Time for some good stuff! We start with someone entering a house… a trying to reason with a man and a gun, a third… thing enters the house and gets shot… Mulder leaves the house and drives off

Doggett is driving to the town where all this happened, presumably a few days after, and is recounting in his head Scully’s words telling him that Mulder was dying, and his pledge to Scully that he will find Mulder. On arriving to the town he speaks to the sheriff who confirms Mulder was in town a week ago.

Doggett speaks to the family involved, who don’t really give him a lot of information other then something from the woods is going to eat somebody, apparently something they were investigating ages ago (not sure if this was a previous episode, hopefully I’ll find out later). Doggett goes to Mulder’s apartment and starts looking around again, the information text that appears tells us Mulder’s apartment is in Alexandra, Virginia.

Basically the rest of the episode focuses on something that happened a few months back before Mulder went missing. He knew he was dying and wanting to find any way possible to cure himself, he went to see some crazy freak of nature who consumes peoples illnesses, curing them in the process. Mulder lied on the case report to state he was in Washington when in fact he took a trip to this little town to be eaten by this freak, and be re-born into a healthy person. However on looking at the freak, he realised that he’ll only be transferring his illness to this thing – who’s basically been suffering all this time with everyone else’s illnesses, so he doesn’t go through with it.

On knowing it was back, he went to the town to release it of it’s pain, and kill it. However since it doesn’t die it’s back, and the townspeople are abusing it yet again to heal themselves. Doggett heads over, manages to find the thing and attempts to save it, when the townspeople shoot him dead with a shot gun. Luckily for him, this thing transfers Doggett’s death to itself, saving Doggett and finally killing it the only way it can.

Strange episode with a couple of interesting points. The Lone Gunmen also stop by to help Skinner and Doggett, Scully’s not in it at all (remember, she’s pregnant in real life, so we’ll be seeing her less and less in the coming episodes), and Doggett is no closer to finding Mulder, staring at a blank case report, Skinner offers him some advice and suggests he not make a case report, since it will only get everyone in trouble.

Still it was good to see Mulder in it, even if it was only new footage of flashbacks.