the x-files s/d

I have a spreadsheet of good 'uns but it's probably 2/3 Gilligan and Darin

(boop beep rm9sbg93zxjz: I haven't seen them but: the blu-ray remastering was outsourced to a rando company, so the widescreen reframing was done without any input from directors or Carter, and Fox would not supply the font to them for the titles; the company also delivered 4:3 versions of the remasters but Fox didn't want them; and yeah there's a mix of upscaling old effects shots and the remaster company's new effects)

xp well, what's your definition of good? Essential/v good from S1 - First 3 episodes, Ice, Eve, Beyond the Sea, E.B.E., Darkness Falls, Tooms, Erlenmeyer Flask. But there are plenty of decent or dumb-but-entertaining episodes. I'd say Space and Fire are painful enough to avoid entirely, and the several vengeful ghost episodes all tend to be boring as hell.

I've said it before, but the rewatch value of X-Files (at least through season six, from seven they moved shooting to LA) is the lush, rainy Vancouver locations, same reason the first two seasons of Twin Peaks are such a pleasure.

name a season and have everyone here give their top five from it

There’s something about watching these on the sofa with my mum while dad was out playing bridge that can never be remastered

gonna see if I can break it down to an extent without breaking spoiler tags

Season 1

S01e03 Squeeze - first Monster of the Week, imo mythology eps are deleterious to rewatch enjoyment (nb: I also thought so on first run and gave up occasionally watching bcz I hit too many of them)
S01e08 Ice - Thing riff
S01e13 Beyond The Sea - fun bcz it flips who's sceptical
S01e17 E.B.E. - mythology ep but intros the Lone Gunmen so I recommend it for n00bs
S01e21 Tooms - not only good, and a fun sequel MOTW, but intros Skinner

I'd go with...

S01E05 The Jersey Devil - a gloriously stupid MOTW episode that sets the tone for dozens of them to come - the local sheriff hates Mulder because you would, really, if an FBI agent turned up looking for lady bigfoot based on a drawing a homeless guy did for him MEANWHILE Scully goes on a date!
S01E08 Ice - as sic says, it's a solid Thing riff
S01E10 Fallen Angel - top tier UFO episode, featuring Max Fenig, predator aliens in the woods, a bogey on the radar screen, dastardly, lying military officers, indignant ER doctors, Mulder ranting about the truth... everything you'd want in a UFO episode
S01E11 Eve - genetically-enhanced girls from Brazil-style preteen murderers, plus amazing performance from Harriet Harris as the insane Eve 6 (hey isn't that a band)
S01E20 Darkness Falls - Body horror + eco-thriller, the gang gets desiccated by glowing green bugs set free from prehistory by amoral logging companies

re that second one not just that it's a Thing riff, but it's the first case of them going for a really direct Mulder-and-Scully-ising of another genre or story (and a p good Thing riff) ha xp!

There's something weirdly charming about doofy early episodes like 'Jersey Devil' where it's clear that they're still figuring out the characters and their world. Like what other episode is going to take a non-negligible amount of time to showcase Scully tolerating a birthday party full of screaming children.

well, to some extent that's a plot point... or I guess thematic variant... on the main storyline in the episode. at my office we printed out a copy of the homeless person's drawing and use it to surprise and annoy our co-workers by acting like there's some important document we need them to see and then showing them that.

lol. Yes, it's a hilariously shitty drawing iirc.

xp lmao

Darkness Falls has some plot issues but has the best creepy PNW vibes.

Also not a very good Scully episode, but the way they use the PNW setting and the creepiness of the glowy green bugs mostly makes up for it.

Was recently re-watching the totally batshit Red Museum, which throws together a cult, kidnapped/drugged teenagers, a pedophile who is also a concerned citizen, bovine growth hormone, Mulder and Scully eating ribs, alien DNA, an extremely convenient plane crash, and a government assassin who has shown up in rural Wisconsin. Apparently it was originally planned as a Picket Fences crossover.

Sorry for no spoiler tags but honestly there’s no amount of information I could provide that would make that episode less baffling.

There's something weirdly charming about doofy early episodes like 'Jersey Devil' where it's clear that they're still figuring out the characters and their world. Like what other episode is going to take a non-negligible amount of time to showcase Scully tolerating a birthday party full of screaming children.

