Still unpacking District 9. I was a little jarred by the fact that they start it out as a faux documentary (which I loved immediately) and then cut to scenes that were more a bit more “traditional action film”; but I can’t say that I can see how they would have accomplished what they needed to with this film had they gone exclusively with the former format. So… all is forgiven?

Regardless, it’s bloody and violent but that’s just a veneer for what is otherwise a story about tolerance and redemption. It’s well-structured (despite the conflicting formats) and I’m hoping that it stands the test of time to enter the canon of Great Sci-Fi Films.

If you think about it for a minute, you’ll notice that it’s the depth-of-field that betrays you.

This came to me relatively early in the film when I went to see Avatar.  It’s a relatively inconsequential scene:  Jake Sully is floating in zero-gee, coming out of the interstellar suspended animation…  The camera is sharply focused on him and the depth-of-field is pretty shallow…  Sully is groggy and floats dead center in the frame…  And down in the lower left of the frame is a box or a cylinder or something with a label on it.  But you can’t make out the writing because it’s in the foreground, too close and out of focus.  But you want to know what it says, so you move your eyes to the object and try to focus…

And that’s it, right there.  Your brain has got competing signals.  You perceive everything in the frame in 3D.  So your brain assumes you can just track the objects with your eyes, move your own focus.  Your brain believes it ought to be able to make out those words.  But the letters never snap into focus.

But now you’ve pulled yourself out of the scene now.  Your eyes aren’t relaxed anymore, they’re not in the center of the frame “where they belong”, and you’re certainly not caught up in the transformative magic of the 3D effects anymore.

So the questions then become…:

1. How many 3D films are we going to need to see before we train our brains to “turn off” those attempts to change focus? That is to say, is this just an artifact of the fact that we have already “trained” ourselves not to try this change-of-focus with traditional 2D cinematography and we just need to train ourselves to do the same thing with 3D?
2. How are directors and cinematographers going to change their framing techniques? Seriously, is the focus always going to be in the center of the frame “from now on” when it comes to 3D films?  Because I can tell you it was awkward and maybe a little bit vertigo-inducing to look at the edge of the frame in those 3D shots.
3. How is this going to work in the living room? Glasses that you can lose?  Or that your cat will chew to bits?  Help me out here…  But I guess having a 3D TV in the den will help us get the training hours under our belts to address #1?

Certainly the elements seem to be there:  a man with a subsumed identity and a concealed past, struggling against forces larger than him—perhaps even controlling him—in a bleak dystopian future setting.  The looming megacorporation that wipes out his memories?  His access back to those memories from his dreams?  It all seems very Dickian.

But Robocop may more appropriately by the anti-Dickian Dickian film.

Just for starters:  if Robocop had been a Philip K. Dick story, a lot more than his mouth would look human.  PKD’s Robocop would have taken place in Delta City (Old Detroit having already been razed) and instead of beautiful unique snowflake Robocop in armored metallic, we would instead have constant surveillance by some oh-so-human-looking-and-feeling robots.  Our hero would not have a memory loss and a sense of this is far back as we go—no PKD’s Robocop would have a whole host of false memories that gradually become suspect as they become corrupt, contradictory to “real world” evidence, or otherwise protean in nature.  And that’s assuming that PKD’s Robocop would even have been a cop to begin with.  Though perhaps “to end with” may be more appropriate?

A Dickian narrative’s (anti-)hero would become more unscrewed as the tale progresses; his memories would become more muddied and more conflicted, his motivations would become more suspect, his alliances would become more ambiguous.  When a Dickian protagonist faces his eldritch nemesis, he finds that he is looking within and not without.

There’s just too much neat-and-tidy closure for Robocop to be Dickian.  Even at the film’s climax, Murphy/Robocop does not question his programmed Directives; he goes right on honoring those rigid rules—regardless of their consequences, regardless of their origins, regardless of their moral imperatives—right up to the end.

1. Upon further reflection, Milch is attempting some important inversions on the creation myth paradigm.  We’ve already discussed how his women do not give birth; instead, their quests would have less to do with “pure creation” and more to do with resisting destruction, fending off entropy.  In particular here, focus on Alma’s trials and tribulations.
2. Thought question:  what is the significance of “Jewel” in light of saloon’s name (i.e., “the Gem”)?
3. Though “Wild Bill” Hickcock dies in the first season, his presence stays with us through — even making a reprise in the final minutes of the series finale.  He’s there to humanize mortality — on account of we have quite a bit of seemingly mechanistic killing and dying.
4. Thought questions:  what’s the importance of the symmetry of the blood-stain scrubbing?

I’m convinced of this.

Listen:  Milch saw a gap.  Every culture worldwide, living or dead, has a ripe and complex history, rich with detailed mythology and folklore.  And though many of these cultures’ mythologies are suppressed under some latter-day predominant macro-culture, the fact of the matter is that each of these mythologies feature some kind of creation myth.  What Milch saw, was that America — melting pot or not — has emerged as a pretty interesting cultural entity, one that is likely to have a long-lasting legacy.  But where was its creation myth?  Was it to succumb to the fate of borrowing the creation myths of its patchwork constituents?  Was it to delegate its mythology to the cultures native but otherwise systematically destroyed?  Or was it to move softly into its own future without regard for this dare-we-say necessity?

So Milch let his Jungian subconscious run wild on whiskey and opium, digging deep and coming up with Deadwood.

It seems an unlikely candidate for a creation myth:  set against the backdrop of the last gold rush in the continental United States, we find a story arc filled with frequent fatal violence and destruction, where the men are many and the women are few — and when we do have women, they’re mostly whores, save for the alcoholic tom-boy and the widows — so we’re not exactly basking in proxies for Gaia here.

