the x-files s/d

for some reason the classic title sequence with “Reggie Something” added seemed hilarious

What if Black Mirror but as a silent(ish) comedy? You know what? It was great and the season highlight by several orders of magnitude.

I kind of wanted a little more dialogue, but overall, not bad for a conceptual episode

Looking forward to meeting you all.
Love, blobfish aka William #bts #TheXFiles pic.twitter.com/fq7k6yW8bN

— Gillian Anderson (@GillianA) February 28, 2018

Funny, 40 minutes in, it's that knock knock "banana" joke that keeps going and going. Show looks great, though.

I'm glad I stuck around for one more episode.

isn't this over yet

Finally finished this last night. What a pile of garbage this revive has been. Cool to watch Mulder casually mass murder his way through the final episode. I think he shot more people to death in 60 minutes than he did in every other episode combined. And it was probably the least worst Carter episode of the past two seasons.

So yeah, if you've been on the fence, continue to avoid. Except for the episode aldo mentioned in the last revive. That was pretty good.

disagree, don't care about the season opener or closer since those have been useless since about season 5, but this season was very satisfying... it felt like the x-files.

this mini-season was worse than the last one

it was bad enough that my stance is now that the X-Files, a pretty good if sometimes ridiculous show, ended after its seventh season in the year 2000

Yeah seasons 8-10 are pretty dire, but even 10 had Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster, and Home Again was pretty fun.

The Carter-written episodes have generally been awful (the hangman episode was fun, though still not exactly good), the others have ranged from decent to occasionally brilliant. The main problem is, passable genre exercises just don't really stand out after all this time.

Carter was never the show's best or most consistent writer, but it's depressing how bad he's got. He'll always be a major reason for the show's success, and the diversity of stories it could tell. The funny thing is, I can actually kinda see what he was trying to do with the new mythology - I find the idea of humans exploiting and experimenting with alien biology and tech scarier than some barely comprehensible invasion plot, as the Anasazi/Paper Clip and Nisei/731 arcs demonstrated. It's just that the guy who once wrote Deep Throat and (Millennium episode) Lamentation seems to have forgotten how to write an episode of television altogether.

why did people have to keep yelling about chemtrails

Yeah, that was really the grossest part of the whole endeavor. I was never quite sure if the relatively value-free references to the increasingly pernicious conspiracy-mindedness of our culture were just ill-advised (I mean, Joel McHale as Glenn Beck/Alex Jones analogue was basically a hero) or if they were actually a reflection of where Carter's mind has gone in his dotage.

he might have brain worms

I kind of assume most old dudes have some sort of brain worms, though. That would make for a decent x-file

Did you see his Amazon pilot from a couple years ago, alledgedly set in the Xfilesverse? Something to do with the apocalypse and the devil in LA. Was major, major yikes.

I haven’t caught up with the reboot at all - just the Darin Morgan episodes and the one Aldo mentions then?

I sort-of-watched all of last season, and this year just the Darin episode, the Lone Gunmen one by Glen, and the Black Mirror-y one. Your impression is basically right, but save The Lost Art Of Forehead Sweat, this year's Darin ep, for last.

(Or for a real flavour of how awkward S10 was without getting REALLY terrible:
S10e04
S10e03
S10e05
S11e02
S11e07
S11e04
-in that order.)

I'll be the militant. S10 & S11 (especially S11) amplified the worst elements of the original series enough that I suspect the entire show was b.s. It's only brilliant on accident when someone managed to write away from Carter. This itself sounds like an X-Files plot.

I'm annoyed that S10 and S11 wasted so much time on embarrassing plots that just kept Mulder and Scully reacting to things. So much what's current in medtech, social psychology, etc. etc. could be the feeder of some potentially great plots.

amplified the worst elements of the original series enough that I suspect the entire show was b.s. It's only brilliant on accident when someone managed to write away from Carter.

