X-Files

[Thad]

The goofy-ass Mulder Goes Solo Against Vampires episode is pretty terrible in every respect except that I kind of love that, without Scully, Mulder has to be his own skeptic and spend most of the episode not believing in vampires.

Fortunately, they limited the Mulder Flies Solo premise to a single episode and followed it with Ascension, which really is as good as the series gets despite Scully being comatose for most of it.

I mean, it's not a perfect episode. It's got those hokey Scully On a Boat scenes, a chase scene which features two of my least favorite tropes (footsteps fail to make any noise in a brobdingnagian empty hallway; guy with gun walks it up close enough so that captive can disarm him), and a scene where Mulder demands to know where Cancer Man is even though he just left less than a minute ago and there is a fucking cigarette still smoldering in the ashtray and you know what Fox you can probably catch up with him if you hurry.

But all that stuff's secondary to the character stuff -- sweaty angry Mr. X, Frohike showing up in a bowtie, Scully's sister calling attention to the utter hypocrisy in Mulder refusing to believe in her psychic intuition and healing crystals, Smoking Man and Skinner, Mulder and Skinner, Smoking Man and Mulder.

On the whole that's where the show really shines -- the plots may be flying by the seat of their pants, but the characters feel real and the actors sell it.

But you know I'm ready for a break from the arc stuff for goofy monster shit again. I like that stuff too.

The Loch Ness Monster episode's coming up soon, right?

[Thad]

New comic to explore the founding of the X-Files in the 1940's.

Karl Kesel is writing it (yay!) but not drawing it (awww...); the '40's-era segments will be drawn by Vic Malhotra and the modern segments by Greg Scott; I'm not familiar with either artist.

I haven't checked out the comic (except that issue where the Lone Gunmen teamed up with the TMNT), but I hear good things. Maybe I'll pick up the trades sometime.

[Thad]

Kumail Nanjiani's X-Files Files is a podcast wherein the guy who plays Dinesh on Silicon Valley plans to discuss every episode of the series.

[Mothra]

Just want to mention that I caught Home the other day on the recommendation of a friend, and hoooly hell.

It was pretty much everything I love about X-Files in one episode.

[Thad]

I haven't actually seen it in about 15 years (IIRC I missed the original airing but caught it later when they re-aired it in a later timeslot with a bunch of promotion about how controversial it had been the first time) but it definitely stuck with me. I'll get around to it when I get around to it -- still slowly wending my way through season 2 at this point.

It's amazing how much that episode affected people. Even casual fans. I don't know how many "But you know what the CREEPIEST episode was?" conversations I've had, years and years later.

[Thad]

Kumail Nanjiani's X-Files Files is a podcast wherein the guy who plays Dinesh on Silicon Valley plans to discuss every episode of the series.

Listened to the first cast. It's pretty solid; ostensibly it's about the first two episodes but they cover a lot of ground. Home gets a mention, and they REALLY HATE the second movie (I thought it was perfectly fine -- not a high water mark but a perfectly valid way of reintroducing the series if only it hadn't been released opposite Dark Knight -- but I seem to be a minority on that front). They talk about the characters and their relationships, how cool it is that, while they're frequently sarcastic, Mulder and Scully are genuinely friendly and compassionate toward the various weird people they encounter, and how the comedy episodes work really well. Some very insightful observations on what made the show special.

And then they yammer at the end about how aliens are real and they sorta lose me, but you can safely stop the cast once they start getting into that stuff. Or listen to it and appreciate that you're listening to real-life Lone Gunmen talk about X-Files.

[Thad]

[Thad]

Season 2 finale:

I love that CSM calls Mulder on his cell phone, Mulder answers his cell phone, and CSM's opening line is "You're a hard man to reach, Mr. Mulder."

I love even more that Mulder is out in the middle of the New Mexico desert and getting reception on his 1995 cell phone. Which he continues to get after climbing into a boxcar that is buried underground.

Fox Mulder is the EASIEST MAN IN THE WORLD to reach.



(Of course, CSM being CSM, it is entirely possible that at some point offscreen he orchestrated the construction of several cell towers and the launch of a satellite just so he could call Mulder on his cell phone. In which case his opening line is entirely justified.)

[Thad]

man anytime an episode features another culture or people with disabilities you know shit is about to get UNCOMFORTABLE.

