Rewind: The X-Files S2

At the end of the first season, The X-Files had disbanded the x-files.  Agents Mulder and Scully were separated and the entire format of the show was in question.  Sort of.  Look, it was pretty obvious the show was returning to normal sooner rather than later, a fact which somewhat hurts the show.  But at the same time, it seems a little much to expect the show to completely change the status quo after one season.

As opposed to the first season, which was only serialized in the sense of character growth and development, the second season is serialized much more heavily.  It probably didn't hurt that the writers needed to work around Gillian Anderson's pregnancy.  Unless they wrote the pregnancy into the show - and at this point in the show's run that seems unlikely - they needed to either hide her pregnancy or have her go away for a few episodes.

So hamstrung with limited options, the writers created a first six episodes worthy of the status that The X-Files has achieved.  In the first episode, Fox Mulder goes through a crisis of faith and a non-believing Mulder is just weird.  But it's necessary.  Deep Throat had just been killed and he was removed from his pet project.

The next two episodes see Mulder on his own, without Agent Scully.  Mulder does his best to contact Scully and it's hard not to wonder at the time of watching these episodes, how they could possibly maintain the show without getting them together.  These episodes suffer ever so slightly from the diminished presence of Anderson.  It's a necessary evil to reduce her screen time rather than explain her pregnancy (something I happen to agree with), but Anderson is just light years ahead of David Duchovny as an actor.  (Unpopular opinion: I don't think Duchovny's that great of an actor.  He tries to cry later in the season and its painful.  He may not be a bad actor, but his range is certainly limited)

The diminished presence continues for Scully, but they add a new player to the game in the fourth episode: Alex Krycek.  As played by Nicholas Lea, he seems like a by-the-book, earnest employee with strong ideals.  Instead, he's a badass killer, spying on Mulder.  I wish there could be more of an arc with Krycek and Mulder as partners, played nearly completely straight.  The show reveals much too quickly that Krycek is a bad guy.

Nonetheless, we get what we get and what we get is still very good.  Not hurting the show is good mysteries independent of what's happening with Mulder.  A sleepless man goes around murdering his Vietnam buddies for what they did in Vietnam and thanks to Tony Todd, it's freaky.  Then Duane Barry, a former FBI agent who was abducted, goes kind of crazy and holds a travel agency hostage.

At first, Barry seems to want to bring his psychiatrist back to the aliens, because if he finds a replacement, they won't want Barry anymore.  Or so the theory goes.  He changes his plans when he's captured by escaping and kidnapping Scully instead.  Barry's kind of clearly crazy, but he also seems to have been genuinely captured by aliens and the ambiguity works in the episode's favor.

All of these episodes reveal the true potential of The X-Files, which makes the next few episodes disappointing.  The jump down in quality from "Ascension" to "3" is enormous.  Scully returns quickly in "One Breath" somewhat abruptly, but I'm not complaining if "3" is any indication of what The X-Files looks like in Anderson's absence.

At this point, the show returns to the old structure with Mulder and Scully visiting monsters-of-the-week.  This isn't a bad thing necessarily, although they are unquestionably inferior to the beginning of the season.  The positive and negative thing about MOTW for The X-Files is that usually it's still entertaining television, but normally it doesn't exceed anything approaching greatness.  That is until "Die Hand die Verletz," which is awesome.  Mulder and Scully are mostly just witnesses to what's happening and don't really have much effect on what's happening, but the story is so great it doesn't matter.

In this whole season I was impressed by the show's added emphasis on Mulder and Scully's history.  Scully's sister is introduced and I instantly wanted to see more of her in this show.  Similarly, while Mulder's sister isn't exactly his actual sister, the two-parter "Colony" and "End Game" lets us see the relationship that motivated Mulder's career path.  The ending result is a bit frustrating and seems largely symptomatic of the show's path - heroes come close to uncovering a mystery only to not end up making any ground up at all - but it's not worrisome yet.

Plus, making Mulder's father in cahoots with the federal government goes a long way towards explaining why he's allowed to do everything he does.  Plus, it makes the quest more personal for Mulder.  And it's always better to make a threat more personal than unknown, generally speaking - at least if it's well done.