Nah: the alien conspiracy episodes were always terrible, and I stopped occasionally watching the show during the original run because you never knew if you'd get a good episode or some mytharc nonsense that you were supposed to have watched 19 non-consecutive previous episodes to follow, except that even if you had, it wouldn't make sense.

Over the last few years, I've done a watch-through of the first six seasons, just watching Darin Morgan and Vince Gilligan episodes, and a few other standalones. But! Carter could actually do good, or fun, or scary, or creative episodes back in the '90s.

The Host (S01e02) set the tone for the monster-of-the-weeks, taking a sci-fi/monster premise and wrapping a procedural, jokes, and development of Mulder & Scully's relationship in it. Syzygy, in S3, is Carter being inspired by Darin Morgan's ability to do outright comedy in the X-Files format, trying it himself, failing but accidentally inventing Buffy. Memento Mori, in S4, is a gang-written script that shows folks didn't NEED to write away from Carter - he could work just as well on a serious standalone as drawing a single co-writer onto his mytharc finales.

And two he directed as well as writing are super-indicators that he saw the oddball, creative, unusual episodes as a primary feature of the series: The Post-Modern Prometheus (S5), the black & white small-town Frankenstein & Cher episodes; and Triangle (S6), the one on a 1939 submarine with all the "unbroken" tracking shots.

(Another S6 all-Carter joint, How The Ghosts Stole Christmas, works fine as a Chrimbo farce.)

we'd all have a better time if we just went squatchin'

Carter was always hit or miss as a writer. But aside from that, as series creator he allowed different writers do their own thing with the show, experiment with tone and story, make their own mark. He gave them the space to make absurd comedies one week and mini horror films the next. He came up with the idea but didn't guard it obsessively (unlike some TV creators). XF probably wasn't the first show with an open-minded approach like that, but not every showrunner would allow something like Jose Chung's "From Outer Space" to happen.

hmm not sure I can trust a guy with your name making x-files judgments

oh please, the show has a hit rate way, way above "brilliant on accident". there are over 200 episodes, of course some of them are going to be crap.

Worth a read: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/x-files-became-a-list-852398

completely forgot that Detective Munch of Baltimore PD appears in the X-Files

the Wolfverse and X-FIles overlap heck yeah

and Homicide/The Wire

well, yes

He was also on Law & Order: SWV iirc.

premiered T W E N T Y - F I V E Y E A R S A G O today

i have wasted my life

Ha, yes, I keep remarking on 20th and 25th and 30th anniversaries of things that mark the various stretches of time when I've done little of note or substance.

Like for instance how I still haven't finished watching all of the X-Files. What am I even doing with my time.

someone was telling me recently that the real scoop around why x files moved to la from vancouver wasn't to do with david duchovny "hating the rain" or wanting to be closer to his family, instead he'd managed to get himself barred from all the strip clubs in the area, including one ran by the Hell's Angels, and pissed off lots of sex workers.

allegedly

The Lone Gunmen standalone series is a 'little bit' silly and totally ridiculous and I love it. It's also all available on YT HA!

Also notable for being cancelled after a cliffhanger ending which was resolved in a later X-Files episode.

and for the WT bomb plot in the pilot episode, whoa.

Mulder travels back in time from 1998 to 1940 : "Hey don't worry the world is at peace, there's a little trouble back at our White House but that'll blow over - so to speak"

Krycek: "you must be losing it mulder, I beat you with one hand"
Mulder: "isn't that how you like to beat yourself?"
Krycek: *points gun*
Mulder: "if those are my last words I can do better"

I rewatched the first six seasons or whatever for like the fiftieth time a couple years ago, maybe this is the time to push through the last three seasons + TLG + Millennium (many episodes of which I've never seen at all let alone more than once).

