Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man is a fun, interesting episode. For not having Mulder or Scully in it, the episode is pulled off surprisingly well. I like how his cigarette lighter says 'Trust No one'. Each of the segments opens with a quote, the first a Shakespearean quote. Nice touch. I think it's interesting that just one of the two "past" sequences was in black & white. Why? When CSM is on the assignment to assassinate President Kennedy, he tells Oswald he likes movies, although he told Mulder earlier that he hates movies. So the lying begins. I also like how instead of music, real Martin Luther King Jr. speeches were played in the background. It gave the episode a cool feel. I like how the book CSM is writing is called 'Second Chance', paralleling CSM's desire for a second chance in life to not be so evil. It's cool to see CSM in a different light, aspiring to be a writer, trying to quit smoking through the use of a nicotine patch. Even though he is still evil, you garner a little bit of sympathy for him. Although we know that Frohike was fed misinformation, I think it would've been better not to have the army part at the beginning. I think they still could've introduced CSM but kept it with what we knew from Piper Maru and Apocrypha. Another problem I have with the PE is when CSM is with Ronald "Deep Throat". They talk a little bit about Bill Mulder and then Deep Throat kills the alien because that's what the international agreement was. If they automatically have to kill the recovered alien, why was the alien on life support in the first place? Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man is a fun episode that should be taken with a grain of salt and not as gospel truth of CSM's real life.
