X-Files

[Thad]

There's also a bit in the Lone Gunmen pilot where Frohike confronts femme fatale Yves Harlow, and it goes like this (quoted from a transcript on the X-Files wiki):

YVES: I guess you don't know me.
FROHIKE: Well, maybe I do (pause) Lee Harvey Oswald.
(Yves looks at him.)
FROHIKE: Your name, Yves Adele Harlow is an anagram of Lee Harvey Oswald. Some joke. I know who you really are, sugar. And I can tell the world in my (makes quote signs) silly little rag.

I thought for a minute there that he was saying Yves is Lee Harvey Oswald, which would have introduced a whole giant ball of simultaneously cringe-inducing and yet weirdly-progressive-for-prime-time-in-2001 gender politics (especially given that when we're first introduced to Yves in the beginning of the episode, she's disguised as a man; she kisses Frohike on the mouth and we only find out later in the scene that she's a woman wearing a fake beard). But no, she's not actually Lee Harvey Oswald; he's just pointing out that "Yves Adele Harlow" is an alias but he knows her true identity.

[Mongrel]

"Yves Adele" would have been a supremely weird and forced name even in that circumstance, as Yves is the masculine form of that name; the feminine is, of course, Yvette.

The obvious assumption here is simply that Chris Carter 1) doesn't know any French, and 2) is an idiot anyway, because you don't need to know French to know that, and just forced the anagram anyway. Given the character might as well have introduced herself as Robert Amanda Bullshit, I'm not sure Frohike's powers of perception come off looking any better for his, uh, discovery.

[Thad]

Look, it was 2001; antagonists with anagrams for names were all the rage.

[Büge]

Look, it was 2001; antagonists with anagrams for names were all the rage.

[Thad]

Episodes 2 and 3 of Lone Gunmen take a hard turn into silliness; they're less X-Files and more Three Stooges. And in case you didn't make the connection for yourself, Yves helpfully refers to them as "the three stooges" in dialogue in episode 3.

It's sitcom stuff, and not modern sitcoms which are expected to adhere to some sort of logic; more like I Love Lucy where everything was just a setup to hang a joke on and nothing anybody did had to make any kind of sense.

Like, episode 3 involves Frohike going undercover to determine whether a little old lady is actually a nazi collaborator who's been in hiding for the last 55 years; in order to do this, he has to figure out how to get a look at her butt, because everybody in the nazi lady's family has a birthmark on their butt in the shape of Germany. This is the premise the entire episode hangs on; Frohike has to pretend to be the lady's son and figure out a way to get a look at her ass.

Also, at the end of the episode, Jimmy Bond (the Lone Gunmen's dim comic relief sidekick) disguises himself as the guy who put them up to this, in order to flush out the real nazi. Only, nobody in the room except Frohike has ever seen Jimmy or the bad guy he's impersonating, so there's absolutely no reason for him to be in disguise except to do a dramatic Mission: Impossible-style "taking off the mask" moment.

This is after episode 2, which introduces Jimmy as he's trying to set up a football league for the blind (the ball makes a beeping noise so they can follow it) and the show swings wildly between trying to play this as a legitimate, heartstrings-tugging effort to make the world a better place for PWD and a vehicle for a bunch of warmed-over ableist slapstick.

It is a very strange show! I like it, largely because I like the Lone Gunmen, but tonally it's a mess and its silly sitcom premises definitely aren't what you'd expect from a show set in the same universe as X-Files and Millennium.

[Thad]

EVERYBODY SHUT UP

Monster of the Week is back

[Friday]

/me slams breaks, turns wheel, flips car

[Thad]

*carjacks Mulder; brain explodes*

[Friday]

Should have cooked meth instead bitch

[Thad]

Okay, never mind the episode about flying a commercial jet into the World Trade Center, the episode where Chris Carter waxes nostalgic about how great Bill Clinton was is the most 2001 thing I've ever seen.