[Mothra]

[Büge]

Batboy?

[Thad]

There are a couple episodes from the first two seasons that I've already singled out as "the perfect ____ episode" -- the two appearances of Tooms are perfect monster episodes; the first finale and Ascension are perfect aliens/government conspiracy/mythology episodes.

But the first episode that really hits all the notes I like best about X-Files is Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose. It's standalone, it's frequently funny while also being somber and atmospheric, the plot all comes together, the characterization is spot-on, and the acting and direction are impeccable.

A lot of it comes down to Peter Boyle being completely fucking amazing as Clyde Bruckman. He's old, he's sad, he's lonely, he's wry, and he gets all the best lines. Stuart Charno, who plays the villain, has a lot less screen time, but makes the most of it; he and Boyle only share one scene, but it's absolutely amazing.

Meanwhile, I love the shading provided by the multiple layers of skepticism in the episode -- Mulder dismisses a TV psychic as a fraud (the psychic, in turn, dismisses him as a skeptic, which is delightful) but immediately believes Bruckman's gift is real.

On the whole, my God this thing is perfect. Apparently it's the earliest single episode to win any Emmys (one for Boyle and one for writer Darin Morgan; previously the show won for its opening titles, and two other episodes later in the third season also won Creative Emmys that year) and yeah, that feels about right; this is where X-Files really shows what it can do.

If you want a place to start with X-Files and see if you like it and want to bother watching any more, this is pretty much perfect. If you don't like Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, man, this is not a show for you and I don't even know what is.

It's so good that even Monster of the Week plays this episode completely fucking straight.

It features this tag at the bottom of the strip:

Unless you’re Darin Morgan, this strip is not for sale.

ETA: Sold.

With this clarification in the comments:

To be honest, much as I hated to do it, I bent my rule. Darin Morgan did not buy the strip.

Glen Morgan did.

(Glen, as you might expect from his name, is Darin's brother and a fellow X-Files writer.)

[Thad]

So I like to watch TV while I work out on the elliptical machine.

At my old house, the elliptical machine was in the living room. At my new house, it doesn't really fit there so we put it on the back porch. I still like to watch TV while I work out, it's just that now I have to take a 10" tablet out there. On the whole it's probably better for my neck because I'm not turning it at a weird angle to see the TV anymore.

The two brobdingnagiest problems with watching X-Files outdoors:

1. The show is dark. It frequently relies on really low lighting to build a sense of foreboding. In any given episode, there are likely to be at least a couple brobdingnagian scenes that are very hard to see if you're watching on a tablet under natural light. Like that time I saw Halloween 2 at a drive-in.

2. Sometimes I hear birds. And I wonder why the fuck there are bird noises on X-Files even though it's nighttime and a really tense scene. And then I realize oh, that's not part of the show, I am hearing real birds and my headphones are not blocking them out.

I COULD switch to another show. Buffy would likely have many of the same problems, but I could get back to, say, Star Trek or Mad Men or one of the other, better-lit shows on my to-watch list. But I'm enjoying X-Files right now. Even if I have to squint sometimes to try and figure out what the hell I'm seeing.

ALSO: Man, is there really no way to watch Millennium or Lone Gunmen except for DVD and piracy?

[Thad]

Darin Morgan only wrote four episodes of X-Files.

I have mixed feelings about Humbug. Because it always feels slightly creepy and exploitative when X-Files uses, well, any minority in an episode (see also: its very '90's approach to characters with schizophrenia, autism, and other mental illnesses, and the mystical crap it pulls any time you see an Indian on the show), and this episode is about...there's got to be a more polite word than "freaks", but I'm afraid I don't know it. That said, at its best the episode celebrates some people who are unusual and amazing. It's pretty cool seeing these people on TV, even if it also feels slightly uncomfortable, and on balance I think it's better that the show sought out people who were actually unusual (and, in many cases, real circus performers) instead of just using makeup.

I've already praised Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose at some length. It's pretty much perfect, a contender for best episode ever, and, like Blink in the new Doctor Who, it's the episode I'd recommend as an introduction to the series for a new viewer.

War of the Coprophages has one of the dumbest premises of any X-Files episode ever (people are being killed by swarms of cockroaches, which turn out to be alien robot cockroaches sent to observe us), but manages to be fun as hell by virtue of some really sharp, really funny dialogue.