Where then am I coming up with this absurd theory?

Looking at any creation myth, what are you really looking at?  Each is a story rendering somethingness out of nothingness, order out of chaos.

And in light of that sentiment, what then is Deadwood except a creation myth that rejects the notion of Genesis and a set beginning?  An illegal camp at the end of time come together to prospect for gold — what cup runneth over with chaos more than that one?  But even as we enter this scene, we are leaving it.  We enter the camp of Deadwood through the eyes of Seth Bullock, who looks to bring one type of order with him (in the form of a hardware store) and in so doing has the task thrust upon him of bringing another type of order (i.e., “you’re the sheriff now”).  The narrative path put down for us from the very beginning is exactly this:  ordo ab chao.

What then makes it a “purely American” creation myth?  If we consider that America (in the sense of “that composite of peoples and geographic territories that became (and/or became again) a part of the United States of same”) is a distinct and unique culture in the world, we can trace it back to some distinct beginning that comes “in the middle” of the lives of every other pre-existing culture worldwide.  A nascent “America” is already quite aware of who it is and what it’s capable of; America is already aware of its beginnings and the growth it will need (or at least want) to do; America starts with a past dismissed as someone else’s and a future borrowed from its coming constituents.

Listening closely to Milch’s Deadwood, we hear the echoes of that.  Characters speak seldom of the camp’s past; the past is something that happened “somewhere else” — Chicago, Montana, away on the Missi’sip’.  And when characters speak of the future, though they yearn for positive outcomes, their fates are so often bound-up in capricious forces from without:  political interests from beyond the hills, large-scale mining operations, clandestine investigators of every color and stripe; but also every color and stripe of new venture and family.

And in that regard we have a bit of cheeky play on Milch’s part with respect to family and America’s long pattern of growth through amalgamation and a further stab at rejecting the notion of Genesis in his “purely American” creation myth.  Milch’s Deadwood grows but does not give birth.  If we consider that a common trope in creation myths is one of “The Great Mother”, Milch’s does away with this all together.  His milieu, while not devoid of feminine characters, is peppered with minor, background women — whores, mostly — and a few moderate-to-major players in the narrative arc.  And of those moderate-to-major players, we have two whores, a rough-riding alcoholic tom-boy (that scouted for General Custer and rode with Wild Bill Hickock), and two widows.  Milch practically shoves aside pregnancy (there are a few off-hand mentions and “the one that matters” ends before it shows) and does away with any treatments of childbirth all together.  What’s left of motherhood is Milch bending it to his vision of his purely American creation myth:  the first mother we encounter is slain by road agents; the child of the slain mother is cared for first by a doctor (male) and then by the alcoholic tom-boy (barely female?) before coming finally to rest as the ward of the then-still-addicted-to-laudanum widow (and though woman, she is barely more mature, emotionally speaking, than the child under her care) who requires additional assistance (first from a whore and then from the tutor/double-agent) for quite a while; Seth Bullock’s son is actually his nephew and is only adopted as such through a marriage of obligation (and that son/nephew perishes not long after arriving in the camp); other children are seen to leave camp; the one pregnancy we’re given to consider as serious does not last.

All of this points to Milch telling us that there is growth, but that it comes with costs and more often we will discover it stems from some amalgamation of existing bodies and not via “new births”, as it were.  The story is a complex apparatus that works well as a creation myth in the American historical and cultural contexts.  The abrupt (arguably disappointingly so) ending even fits the picture of a creation myth; what else is a creation myth but a way of setting the stage and constructing the context for the myths that come afterward?

Great film.  Stunning.  Epic.  Masterfully shot.  Surreal.  Insert more superlatives here.

However, when your primary film-selection criterion for the evening is “which one is shortest?” — well, this one may leave your jaw unpleasantly unhinged.  Bewildering.

Will watch again.  When I’m more serious about it.

Seriously.  You need no additional evidence that Kubrick was a bat-shit insane genius than this film.

Anyone that says that describes it as “slow moving” is expecting entirely too many explosions for something set in the 18th century.  Or they’re not paying attention.  Every scene is dense with dialogue, imagery, narration, and plot-advancing actions.  It’s complex (no fooling there) but not so complex that it becomes difficult to follow.

That said, you do need to be paying attention.  And you do need to exhibit some patience to let all of the pieces come together.

Plus, the film is a technical masterpiece — even before you stop to consider the great pains to which Kubrick went to achieve all of those candle-lit shots without the aid of electric light.

“What’s wrong?” “Oh, nothing.
I just need something stronger.”
Subdue the perverts.

It’s a little tough to believe that I’d gone this long without seeing George Lucas’ THX 1138. And in many ways, it’s almost harder to believe that it was made by the same guy behind Attack of the Clones.

As I’ve said of some books:  far more erudite and learned individuals have put together thoughtful, insightful essays that either include or are about this film.  I have no intention of doing a “close read” here.

The thing that was most startling to me was that I didn’t realize exactly how iconic this film had become. Watching it for the first time, during the first 15 minutes, I recognized three bits of audio that had been used in songs I’ve been listening to for years.  It may not be iconic in the mainstream-geek sort of way that Star Wars is, but it’s definitely become part of our cultural consciousness.  It just might be the definitive science fiction film about the alienation that follows assimilation by a Big Brother-style authority.  If you haven’t checked it out already, you should definitely do so.