[Thad]

Welp, I guess I'm finally going to have to follow up my Favorite Episodes of Millennium and Favorite Episodes of X-Files (still in progress) blog posts with My Favorite Episodes of The Lone Gunmen.

Well, episode, so far, but hopefully there will be at least one more good one in the back half of the series.

But episode 6, "Madam, I'm Adam" is the first episode of the series I'd describe as Actually Good. And I had a feeling it might be when the first face I saw was Stephen Tobolowsky's. That guy's always great.

Tobolowsky plays the eponymous Adam, a man who comes home one night to find there are other people in his house and there's no evidence he ever existed. He tells Jimmy and Byers that he's from another universe and in this one he doesn't exist.

That's right: it's a riff on Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.

Or is it? In an amusingly specific third-act twist, it turns out it's actually a riff on a different Philip K Dick story.

Anyway! I really liked this one, which is something I can't say about the first five. It's got its problems, including some ableist language: several of the characters in this one are little people and they're repeatedly referred to by the M-word, and look, there was a time that word wasn't considered a slur, but 2001 was not it. There's also a moment where Langly loses his temper with Adam and calls him a "re-" before stopping himself. I guess they at least knew that one was too far, but jeez, you guys.

And there are some problems on the plot side. I'd really like to know more about Lois and why she is doing the things she is doing! Like, is she just a sex pervert? I kinda feel like she might just be a sex pervert.

But still! Flaws aside, I really liked this one. Six down, seven to go; I guess I'll see whether the show is starting to find its footing or if this was just a flukeman.

[Thad]

Returning to X-Files: "Deadalive" is an episode where Skinner has to remind Scully that she's pregnant with Mulder's child, and somebody should have reminded Carter and Spotnitz that Mulder is Jewish and should not be having a Christian-ass funeral, and also explained to them what a vaccine is.

But also Doggett jumps in the window of a moving car to punch Krycek in the face, so it's not a total loss.

[Mothra]

Please call him "Big Dogg" Thad, this is his official name.

[Mothra]

Our slog through the bleak hellscape of season 9 continues. The only thing holding this goddamn show together is the charisma of Big Dogg.

I count two decent eps this entire season, one particularly fun one involving my boi Michael Emerson manifesting the entirety of the Brady Bunch via loneliness-powered reality-shaping telekinesis.

Some lowlights include an entire episode devoted to a slime man menacing Scully's baby, where she turns into your generic anxious desperate mom character for the duration, and the Lone Gunmen's final appearance, which was weirdly an episode of that failed spinoff, relying on a bunch of information you would only know from watching The Lone Gunmen, culminating in a super unsatisfying anti-climax. I think I get why this show didn't make it - beyond the usual Fox fuckery, it's full of flat Big Bang Theory-ass jokes that don't really respect the characters. Michael McKean was a delight, though.

The ep that resolves the mystery of Lil' Dogg's abduction and murder was very strange in how unremarkable it was, all the way through. It's like an NCIS episode or something. In fact, that's one thing I've been noticing a lot this season - episode after episode feels like low-supernatural NCIS-ass police procedural stuff, where scene after scene takes place in very similar buildings, working through the process of solving regular murders. Sunshine Days was such a breath of fresh air for taking place in a series of unusual locations, with a lot of weird shit going on, held together by a good character story. Not too much of that this season.

Looking forward to the second X-Files movie next, which I remember being like an regular ep of X-Files stretched insanely to 2 hours.

[Thad]

The ep that resolves the mystery of Lil' Dogg's abduction and murder was very strange in how unremarkable it was, all the way through. It's like an NCIS episode or something.

That's one of (I think) two episodes of season 9 I saw during the original run; I haven't seen it since but I remember thinking that was actually kind of a nice touch. It's fitting that Doggett's big closure episode doesn't involve any supernatural X-Files shit, it's just a regular, mundane police case.

Looking forward to the second X-Files movie next, which I remember being like an regular ep of X-Files stretched insanely to 2 hours.

