to have spelled disaster, it instead gave the somewhat formulaic series a new lease of life, starting a trend of these kinds of humorous, low-stakes episodes that kept it on air for another four seasons in its original run.