X-Files season 4 re-watch continued

To be honest I'm not sure quite what to make of Never Again. I think that it was a really interesting idea for an episode to take a closer look at Scully's character and how Mulder's quest has overtaken her life as well, it's the kind of examination of the central character that we expect in shows this days as a matter of course, but I'm not sure it really works as an X-File? Shows today would generally build up to a development like this over several weeks, making sure that Scully's complaints feel organic and we understand where she's coming from, obviously that was never going to happen in a 1990's episode of the X-Files, so instead it feels a little too random for Scully to suddenly come up with all of these frustrations with Mulder out of the blue. Certainly interesting, but with no real groundwork for us to understand why she is suddenly so sick of her life. I've loved past examples of episodes taking a closer look at the main characters, but I'm inclined to say this one is an awkward fit in the context of the show, it's all about Scully expressing her frustration with the current state of her life, and yet we know that it's never going to get followed up on or even mentioned again. I guess you can fanwank it as being part of the cancer arc and Scully reevaluating her life because of that, but the diagnosis is never brought up in this episode (it was apparently intended to air earlier in the season), so it never actually comes across as that being the case idk

I found the episode a bit slow and draggy in parts too tbh, it felt like Scully's ~walk on the wild side~ should have been more exciting than it ultimately was, and it says a lot about CC's view of the character that he reportedly insisted on any potential sex scene being completely cut out, even though the writers have talked about how they (and Gillian) had been excited to create a steamy sex scene for her character in this one. (Complete sidenote, but it did strike me as funny on this watch that the X-Files was the opposite of most shows in that it took pains to never sexualise the main female character, yet Mulder and Skinner are shown shirtless in quite a few gratuitous shots over the years! It really stood out to me just how often Skinner is shown with no shirt on when he's at home, or he'll be answering the door to Mulder in just a towel or something. And the show seemed to *really* like their scenes playing up Mulder being naked and vulnerable, whether it's Scully coming across him shivering in a bath, or she's putting him to bed in his boxers. And then there's the infamous red speedo shot from season 2 as well. Whereas Scully is pretty much always kept in the professional business suits...)

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