In an essay about David Lynch's "Twin Peaks," another seminal television series that fell apart in the process of resolving itself, David Foster Wallace might have been describing Carter. Lynch, he wrote, "is way better at deepening and complicating mysteries than he is at wrapping them up." Wallace continues:

The show had degenerated into tics and shticks and mannerisms and red herrings ... Part of the reason I actually preferred "Twin Peaks"' second season to its first was the fascinating spectacle of watching a narrative structure disintegrate and a narrative artist freeze up and try to shuck and jive when the plot reached a point where his own weaknesses as an artist were going to be exposed (just imagine the fear: this disintegration was happening on National TV).

I'm not sure fear could penetrate Carter's cocoon of self-satisfaction. Is he at all concerned that he has shied away from providing the answers his audience craves? Over the course of "The X-Files"' stretch run, only three episodes -- including the first two: "Provenance" and "Providence" -- dealt seriously with the conspiracy. The rest were, at this stage in the game, irrelevant.

One episode, "Jump the Shark," in which McKean reprises his role as the craven and venal Fletcher Morris, killed off the Lone Gunmen in a biological terrorism plot unrelated to the conspiracy. The fact that the episode was so named indicates that Carter and his co-conspirators still have a sense of humor, if not a keen sense of where and when to apply it.

"Jumping the Shark" refers, of course, to the moment in "Happy Days" when Fonzie jumped a shark tank in a motorcycle and the highly popular sitcom lost its last shred of dignity. The term now applies to the moment when any TV show or cultural phenomenon, having reached its zenith, resorts to ridiculous lengths to hold on to its audience and then proceeds unceremoniously downhill.

OK, so Carter et al. are aware of the criticisms leveled against them. But the problem is that the episode was characterized by some of the very same flaws (cheesy melodrama, deathly slow pacing, and a lack of coherence) that caused "The X-Files" to jump the shark in the first place. A mere wink at the audience does not credibility restore.

In "Provenance," the first of the final 11 episodes, it seemed Carter was trying to stall for time. Thirty minutes and two commercial breaks came and went before anything happened. Finally, a guy who turns out to be a deep-cover FBI agent tries to kill little telekinetic William. Later, in the only interesting moment of the show, William causes a metal fragment of a spaceship that may contain the secrets to all of human history to explode from a bureau drawer and spin over his head.

In the next episode, "Providence," William is abducted but apparently defeats his captors by making a buried spaceship roar to life and take off with the kidnappers either on top of it (ouch) or inside it. He's a precocious little tyke, all right.

But after all the time devoted to Scully's baby, Carter scuttled the entire thing in "William," an episode directed by Duchovny. In it, Jeffrey Spender, Mulder's old foil and half-brother, comes back to Washington horribly disfigured and injects William with a magic solution that "cures" him of his superpowers. Scully gives him up for adoption, and that's that. As Agent Reyes says in the episode after "William" ("Release," in which Doggett finally puts to rest the unsolved murder of his son): "In other words, we're nowhere again."

To make this hoax more pronounced, Carter gave the subtitle "Endgame" to the final four episodes, the first of which was "William." The promos implied that with "Endgame" we'd be getting down to the nitty-gritty, but "Release" was unconnected with the conspiracy, and "Sunshine Days," which the promos touted as the "most bizarre" episode ever (it wasn't), dealt with a psychokinetic man obsessed with "The Brady Bunch."

Which brings us to the finale. Mulder is back and on trial for his life. Where's he been? What will be explained? Will Carter abandon his newfound roles of cheese merchant and staller for time?

There is at least one more "X-Files" feature film on the way. In this week's TV Guide, however, Carter says the next film will be a stand-alone mystery, unrelated to the show's overarching mythology.

Therefore, if Carter really has anything left to say about the mythology, now's the time to do it. He doesn't have to answer every last question in order to satisfy me, and indeed the audience shouldn't demand that of him. But he must, at the very least, put out a blueprint for who's involved in the conspiracy and what their roles are.

I mean, I went to college and whatnot. And I have no idea what the hell's going on. There are aliens (including mellow gray aliens and ferocious, flesh-tearing aliens), there are alien bounty hunters, there are alien rebels, and there are Super Soldiers. Prove to us, Chris, that you know what you're doing, that there's actually a coherent plot that connects all this.

There is a conspiracy within the FBI. Sinister characters are threatening Kersh and Skinner. Who are these people and what is their agenda? Are we going to discover why Skinner always looks so thoroughly constipated? Perhaps it's just an unresolved childhood issue.

I want Carter to prove me wrong and knock me out with "The Truth." To do that, he's got to deliver something on a much higher level than the final season has done so far. I don't think it's going to happen, but for all my skepticism I'll still be glued to the sofa on Sunday night. If nine years of "The X-Files" have taught us anything, it's that unlikely things -- even impossible things -- sometimes happen.

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