The X-Files - The Complete Seventh Season
With the original conspiracy plot arc having fallen into a muddle of  loose ends, once-hungry lead actors on the verge of big-screen careers and  making demands for more time off or shots at writing and directing, and the  initial wish list of monsters-of-the-week long exhausted, it's a miracle that by  its seventh seasonThe X-Fileswas still making its airdates, let alone  managing something pretty good every other show and something outstanding at  least once every four episodes. The season opens with a dreary two-parter  ("Sixth Extinction" and "Amor Fati") and winds up with the traditional  incomprehensible cliffhanger ("Requiem"), but along the way includes a clutch of  episodes that may not match the originality of earlier seasons but still  effortlessly equal any other fantasy-horror sci-fi on television.The highlights: "Hungry," a brain-eating mutant story told from the point of  view of a monster who tries to control his appetite by going to eating disorder  self-help groups; "The Goldberg Variation," a crime comedy about a weasely  little man who has the gift of incredible good luck, which means Wile E.  Coyote-style doom for anyone who crosses him; "The Amazing Maleeni," guest-starring  Ricky Jay in a rare nonfantastic crime story about a feud between stage  magicians that turns out to be a cover for a heist; "X-Cops," a brilliant skit  on the TV docusoapCopswith Mulder and Scully caught on camera as they  track an apparent werewolf in Los Angeles (season-best acting from David  Duchovny and Gillian Anderson); "Theef," a complex revenge drama with gaunt  Billy Drago as a hillbilly medicine man stalking a slick doctor; "Brand X," a  horror-comic tale of corruption in the tobacco industry; "Hollywood AD" (written  and directed by Duchovny), in which Tea Leoni (Duchovny's wife) and Garry  Shandling are cast as Scully and Mulder in a crass movie version of a real-life  X-file; and "Je Souhaite," a deadpan comedy about a wry, cynical genie at the  mercy of trailer-trash masters who haven't an idea what to wish for.--Kim  Newman