UPDATE: Also, it occurs to me that the film reminded me very much of This Time of Darkness, a young adult novel I read in the fifth grade (?).  Sadly, it appears to be out of print — but the two stories share a great many details and plot elements.  I’ve yet to come up with a publication date yet, so I remain curious as to which served as inspiration for the other…

Fight the Future feels like a long episode with a little more weight in the climactic moments.  On many levels, this works.  Scenes and dialogue are constructed in a way that you could “get” the film without having seen the preceding 117 hours of X-Files footage, though certain things will make more sense and will have more of an impact if you led up to them gradually and in the right order.  This helps to keep the narrative focused.  At the same time though, it almost seems as though the writers succumbed to the temptation to re-write or re-invent aspects of the narrative.  These minor discontinuities include such things as:  (1) the Black Oil goes from being an organism of its own to being a virus; (2) the FBI that broke up Mulder and Scully when they broke up the X-Files puts them to work on anti-terrorism together; and (3) Mulder’s new-found skepticism seems to have left him all together again.

The film’s story works as part of the overall arc though it has a few bits that are over the top and others that don’t feel quite right.  The ending is pretty typical for The X-Files though:  Mulder and Scully have literally traveled to the ends of the Earth as part of their Search, only to have circumstances dictate the last-minute Total Escape of any evidence or proof that they might have sought.

We’ll let that sink in before resuming with Season Six.

Season Five seems to rely on some role reversals:  Scully as the (reluctant) believe, Mulder as the doubter, conspiracies that are present but mundane and solvable.  In a lot of ways, it’s the spiritual successor to Season Two because it shows our protagonists at important crossroads.  Considering Season Five’s position in the Series timeline, perhaps there are sound reasons to construct this arc in the narrative.

1. Redux.  As the episode’s title suggests, it picks up where Season Four left off.  In many ways, it is a reiteration of events from the Season Four finale:  some gaps are filled in, some alternate perspectives on the events are explored — but overall it is a strong start to the season.  We are right in the thick of it and the conspiracy angle is strong, especially with respect to how they have wrapped the “extraterrestrial” bits into a larger and perhaps scarier proposition — that the government uses such preposterousness as a smokescreen for more mundane but more wicked experimentation.
2. Redux II.  Part two of two, and a game-changing episode.  Mulder is so close to the conspiracy he has chased that he must be able to taste it; the “false positive” that closes the previous episode turns out to be a copy of the chip in Scully’s neck and the cure to her cancer.  Cancer Man approaches Mulder, trying to cut a deal with him, offering Scully’s cancer cure, offering him a meeting with his sister Samantha but in the end, of course, Mulder refuses.  He and Skinner chaise their own leads, leading them to the name of a biotech company named “Roush” only to have it all snatched away when the story arc has the Syndicate (apparently) assassinate the Cancer Man.
3. Unusual Suspects.  Possibly the best episode of the Series thus far.  It’s all flashback, showing how Mulder came to meet The Lone Gunmen.  Nothing truly paranormal going on, just with characters and government conspiracies about bioweapons.
4. Detour.  The sense of humor seems to be back in this episode but the Ents-esque monster(s)?  A little weak.
5. The Modern-Day Prometheus.  Again:  the sense of humor seems to be back but not in its fullest form.  There is a carnival or circus freak atmosphere to this episode that plays on all of the right symbols but that also lapses into a Frankensteinian story that is a big short-sighted and predictable.
6. Christmas Carol.  Except for the briefest of cameo appearances, there is no Mulder.  This episode focuses entirely on Scully and works over a weird confluence of classic X-Files tropes:  government conspiracies, Scully’s (alien?) abduction, voices from beyond-the-grave…  It all centers around a child that all genetic markers indicate is Scully’s offspring.  We are to believe that this episode resumes the core Mythology arc but something feels off about it.
7. Emily.  Part two of two.  Though “Christmas Carol” felt a bit flimsy, there seems to be enough in here to make up for it.  Not that Scully cannot stand on her own as a character but she works better as a foil to Mulder, so it’s a relief to see him drawn into this plot thread.  The “alien conspiracy” aspect of the Syndicate/Mythology episodes is more present here and for a little while it even seems like we’re going to resume that story full-bore, like it will remind us why we’ve been watching for the past four seasons.  But by the end, the resolution is a bit vague, the symbolism a bit heavy-handed, and we start to wonder why they didn’t circle back on the “Roush” name that cropped up five episodes ago.
8. Kitsunegari.  The return of the “Pusher” character from Season Three.  There are enough feints and twists to make it interesting though (that bit with his sister, for example?).  A good episode with some strong writing.
9. Schizogeny.  There is a possession/multiple-personality thing going on here that doesn’t seem to offer much to the story.  Besides, didn’t we already do an Ents-esque monster-of-the-week this season?
10. Chinga.  The fact that this one is set in Maine ought to be the dead giveaway that Stephen King was co-author on this episode.  That said, it definitely feels like a recycled version of Child’s Play.  It isn’t terribly original feeling; it isn’t bad, it’s just average.  Also:  is David Duchovny on sabbatical this season?
11. Kill Switch.  My first reaction to this episode was:  Hey, I liked this better when it was called “The Matrix”.  But this episode pre-dates the theatrical release of that film by about a year.  It’s no surprise however, that it’s co-written by William Gibson and Tom Maddox.  Reflecting more deeply on the episode, I find that it has picked up more of Maddox’s influence than Gibson’s.
12. Bad Blood.  This episode battles “Unusual Suspects” for best episode of the Season (Series?); it is well-written and returns the humor and some of the whimsy of Season Three.  What makes this episode remarkable is how the first and second acts are where Dochovny and Anderson act their characters OUT-of-character depending on whose version of the story (i.e., Mulder’s vs. Scully’s) is being told.  It is a fun take on vampire folklore made perfect by casting Luke Wilson as a small-town Texas sheriff who just happens to be the head vampire.
13. Patient X.  It took 11 episodes to get back to “the point” of the Series.  This brings back the Black Oil and it brings back Marita Covarrubius and Krycek.  It is interesting to see the reversals playing out between Mulder and Scully (i.e., believing vs. doubting) and for the first time in Season Five, it’s starting to feel like home again.
14. The Red and the Black.  Resist or Serve.  Part 2 of 2:  we round out the story arc from “Patient X”.  Mulder’s newfound skepticism continues while Scully agrees to go under hypnosis to validate beliefs she might not have admitted to having in the previous season.  The character reversals aside, it seems like there are many continuity errors here:  wasn’t Cancer Man dead? (wasn’t his body found?) and didn’t Krycek only have one arm?  The title of the episode seems to be a tip of the hat Stendhal’s novel and throws a little color around Jeffrey Spender’s character, though this seems only to make his entrance seem that much more perpendicular to the Series.
15. Travelers.  It’s like retro X-Files!  Flashback to 1990 to find Mulder (smoking?) interviewing an old FBI agent and then we flashback to 1952 and McCarthyism and xenotransplantation, etc.  We discover (with no surprise) that Mulder’s dad has been playing this conspiracy game for a long time and has had his conscience plagued almost as long.
16. Mind’s Eye.  The episode feels a bit off-the-subject but is very well-written, well-shot, and well-acted.  Though it won’t take “best of the season” away from “Bad Blood” or “Unusual Suspects”, this episode strings the viewer along through a minefield of gray-areas and moral ambiguities as it assesses the nature of good and evil.
17. All Souls.  Watching this episode brings it home that the X-Files’ attempts at tying religion to the supernatural/paranormal just don’t work.  It’s as if the religious superstitions are thin stand-ins for the monsters and aliens we have come to expect.  They don’t fit into the Series’ milieu very well; every time we get an episode “like this” I get the same feeling and wind up wondering how the show might have been different if religion played more of a role.  But aside from adding a little depth to Scully’s character, it doesn’t do much.
18. The Pine Bluff Variant.  A cool but non-paranormal episode revolving around (again) government conspiracies and secret bio-weapons programs and “the New Spartans” (an anti-government militia).  Overall, it is a good, complete-feeling episode that works within the milieu in ways that (e.g.) “All Souls” did not.  I get the feeling that this here is the writers’ attempts to set up the Series for some kind of “next step” — it’s a kind of preliminary exercise in “where to from here?”
19. Folie a Deux.  Interesting and not without its charms but we are really beating Mulder’s new-found doubt to death this season.  As events transpire throughout the Season Five, Mulder’s new cynicism makes sense and the lapse that occurs here makes sense.  Still, it seems (as this season comes up several episodes shorter than its predecessors) that the writers had a hard time working through this plot arc.
20. The End.  I am uncertain as to how I feel with respect to this ending here…  There are enough hooks to leave it open for additional Seasons but they also do a good job of tearing apart the X-Files (what with the fire and all that).  It’s as if the writers were trying to one-up each other in a series of annihilating feints until they only option left was to bring back Cancer Man with a bit of deus ex machina.  To go so far as to link Cancer Man to this new Agent Spender character is… I don’t know, it seems like it might be too much and where is the closure on this particular story arc?  I realize that we need to lead in to Season Six by way of the film, right…?

