This is the one with the weird guy that gets fired and then literally gets "FIRED" (ie, possessed by some kind of weird fire demon that we later find out is some kind of thread of evil or something... more on that to come). This is one of the first episodes that uses Reyes as more than an extra and to be perfectly honest it seems to set the tone for every other crappy Reyes episode from here on out. Things are a little crowded on the show at this point with Reyes, Mulder, Doggett, AND Scully all intermingled in a giant spaghetti bowl of X-Files investigation-o-rama. Who is officially assigned to the X-Files at this point anyway? I'm pretty sure its just Doggett and Scully however, Reyes and Mulder are the two that take the case. Reyes thinks that some office shooting spree is connected to the murder of Doggett's son but she decides that the best way to handle the situation is to sneak behind Doggett's back and get a bunch of other people involved, a decision which actually royally pisses Doggett off. To Mulder's everlasting credit, he appears to hate Reyes just as much as everyone else and even makes a number of comments about how she just doesn't know when to shut the beep up. Finally, they catch the guy that did the shootings after he claws his face off revealing rivers of molten lava flowing beneath his skull and when he dies, his sister who didn't seem to care that much about him anyway attacks Reyes with a fire extinguisher (note the fire reference again?). Reyes' theory that evil apparently jumps from innocent bystander to innocent bystander turns out to be true yet she still doesn't see that coming. I think its great that we have learned from this episode that no matter what, if you are around when an evil person dies, you will become evil next. Oh well such is life. 4 out of 10.
Review of Empedocles
