One of the greatest TV shows that not only defined the ’90s at the time it was on, but had a ripple effect on how television was made in the aftermath, was The X-Files. Not only did the series arrive at a time when mistrust of government was starting to spread from the fringes, but it also used that alongside its genre-bending format to create a show truly unlike anything else on at the time. The series wouldn’t have worked without its two leads, though, with stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson developing their characters of Mulder and Scully into icons that even transcended the series.
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Across its eleven seasons and more than 200 episodes, though, the pair have been through a slew of adventures and met all kinds of bizarre circumstances. As a result, not only do fans of the series have their absolute favorites, but the cast has their picks as well. Over the years, Duchovny has gone through waves of being eager to talk about The X-Files and times when he was…less interested in it. Throughout the years, though, he’s made some comments that reveal which episodes of The X-Files he holds near and dear, some of which might surprise hardcore fans (others, however, not so much)
David Duchovny’s Favorite X-Files Episodes Are (Mostly) the Funny Ones
Speaking with TV Line back in 2015, ahead of The X-Files‘ return on Fox and Hulu, Duchovny was asked about his favorite episode from the revival (the tenth season of the series), specifically highlighting that for him as a performer, the scripts written by Darin Morgan in the series were “challenging and fun” for the original run of the series and something that remained true during the revival as well, spotlighting “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster” from the revival.
“For me in terms of being an actor, Darin [Morgan]’s scripts — which were funny and whimsical yet very smart and rigorous — were always challenging and fun,” Duchovny said. “Chris [Carter] really took care of the scope and the action, [but] action’s less interesting for me to play as an actor. You’ve got to be there at night, basically. And you’ve got to run to something or from something. [Laughs] That’s not a knock on Chris’ writing. But Darin’s episodes were always very verbal, often comically driven and thematically twisted.”
It’s worth noting that the episodes of The X-Files written by Darin Morgan are actually a pretty short list, but there’s also a clear throughline in each of them that can be tracked. Not only are they marginally more humorous takes on the material, giving Duchovny and Anderson something else to work with beyond procedural drama, but thematically, they’re all quite self-aware about the series itself. Not only the tonal space that it typically occupies but also its place in the genre and culture. The results are episodes of The X-Files that bend the series into new tones and arcs, but never so far that they break the show completely.
Duchovny’s love for Darin Morgan’s work on The X-Files has been a very consistent thing for him in interviews over the years. Another major episode that Duchovny has spotlighted as one of his favorites is the Darin Morgan-penned “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose,” which won Morgan an Emmy and which Duchovny called one of his favorites of Season 3, noting he “loved” it in an interview for Brian Lowry’s book, Trust No One.
Speaking during a Reddit AMA, Duchovny was asked about his favorite Monster of the Week episodes of The X-Files, spotlighting yet another connection to Darin Morgan, but not because he wrote the episode. Duchovny called the Flukeman character from the Season 2 episode “The Host” as his favorite, because Darin Morgan was actually the one in the suit, appearing as the monster before he went on to work as a writer for the series.
“Darinn Morgan was in the suit, one of our great writers,” Duchovny wrote. “And I had never met him, and I never did meet him, because he was in the suit and it took so much time in makeup. So when we did that show, I never actually saw Darin’s face.”
In the same AMA, Duchovny revealed a few other favorites, adding: “I do like Post-Modern Prometheus, we all love Jose Chung, we love Small Potatoes, we love all the funny ones, we’re easy that way.”
David Duchovny’s Least-Favorite X-Files Episode Should Surprise No One
Though not one to criticize too much, Duchovny has also been public about some of the episodes of the series that he doesn’t like, specifically citing Season 3’s “Teso Dos Bichos” as one he’s not so fond of. In the same AMA, Duchovny was asked, “Was there ever a plot line that came out of the writers’ room that made you stop and say ‘Seriously?’”
“Some of the one-offs. Like the killer cats episodes,” Duchovny said. “There was a scene where the guy comes in and tells us the dog was killed (It was killed by a cat, but we didn’t know that yet), and we were supposed to have some kind of emotional reaction to a dog dying that we didn’t know. Kim came over and it said something like ‘The agents should react appropriately to Fluffy’s death, Fluffy was a beloved dog, and we had never met Fluffy, we hadn’t even met the guy who owned Fluffy, and we were supposed to weep.”
To his credit, Duchovny’s clearly not wrong about this one. As much of a pain as it was to apparently film, even fans of The X-Files detest “Teso Dos Bichos,” which is currently the lowest-rated episode of The X-Files on IMDB (it currently has a 5.9 out of 10 with over 4.7K votes cast).
