10. Wetwired (Season 3, Episode 23)
"You're in on it. You're one of them. You're one of the people who abducted me. You put that thing in my neck! You killed my sister!" - Dana Scully
In "Wetwired," Mulder and Scully follow up on an anonymous tip, pursuing a case in which individuals go on murdering sprees in which they hallucinate enemies in what are actually innocent bystanders. The only links between the murders seem to be a mysterious cable tube and dozens of television tapes with hundreds of hours of random programming. Mulder and Scully, determined to solve the case and stop the murders, watch tape after tape, neither of them realizing that perhaps watching those videos might be a bad idea. What will this mean for Mulder and Scully? "Wetwired" would be a great introductory episode for anyone who would prefer to begin the show with a government conspiracy and main antagonists rather than a lake monster or fat-sucking vampire. The episode, which features some of the show's greatest recurring characters, touches on the mythology without requiring a cheat sheet for all of the nefarious government deeds thus far in the series. The threat is real and hits close to home for our protagonists, approaching the largely unspoken question that haunts the agents: at what point in their bizarre lives does the necessary paranoia cross over into mania? Also--and very importantly--"Wetwired" provides the underlying explanation for Mulder's questionable taste in neckwear.