the x-files s/d

I skipped the finale eps last year bc they sounded dumb. can I skip this one as well?

skip to your heart’s content, my son.

i feel like CSM's 'plans' now just got lifted wholesale from Utopia.

he wants to be a showrunner of a failed reality tv experiment?

I think akm is referring to the short-lived British conspiracy thriller of the same name

Wait, shit, was this on last night or something? Goddamnit, man. They've really done very little marketing for this thing. Like, I knew it was returning but I thought it was still six months to a year off until I saw a commercial sometime around Christmas.

I've had facebook ads constantly, they must... know

The truth is out there. The promotion..not so much

In the five episodes of the new season made available to critics, the winner is the fourth, “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat.” It was written and directed by Darin Morgan, who also provided the best hour of the show’s revival season in 2016, “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster,” and authored celebrated old-school episodes like “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” and “Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’” back in the 1990s.

Oh thanks, "Were-Monster" was one of my favorite episodes of anything last year, and I couldn't get through any of the other episodes, sounds like it's the same this time around.

Dagoo!!!

"I think akm is referring to the short-lived British conspiracy thriller of the same name"

yes.

not coming back after this season.

http://www.slashfilm.com/the-x-files-ending-2/

I kept waiting for the Ford commercial to end.

This episode reminded me a bit of the work of Neil Breen

https://youtu.be/u-fYWAwc8Q0

Caught up on the last two. Tonight's episode was okay, but I can state unequivocally that the season premiere is the worst X-Files episode I've ever seen. By some distance. If Carter refuses to keep his fingers out of the pie, it's probably for the best that it's ending.

No, seriously: it was really, really fucking bad.

It's funny that the second episode was about people being uploaded into virtual reality because I kept thinking during the premiere, 'oh, this is such an OTT awful episode that they're going to eventually reveal that everyone is stuck in some kind of simulated purgatory' but no.

Damn, I'm sorry to hear that it's terrible, although I feared the worst. Maybe better I just don't watch.

the second one kind of falls apart in the end, as far as the episode's plot goes (that's not how computers work and the coda explains it for us), but at least demonstrates a comprehension of what a plot and characterization look like

but it gives us actual action, with the comedic acknowledgment that Mulder is _not made for action_ because he looks like he's gonna vomit and then die

then it has actual Mulder/Scully banter, jokes about Scully that come off as eye-rolly and a little funny without being offensive by modern standards, references good parts of the original (grave of informant character!), gets Skinner in there without him being overwrought. and Mulder has a house! and it's very Mulder-like

there's a brief moment that has forced connective tissue to a seasonal overriding plot that's luckily forgettable

don't watch the first episode unless you just want to kill time or can pay partial attention

this is probably better duchovny than he or we should expect, and we don't deserve modern gillian anderson in a tv series with this much baggage

That first episode (and yes, I'm still stewing) was like one of those YouTube videos where someone's mom explains Star Wars without having seen Star Wars except instead of someone's mom it's some dumb guy who knows a little about the X-Files (like the main characters' names and that they're in the alien police or whatever) but has fairly open contempt for it and is given a whole bunch of money to film his idea of what an X-Files episode is like, and instead of being charming it's kind of an insulting slog where you're just like, dude we gave you a bunch of money, we hoped you'd at least put some effort into it. Except the twist is that the dumb and contempuously uninterested dude was the actual creator of the show the whole time.

And yes, I've seen bad X-Files episodes before and yes, I watched last season and acknowledge that the Carter episodes were previously probably the worst of the series. This was worse.

what, you don't love no-stakes poorly-filmed car chases?

I thought second episode Mulder and Scully gunfights were off-character but I think it was filmed really well!

I did like the "chaos" - "control" joke though.

It felt like one of the Adult Swim action show parodies.

Oh boy. I just watched the first episode. It had the feel of a two hour premiere edited sloppily down to one hour. I think I was too distracted by the poor filmaking to follow what Cancer Man’s plan is. He just wants to kill everyone except select people he’s injected with alien serum? There was a certain elegance to the character back when we thought he was a guy who resignedly did evil stuff for the preservation of the human race, but now he’s just a supervillain. And wtf with that retcon about knocking up Scully? So William is half human/half alien but with two human parents? And why was Mulder wearing sunglasses half the time?

