After a 30-episode TiVo marathon this weekend, I finally finished viewing every
"X-Files" episode (the very last one I had not seen before:
"Sleepless"). Here's some thoughts!
My Favorite Ten Episodes 1.
“Red Museum.” Unlike most of the “mythology” episodes, it doesn’t telegraph its intentions from the beginning. Filled with enough red herrings for a three-parter, this single episode defines the show’s universal paranoia better than any other. Besides, the goofy cultists end up saving the day for once. 2.
“Folie a Deux.” A terrifying monster-of-the-week show with a very solidly constructed metaphor. What if your job was so awful it turned all of your coworkers into monsters? The big action sequence, with Mulder in a hostage negotiation, comes at the beginning; after that it’s all psychological. Uses the agents’ relationship dynamic extremely well. 3.
“The Goldberg Variation.” Willie Garson is terrific as the hapless Luckiest Man in the World who as an unforeseen side effect of his fortune brings misery to everyone else with whom he comes in contact. How this all ties in with some lighthearted mob stereotypes and a sick kid (played by a young Shia LeBeouf) is very much more than the sum of it parts. Set in Chicago, natch. 4.
“Beyond the Sea.” Episodes that reverse Scully and Mulder’s established roles work more often than not, and in this one the death of Scully’s father makes her susceptible to the claims of a charismatic Death Row prisoner (Brad Dourif, in the single greatest guest performance of the series) who says he can speak to the dead. There’s barely any special effects (and you wish they’d left out the one sequence in which there are) but Duchovny, Anderson, and Dourif are terrific. Also marks the beginning of a very subtle long-running joke involving Mulder’s ratty Knicks t-shirt. 5.
“The Unnatural.” David Duchnovny – who, let’s face it, is not the greatest actor in the world – really responded to the whole “X-Files” concept, not merely as a performer but also as a creative force in his own right. He contributed to the stories for some of the series’ best episodes. This parable, which he wrote and directed, is as loving a tribute to the game of baseball as the small screen has ever produced, and its handling of racial issues is really remarkably understated. The flashback plot involving an alien who disguised himself as a Negro Leaguer in the ‘40s is interesting, but the final scene with Mulder teaching Scully how to hit a baseball is the key to the episode’s greatness. 6.
“Dreamland I & II.” Lots of sci-fi shows have done body-switch episodes, but how many have had Michael McKean and Duchovny doing the “Patty Duke Show” living mirror routine? Not many! Hysterical, but also spooky, as the phase-shifting device that causes Area 51 suit Morris and Mulder to switch bodies also tends to stuff two solid objects into the same space together with grotesque consequences. The scene in “II” where “Mulder” ineptly tries to seduce Scully and she gamely whips out her handcuffs is pure comedy gold. Duchovny also plays his scenes with Morris’s wife and kids very delicately; he’s freaked out but also kind of melancholy about what might have been. (See also
“Arcadia,” another episode from the watershed sixth season, where an undercover investigation has Mulder and Scully playing house in a planned community.) 7.
“Jose Chung’s From Outer Space.” “The X-Files” answer to
Rashomon. “Chung” lightly pokes fun at the show’s writers, actors, and fans while underlining how difficult Mulder’s mission really is. How is the truth about extraterrestrials supposed to compete with raging teen hormones, government cover-ups, and really excellent sweet potato pie? It’s got
layers, man, and extra bonus points for the perfectly cast True Believer who’s certain he’s been abducted multiple times but is unconvinced that Scully is actually a woman. 8.
“Duane Barry”/“Ascension.” This early two-parter is the height of “The X-Files” as an action show. In the first part, Mulder does his best to bungle a hostage situation involving damaged former FBI man Barry, who as an effect of umpteen UFO encounters can only refer to himself in the third person. Then the sequel ups the ante with Barry’s escape and kidnapping of Scully, Mulder’s suicidally insane cable car misadventures, and the treachery of long-running stock heavy Alex Krycek. At the end, Scully is abducted (thanks to Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy) in the single most debated event in the show’s run. I’ll save you some time: it wasn’t aliens. Unless it was. 9.
“S.R. 819.” Flashback structure works as a time bomb in this showcase for the show’s unsung hero, Mitch Pileggi as Assistant Director Walter Skinner. Mulder skulks around in a truly epic number of dimly lit parking garages while Scully squints into microscopes in an attempt to save Skinner from tiny self-replicating nanobots in his bloodstream. The indefinite ending and hazy conspiracy plotting serve the extremely clever parallel between the scary unknowns in Skinner and the scary unknowns out in the world at large. The episode asks a great imponderable to break out at parties, too – if you had a remote control you could use to kill your boss, what would you do with it? 10.
