“Look, we can only afford one American, so… let’s just make Australians the villains of the universe.”
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I can only think of one of them, the animated one, but my memory is really hazy for this show.
Crackers don’t matter
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I actually decided to watch DS9 because I wanted to get to the Roswell gag episode. But when I finally got to it…it wasn’t that great. Like, it was a bit of fun, but not an awesome, mold breaking gag episode. I love fish out of water humor, and there was almost none!
I mainly like X-Files for the gag episodes.
Actually, it’s a great show overall, but the gag episodes are SO GOOD that for me they define the show. I know X-Files fans already know this irony, but yeah: the most grimdark show is at its best when it’s being silly. Though often it’s because the gag episodes are also really nicely written.
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I haven’t seen DS9 yet but I love Star Trek gag episodes. The Trouble with Tribbles is the best TOS ep. TNG had some good ones too, like Deja Q and Data’s Day.
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There was a tipping point with X-Files. Early on when the goofy episodes—Humbug in season 2, War of the Corprophages, Clive Bruckman, and Jose Chung in season 3, Small Potatoes in 4–were occasional treats. Around season 6 they go full tilt into wacky episode and the dude from Spinal Tap becomes a regular or they’re investigating the haunted Brady Bunch house or having a cutesy Christmas ghost episode or doing an episode of Cops or whatever, it really starts to feel hollow.
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This is the meanest anyone has ever been to a dying woman.
She died to save his life, and he’s like, “Well, I kind of have a will they won’t they thing going on, so…”
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See, the thing is that Darin Morgan wrote the original gag episodes, because he just didn’t know how to write it any other way. The original script for Humbug featured Mulder see one of the freaks, screaming, “Yeep!” running in the opposite direction, realizing he’s not moving, and then looking down to realize he’s on a treadmill.
Then when Morgan decided he didn’t really feel like writing for the most popular show in the world anymore, the rest of the writers were falling over themselves to couple him (like Vince Gilligan). Sometimes it worked, other times it didn’t.
No on ever talks about it, but there’s an episode that’s supposed to be a plausible deniability origin story of the cigarette smoking man. The gag is that it’s his memoirs, but he spiced it up by making up half of it. Thing is: the director and actor didn’t get the jokes (one of my favorite things in TV). So you have an ep with actual Forest Gump references delivered totally straight, which just makes the jokes feel even more desperate.
Anyway, I haven’t researched the series in a very long time, but part of the problem with rewatching it is that the gag episodes and mythos episodes are like marshmallows mixed in with the rest of the Lucky Charms, and it makes the perfectly good, well written, well directed episodes feel like filler.
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I did like when they set csm up as a frustrated pulp writer.
I really forgot how big an X-Files fan I was.
Around season 4, the mythos episodes sort of because just something you work through to get back on the monster of the week grind.
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Millennium season 2 feels like they finally got the mixture for the x-files right, which is naturally why season 3 is some of the worst television of the late 90s
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Mythos episodes are the absolute worst part of X files. Darin morgan gag episodes are like the marshmallows and the mythos episodes are the little rat turds that chris carter produces after chewing through the corner of the box
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X-files and Farscape were a Friday night pair for a bit right?
Stargate was Farscape’s lead in and I think that was concurrent to when X-Files was airing on Fox til it moved to Sundays.
Having all sorts of memories of my mom working super late and me having to recap X-Files for her during Farscape’s ad breaks
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I mean, a lot of the mythos stuff is pretty cool, and they come up with some fun twists and turns to keep it going. Iirc, there’s some kind of alien civil war mixed in there. Even on a rewatch it’s fun, because it’s so convoluted you’ll usually forget half of it after five or ten years. The problem is that they ended up stretching badly, and after a while it becomes clear it’s just a soap opera with pointless arcs. But–again–when the soap opera bits only occur, like, three times a season you can hide that for a while. It’s easy to criticize in retrospect, but for the pre-DVD era, it was a really cool way to handle continuity that not many shows were doing.
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The PK tech girl deserved better. I liked that actress.
I didn’t care for the actress, but the character deserved better in the sense that nothing surrounding her ever made sense. There wasn’t enough sexual tension between Erin and Crichton previously for Erin to be jealous. Then when PK Tech comes back, there’s no reason for her to be absolutely head over heels in love with Crichton. Like…they survived one high pressure situation together and had one kiss. Worth a second date, sure, but exile from your race and becoming a wanted fugitive…probably not. And then when he’s clearly not able to confirm that he’s totally into her, she…becomes suicidal? I guess? And when she’s finally on her death bed, it would cost him nothing to say “I love you” back and kiss her, but he’s like, “Sorry toots. My heart might belong to another today. I haven’t decided.”
It’s fucking wild. Like, I know this is standard weekly TV schlock bad writing, but–y’know–I make no exceptions.
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