Scully's first date outfit is seared into my mind. White lace and shoulder pads!
Very important character-building, really, as it establishes that Mulder will never let Scully date.

xp I don't really know what counts as a spoiler at this point. I don't think of basic episode descriptions as spoilers, unless they mention some major show-altering plot development, but I'm happy to spoiler-tag that kind of thing if people would rather.

well, the revive is a rewatch so the spoiler tags probably aren't strictly necessary

and yeah, Scully doesn't get to go on another date until season four when Mulder goes to Graceland!

I guess I don't tend to think of this as a heavily spoilerific show. The MOTW either gets captured/killed or doesn't, and the mythology is ultimately so labyrinthine and incoherent that I'm not sure I'd be able to say for sure if the divulgence of any particular detail was a legit spoiler or something made up to amuse the divulger. I guess generally I'd just avoid discussing the fates of characters whose stories take surprising and/or tragic turns (like when Marita Covarrubias got alien cloned and then subsequently fused into a slavering two-headed monster alongside her alien clone, oh whoooooops).

wow I guess I need to watch season 9

running through the rest in case Chuck or anyone really do want rewatch recommendations

Season 2

S02e02 "The Host" - Carter MOTW, Darin as Flukeman
S02e03 "Blood" - first Darin writing, a week after his first monster role. story credit, teleplay by Morgan & Wong (all my S1 picks are M&W btw)
S02e13 "Irresistible" - no paranormal elements! Carter script, it's always cool when he tries something out of his ordinary
S02e20 "Humbug" - Jim Rose Circus Sideshow ep, Darin's first full script. this is where I started watching, so the show always struggled to live up to itself
S02e23 "Soft Light" - the show's first freelance script purchase discovers Vince Gilligan. Tony Shalhoub as dweeb baddie

bonus track: S02e14 "Die Hand Die Verletzt" - haven't seen this one but it's Morgan & Wong doing parody on their way out the door to run their own shows, so curious

Season 3

S03e03 "D.P.O." - lightning boy, Jack Black / Giovanni Ribisi
S03e04 "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" - Peter Boyle & Darin both won Emmys for this
S03e12 "War of the Coprophages" - Darin Morgan cockroach episode
S03e17 "Pusher" - classic Vince Gilligan, lesser sequel later
S03e20 "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" - Darin's second stone-cold gold-plated classic this year. has a sequel in Millennium

bonus tracks: S03e13 "Syzygy" - Chris Carter attempt at a Darin-style irreverent genre-breaker. he doesn't pull it off but it's interesting to see him try
S03e22 "Quagmire" - not credited but heavily rewritten by Darin Morgan: has his jokes and signature characters

Season 4

S04e02 "Home" - Morgan & Wong come back after their own series flopped, with an ep so horrific that Fox never repeated it
S04e04 "Unruhe" - Vince Gilligan, spooky photographs
S04e07 "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" - Morgan solo, Kennedy assination counterfactuals, no Mulder & Scully on set
S04e10 "Paper Hearts" - VG, child killer
S04e20 "Small Potatoes" - another great nebbish monster written by VG, played by Darin who needed work after burning out on writing for the show

bonus tracks: Millennium S01e01 "Pilot" if you want a bit of context for later, not rly essential. fake Seattle.
S04e12 "Leonard Betts" - cancer vampire
S04e13 "Never Again" - Gillian Anderson requested an ep to show Scully's darker side. intended to be directed by Tarantino!

Season 5

S05e03 "Unusual Suspects" - VG: origin of Lone Gunmen, crossover Belzer as Munch, no Scully
S05e05 "The Post-Modern Prometheus" - CC: B&W Frankenstein homage
S05e12 "Bad Blood" Cliff Bole - A++ VG, comedy Rashomon with Luke Wilson
S05e19 "Folie à Deux" - VG, white collar work is a mechanism for invisible bug monsters to suck your soul
saving my fifth choice for...

also essential:
MS2e09 "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense"
MS2e21 "Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me" - two episodes of Millennium written AND directed by Darin, including his X-File sequel.

