Oh look the last ever episode of the X-Files is on!

also does every episode have to try and cram in some reference to William. This week the mother of the terrorist's love for her dying terrorist son makes scully think about her child

last week a weird street artist creates a trash Gollum anti-gentrification monster and that "creation" was linked to Scully's creation of her child. All really hamfisted and aiming for emotional resonance but failing awfully.

this has been a bad, bad miniseries. I will still watch the final episode, and any further episodes they get commissioned, but it's definitely out of a sense of fanboyish nostalgia, not because this is good tv. the darin morgan episode was really the only one i would give a passing grade to.

Although, okay, wait. The whole episode was such a scramble that I think I missed this: his mother said she had communicated with him psycically or whatever and knew that he wasn't able to go through with it, and I guess that's borne out by the fact that he wasn't blown to bits as he surely would've been if he'd actually been wearing a vest. So he was working with a terror cell but didn't actually commit an act of terror himself...but I guess he still ultimately abetted an act of terrorism anyway so the distinction is pretty fuzzy.

it makes you wonder in what decade and country he wrote that episode

― μpright mammal (mh), Tuesday, February 16, 2016 11:22 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, Homeland is still airing.

I just listened to an episode of Kamau Bell's Denzel Wahington podcast where the 2 women from Good Muslim Bad Muslim talked about all the ways that The Siege was terrible from a muslim standpoint

The opening of this episode was a total utter facepalm, even more so in light of just finishing listening to that conversation

Yeah, I kinda want to rub the nose of every butthurt Christian with a persecution complex in this episode and say "do you see what actual institutionalized, cultural persecution looks like???" but I know they'd just champion the crazy nurse or vilify that character as slanderous.

haven't watched this yet, not really feeling the urge to now

odds on fox bringning xfiles back again next year for a short run? do people still want it?

Seems to be doing pretty well so there will likely be more

I mean, I want it to return about as much as I wanted this miniseries in the first place. Which is, as someone else said earlier, basically to the extent to which I'm still nostalgic about the initial, mostly good stretch of the original series. I can acknowledge that it was kinda shitty for about as long as it was kinda good, though, so I didn't have any illusions about the revival blowing my mind. I hoped for a couple of good episodes in the classic mode and got one solid classic new episode and some memorable moments, so my low expectations have been satisfied.

yeah this sounds like its about as good/consistent as the original run

Well, Homeland is still airing.

You saying you think Gordon ghostwrote this one due to contractual issues?

a trash Gollum anti-gentrification monster

guys, golems and Gollum are different things

watched this because of reaction. really enjoyed the alternate Mulder & Scully, seeing Lauren Ambrose onscreen in general, the Mulder tripping sequence, the extra joke of the placebo, wrapping it up with a painful extended self-important dialogue between ersatz M&S... though that was ruined by then having another actual extended etc from the real M&S. Without insane racism/bigotry/clichesplosion and hideous tonal shifts, some of Carter's ideas for this could have been an interesting and fun stand-alone.

wow, this finale was really the nadir.

lol at Smoking Man hiding out in Spartanburg, SC (I live in Greenville)

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/fef72609be4842b395fab06ed7c384b2dfbf0073/c=251-0-2307-1546&r=x483&c=640x480/local/-/media/2016/02/23/CarolinaGroup/Greenville/635918138887021470-Screen-Shot-2016-02-23-at-8.44.16-AM.png

But yeah this whole revival has been mostly atrocious aside from the Darin Morgan episode

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/02/23/its-time-for-chris-carter-to-pass-the-x-files-to-the-next-generation

Yeah :(

I give them a half point for CHEMTRAILS!!!! in the last episode, but that might be the only point

ALIEN DNA

literally everyone in America's immune system has shut down but not to fear scully is homebrewing some antidote in a d.c. hospital, there'll be plenty to go around folks

gah do I even want to watch these last two episodes?

guys, golems and Gollum are different things

I am really embarrased I spelled that like I did, because I do know the difference. WTF me.

c'mon the last ep literally had the line "This is so unnecessary, Fox!", gotta give Carter moxie points for that

can I just watch the Darin Morgan episode and skip the rest then?

