The agents investigate two identical-looking women who seem to wreak havoc whenever they are near each other.

A Way With People

Mulder: Are you a practitioner of the occult, Miss Templeton? Wicca? Voodoo? Satanism? The black art of bodily bi-location? Betty Templeton: Me? No. You know what they say, everyone has a twin out there somewhere. Mulder: No. We don't know what they say.

A suburban street. Two young men in white shirts and dark ties are on bicycles. They go to a house that has a red car in the driveway, and try to give religious literature to a woman who answers the door. She’s not interested, helpfully explaining that she just moved in and is waiting for the cable guy. She shuts the door.

The missionaries bike over to another house -- this one differentiated by the presence of a blue car in the driveway -- and are surprised when an identical woman answers. Told that someone who looks just like her lives nearby, she gets upset, closes the door, paces.

This episode conveys a strong sense of a writer, director and actors merely going through the motions, collecting their sizable paychecks while running out the clock on the season and series. The plot is not compelling, the agents themselves seem not to take it seriously, and the doppelgangers around whom the action revolves are little more than ciphers.

[Editor's Note: Kenneth Silber was so irritated by the inclusion of doppelganger versions of our favorite agents -- likely a gesture toward thematic unity and/or irony on Chris Carter's part -- that he refuses to dignify the plot point with comment.]

Will the doppelganger women find a way to disentangle themselves from their hurtful link to one another?

The phenomenon depicted lacks an interesting mystical explanation, let alone a plausible scientific one.

What if someone could make your wishes come true? Would it be a blessing -- or a nightmare? Find out in "Je Souhaite."