Somehow Satan Got Behind Me is the awesome Millennium episode with Charles Nelson Reilly, don't miss that one

oh wait I'm confused, obviously that's Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense, SSGBM is also written by Darin Morgan though

Trying to recall if there was anything from the second of the reboot seasons that would make it worth owning (as it's the only thing from that franchise not currently in my possession). Even the Darin Morgan ep was somewhat of a stinker iirc.

Via Negativa from the 8th season is creepy and great. I liked the weird little smart-technology morality play in the most recent season.

yeah that one wasn't bad, but it was definitely more bleak than funny... but the AI one (memorably titled "Rm9sbG93ZXJz") is pretty great, absolutely spooky in how empty it makes the city, IIRC there's nobody in it except Mulder and Scully at all.

I rewatched the first six seasons or whatever for like the fiftieth time a couple years ago, maybe this is the time to push through the last three seasons + TLG + Millennium (many episodes of which I've never seen at all let alone more than once).

I recently finished a first-time-ever watch of the intersting-looking episodes and:

loads of good Vince Gilligan eps in Season 7, the Duchovny-written-and-directed episode is fun, the Anderson-w-and-d one is not but was worth seeing what she was drawn to make in the context of the show.
Lone Gunmen is nearly bad but almost always silly and fun enough not to matter; a few eps are good.
One Vince Gilligan ep in S8. It's... fine.
S9 has a Gilligan spotlight-on-Doggett ep that's notable bcz it's the first thing directed by Michelle Maclaren and has lots of desert-y sunshine, so is a curio years before Breaking Bad. But that's about it. Similarly, the Jackass-referencing episode (by Tommy Schnauz) is fun to see a younger Aaron Paul. Gilligan's ep where the Brady Bunch house is haunted and murdering people is a little better. Carter's episode "Improbable" is fun, like most of his weird stand-alone experiments.
Dunno about Millennium, I only watched the pilot and the two Darin Morgan written-and-directed episodes.

But overall I reckon you can tap out happily at S07e21, the final stand-alone Mulder & Scully ep (it's a Gilligan).

Trying to recall if there was anything from the second of the reboot seasons that would make it worth owning (as it's the only thing from that franchise not currently in my possession). Even the Darin Morgan ep was somewhat of a stinker iirc.

Darin Morgan one was great, Rm9sbG93ZXJz was great, but you'll probably live a fine life without having them on a disc in your house.

Also notable for being cancelled after a cliffhanger ending which was resolved in a later X-Files episode.

Not even! Had a cliffhanger episode (including Michael McKean's X-Files character capturing the Gunmen & telling them their colleague is a bad 'un) end on To Be Continued, then aired an unrelated stand-alone a month later, then put the Lone Gunmen back into the X-Files and pop up across the season making jokes about their show being cancelled, then have McKean's character turn up at the end of the series and tell the feds, unrelated to The Lone Gunmen, that someone the Gunmen used to know is a bad 'un.

I'm dragging through the final series.

Is there a reason why Gillian Anderson constantly whispers or appears to have a gravily throat in most of these episodes?

I don't even know why I just asked such a dumb question. ignore.

watching that Rm9sbG93ZXJz episode now, best of the series for sure.

I have been wondering that about her voice as well. Seems like in the final series they started setting important scenes in churches or courtrooms so that the whispering would seem natural.

I thought Season 11 started out stronger than Season 10 - I genuinely liked Ghouli and Forehead Sweat - but really fell off in the second half except for that silent episode.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/1927385/the-fall-viewers-moan-they-cant-cope-with-the-shows-constant-whispering/

We started a rewatch this week :D

We’re watching on Hulu and damn the show looks good! Mr Veg said he read that they recreated it with the 35mm footage (sorry too lazy to google, sicbot will provide perhaps?)
So it’s still a parade of 90’s floppy hair and brown lipstick & ill fitting suits ... but in gorgeous film-level quality

Scully is not quite yet the Scully I love, she yells a lot more than I remember which is annoying

but it just starts so GOOD right out of the gate, l am glad it holds up.