“Redrum.” By the eighth and ninth seasons the ongoing story had well and truly run its course (it didn’t help that the magnificently evil Cigarette Smoking Man had by this time been separated from his organization and the source of all his terrifying power, leaving him not much to do except cough, glower, and repeatedly fake his own death). However Robert Patrick brought a very different energy to the show as the hard-boiled Agent John Doggett and the writers could crank out reasonably good stand-alone episodes practically in their sleep by this point. This eighth-season standout follows a man travelling backwards in time to right a wrong of his own doing, using Doggett and Scully as supporting characters. It wouldn’t work if guest star Joe Morton didn’t so adroitly win our interest immediately as the falsely accused Martin Wells. Like a lot of great “X-Files,” there’s a kernel of morality in this story that gives you something to think about after it’s all over.
Whedonverse Guest Stars (by no means a complete list) 1. Seth Green- Oz on “Buffy,” a random teen burnout in “Deep Throat” 2. Jewel Staite- Kaylee on “Firefly,” a teen kidnap victim in “Oubliette” 3. Gary Grubbs- Fred’s dad on “Angel,” a sinister sheriff in “Our Town” 4. Andy Umberger- D’Hoffryn on “Buffy,” one-off characters on both “Angel” and “Firefly,” a random FBI suit in “Requiem” 5. Tom Virtue and Abraham Benrubi- Virtue was a doctor on “Firefly” and Benrubi was Olaf the Troll in a couple of “Buffy” episodes; they were both townsfolk in “Arcadia” 6. Jeff Kober- played vampire Zachary Kralik and warlock pusher Rack on “Buffy,” was a pilot named Bear in “Ice” 7. Harris Yulin- was Council chieftain Quentin Travers in a couple of “Buffy” shows and played a cardinal in “Hollywood A.D.” 8. Steve Rankin- played Tara’s creepy dad in “Family” and a U.S. Marshal in “Orison” 9. Adam Baldwin- Jayne on “Firefly,” Hamilton on “Angel,” and Knowle Rohrer in a bunch of Season Nine episodes, including the series finale 10. Conor O’Farrell- Colonel McNamara in a couple of episodes at the end of “Buffy” Season Four, yet another sinister sheriff in “Roadrunnners” 11. Jennifer Hetrick- one of Buffy’s teachers in “Homecoming,” Skinner’s wife in “Avatar” (and Vash on “Star Trek,” of course) 12. Brian Thompson- Luke and the Judge in Seasons One and Two respectively of “Buffy,” the Alien Bounty Hunter in numerous “X-Files” episodes 13. Vincent Schiavelli- Uncle Enyos in the “Buffy” two-parter “Surprise”/“Innocence” and a retired carnival freak in “Humbug” 14. Willie Garson- a security guard in “Killed By Death” and two (very) different characters in “The X-Files” “The Walk” and “The Goldberg Variation” 15. John Hawkes- a ghost in “I Only Have Eyes For You” and a seductive novelist in “Milagro” Also I feel I should mention that both Kurtwood Smith and Lisa Robin Kelly did “X-Files” episodes, and Mitch Pileggi did a “That ‘70s Show.”
Ten Most Overambitious Episodes 1.
“The Truth.” Well, obviously. The first half of the series finale is essentially an hour-long recap, the second half (save the very end) pretty disappointing. The device of bringing back all of Mulder’s fallen comrades, including Deep Throat, X, Krycek, and the Lone Gunmen, is clever but the episode ends up being too much about Mulder and too little about Mulder and Scully. They tried to give Patrick and Annabeth Gish something to do and maybe they shouldn’t have. I like how Kersh switches sides but the CSM-as-Indian-mystic-chillin’-in-a-pueblo climax is too much. 2.
“The Sixth Extinction I & II.” We’d been down this road before as far as Mulder having a near-death experience; the whole deal with the Bible being written on the hull of a eons-old downed spacecraft is goofy and bizarre (and how exactly that would cause Mulder to be alternately super-psychic and dying is unclear); and Scully’s trip to the Ivory Coast is notable mostly for her cute safari outfits. Part II, where the CSM shows up and takes Mulder on a bent Christmas Carol day trip to fantasyland, runs completely off the rails somewhere in between the hundredth fake reappearance of Samantha and the badly mangled CGI version of alien apocalypse. Chris Carter is totally grasping at straws here (including resurrecting old characters for no particular reason: hey look, Kritschgau!) and no number of reviewings can get any of it to make more sense. 3.
“The Blessing Way.” While we’re on the topic of Mulder’s near-death experiences, the Season Three premiere is a jumbled mess of bad effects and lame Native American mumbo-jumbo. “The X-Files” by and large did a good job of handling the mythologies of various world cultures, and even managed to be educational every now and then. Practically every episode with American Indians, though, is embarrassing; the way they have it, every guy clutching a bottle on a reservation in the American West is secretly a powerful shaman who can raise the dead, has dead aliens buried behind his trailer, and also singlehandedly won World War II with his codetalking ability. 4.
