Scully's skepticism is pretty rational

[Deledrius]

By the end, I hated them; the mythology made no sense, and was all buildup to absolutely nothing. The conspiracy was just a bunch of dudes in a poorly-lit rooms speaking vaguely about nothing in particular while portentous music played.

The irony being that's a realistic amount of depth for most conspiracy theories!

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

By the end, I hated them; the mythology made no sense, and was all buildup to absolutely nothing. The conspiracy was just a bunch of dudes in a poorly-lit rooms speaking vaguely about nothing in particular while portentous music played.

The irony being that's a realistic amount of depth for most conspiracy theories!

The thematic grounding of the show though is actually much more complex than conspiracy theories.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Oh yeah, one thing about the conspiracy episodes in the later seasons. From the get go after Fight the Future, the evolving state of involved administration members never leads to anything. All the high-up congress people are seen once and deliver some natural grandeur, but it's entirely 1 dimensional and kind of short served. Like Blythe Danner at the end of the movie. It's an alright scene, but leaves much to be desired. And then while Kirsh added a lot of gloom to mulder/scully's quest, his threats always come off anticlimactic because he finds out what Mulder is doing midway through the episode and just tells him he's in deep shit, and that's just what i remember iirc. Well alright for the first time, but it just kind of keeps happening until Mulder suddenly doesn't work there anymore. Idunno just a thought.