bonus tracks:
S05e06/e07 "Christmas Carol" & "Emily" - if you happen to be watching at Christmas, it's a dece Scrooge riff involving Scully's family
S05e08 "Kitsunegari" - sequel to S03's Pusher

Season 6

S06e02 "Drive" - A++ VG, starring Bryan Cranston
S06e03 "Triangle" - CC time twister and Rope homage. double-feature it with the Australian horror film of the same title.
S06e04/e05 "Dreamland" - Michael McKean is a MIB who bodyswaps Mulder
S06e010 "Tithonus" - VG: death photography, callback to Darin making Scully immortal
S06e014 "Monday" - Gilligan & Shiban, fun time loop bank robbery

bonus tracks: S06e06 "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" - Ed Asner & Lily Tomlin in a Carter comedy, fun if yr watching syncs up with the season
S06e015 "Arcadia" - Mulder & Scully undercover as married couple in a suburban subdivision
S06e018 "Milagro" - spooky writing-becomes-real story written for John Hawkes to star
S06e019 "The Unnatural" - Duchovny written-and-directed alien in the Negro Leagues baseball story
S06e020 "Three of a Kind" - sequel to Unusual Suspects with Scully, no Mulder
S06e021 "Field Trip" - Scully and Mulder get fucked up on mushrooms and their respective hallucinatory perspectives on the episode merge

Season 7

S07e03 "Hungry" - classic VG, shown from monster's perspective
S07e08 "The Amazing Maleeni" - sleight-of-hand-or-magic ep with Ricky Jay
S07e12 "X-Cops" - A++ VG, straight-up made as an episode of Cops
S07e19 "Hollywood A.D." - parody ep w/d by DD, including Garry Shandling & Tea Leoni
S07e21 "Je Souhaite" - first VG direction, final regular Mulder & Scully ep, Will Sasso is in it, great place to stop if you're on a pure nostalgia hunt

bonus tracks:S07e04 "Millennium" - patch-job finale for that series: not good, but if you want to see M&S kiss...
S07e14 "Theef" - dece MOTW that's not riffing on anything for a change
S07e17 "all things" - not good but GA w/d, if yr curious or want to compare to Duchovny's effort the next week

Season 8

S08e04 Roadrunners is a decent Scully focus in the Doggett era, and the only Gilligan ep this year bcz he was off running Lone Gunmen

Season 9

S09e05 "Lord of the Flies" - not great but: Jackass riff, Aaron Paul & Jane Lynch act, first Thomas Schnauz script (he came from Lone Gunmen and later wrote lots of Breaking Bad/BCS)
S09e07 "John Doe" - first VG / Michelle McLaren collab (she later directed loads of Breaking Bad, a bit of BCS, The Deuce pilot)
S09e013 "Improbable" - Chris Carter loopy Burt Reynolds fantasia
S09e015 "Jump the Shark" - end of Lone Gunmen, bonus Michael McKean (nb that TLG's second-last episode was a cliffhanger involving McKean's character, but that the two don't actually connect
S09e018 "Sunshine Days" - second VG direction, Brady Bunch house does some murders

S04e02 "Home"

oh man, this episode.

When we were doing the full rewatch a few years back, it was the only one my gf refused to subject herself to again.

Twice I've watched the series in lockdown now, and guys you're making me want to do this all over again.

'Die Hand Die Verletzt' is a dece twist on satanic panic, with a demon leading the charge

Wrt the eighth season, one probably needs to see 'Badlaa' if only to confirm with one's own eyes that, yes, they did indeed make an episode about a little person who crawls up people's buttholes.

Brilliant thanks. I’m off to watch Quagmire now.

For me X-Files is like one of those albums you only listen to your favourite 2 tracks on. Every time I want to rewatch, I think “fuck it I’ll just watch the Darin Morgan episodes again”. The brutal undercutting of Mulder in the Jim Rose episode still makes me laugh.

Having said that, the thing under the bed at the end of “Home” might be where the series peaked for me.

Quagmire is one of the coziest X-Files to watch, it's low stakes (well not the 4-5 people who get killed) and the Darin Morgan rewrites add a bit of humor but not too much, plus of course it has the Conversation on the Rock!

