Post-post, I’m still on my lunch break ruminating about how X-Files’ more of the same approach from the same people felt warm and natural, where as Star Wars’ more of the same from a completely new guy felt calculated and soulless. I guess it’s sort of like the Faith No More reunion vs whatever’s going on with the so-called Beach Boys now.
Haven’t seen the last two yet, but I’m hearing a lot of “Carter needs to dump this entire mythos biz and start something fresh.”
Saw ep 2 and overall thought out wasn’t particularly good. I did like the 1/3rd of it with the two kids.
I think 6 is a lot better than 5. I could do without mulder and scully jr. in both of them.
I think the show is being honest about this. The internet show host is supposed to be scummy and fishy, and they make it repeatedly clear that Mulder and Scully aren’t fans. The chemtrail stuff was presented as his misinterpretation of what was going on. And the script was flipped on the vaccination issue (unless you believe that about link about Scully getting played into making that cure).
The mini series has issues, but recognizing shift in the political spectrum among conspiracy theorists isn’t one of them.
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holy shit you guys weren’t kidding about the terrorist episode
lordy bagordy
I cannot bring myself to give a fraction of a dick about these two young NEW GENERATION FBI agents that just showed up
HEY GUYS WE’RE THE NEW MULDER AND SCULLY
YOU MIGHT’VE CAUGHT US LAST WEEK ON CSI AS EVERY CHARACTER
When the show launched, the publicly-accessible internet was still in its infancy. Conspiracy theories about alien abductions, black ops, and the Illuminati were reserved for a small number of isolated tin foil hat wearers who traded “information” through obscure radio shows, crude web forums, and infrequent meetings. These bizarre, mostly harmless ideas were a goldmine for a unique brand of science fiction that combined tried-and-true stories of little grey men with the thrilling paranoia that infused a niche segment of society. The resultant X-Files universe was one filled with fun creatures, as well as an unending spiral of intrigue that could never be resolved.
Since the 90s, however, a strange thing happened: Those conspiracies have moved from fringe beliefs to ideas held by a large chunk of the mainstream population. With the internet fertilizing whole communities devoted to obscure hobbies and ideologies—however odd or ugly—every manner of conceivable conspiracy theory seems to have attracted its own devoted adherents.
Basically, being batshit insane USED to be cool. Now every Tom, Dick, and Larry thinks big gov’s spraying the population with reptilian mind-control drugs.
We need like a sane counter-X-Files now, which I guess is Bob’s Burgers?
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Lol vice
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Good point. I’ve have COINTELPRO on the brain lately with that Black Panthers PBS special that was on a couple weeks ago. Nixon was a pretty obvious touchstone for The X-Files with a dude named Deep Throat and all. But yeah, there’s a long and varied history prior.
There’s probably a far better article to be written about the X-Files in the Clinton years vs the Bush years. I’m pretty sure that presidential portrait in Skinner’s office was framed different in shots in those final two years. I remember an interview with Carter around the time of the second movie in which he said the post 9/11* patriotic frenzy was harshing on the show, and and was another strong deciding factor in pulling the plug. That new terrorism episode felt like exactly what I thought he was trying to avoid.
*Wikipedia says the first episode aired September 10, 1993. So X-Files is literally pre-9/11.
Yep that’s exactly what I was thinking of. I don’t know how they got to that point in writing it and didn’t stop themselves. “Let’s retell Frankenstein in an X-Files context but make Frankenstein’s Monster a serial rapist!”
Yeah, I stopped watching halfway through season eight and never went back for the rest. I watched the later movie, and it was fine. (Best part: when Skinner shows up.) I suffered through the revival, which had… one amazingly good episode in the middle, and otherwise was a bunch of yuck.
I’d rather see a Millennium revival, frankly.
What really needed to happen is that they need to have introduced Richard Patrick’s character a season earlier as an incidental, supporting character, then given him a big role in a couple of episodes toward the end, so that when he took over as the lead it wouldn’t have been this abrupt switch-over. I really like his character, but the show just handled it poorly.