truly a hard-on
for these U.S. armed forces
and for broken glass

⇒becomes⇒

try to suck boner
for nose-gas. half of us ran.
arms heralded red.

Wired captured it best in June of ’07 with this quote from the original screenwriter, John Rogers:

“While a large chunk of people want to see giant-robot fights, there’s an equally large, dedicated group who want to see their childhood idols treated like serious characters, with real emotional arcs [...] For every fan wanting to feel like he’s 12 again, there’s another who’s outraged that you think this is just a movie for 12-year-olds. It’s not that people don’t trust Michael Bay. It’s that the list of people who would be trusted is almost vanishingly small.”

I watched this film because, as a kid, I was a Transformers fan; I was curious what this updated version would bring to the table.  I went into it feeling like the former group in the above quote — not really looking for much more than a cheap thrill — but left it feeling like the latter.

And not because the film was all explosions and broken glass.  I think I would have been OK with that.  It was the nihilism.  It was as if no investment was made in any aspect of the film.  Certainly in the $150 million spent they could have found some room for actors willing to display a little affect, for writers that could create a half-way decent character arc…  It’s almost as if they blew the whole budget on sets and special effects.  And then when the CG animation didn’t look nearly as good as they hoped, Bay stepped in and said: “More smoke.  More dust.  More explosions.  Speed the damn thing up.  Don’t let anyone get a good look at anything.”

Also, bonus round haiku (non-anagrammatic):

Can a film about
giant transforming robots
have latent sub-text?

I’m not talking about the “no sacrifice, no victory” theme that they mention in the Wired article.  No.  I get a vague notion that what’s afoot is more ontological in nature.  The battle between the robots seems to be about free-will; nearly all of Optimus Prime’s dialogue is drenched with these plaintive statements about how our young human species should be allowed to choose its destiny.  It’s a little cloying and patronizing.  Megatron at least seems to have grasped the principles of evolution, that goalless sallying forth of life (fleshy, robotic, or otherwise) that knows no rules and has no plan; he at least seems to understand that these are simply constructs that we bring into the mix.  And as I recall, it is not as though the Decepticons were specifically out to destroy humans; we just happened to be in the way.  This effort on the Autobots’ part to defend our free-will then seems to start to lose credibility.  The Decepticons aren’t explicitly trying to strip us of any of our rights; they just don’t give a shit.  Meanwhile, the Autobots claim to be defending our freedoms, tug at our heart-strings a little bit, and suddenly they’ve manipulated a boy and a whole bunch of hardened U.S. Army soldiers to pitch in on their behalf.  Our choice?  Our free-will?  Perhaps.  But perhaps under duress; those sons of bitches took advantage of us.

