maxwellyoung

The Weekly X Files Rewatch Thread

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I tried watching it and got bored somewhere in the middle of season three or four. Have no desire to ever go back. ): Most of the monsters of the week were dumb, and the mythology stuff wasn't really all that interesting. C'est la vie.

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Sorry, I ended up rushing my reply and not answering your question, TLB: yes, the show does continue to throw a hotchpotch of belief systems and supernatural stuff in as MOTWs (and I'd argue S1 did that a fair amount - ghosts, werewolves etc). It is a bit jarring to see everything sharing equal validity. Also, you are right about the "Mulder is always right" thing, but they do start to play with that a bit as the show goes on.

 

Incidentally, that episode with the guy stealing hair ("Irresistible") is often read as not being supernatural - the glimpses of that stuff can be taken as purely metaphorical; also, Chris Carter has said that it alludes to accounts like those of Jeffrey Dahmer's hostages who thought they saw him shape-shifting in front of them.

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Due to the tonal changes from episode to episode (especially later on as the direction got more bold), the lack of callbacks to other MotW stuff, and Scully's increasingly ridiculous incredulousness, I tend to watch X-Files as an anthology show more than anything. For me, most episodes exist in a world identical to ours except for The One Weird Thing The Episode Is About and also Aliens. The other episodes didn't happen, or at least, happened in a vague fuzzy way an unspecified length of time ago.

 

Just another way the show improves if you just skip all the mythology episodes, it removes the cumbersome sense of continuity.

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" Scully's increasingly ridiculous incredulousness "

 

This is what drove me off the most, I think. She's literally in the same room as some fuckin' intense supernatural shit and then the next episode she's back to "i dunno tho!!!!!!!!" and I can't.

 

I think treating it as an anthology show does work best, hah.

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Scully, two episodes back you literally saw an alien in a jar, c'mon.

 

Yeah I get the complaints, I we started being selective of which episodes we watched after season 4 lots of lows.

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The X Files Season 12 Episode 13: "Wrong Thread"

 

Mulder and Scully investigate why this isn't being discussed in the X Files thread. (And discover it is because of mermaids.)

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1 hour ago, YoThatLimp said:

Scully, two episodes back you literally saw an alien in a jar, c'mon.

 

Yeah I get the complaints, I we started being selective of which episodes we watched after season 4 lots of lows.

 

I honestly think my breaking point was in the first season when she was in the same room as a werewolf and she refused to believe it was a werewolf because she had her eyes closed or whatever.

 

I kept watching a while after that, like I said, into season four, but it was so dumbbbbbb. The fact it KEPT HAPPENING made it worse.

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Oh gross, they cropped X-Files to 16:9 on Netflix. Why do people keep doing this? Why are people so dumb that they think if there's any black anywhere on their screen they're MISSING OUT. Why is this the worst of all possible worlds. Luckily I have the DVDs, but I was hoping to just throw the show on so it could auto-play while I cooked dinner. 

 

Thank God for physical media or all our art would be subject to the whims of the corporations chasing dumb people's money. 

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Ugh, I know, it's awful. I keep meaning to pick up The Wire on DVD for the same reason. From a quick Google, it seems like a similar situation - they were filmed on such a format that the extra information for 16:9 is there, but the move still involves some cropping/re-framing and of course ignoring the intent of the original compositions.

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Apparently the Wire is much more egregious, as that show had the option to go to 16:9 early on but opted not to, as they wanted to keep the general ratio of surveillance footage for the show. They never intended any of it to be seen widescreen ever, and you get a lot of boom mic shadows and stuff of that nature in the HD 16:9 cropping.

 

According to this blu-ray review, the X-Files was always shot with safeties in mind, meaning they composed for 4:3, but also secondarily for 16:9 (meaning no shadows or equipment in the widescreen frame) because they wanted to go to a more cinematic widescreen as soon as they could, which ended up being season 5.

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So after getting a little negative on X Files I saw the episode Humbug (the one with all the sideshow freaks living in a town) and I really liked it.  I don't know if it was because it was less serious (or specifically less self-serious) than previous episodes, or if I just like Michael J Anderson in anything.

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Best part of the start of Season 2 is the way all the monster of the week episodes are connected to the ongoing story of the X-Files being re-opened and the introduction of Deep Throat's replacement. The worst thing is that the actor who plays Deep Throat's replacement is lame.

 

Also, I found this really good article about how Darin Morgan totally changed the show over the course of 4 episodes he wrote.