Yeah aren't they stuck on that rock in the dark for like 20 minutes? That had to have been the cheapest 20 minutes the producers ever paid for.

I love that episode, the dialogue is just so snappy, thanks to Darin Morgan. Love the conversation on the rock, you can see Scully being this close to just writing Mulder off as a complete dick, and then he quotes her favorite book at her and goddamit, she's back on board.

not quite that, but it was about 5 minutes out of a 43-minute episode... one thing I've found funny about rewatching this show in the present is how much the dialog (which seemed perfectly modern in the 90s) now sounds like something out of a 50s b-movie... like from Quagmire, you have the frog scientist during the opening scene portentously shouting "don't turn your back on nature... or nature will turn its back on you!"

After two decades of 24/Bourne/SEAL Team/et al. the MP SWAT team in the second episode looks like a group of high school kids playing paintball.

I haven't watched the show since the original run, so I was startled by how great the remastered episodes look on a 21st century television ... it's made a pleasing contrast to my trek through the sub-VHS blur of Dark Shadows c. 1969

yeah its gorgeous

i am only 2 episodes in but the s1e2 Deep Throat ep was such a great fever-dream of alien conspiracy tropes. it’s like watching reddit being born lol (but in a good way)

also: Seth Green :D

I’d add Terms of Endearment as a S6 ep worth watching.

Perhaps a more controversial choice would be The Field Where I Died from S4. Widely disliked when it came out, but some, me included, have grown to love it.

Badlaa is one of the better examples of a bad XF episode - so many things wrong with it, but it still manages to be pretty enjoyable!

A really controversial choice is S7's Sein und Zeit/Closure, where Mulder's mom dies by suicide and Mulder hugs Samantha's ghost in a field while Moby appropriates a traditional Melanesian song in the background. Many people hate it; I think it's clumsy but also quite beautiful, and anchored by really solid acting from Duchovny.

awww forgot about babyface Donal Logue

at my office we printed out a copy of the homeless person's drawing and use it to surprise and annoy our co-workers by acting like there's some important document we need them to see and then showing them that.

this keeps popping up in my mind and cracking me up

https://i.redd.it/ghb7efs8ix351.jpg

Sorry to spoil that the Jersey Devil is actually Ric Ocasek

My house rewatch just got to Season 4, which means we got to watch the scene where Mulder dumps gasoline all over his head and into his eyes and then is like, "You'll have to lead me! I can't see!"

First absolute dog of an episode, episode 9, "Space."

We watched ep3 tonight - “Squeeze”
TOOOOOOOOMS D:

First Morgan & Wong-penned episode! first flashlight scene! the dialogue feels noticeably snappier in places, some v good laugh out loud lines (“what’s the quickest way to get this off me without betraying my cool-guy exterior”)

I lovw how the mythology of Tooms is laid out with ~just~ enough breadcrumbs - bitsized info to make it creepy & wtf but no deepdive attempt at explanation to take you out of it.

Still as creepy as the first time I saw it. Maybe even more so now since it was established that Doug Hutchinson is an irl actual creep.

Squeeze! I love that the first monster-of-the-week episode is such a good one. Is that the one that also has the Mulder line, "Sometimes the need to mess with their heads outweighs the millstone of humiliation?"

I noticed at some point that Mick Jagger on the Ed Sullivan Show looks freakishly like Tooms when he's just about to eat a liver, and now I can't unsee it. Look at him around the 20-second mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ANhU4AcK04

SCULLY: You're so consumed by your personal vengeance against life, whether it be its inherent cruelties or mysteries, everything takes on a warped significance to fit your megalomaniacal cosmology.

MULDER: Scully, are you coming on to me?

milo otm re S1E9 Space

definitely a dud. even as a space nerd, i was trying to find something to like about it but it’s just so “...huh”?

Yeah if I remember it just blunders on and nothing really great happens. A shame because I like the actor who plays the astronaut hero, Ed something? (fuck google imo)

oh Ed Lauter, remember him from Family Plot

In the second half of Duane Barry/Ascension, Krycek pistol whips the tram operator and temporarily stops the tram, Mulder never asks what happened with the tram and somehow the operator doesn’t complain to anyone?