Oh, but they did a hell of a job with the sound in that film.  Nice work, that.

Image credit: Thomas Hannich @ Wired.com.

Which is not to say that this season was without its humorous moments but it did not let its hair down in the same way the Season Three did.

That being said, Season Four is arguably a definitive one for the Series, perhaps more so than even the landmark first season.  Many of the plot threads from the past 73 episodes come together in these twenty-four.  And while most go unresolved in a fashion that characterizes the Series, the writer perform well overall, striving — and almost managing — to make every minute count.

1. Herrenvolk.  Everything dies.  While I cannot say I was expecting the Syndicate to bury its secrets in rural Canada, the conspiracy and the story that follows it did go approximately where I (as a viewer) expected it to go.  This is a dense episode that feels longer than its actual run time.  The colonization angle continues to play out, though we have strange twists with “The Bees” and the flowering shrubs and the self-sufficient agriculture communities populated by cloned “drone” childen.  It is interesting to see these enigmas crop up even as we resolve certain other plot threads in ways that are predictable.  But Season Four starts off with the right reminders of what the conspiracy is and we drop some hooks into the water to bait the next twenty-three episodes.
2. Home.  A good and creepy monster-of-the-week; perhaps a new classic?  Cannot say that it was especially supernatural but it was right off the chart in terms of delivering The Willies.  After all, there’s nothing like a pre-running water, pre-electricity, run-down, Civil War-era farm house to induce severe paranoid claustrophobia.
3. Teliko.  Deceive.  Inveigle.  Obfuscate.  Is this the first episode that begins with a special tag line that isn’t part of the Mythology?  This is an interesting one with Scully at the center of the plot; the weird albinism/cannibalism conditions, all that botany…  You wonder if botany isn’t going to be a big part of this Season since it’s factored so heavily into the first and third episodes.
4. Unruhe.  Perhaps one of the most disturbing episodes to date: the psychic photography bit combined with the schizophrenia brings some serious terror with it.  What doesn’t sit right with me however is how often the writers deem it appropriate to put Scully into damsel-in-distress mode — not that she has any arm-waving moments but how many episodes have we seen during the Series’ run where Scully is somehow captured or tied up or otherwise held hostage?
5. The Field Where I Died.  Why doesn’t this episode open with the inciting crime?  The episodes seems ever so slightly disjointed from the Series’ overall narrative; the past-life regression fits well enough and the references to Samantha are there but it’s like a figurine slightly out of scale with its neighbors on the shelf.  To the writers’ credit, they did well here to muddy the waters with multiple personalities vs. past lives.  But then again Mulder’s hypnotic monologue comes across as unforgivably bad Beat poetry…
6. Sanguinarium.  Delightfully unresolved!  All that black magick and blood sacrifice…  Not a pivotal or even particular interesting episode; but fun just the same.
7. Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man.  Allegedly this episode tells Cancer Man’s backstory — but did we really need this?  It seems too much, too over the top.  Wasn’t it enough for Cancer Man to be instrumental in the greatest conspiracy of all time?  Having him involved in both JFK and MLK assassinations seems overkill; it is distraction from what we know about him.  Besides, these elements appear to add up to continuity errors with what we already know about him.  If he is busy killing the great American leaders, when would he have had time to cover up evidence of E.B.E. visitation and colonization?  Let’s assume that this episode is non-canon and move on.
8. Tunguska.  With this name, how could this not be a killer episode?  This is where Season Four starts to heat up, getting back on track after what feels like a six episode hiatus from the central plot.  You get the feeling (especially with Scully’s opening testimony before those Congressmen) that episode seven is supposed to serve as a partial setup for the sequence that begins here.  In many ways we experience some interesting reversals here: we have a return to the “old” Skinner who is unwilling to go out on a limb for Mulder & Scully, we have renewed tension between the Cancer Man and the Well-Manicured Man.  The Black Oil thread comes into the fore again here and we’re left wondering: why does it kill everyone except Krycek?
9. Terma.  E pur si muove.  The opener is a little discontiguous and seems to make you forget that it’s “part two of two”.  Just the same, it picks up with Mulder in the Siberian gulag, subject to The Black Oil/The Black Cancer, trying to figure out escape and revenge on Krycek.  The plot takes some tight turns back home as well, with Scully and Skinner appearing before Congress and Scully’s rhetorical stand that lands her in jail.  True to form, the episode brings our protagonists (and by extension: us) so close to The Truth, so close to some breakthrough, only to snatch it away through conspirators and interfering circumstance.  Some new and interesting findings but never enough to be credible.  Also, the final twist with Krycek was certainly interesting: was he perhaps KGB all along?
10. Paper Hearts.  This episode is creepy and unnerving in the way that episodes like “Irresistible” and “Oubliette” were…  The dream/deja vu angle plus proposed “psychic nexus” are enough to give this episode the requisite paranormal edge, but this is one that could have played out well (or perhaps even better) without that.  There is enough ambiguity around the conflict that the psychic stuff could just be Mulder projecting onto it, confabulating new explanations to suit his proclivities.  The writers pull this one off masterfully though, getting Mulder emotionally involved with this killer via his sister.
11. El Mundo Gira.  In a way, this is the episode that got my hopes up that we would see a return to the wit and charm of Season Three’s more light-hearted, self-parodying interludes.  However, while this episode appears early on not to take itself all that seriously, it manages by the end to have contorted itself into one that does.  There were some interesting twists with respect to the “Chupacabra” neo-legend but ultimately this was not all that fulfilling of a story.
12. Leonard Betts.  The cancer vampire!  Despite the premise, this episode turned out not to be at all cheesy; a well conceived and executed story by the writers that fits very well into the overall story arc, hitting all the right notes to be a successful stand-alone episode while referencing back on existing plot threads.  It’s an interesting premise and having a deformed/cancerous Betts tell Scully “You have something I need…” was a master-stroke of a hook to circle back on the abduction/cancer link hinted at during Season Three.