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It's pretty crazy how far Scully can get just telling people "I'm a medical doctor" and what they'll let her do. Like in the episode with the gorilla she's at the zoo and tells them she's a doctor so they let her start performing an autopsy/dissecting their animals. Now in this episode I just started watching (F. Emasculata) there's a CDC quarantine and she tells the guy there who says he has strict orders that she's a doctor and he lets her in. Now she's inside the area, they've told her everything even though I guess they're keeping the quarantine a secret and while everyone else is in a hazmat suit she's just walking around in her normal jacket and such.

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On 19/12/2016 at 2:08 AM, Patrick R said:

The worst thing is that the actor who plays Deep Throat's replacement is lame

 

Whaaat? Steven Williams is awesome!

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8 hours ago, TheLastBaron said:

It's pretty crazy how far Scully can get just telling people "I'm a medical doctor" and what they'll let her do. Like in the episode with the gorilla she's at the zoo and tells them she's a doctor so they let her start performing an autopsy/dissecting their animals. Now in this episode I just started watching (F. Emasculata) there's a CDC quarantine and she tells the guy there who says he has strict orders that she's a doctor and he lets her in. Now she's inside the area, they've told her everything even though I guess they're keeping the quarantine a secret and while everyone else is in a hazmat suit she's just walking around in her normal jacket and such.

 

Apparently "I'm a medical doctor" is a big meme among the X-Files Tumblr fandom. I bet if I look some's made a megamix of it on YouTube...

 



YEP!

4 hours ago, Ben X said:

 

Whaaat? Steven Williams is awesome!

 

His badassdom seems so forced. I really miss the beleaguered humor of Deep Throat in those scenes. 

 

Also, he's the worst character in the history of the Friday the 13th franchise (no small feat!), and as a fan of those movies I may be bringing along some Creighton Duke hatred along with my viewing of this show.

 

 

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Ha ha, but he's brilliant in Supernatural and Blues Brothers so it all evens out.

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I forgot that there was an episode in Season 2 that was just Mulder and Scully looking for an Ed Gein type and Scully gets super upset at seeing desecrated bodies. Chris Carter's teleplays are so didactic, usually have super pretentious voiceover doing a dry deep dive into some aspect of the paranormal (or in this case, abnormal psychology). 

 

It always feels like he's trying to prove how smart he is, and in these early seasons he doesn't seem to understand how important humor is to the show's tone. I bet he's the one who made half the episode titles phrases in other languages, so they sound smart and also you can never remember what each episode is about because all you have to go on is a latin phrase that means "Hand of God" or something.

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1 hour ago, Patrick R said:

It always feels like he's trying to prove how smart he is, and in these early seasons he doesn't seem to understand how important humor is to the show's tone. I bet he's the one who made half the episode titles phrases in other languages, so they sound smart and also you can never remember what each episode is about because all you have to go on is a latin phrase that means "Hand of God" or something.

 

I know I'm asking the impossible, but I wish there were some kind of regulatory structure in place that controlled the use of Latin by non-specialists in works of popular media. Even just a basic test that required an explanation for why "Manus Dei" is more meaningful than "Hand of God" would satisfy me...

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You mean Darin Morgan? I love "Humbug", "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" and "War of the Coprophages". I'm not a big fan of "José Chung's From Outer Space" or "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster". I quite liked the Jose Chung episode he wrote for Millennium  (and I would have liked his other ep for that series, "Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me", if it were a comic subversion of the demon characters rather than their major introduction).

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I switch up the Morgans all the time.

 

I like the Season 4 ep. Never Again. Scully's "Why don't I have a desk?" moment was a long time coming, and I like that her response to being frustrated with her job is to say "Fuck it." and just get laid and get a tattoo. In general Season 4 is a good Scully season that does some necessary work on her character after three seasons of "Actually Scully, you're dumb because it's a mummy." and "Scully was kidnapped, we have to save her!"

 

Though sometimes the cancer stuff can feel like the latter. 

 

I also like the recurring motif that, in the super secret Organization, The Cigarette Smoking Man is this weird fuck-up who they have no faith in and are constantly questioning.

 

"Are you sure you have this under control?"

"Of course I do."

"Because this is really important."
"I know!"
"Ok, just saying. You know. If you don't have this under control..."
"I do!"

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Season 6 is definitely where the show started it's downhill trajectory, but Triangle is such a stupidly awesome episode. It's kinda meaningless, it doesn't really tell us anything about the characters we didn't already know, it doesn't advance the plot, but it is such a logistical nightmare and it's amazing Chris Carter had so much clout he could convince Fox to spend so much money on such an insane idea.

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