Hamstrung by time constraints, the show was forced to get creative with how to make a season of television while also making a movie for theaters. This led to inventive and exciting new episodes while also having the most duds of any season since the first season. Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny are both either missing or barely present in multiple episodes. One of the show's two primary directors, Rob Bowman, only directed two episodes in this season because he was also directing the movie. He had directed 23 episodes in the first four seasons. (I find it interesting he was chosen for the movie. Kim Manners directed more episodes of the show and also directed the finale. Despite his obvious talent, he didn't seem all that interested in movies so maybe that was the reason?)
So the fifth season ends up becoming uneven and unfocused (especially contrasted with the extremely cohesive fourth season.) But that's not a huge problem with a show as creative as this one got. In "Unusual Suspects," The X-Files had a spotlight episode on its tertiary characters, the lone gunmen. These weren't exactly characters I would have guessed could carry an episode on their own, even knowing they eventually got their own (failed) TV show. But by focusing on the most normal one of the group, John Fitzgerald Byers, it ended up being similar to a typical noir story where the everyman is duped by a woman. Predictable maybe, but still entertaining.
"Post-Modern Prometheus" evokes an old-fashioned type of horror by being shot in black-and-white where we are dropped into a small town. The X-Files episodes that focus on small towns are at the very least always interesting and tend to seem like real places. But this is definitely considerably different than most X-Files episodes. "Bad Blood" is one of the best episodes they've ever done with a "Rashomon" like story where we get two skewed perspectives and no sense of the truth. "The Pine Bluff Variant" puts Mulder in a position where he robs a bank! "Foile a Deux" is one of the creepier monster of the weeks they've ever done. Just the idea that you can see a huge insect-looking thing coming towards you and nobody else can is one of the most terrifying things imaginable.
With the excellent come the very bad episodes as well though. "Schizogeny" is confusing, not scary, and doesn't have a compelling monster of the week. It's a slog to actually watch. "Chinga," the Stephen King-penned episode, is quite awful. Those two at least have good reasons for being bad. Stephen King works haven't really tended to work that well either on television or in movies unless someone takes his idea and goes in a different direction. The other one was a spec script that they accepted because they needed another episode. "The End" has no such excuses with a child prodigy who can read minds and a forced love triangle from a completely new character. That was the last episode of the series so even if the movie was on your minds, you'd think you'd actually put your best foot forward.
The fifth season, as I look at all the episodes I talked about, wasn't quite as uneven as I thought. It has a rough middle stretch and the mythology episode at the end is probably the worst one thus far, but most of these episodes are good. In fact, I'm not sure there've been so many off-the-wall ideas in any season thus far and nearly all of those ideas work. The fifth season is rarely in its typical format which lends an unpredictability to the season. While previous seasons have been better, when you click on the next episode, you usually know what you're getting. That is definitely not the case in this season, for better and for worse.
So I'm pretty intrigued going forward to say the least. I have seen from a number of people that Duchovny at some point stops giving a shit. I can't help but speculate that the heavy workload this season could have been a factor, if true of course. But this season, while somewhat of a letdown from previous seasons, in no way indicates a drop in the show's quality. The top episodes are as good as the show has ever been and the weaknesses can simply be explained by the tough schedule they put themselves in.
Grade - B+
As an added note, I plan to watch The X-Files movie and the sixth season before the special six episode season coming out in January. Since most people have recommended I stop after seven seasons, I'll probably end up recording the newest season, watching the seventh season and then finally watching the new episodes. So it might be fair to say I won't get to the new episodes until March.
No comments:
Post a Comment