13. Never Again.  An episode completely around Scully and while it’s not really all that paranormal, it’s certainly weird.  Ergot-induced homicidal hallucinations?  At least Scully got a date (and a tattoo) out of the deal, right…?  It is out of balance without Mulder though and Scully seems … not herself.
14. Memento Mori.  We circle back on Scully’s cancer and work our way once again to the women in Pennsylvania that are part of the UFO/abductee network.  We get a bit more elucidation on the conspiracy, we see another turn in Skinner (who is taking on the martyr’s mantle by all appearances), and we delve more into the alien hybridization theme.  Which starts to beg the question: are we to take from this (the hybridization plot elements) that we as a culture have become intertwined with the aliens?  That is to say, have we become “one body” with whatever it is that the aliens represent in the story arc?  Have we allowed the paranoia and the persecution to become a part of us?  And to take that one step further: is that why it’s made Scully sick?  And if that’s the case, is Scully an on-screen stand-in for us?
15. Kaddish.  Hate crimes + Kabbalah = Revenge of the Golem.
16. Unrequited.  I am not so sure that I understand the episode’s title in this context.  Thematically speaking, this is a solid episode but otherwise it’s a little thin.  There is no “real” paranormal action here (i.e., our villain does not actually turn invisible) and the “scientific” angle about the guy “just using your blindspot against you”…  Well, it doesn’t even come remotely close to reality.
17. Tempus Fugit.  The Second Coming of Max!  The writers pull off an interesting stunt here by diving way back into Season One to bring back an otherwise throw-away character and immerse him in the Mythology/Conspiracy — though that involvement comes across as tangential (see below).  What is interesting here is the beginning of a strong push within the plot to place all of the UFO activity around military ops/military cover-ups; of course, this is immediately thrown into doubt by the Missing Time.
18. Max.  The continuation of episode 17 (above); as mentioned, this should tie directly into the E.T./E.B.E. plot threads but ultimately feels tangential to the Mythology.  We have a plot that (as it resolves) could just as easily be high-tech industrial espionage by two complete lunatics; it need not have anything to do with extra-terrestrial organisms at all.  Granted, those two lunatics (i.e., Max and “his sister”) are convinced that this high-tech apparatus is alien in origin; but bear in mind that they are both medicated for mental illnesses.  Again, as viewers we are frustrated because even our skepticism is called into question as alien technology is apparently co-opted by government agencies or else Missing Time and Abductions enter the equation to further confound everything.
19. Synchrony.  An interesting take on time travel.  The whole cryobiology angle plus the quantum physics makes this a fringe science-heavy episode.  Not the best writing perhaps (I felt that they telegraphed the ending way too early on) but still worthwhile.
20. Small Potatoes.  The most humorous episode of the season, nearing but not quite reaching the comedic appeal of Season Three ; the comedy here was more “screwball” than “dark”.  Not that this was a bad episode; it certainly kept you on your toes — what with a shapeshifting son of a carnival freak that takes a shine to the opportunities furnished via Mulder’s form.  Makes you wonder out loud: “Hey Scully…  Would you have gone all the way?”
21. Zero Sum.  We have never seen Skinner gets his hands dirty; you ask immediately Why now?  There is (curiously) no Scully in this episode, though it is certainly deep within the Mythology — and consequent to the conspiracy.  We return to the thread with The Bees that we started back in Season Three and gave full attention to during Season Four’s opener.  In a way, The Bees seem to come out of nowhere — weren’t they just a deus ex machina means of escape in the first episode?  It seems that the UN Special Secretary is “involved” as we had suspected all along; and we confirm for ourselves that of all the characters, Skinner is the most royally screwed.
22. Elegy.  We come around again on Scully’s cancer; this time, the wraiths just provide the paranormal backdrop against which we can focus on how Scully’s condition worsens.  It has been easy as a viewer to let this critical component of the plot become washed out in the noise of far-reaching conspiracies and hokey monsters run amok.  The writers keep dropping reminders: the nosebleeds, Skinner’s accusations toward Cancer Man, concerned entreaties from Mulder…  But these last couple of episodes seem to be stepping up the frequency and intensity of these reminders.  And what we get here (at long last?) is this: if Season Two was about the crossroads of life and death, Season Four visits with our mortality — the road signs leading up to that intersection.
23. Demons.  Season Four seems to have an abundance of episodes where the supernatural/paranormal element is either absent or tenuous at best; this is another one of those.  Though the attention is given over to alien abduction and the consequences it has had on the victims, the sinister component is not the abduction itself but the psychiatric treatment given to these characters  The episode seems like filler; though the psychiatric treatment appears to give Mulder access to long-repressed memories, they could just as easily have been hallucinations and confabulations.  With so much doubt around the events, we wonder if it’s worth even considering that the writers are trying to set up the possibility that Cancer Man was more intimately involved in Mulder’s family than we’d dared imagine before.
24. Gethsemane.  Believe The Lie.  The strongest season finale of the Series thus far; but also one that you immediately approach with your own paranoid skepticism.  The validity of every statement and portrayed event is thrown into immediate uncertainty.  If the fact that they don’t show Mulder’s body wasn’t enough for you, the opening text (above) is your explicit invitation.  It’s a bit of a cheap trick; effective and well-played, but in many ways a dig on viewers.  An alien corpse found in deepest Yukon Territory that (after much DOD interference) appears to be a hoax?  Increased but unresolved tension in Scully’s family over her cancer?  Suggestion after suggestion that the fantastic alien conspiracy is just a cover story for a more sinister and far-reaching government plot to enable unfettered Defense programs?  The hint that Mulder may have been but a pawn in that more mundane conspiracy all along?  Of course Mulder’s fragile character would contemplate suicide.  But with all of that new information, with all of those still unresolved plot threads, how could we “believe the lie” when Scully tells us Mulder is dead?

