FBI Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully is pregnant.

No, this isn't the opening line to a bad fanfic circa the third season. This is current "truth" within the quickly deteriorating X-Files universe, a "bombshell" dropped on the fans at the end of an episode which included Mulder's abduction by aliens.

Does this plotline smell of bad fanfic to anyone else? To be honest, most of the later episodes I've actually been able to muster the balls to watch have had the sickeningly-sweet aroma of well-intentioned badfic. Let's start with Emily. Scully's infertile. So of COURSE the little sick girl is going to be her daughter. What kind of a surprise was that supposed to be? Let's take stock. Big bad brother's cute little wife is very very pregnant. Scully is infertile and moping. There's a little girl who's very sick and her parents have been killed.

Yawn.

Just to further this plagaristic suspicion of mine, there's the insulting "Arcadia". HELLO!? Mulder and Scully PLAY MARRIED?! Uh, geez, George, where could that particular plot have come from? Only about 10,000 stories in the Gossamer Archive. The only kudos I'll give the writers here is the fact that they didn't have sex. Way to go. Really.

What do these loosely related examples show us, you may be asking me. Well, bear with me people, I'm nonlinear and ranty. They show us one thing: that in trying to be stylish and edgy, Chris Carter and his team of crackpot writers have gone where every show has gone before. This is the Sarlacc Pit of predictability, in which, Scully's chances of getting knocked up increase exponentially when she is discovered to be infertile; NOT when Gillian Anderson herself is pregnant.

Just don't come crying to me when Scully's baby is born smokin' a Morley.

And that's the Genki Cynic's side of the story.