The X-Files changed the way sci-fi is portrayed on TV, but you know what’s more fun that discussing the pop-culture impact of a show? Watching its best episodes! So here are nine fantastic episodes that everyone in the world should watch. (I have left off the big mythology episodes that focus on the meta-arc; you can watch those once you inevitably fall in love with the show. For the record, my favorite mythology two-parter is “Duane Barry/Ascension.”)

Season 1, Episode 1 “Pilot”: Watch it not only because it’s the first episode, but also because it’s fantastic. Mulder and Scully’s first meeting will give you chills. “Sorry, nobody down here but the F.B.I.’s most unwanted.”

Season 1, Episode 3 “Squeeze”: The first “Monster of the Week” episode features a fantastically creepy bad guy (Doug Hutchison) who can stretch his body and eats human livers to survive, because those two things go together. The actor later married a 16-year-old girl and showed us that he’s still good at playing creepy.

Season 2, Episode 20 “Humbug”: Circus freaks, bug eaters, and the late, great Vincent Schiavelli get together in this episode about the importance of finding your people. It also makes Mulder look like a total putz, which is hard to do because David Duchovny is so handsome.

Season 3, Episode 4 “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose”: The greatest X-Files episode of all time. I once watched this episode three times in one day and cried each time. Darin Morgan won an Emmy for writing this episode. The late, great Peter Boyle won an Emmy for playing a psychic who can only see how people die and tells Mulder how it ends for him. (Hint: It’s the worst possible way to go.)

Season 3, Episode 20 “Jose Chung's ‘From Outer Space’”: A meta-deconstruction of the show itself. The late, great Charles Nelson Reilly plays a pulpy writer trying to get to the bottom of an alleged alien abduction incident by talking to a group of unreliable narrators. Or was it an alien abduction incident at all? I would tell you about all the wonderful cameos in this episode, but that would ruin half the fun. Or would it ruin any of the fun at all?

Season 4, Episode 2 “Home”: The scariest episode of television ever made. Period. End of discussion. You’ll never hear Johnny Mathis’s “Wonderful Wonderful” the same way ever again.

Season 5, Episode 12 “Bad Blood”: Luke Wilson stars in this vampire episode told separately through both Scully and Mulder’s perspectives. This is Gillian Anderson’s favorite episode.

Season 6, Episode 2 “Drive”: There’s a pretty good show called Breaking Bad. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but it was created by The X-Files writer Vince Gilligan and starred Bryan Cranston. This episode is where they met, and you see how likable Cranston can be while saying and doing some pretty unlikable things. Not “Start selling meth and murdering competitors” unlikeable, but unlikeable nonetheless.

Season 7, Episode 12 “X-Cops”: The X-Files and Cops crossover. Sounds bad, right? It’s not. It’s scary and cool and highlights the show at its most inventive. It also shows how resilient the Mulder/Scully dynamic is. Seven years in and Mulder is still coming up with a crazy theory, Scully is pointing out that it’s a crazy theory, but because the universe is unfair, Mulder is proven right and Scully wrong.

Can’t wait to see it all happen six more times.