By the end of Season Four, the Series has definitely hit its stride.  It’s conventions and tropes are all well-established, it has a good rhythm going, and the actors have all mastered each character.  Though we have many exemplary episodes here, I found myself pining often for Season Three’s see-saw of serious/humorous; the Series needs its hard-core Mythology episodes but it just as badly needs episodes like “Small Potatoes” and “War of the Coprophages” to lighten the mood from time to time.  Sadly, I believe those episodes will be fewer and farther between as the Series progresses.

Just the same, onward to Season Five.

1. The Blessing Way.  Picking up where Season Two left off, Season Three’s opener thrusts us immediately back into the series’ central mythos.  But we are in for no surprises; the last episode of Season Two telegraphs how this episode will unfold and we receive exactly what we expect.  Except for perhaps a slightly tawdry “spirit world” sequence with Mulder?  It’s as if the Navajo Code Talker made sense for the encryption angle but now the writers are stuck with a sidebar character that they don’t know what to do with.  On the other hand, we see The Syndicate introduced and we get our first suggestions of the Cancer Man being under what appears to be scrutiny.
2. Paper Clip.  A direct continuation of the previous episode, we dive deeper into the Mythology.  We build more on that main alien arc: Nazi scientists, human-alien hybridization experiments, a decades-spanning conspiracy manifested through smallpox vaccines.  We start to “get to know” The Syndicate; we get “The Well-Manicured Man” as a sort of counter-point to The Cancer Man — though we may zero in on him not only because he comes to the fore of the plot but because he is the only other Syndicate member that speaks with any affect.  Better yet, we see layers added: The Cancer Man as a string-puller but one whose own strings may be pulled…  Plus we see Skinner start to come into his own more, showing his teeth.  Between the first and second episodes: Season Three starts strong.
3. D.P.O.  A fun episode, if a bit lacking in substance — a bit like munching Cool Ranch Doritos.  ”DPO” can absorb lightning and shoot it back out and has all kinds of wild control over electricity; this episode is a bit of a dark comedy.  There is something a bit forced and awkward about the unrequited student/teacher romance angle but they manage to make it work.  Even if you (as a viewer) wonder what happened to the rhythm of the season all of the sudden.  But hey: Jack Black!
4. Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose.  More black comedy, this episode has a charming and whimsical take on psychic phenomena and clairvoyance.  It’s also borderline PKDickian about the nature of those psychic powers: Clyde can see into the future with startling accuracy but it’s just too bad that the powers are useless.  I loved this episode: tongue-in-cheek and very well played.  (Plus: Scully gets a dog.)
5. The List.  A dark episode that could have been straight out of Season Two, “The List” has a strong Beelzebub/Lord of the Flies overtone going on.  It also has one of the highest body counts of any X-Files episode to date — at least 7, probably 8 dead by the time the credits roll.  The writers of this episode work the reincarnation angle better than any of the Series’ previous efforts.  There is also an odd green cast to the camerawork in nearly every scene.
6. 2Shy.  Seems to be a re-hash of the Tooms character from Season One; certainly not identical but there’s enough overlap to throw a few questioning red flags.  Again, the subject matter is dark but this one tip-toes toward farce though not entirely successfully so.
7. The Walk.  In terms of emotion and power: this is the best episode of the Season (so far).  It addresses the tragedies of war and all that and though it borders on being didactic and over the top, it manages to pull off these themes well.
8. Oubliette.  If “The List” was our bloodiest episode thus far then this is perhaps the scariest.  It’s almost always the ol’ fashioned kidnapping and torture stories that hit closest to home.  The psychic/transference angle just plants it in X-Files territory — it has enough else going on without that to keep its intensity high.  (Also: Firefly‘s Kaylee as a youngster!)
9. Nisei.  Back onto the Mythology track with the introduction of a major new plot thread.  These new developments are curious to be sure — an alien corpse before the opening credits?  There is a great deal of tension here and you have to pause as a viewer and wonder if some of this isn’t just a red herring to throw us all off.  After all, hadn’t we gotten far during Season Two?  And don’t these new developments seem to deviate from that?  ”X” is back and if nothing else his interest should confirm that we are not running down false leads.  Or are we?  (The episode turns into a cliffhanger, to be sure.)
10. 731.  Apology is Policy.  Sure enough, we continue where the previous episode left off and our plot thickens substantially with “the Japanese angle”.  It is interesting to see how The Syndicate enters into this and how they work up an explanation for the alien abductions.  Cutting-edge but unethical experiments on human subjects provide a somewhat mundane and plausible explanation for so many of the events from the past twenty or so episodes.  But is it a smoke screen?  And besides, you ask yourself: couldn’t covering up human experiments be worse than covering up knowledge of extra-terrestrials?  Despite the action, despite what appear on the surface to be revelations, we are ultimately left a bit unsatisfied.
11. Revelations.  Tackling stigmata and some Millenarian Christian eschatology, this is a Scully-centric episode if ever there was one.  If there were more episodes like this, I would say that it does well to side-line Mulder from time-to-time to create a better balance.  But something about it throws off the Season’s rhythm again; Scully works well enough as narrator and foil and this just seems to complicate that relationship with the text.
