Reception
"Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" premiered on the Fox network on November 17, 1996. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 10.7, with a 15 share, meaning that roughly 10.7 percent of all television-equipped households, and 15 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 17.09 million viewers. James Wong earned the show's first ever Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for this episode, although he later lost to NYPD Blue's Mark Tinker.
Few viewers picked up on the notion that the events of this episode were not necessarily factual. Story editor Frank Spotnitz said "In the closing scene Frohike tells Mulder and Scully that the whole story was something he read in a crummy magazine. A lot of people didn't pick up on that subtlety. They thought that this was indeed the factual history of the CSM. As far as I'm concerned, it's not. Some of it may indeed be true, and some of it may — well, never mind".
"Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" received moderately positive praise from critics. Entertainment Weekly gave the episode an "A–", noting that "one has to wonder to what extent this episode is intended as information, and to what extent sheer entertainment". Reviewer Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club spoke positively of the episode, saying "I love this ... and watching it now, I still do". He ultimately gave the episode an "A" and wrote, "'Musings' is great because it transforms CSM from a living ghost into the walking dead—still horrifying, still dangerous, but pitiable just the same". Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, named the episode "one of The X-Files' true masterpieces" and awarded it five stars out of five. The two praised Morgan and Wong's combination of mythological story elements with more dry and dark humor. Furthermore, Shearman and Pearson wrote positively of the ambiguousness of the episode's authenticity, noting that "the answers that the viewers are craving are handed out here on such a large plate, you can only take them as a delicious parody." Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a glowing review and awarded it four stars out of four. She praised the way that the viewer is able to see the "barren emotional landscape in which the Cigarette Smoking Man dwells" via the "tone of the script". Furthermore, Vitaris applauded the Forrest Gump-esque rant, calling it "a comic high point of verbal venom".
Not all reviews were so positive. Author Phil Farrand, on the other hand, was critical of the episode, rating it as his fifth least favorite episode of the first four seasons. He criticized the entry for having an uninteresting first half, and relying on the "cliche" of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Furthermore, he was unhappy with the fact that viewers did not have any way of knowing whether the content of the episode really happened. Alan Kurtz criticized the episode for being inconsistent with the timetable of The X-Files, pointing to the fact that the episode contradicts canon that was established in the third season episode "Apocrypha". Furthermore, he derided the show for too closely mirroring the plots of the 1979 movie Apocalypse Now as well as Forrest Gump.
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