“all things.” While David Duchovny ended up a surprisingly effective writer and director (at least for this show), Gillian Anderson’s big project is a slow, heavy-handed self-searcher that takes an awful long time not to get anywhere in particular. From what we’ve learned of Dana Scully up to this point, we would imagine that in the unlikely event that she did choose to go on a spiritual journey, she would do so in a more serious and thorough manner than depicted here. The suggestion of an affair between a younger, med student Scully and an older professor is interesting, but out of character enough that we wish there was more here to explain it. Instead we get several speeches from one of the show’s many annoying representative talking heads and lots of screen time for Mulder’s fish. Well, yes, they have sex. Maybe. We don’t actually see it. There’s some dialogue in Season Nine that supports that they did but there’s also a throwaway line in the last season of “Buffy” that suggests the reason Willow and Tara’s cat mysteriously disappeared is that Dawn accidentally shot it with a crossbow. 5.
“One Breath.” What is it about this show and near-death experiences? Scully’s coma after the “Ascension” abduction is represented by very, very many oversaturated shots of Gillian Anderson lying benevolently in a rowboat. Meanwhile a clearly distraught Mulder copes by lurking around in further parking garages. How different would this show have been if Mulder took the bus to work? 6.
“The Post-Modern Prometheus.” The black-and-white is beautiful, and John O’Hurley is perfectly cast as the mad scientist, but Carter invites less positive comparisons to Ed Wood films by finishing this one off with a Cher concert and a Jerry Springer cameo. For some reason the extras in this episode look far creepier than the monster when he’s eventually revealed, and the plot is more confusing than it really needs to be. Unlike “Buffy,” the high concept “X-Files” episodes are usually let-downs –- my favorites tend to be fairly rank-and-file monster-of-the-week shows done with extra verve, like “Folie a Deux” or
“Small Potatoes” or
“Lord of the Flies.” 7.
“X-COPS.” Case in point. The attention to detail in the recreation of the look and feel of the “Cops” TV show is spot-on, but in all the effort to shoot entirely hand-held and create a variety of bizarre urban characters, story went sadly overlooked. I suppose there’s something to be said for the argument that if any time we actually saw the monster in this episode, that would mean that the “Cops” camera guys in the “X-Files” universe saw it, and that would have far-reaching and undesirable consequences as to Mulder’s mission, credibility, and reputation. However this is a lot of setup for very little payoff, and like
The Blair Witch Project the constantly bobbing camera makes me nauseous. 8.
“Essence”/“Existence.” Only weakened in retrospect. The show spent all of Season Eight building up the birth of Scully’s magical alien messiah baby with some good episodes and some bad ones, then climaxed with this two-parter with plenty of needless Biblical overtones (the abandoned stable I can deal with, but what about the adoration of the space mutants?) which also established Scully’s (partial) replacement, Annabeth Gish’s Agent Reyes. Season Nine more or less abandoned every thread this finale left hanging – the baby had one or two big moments and was summarily given up for adoption, while Reyes’ latent psychic powers were largely forgotten. It could have been the launching point for a new alien storyline to replace the one running on fumes since mid-sixth season, but instead we got a bunch of malarkey about super-soldiers and a guest shot from Xena. 9.
“Sunshine Days.” Perhaps subject to unfair scrutiny due to its positioning as the last regular weekly episode of the show before the finale ran, but a pretty crummy way of tying up the Reyes/Doggett relationship, and anyway what’s the point? The powers of a man who fights loneliness by projecting the Brady Bunch into his home are not well-explained, and Scully’s speeches about how This Time, We Have Real Proof sound like second-season “Voyager” This Time, We’re Really Going to Get Home misleads. There’s also a distractingly bad performance by David Faustino (Bud from “Married With Children,”) and I can’t quite put my finger on what they were trying to say with his casting. Ow, my brain. 10.
“Fight Club.” Bruisingly bizarre, it’s amazing that this outlier wasn’t directed by Chris Carter (only written by him). Featuring the noxious Kathy Griffin in a double role, “Fight Club” is so completely over the top that it’s kind of charming – the music score practically assaults the ears, the obligatory Important Last-Minute Clue comes in the form of an inmate who communicates only by shouting at the top of his lungs, and the most sympathetic guest character is a semipro wrestler by the name of Zupanic the Titanic. But so much here makes no sense at all – the appearance at the beginning of Mulder and Scully doppelgangers, unnoticed and uncommented-on for the rest of the episode; a hallucinatory scene where the agents play debriefing charades; violent jump-cuts that assault the senses. Maybe it’s the cause of being trimmed down for syndication, but I feel I missed something both times I watched this one. Anyone got seven hundred bucks I can have for the DVDs?
USA! USA! USA!
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