That's how I remember it. I know most people hated it, but I didn't; I didn't think it was great, either, but I thought the idea of relaunching X-Files as a series of low-budget movies that were basically big-budget TV episodes was a good direction. In hindsight it's just as well that it didn't work out; I still haven't seen season 11 but season 10 was a pretty good argument that X-Files just doesn't work anymore because conspiracy theories are no longer cute and charming.

I've thought about how you could possibly do an X-Files-like show today and have it actually work, and...pretty much the answer is "make it Wellington Paranormal."

[Mothra]

Ah of course - I looked at the writer of Sunshine Days, and sure enough, Vince Gilligan.

I think it was Friday that pointed out how Season 10 and 11 being helmed by only Chris Carter really brought out the worst, more tired elements of X-Files. So much of the mythos storylines nobody likes are his.

[Thad]

Ah of course - I looked at the writer of Sunshine Days, and sure enough, Vince Gilligan.

I remember seeing that one advertised and meaning to watch it; it looked fun.

Still haven't seen it. Plan on getting back into X-Files and Lone Gunmen soon, I hope, but my morning routine of hitting the elliptical and watching a TV episode has kinda been disrupted lately.

I think it was Friday that pointed out how Season 10 and 11 being helmed by only Chris Carter really brought out the worst, more tired elements of X-Files. So much of the mythos storylines nobody likes are his.

Yeah, and even at his best he gives us deeply mixed bags like The Post-Modern Prometheus, which is so close to being a perfect episode but uh does Chris Carter know that (CW) having sex with an unconscious woman is rape? Because it really, really seems from that episode like he doesn't understand that. Or at least didn't in 1997.

Yeah, I do think Carter was a big part of the problem with the X-Files revival. But I really don't think there's any way to do a decent X-Files in the era of Qanon without jettisoning pretty much the entire "government conspiracy" angle*, which is like half the show. If you do a show that's all goofy monster-of-the-week episodes and no government conspiracy episodes, is it really X-Files anymore? I submit that no, it's Wellington Paranormal. And that's okay! Wellington Paranormal is fucking great.

* Obviously I am not saying we shouldn't acknowledge that there are government conspiracies and coverups; of course there are. But the kind of bizarre fictionalized government conspiracies that were X-Files' stock-in-trade land a lot less comfortably now than they did 25 years ago. Shit like "they're putting tracking devices in vaccines" was harmless science fiction in the '90s; now it's harmful science fiction.

[Mothra]

Yeah, conspiracy theories really lose their appeal when they become shock jocks denying mass murders happen instead of mostly-harmless weirdos claiming their fillings are CIA antennas. Mulder's 9/11 conspiracy in season 10 is such an abrupt realization of that, where you can't help but feel, "oh, this isn't fun".

I think the only way an X-Files-type show could work nowadays was in a world or setting pretty far-removed from reality. Fringe wasn't great, but it wisely made its main mythology arc about alternate universes and outlandish mad science. Or yeah, as a comedy like Wellington Paranormal.

[Thad]

Yeah, conspiracy theories really lose their appeal when they become shock jocks denying mass murders happen instead of mostly-harmless weirdos claiming their fillings are CIA antennas. Mulder's 9/11 conspiracy in season 10 is such an abrupt realization of that, where you can't help but feel, "oh, this isn't fun".

Yeah, and again, I get that that's a callback to a Lone Gunmen episode that previously established a government conspiracy to crash a commercial flight into the Twin Towers, and I kinda understand the temptation to tie those things together, but...that's one bit of continuity they really should have just let go.

The vaccine thing is another callback to the original series where they really should have read the room and realized that wasn't something they should revisit. (Plus it's just plain sloppily executed; there's a plot point involving the young agents they're working with having received the smallpox vaccine, and you can tell by fucking looking at them that they're too young. Never mind that this was made in 2015, well into the era where you can just type when us stop vaccinating smallpox into a search bar, you'd think by the time they had to have the makeup department put smallpox vaccine scars on the actors because they don't have them someone would have noticed this was a problem.)

[Mongrel]

Lottel tripped over some nice art yesterday.