(And is that episode even good?)

it's not terrible, but not really on the level of the great darin morgan episodes. i think people are overrating it some because of how absolutely dire every single other episode of this run was.

The Darin Morgan episode was great, except for the transphobic stuff about which they should have known better, and then Founder's Mutation and Home Again were passable with some great Mulder/Scully interplay. The other three episodes were complete garbage.

lol, the commonality b/w the other three episodes? written and directed by carter

"Babylon" was fucking insane.

it's not terrible, but not really on the level of the great darin morgan episodes. i think people are overrating it some because of how absolutely dire every single other episode of this run was.

I agree completely

One question re the suicide bomber ep (which yeah, that was a pile of insulting dung). What was with the 2 "homeland security" guys. Were they HS? Why did one speak to the other in Arabic and they started looking shifty, then cover their faces when their photo was being taken. Were they part of the terrorist cell? That bit was compeltely wtf confusing - hell the whole everyone fighting over him in the hospital bit was, tbh.

And I refuse to believe the placebo effect can make people trip their balls off.

It's the third-best Darin Morgan episode, and the trans stuff is unfortunately a little clunky but plainly ally-focused, not phobic. M&S accept her wholly on her stated identity, and Mulder tells Mann that it's entirely common and no big deal.

refuse to believe the placebo effect can make people trip their balls

Fox wants to believe!

I assumed she did not actually give him placebo, but was lying about it to cover her own ass

That did occur to me, yeah.

***WARNING***NERD ALERT&&&I mean one of the things I liked most about original X-Files was that it exploited the "diegetic reality"(??) of the implausible things we witness *typically in the opening sequence, so that we spend a good deal of every episode yelling "Shut up! You weren't there!" at all the people who are pooh-poohing Mulder's crazy explanation for this week's crazy phenomenon (NB this is not so much true of the mythology episodes)

... so I feel like with the drug trip itself, they were already violating this longstanding convention of having the camera give us "objective reality" and not subjective delusion (although I can think of counterexamples & I'm sure you can think of more); but to then follow up with "SIKE! that drug trip wasn't a real drug trip; Mulder is an unreliable narrator of his own mental state" just pissed me off more!!

"longstanding convention" more like BONGstanding convention amirite folks /signs off

Straigh up tho that whole scene was gratuitous and gross, but maybe I'm getting prudish in my old age who knows.

that scene was america 2016 through filtered through chris carter

the trans stuff is unfortunately a little clunky but plainly ally-focused, not phobic.

I dunno, the reactions of trans people online were pretty uniformly negative. Also following up two episodes later with some lazy Muslim-bashing doesn't really make me feel like giving them the benefit of the doubt on the trans thing.

Morgan and Carter are plainly two very different writers; this show is not group-written.

also lol at "he couldn't have freaked out on a placebo!" when last night I watched the Vince Gilligan episode where a serial child-killer can implant dreams into Mulder's head a decade later because Mulder profiled him so hard that he understood his mind

Mulder's brain has to be pretty mushy by this point after all the torture and alien abuse and profiling

Morgan and Carter are plainly two very different writers; this show is not group-written.

A lot of people work on that show, in 2016 at least one of them should have realized that a scene with a crack-smoking prostitute trans woman might need a rethink. Doesn't matter who is writing the episode. Same goes for having Muslim characters that are suicide bombers. Their terrible depiction of Texas can be chalked up to the crippling jealously non-Texans have for our state, however.

depiction of Philly totally otm though

Did they ever actually set an episode in Vancouver?

the Marco Rubio one

talk about a werelizard

Damn, that final episode was a-grade baloney.

Carter has said FOX wants more episodes so I suppose there are more years of disappointment ahead

William peeks his head out of the ship. "It's ok mom and dad, I'm here!"