Like the middle of the season, after "End Game" the show mostly goes back to the MOTW format.  But for whatever reason, these episodes are just better.  "Humbug" is from the acclaimed Darin Morgan, who's got an amazing reputation purely on the basis of six television episodes.  This is the first one I've seen and it's certainly off-the-wall and creative.  Looking forward to his next The X-Files episode personally.

"F Emasculata" is related to the entire mythology in a way and it's another very strong episode.  "Soft Light" is intriguing and was Vince Gilligan's first script on the show.  I've read that Gilligan was the most consistent X-Files writer in later seasons so I'll be looking for his credit in the future.

Lastly, the show ends on a major cliffhanger with Mulder in an underground something with a bunch of dead alien bodies.  Oh yeah and he's not found and the place is burned.  Previous to this we saw Mulder see no openings so the cliffhanger is pretty effective at making you wonder what the fuck exactly happened and how will Mulder come out alive.  (I suppose this is a benefit of having a character you know you won't die.  If it was an expendable character, there would be a threat of death but it'd feel like a cheat if they made it alive.  Whereas in this instance, it's kind of understood he'll survive.)

The X-Files second season is a definite improvement over the first season.  There's more genuinely great episodes, less outright stinkers, and more serialization making it worth it to watch it in order.  The show starts and finishes the show as good as it has ever been and the mythology still makes a certain amount of sense - in that it doesn't seem overly convoluted and ridiculous.  I'm hoping that the third season can continue that momentum.

Grade: A-

Playlist
1. "Seconds" - Ghost Loft
2. "Mother & Father" - Broods
3. "Superstar" - Sonic Youth
4. "Soul Food" - Logic
5. "Changing" - Airborne Toxic

Rewind: The X-Files S1

It's sometimes easy to forget that television shows used to not have much in the way of serialization.  In the case that there was serialization, it was in the form of character development.  That is definitely the case here, although there are "mythology" episodes which don't necessarily scare away newer viewers anyway because those episodes rarely answer anything.  Thankfully, The X-Files was able to both use a formulaic structure while also making it necessary to start at the beginning.

To say I'm disappointed in The X-Files is not accurate, but it definitely didn't blow me away.  I suppose the reason is because I had relatively high expectations.  I really wasn't expecting two things that probably harmed my enjoyment 1) I knew this was basically a procedural, but I didn't know just how much it was a procedural.  Most of the episodes follow the same structure and only a few tended to deviate from that structure. 2) Somewhat related to the former, but this season has quite a few forgettable episodes at best.  That's part of the issue with procedurals - it's easier to have a long-running ongoing story than to create 25 new stories.  So it's bound to have some clunkers.

I suppose it's just really hard to believe how far TV has come in the past 20 years.  At first glance, 1993 does not seem like that long ago.  But on my list of Shows that Changed Television (coined and created by Alan Sepinwall I must add), none of them were created before 1997.  The only show that preceded this show that I absolutely need to see - if only because it's so annoying how much I read about its influence on shows I have seen - is Twin Peaks.  My point is that context is everything.  The X-Files came before it became common for good shows to have serialization.

With all that said, it's extremely unfair to call this a procedural show.  It's clearly beneficial to watch from the beginning and watch it in order.  The only difference from serialized shows is that you can probably make contact with an expert of The X-Files and ask them which episodes to skip without losing anything.  Based off this first season, I'd say there's about 10 solidly skippable episodes.  That's not to say they were bad - I really only had trouble finishing one of the episodes, and the rest, while kind of forgettable, are really enjoyable. 

The best thing about this show is clearly the relationship between Dana Scully and Fox Mulder (great names by the way).  Their burgeoning connection throughout the season as Scully grows more appreciative and less skeptical of Mulder IS the reason to watch it in order.  And so far at least, Scully consistently questioning Mulder when she's usually wrong has somehow not made her seem like an idiot.  It's a pretty tough line and the show has managed to both make her still stick to her values and make a good partner.

What's really great though about that aspect is that the relationship clearly follows a distinct, natural pattern to where by the end of the season, you see how they got to that point.  It all perfectly culminates into the last episode where Scully apologizes to Mulder for being wrong (which I don't believe she had done yet) and sneaks illegally into a government building in order to save Mulder.  If I were forming the episodes that needed to be watched, I'd pay close attention to any episodes where the dynamics of their relationship changed, and not just the obvious like the final episode and Tooms.

