I want to believe the new ‘X-Files’ will keep getting better

The truth is out there.

An entertaining episode of the "X-Files" reboot is, too.

Both of them, though, take a while to uncover.

Last seen in the 2008 movie "The X-Files: I Want to Believe," FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are back for six new episodes. (They debut at 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 24 before moving to 8 p.m. Monday on Fox.) And, much like the series that ran from 1993-2002, the revival is a bit of a mixed bag.

The first episode represents the groundbreaking sci-fi series at its tinfoil-hatted worst. The second is a fairly standard — and fairly forgettable — investigation. But the third, titled "Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-monster," is among the show's weirdest, wildest installments yet. Think of it as a reward for sticking around after Sunday's premiere.

In a dry, yawn-inducing voiceover, Mulder opens Sunday's episode with a reminder of what "The X-Files" was all about — an alien-obsessed federal agent who was reluctantly partnered with a skeptical doctor to investigate strange phenomena — before launching into a brief history of UFO sightings.

Mulder and Scully have been estranged for years, but they're brought back together by FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), who asks them to meet with the host (Joel McHale) of "Truth Squad with Tad O'Malley." Tad, it turns out, is a paranoid wingnut who believes 9/11 was a false flag attack setting the stage for World War III as part of a conspiracy dating back to the Roswell crash in 1947.

It's a chance for series creator Chris Carter to take potshots at the evils of Big Oil and consumerism. And, while Duchovny and Anderson still have plenty of chemistry, the eye-rollingly dense conspiracy claptrap is enough to make newcomers, for whom that awkward introduction was intended, wonder what all the fuss was about.

After all, "The X-Files" was one of the longest-running, most-influential sci-fi series of all time. Not only did it launch a short-lived spinoff, "The Lone Gunmen," and a companion series, "Millennium," its DNA can be found in everything from "Fringe" to "Supernatural" to the succession of ratings-challenged genre shows Fox trots out, year after year, in hopes of recapturing a fraction of its crossover appeal.

Some of the most prodigious "X-Files" writers have gone on to nice little careers of their own. Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, who combined to pen 26 of the 202 episodes, created "Homeland." Frank Spotnitz, who wrote 48 of them, adapted Amazon's "The Man in the High Castle." And, if it weren't for "The X-Files," the world wouldn't have had "Breaking Bad" — at least not as we know it. Vince Gilligan, that legendary drama's creator, wrote 30 "X-Files" episodes, including the 1998 installment "Drive," which starred Bryan Cranston as an anti-Semite whose head would explode, thanks to a government experiment with low-frequency waves, if he didn't keep travelling west at a high rate of speed.

But that legacy means little if the new episodes aren't entertaining. And, after a bumpy start, "Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-monster" doesn't disappoint.

"Scully, since we've been away, much of the unexplained has been explained," Mulder laments, citing everything from the moving rocks on the Death Valley Racetrack to less famous mysteries such as the Amarillo Armadillo Man or the Hairy Whatsit of Walla Walla.

When a couple of paint-huffing slackers stumble across dead bodies in the woods and report seeing a lizard man fleeing the scene, the fun is on.

Given the rash of TV revivals — Fox alone is rebooting "24" and bringing back "Prison Break" — and the waves of nostalgia these new episodes have unleashed, there's no reason to think Duchovny and Anderson couldn't get together every year or two, "Sherlock"-style, for new adventures.

Especially if those adventures strike the proper tone — even occasionally.

"I forgot how much fun these cases can be," Scully says, somewhere in the madness of that third episode.

Then, after listening to Mulder comically ramble on like a man who's a few Kardashians short of a full tabloid, Scully admits, "This is how I like my Mulder."

She's not alone.

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com. On Twitter: @life_onthecouch