Crying is foxy
I really love that Mulder was a crier. We didn't get a ton of that from male leads back in the day, as it wasn't perceived as "tough" or masculine to shed tears unless the mom or wife died. 🙄 Even female leads who were in more masculine roles (Xena and the like) didn't cry often and thus avoided looking "weak" or feminine.
Mulder was crying every other episode and honestly I love that about him, it works. The fact that it works today, where it is more normalized makes sense; but the fact that it worked back then speaks to how well the character was written and acted, IMO. These traits made him even more attractive too.
Anyway, I'm just having random thoughts about the various ways this show was groundbreaking, and how some of them were more subtle than others. 90s tv, especially scifi tv, really defied a lot of conventions and it was kind of great.