On that same note, Mulder's obsession with the extraterrestrial and government cover-ups has a nice arc.  People call him "Spooky" Mulder - which honestly is kind of a terrible nickname since nothing about David Duchovny is spooky.  The natural developments occur - eventually Mulder ends up embarrassing himself in "Tooms" when he tries to sell Eugene Tooms as a 100-year-old man in front of a jury.  And while I'm sure it's not the last time he tries to sell an unbelievable story to someone who won't understand, it kind of ends in "Roland" when he tries to tell the special needs caregiver that Roland was psychically overtaken, and Scully cuts him off before he can get it out.  She's looking out for him to make sure he doesn't make a fool of himself - even if Mulder seemingly has no capacity for being embarrassed or fooled. 

Duchovny is good as Mulder - I remember having a bit of an issue with him for the first few episodes, but by the end, I'd forgotten all about those issues.  And Gillian Anderson is incredible as Scully - it's a little hard to believe that the network objected to Anderson on accounts of her attractiveness (especially now).  And Jerry Hardin is solid as recurring character Deep Throat.  Anyways, I don't think I've ever written about a show with so few principal actors.  So notable guest stars that stuck out to me would have to be the always creepy Doug Hutchison as Tooms, Xander Berkley in "Ice," Harriet Sansom Harris as Eve 6 and the always fantastic Zeljko Ivanek in "Roland" singlehandedly making that episode better than it had any right to be.

Speaking of the acting, one of the things that has not aged well is that sometimes the acting is painful.  Not by any of the above, but a small, one-off character is sometimes played by someone who cannot act.  That is one of the issues with having so many episodes rely on consistently having completely new characters.  (That's one of the impressive things about the original Law & Order to me: very rarely is there bad acting.  Perhaps because they unashamedly re-use actors)  An actor needs to make an impression for you to remember them because they will soon be gone.  In the case of Ivanek, impression made.  In the case of most others, it's probably better if they didn't make an impression.  It's not a big deal, but it's a little frustrating to have the quality of an episode dictated by whoever the new actor is.

And while I'm probably overstating the badness, I look at an episode like "Ice" and I think it's more of a matter of just being unconvincing than bad.  In "Ice," I don't think that episode works near as well if the actors aren't Xander Berkley, Felicity Huffman, Steve Hytner, and Jeff Kober.  While "Fire" isn't a bad episode, it probably works a lot better if Mulder's former love interest is more convincing as an actress. (That and if Mulder's fear of fire didn't seem so random)

I'm not going to create a list of the essential and inessential X-Files, but I will mention some memorable episodes for one reason or the other.  The pilot of course is a great introduction to the series instantly setting the tone for what to expect.  My favorite episode of the season was probably "Ice", where Scully and Mulder are stuck in Alaska with a creature that spreads paranoia and violence.  Somewhat similar to that episode, "Darkness Falls" is another episode where they are stranded trying to find a way to escape that worked nearly as well.  "Beyond the Sea" is great both for Brad Dourif and for making Scully the one who believes the impossible while Mulder is the skeptic.  "Tooms" is actually a sequel to "Squeeze," but is much better than the first and "Roland" is worth watching if only for Ivanek's peformance.  Lastly, the finale works better not knowing that the second season will probably return everything back to the status quo.  It's daring, it's shocking, and it's a perfect capper to a season-worth of development between Scully and Mulder.

Episodes I would recommend wholeheartedly skipping would have to be "Ghost in the Machine," which is a computer hysteria episode that worked better when computers could do anything; "Space," improbably the most expensive episode of the season that is wholly uninteresting with bad graphics; and "Young at Heart."  The rest aren't bad, although it's surprising just how many episodes are carbon copies of previous episodes with a few details changed.

Then there are the mythology episodes, which work effectively enough.  They've mostly made more questions than answers.  That's fine with me as the questions are usually more interesting than the answers.  And from what I've read, the show ends up digging itself a hole ala Lost.  I don't have a problem with that as the journey is what matters.

I find myself in the strange position of both understanding The X-Files love and kind of understanding how the show sort of went under the radar when discussing best shows of all time.  I think this is one of those cases where having originally watched it when it first aired - I was less than one-year-old - would have made me realize its impact more.  As it stands, it's an impressive character study with some very good episodes and some serious potential for me to look towards the next few seasons.

Season Grade - B+