And I just watched Jose Chung's From Outer Space, and...wow. It really is a tough call whether I like Clyde Bruckman better or this one. Kumail Nanjiani recently had a two-part interview with Darin Morgan (I've only listened to the beginning of it; I intend to get to the rest at some point) and Morgan says Jose Chung is his personal favorite episode. He said he used to tell people that Clyde Bruckman had the better script but this one was his favorite, but now he just says this one is better.

I don't think Clyde Bruckman has the better script at all. It's a wonderful fucking episode, but Jose Chung is far more complex and more ambitious. Bruckman is a wonderfully presented but straightforward story, while Chung juggles multiple framing sequences, narratives within narratives by unreliable narrators, and an ending that doesn't really resolve anything, and makes all those parts work together. All that plus some great guest stars (Charles Nelson Reilly as Jose Chung, Jesse Ventura as a Man in Black, and a surprise cameo as the other Man in Black).

I still think Clyde Bruckman is the better episode to watch as an introduction to the show, if you've never seen it before. But I think I might like Jose Chung better. It's a legitimately tough call.

[LaserBeing]

Jose Chung is absolutely my favourite episode, hands down

[Thad]

And I just watched Quagmire, which is another of those episodes that mostly isn't very good but is saved by some brilliant Mulder/Scully dialogue. And I thought, "Hey, is this the episode Darin Morgan did an uncredited rewrite on?" and, per Wikipedia, yep, that's the one. (Something else I learned reading his Wikipedia entry: holy shit, he brought back Jose Chung on Millennium? Man, I've really gotta watch Millennium.)

I'm also kinda curious whether Morgan is responsible for bringing Scully's dog back in this episode considering he's the one who introduced the dog in Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose. Wikipedia doesn't answer that question. It's got this:

Story editor Frank Spotnitz stated that the dog was brought back in this episode simply to kill it, seeking to incorporate it in an episode in a grisly fashion.

but it's unclear whether that was Morgan's idea, Spotnitz's, Kim Newton's, or whose.

One of these days I'll get around to listening to his interview on The X-Files Files; maybe that'll have more information.

[TedBelmont]

THIS POST REMOVED FOR INSUFFICIENT CONTEXT

[Thad]

And it's official: X-Files to return as six-episode event series.

Which I hope is enough to fit some goofy one-off episodes in there. Goofy one-off episodes are the BEST episodes.

And hey, maybe if this miniseries does okay we can get another one later on down the line. New X-Files every few years would be nice. I've mentioned before that I liked the idea of doing a series of low-budget movies that were effectively just big-budget episodes; I don't share the hate most fans have for the last movie, and think it would have been a good format to continue with if it hadn't opened the same weekend as Dark Knight.

SO. I expect we'll get a lot of mythology stuff in there. Maybe open in 2012, work in some explanation for why the world didn't end like it was supposed to, then jump forward to the present.

Wouldn't be surprised if they brought back the Lone Gunmen. Which apparently the comics have already done.

Man, I've got some catching up to do; I'm not quite done with season 3. That's six whole seasons to go. And if I'm planning on fitting Millennium and Lone Gunmen in there, that's four more.

[Thad]

You know, watching it again after 15 years, the most shocking thing about Home is that it really is not very good. It's got some solid direction from Kim Manners, and good work from the makeup and props departments, but let's face it, the only reason anybody remembers it is the ick factor. The script really doesn't have a damn thing going for it except emotional manipulation; it taps into subjects that evoke strong, primitive repulsion from the audience (not just the incest/inbreeding but also the physical deformity, amputation, and dead baby imagery, plus some good old-fashioned beatings, hackings, and impalings), but if you took all that away you wouldn't have an episode left.

Deliverance would still be a memorable film without hillbillies performing horrifying sex acts. Home, on the other hand, really doesn't have anything else going for it. I'd like to say that the reason it had such a lasting effect on so many people who saw it is that it was so well-done. But it's not. It's just pure, cheap, lazy shock value.

That said, for an episode of a horror series, it sure does make your fucking skin crawl.

[Thad]

And in a thoroughly unsurprising revelation, Duchovny says Skinner and CSM will be in the new series.

Given that they went to a lot of trouble to establish that the CSM was Killed Off for Real at the end of the original series, that means it's either a flashback or they're going to have to handwave a resurrection. My money's on the latter, because X-Files.