I'm already working on erasing it, and the prior season finale, from my mind

If you forget the original series finale too, then CSM appearing alive doesn't even need an explanation

lmao @ "alien police"

When/if I'm feeling particularly masochistic, I may have to rewatch the premiere and 'live'blog everything that's bad and wrong about it minute-by-minute. It really is a masterclass in how to create garbage entertainment.

if you do, please let me know if Scully crashed her car two or three times. I'm thinking it was two, but much of the episode was just Scully crashing her car

the little Mulder/Skinner schoolyard fight at the end was hilarious

I think Carter has been watching Scandal and thinks he needs a heel turn or a shocking reveal every five minutes

wrt both of the new episodes, the resurgence of the Skinner distrust is so goddamn 'come the fuck on already'. Every one of you has been compromised by the CSM multiple times over at this point, you know how this shit goes, and Skinner has saved your asses or put his neck on the line approximately 815 times over the course of a quarter decade. Cut him a little slack for the love of Christ.

If I were him I'd be like, yeah, best of luck in all future endeavors you paranoid mofos, peace in the middle east.

"I'm going to an X-File on this bran muffin"

"open"

the first episode was painful, so much exposition-dumping and explaining
I fell asleep in the middle of episode 2 but Mr Veg didn't mind it.

honestly at this point I care so little about the main story. Carter's just writing bad fan fiction now.
all I'm really interested in are the monster-of-the-week episodes

Feel like I'm the only one here who's still watching this. We got a Carter-penned MOTW episode this week. Does anyone know when he contracted his degenerative neurological condition and if there's a foundation where I can send a check? Based on the evidence of these past two seasons, it must be a brutally debilitating illness. God bless Fox for throwing him some work when less charitable folks would have likely judged him unfit to construct a coherent narrative or responsibly handle the IP he created when his brain still worked good.

whew, I was thinking that the doppelganger one was by Wong or one of the Morgans and was disappointed and confused. knowing it was written (thankfully not directed) by Carter is actually a relief

holding out hope that the next two are the best of this run

my lingering question is: Where. Is. Dagoo?!?

Spoiler: at one point, the camera hones in on a character eating a brand of chocolate pudding named Dookie apparently just for the sake of justifying the inclusion of multiple utterances of 'flinging Dookie'.

That's where we're at, folks.

Karin Konoval could've been pretty great in this episode if they had discouraged her from playing her twin as a complete cartoon character.

my lingering question is: Where. Is. Dagoo?!?

same place Queequeg was in non-Darin Morgan episodes

fair enough

In the belly of a Loch Ness Monster? Poor Dagoo...

Been watching Series 3, and also Sons Of Anarchy. Not only is AD Skinner white nationalist guy Darby but now Piney has just turned up as er, Roky Crikenson (!) in Jose Chung's "From Outer Space".

This week's was an improvement but I think I would've been much more receptive to a batshit Darin Morgan episode if the rest of this season's episodes didn't feel so much like IDAGF self-parody.

"improvement"

The jokes are elderly and embarrassing.

Well, yeah, it was possibly my least favorite Morgan episode, but they've set the bar so incredibly low this season that any episode that evinced a degree of effort was gonna be an improvement.

are these any good? I honestly stopped after episode 1. I don't think I'm going to bother until I've consumed every other form of visual entertainment in the universe.

I can't really recommend it, no.

One thing I did appreciate about this episode was the commentary on how the entire premise of the show is kinda depressing and unfun now in relation to the active dissolution of consensus reality.

The jokes were definitely more predictable (maybe just being used to Morgan's style at this point but the They reveal was so obvious) and the Trump stuff was annoying. But everyone was enjoying themselves, I still laughed at a lot of the dumb jokes, and I liked the Eels/Hugh Everett shout-out, I'd say it's worth a watch if you don't mind it not being up to the standard of the classic Morgan episodes.