"Mulder, you just keep unfolding like a flower". ~ Scully

It's so nice that when we have an episode all about character development, when we learn about about a character's past, his fears, and his triumphs, that we remember these things eight years later. It's called "continuity".

Did you get that, CC, "CONTINUITY"?

CC wrote this one, and honestly, it's nothing special.  So Mulder has an old flame contact him about arson cases... so she constantly makes plays for him... so she hates Scully and all the attention she would usually get from Mulder. So what?

This episode is Scully-lite, which adds to the effect of Mulder being on his own to investigate cases he's scared to death of (fire).  It shows the viewers how dependent he has become on Scully for her over-protective nature and platonic bantering. It also shows that Scully can hold her own, if she had to.

It's important to remember that this episode is from the middle of the first season, before the characters got bogged down in their mundane and redundant ways.  Viewing this episode for the first time in the middle of season 8, its a little difficult to try and wipe away all that I've seen about these characters and their workings.

Anyway...

I would've hoped that Mulder learned a lesson from all this: never do anything without Scully. You never know when you may be in the middle of a kiss with "the terror of Scotland Yard" while two small children are being burned upstairs. Thank God for Scully's meddling.

Now for the fun part: I'm not sure that Chris Carter knew where this one was going. Character development inside a MotW is fine, but make the monster INTERESTING. After Scully explained to us that Cecil set people on fire because of repressed sexual desires, I had to wonder, what does pyrokenetics have to do with any of this? Can't he just murder people, plain and simple, and not waste Mulder's time? Cecil was a bastard! Of course no one in their right mind would give him a second look. Trying to get little kids to smoke? Yeah, right! What the Hell was he thinking? And why did he feel the need to set the bar on fire? Just showing off? Why did he have to kill the caretaker of the house on Cape Cod? Why did he only go after rich women? Why did he leave England for one? Aren't their enough aristocrats over there?

Oh, and I guess Mulder's fear of fire and his photographic memory will remain in the ranks of his red-green colorblindness, only coming out when it's convenient, right?

Anyway...

Rating: 2.5 lounge chairs out of 5

"Is that what you were extending"?