12. War of the Coprophages.  In short: this episode is awesome.  The episode becomes almost deeply parodic of the Series itself, invoking War of the Worlds as much as it invokes Series tropes.  The phone calls back and forth between Mulder and Scully, the shit-eating alien robot cockroaches, the Stephen Hawking-esque scientist…  It’s almost all too much.  And extremely refreshing after the previous episode.
13. Syzygy.  Astrological terror!  Another episode that’s a bit humorous and almost light-hearted.  It’s not self-parodying like “War of the Coprophages” but it doesn’t take itself too seriously either.  We don’t walk away with much but we do get a grin out of it.
14. Grotesque.  Though its thematically out of joint with Season Two, the tone and style are both dark enough to have been nestled between “Excelsis Dei” and “Irresistible”.  The writers went to work on gargoyle myths and came away with an effect that was deeply unsettling.  This episode is Mulder-centric in a similar way as “Revelations” was Scully-centric.  Somehow this one works in the Season’s context though: it reprises some unresolved father/son motifs for Mulder through this proxy of the former teacher.  In a way, it’s an important building block for his character.
15. Piper Maru.  In effect, a continuation of “731″, we drop the explicit references to “the Japanese angle” and move on to “the coordinates”.  This time, the French are after whatever is at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and Krycek returns to play the mercenary.  I suppose we expect aliens in the X-Files sense; we expect little grey men and big eyes set in big heads.  Instead we are introduced to the mysterious and rather disturbing Black Oil.  It’s a great new plot thread — introducing some new element that’s tangentially related.  It’s also worth noting that it’s easy to palate these serious episode when they’re coupled with the dark comedy of episodes like “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” — it’s a way for Chris Carter and the staff of writers to say, “Hey, we can do this both ways without breaking continuity.”  And speaking of continuity: this episode turns into #1 of 2 — as in, it’s the third two-part episode of Season Three.
16. Apocrypha.  Part two of two; Skinner gets shot, we have Scully at the forefront, and the return of The Syndicate.  Things develop well with this plot line and though viewers are not given enough to create a cohesive whole, we are given enough to know that the tattered pieces should get stitched together.  What does The Black Oil have to do with the hybridization projects referenced back in “Nisei” and “731″?  What about the revelations in Season Two’s “Colony” and “End Game” episodes?
17. Pusher.  An “old favorite” for me and one of the more memorable episodes — then again, doesn’t self-immolation always do that?  The premise is great and all those dealings with mortality just seals the deal.
18. Teso Does Bichos.  An episode that takes itself too seriously?  The approach gives it some legs to stand on for fright and tension but the “mundane” myriad of feral cats?  At least it we aren’t thrown an out-of-habitat jaguar as the explanation.  Or a “were-jaguar”, for that matter.
19. Hell Money.  You have got to love the rare episode that turns out not to be supernatural in nature at all.  A “traditional” Chinese lottery game turns deadly with involuntary organ donation.  The angle seems supernatural but it breaks down into something pretty mundane and that’s more than okay; the suspense is still there and there is enough ambiguity to keep things interesting.
20. Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space”.  Another vaguely self-parodying episode — what with its unreliable (meta-)narration and contradictory elements.  The writers pull off a nice trick by breaking down the Fourth Wall and having Scully tell the story to this Jose Chung character.  They manage to invoke a whole lot of the modern folklore and mythology about aliens, abductions, and all of the surrounding cultural paraphernalia.  A pretty damn good episode, actually.
21. Avatar.  The episode is more-or-less custom tailored to give us some background material on A.D. Walter Skinner — since we have obviously decided to keep him on as a permanent cast member.  The succubus bit is just a convenient paranormal backdrop.
22. Quagmire.  An X-Files take on Moby Dick?  It is actually pretty well done; nice and ambiguous and with featuring the right kind of easy outs (with the alligator) while still ending with the oblique nod to the paranormal.  Plus: mentioning Vermont and Lake Champlain and “Champ” specifically put a nice smile on my face.  (But: poor Scully’s dog!)
23. Wetwired.  By the end of this episode we “get it” that the idea here is some exposition: “X” is working for/with Cancer Man and is betraying him.  The episode’s premise is interesting enough and we see Scully come a bit unscrewed for a change; and what better way to perform character development than to show them at their most vulnerable?  Also: Mulder is red-green color blind!
24. Talitha Cumi.  The Season Three finale and we are quite deep into the core Mythology.  We return to the Cancer Man and X and see the neck-stabbing apparatus come back as well.  A lot of direct references and signs point way back, clear into Season Two and its Gregor clones and shapeshifting, stony-faced bounty hunters and furtive talk of alien colonization efforts.  What happened to the Japanese and The Black Oil?  That all seems a sidebar now, a distraction to the Colonization plot.  Regardless, the pace quickens, the plot thickens, and Season Three closes with another explicit cliffhanger.

Fortunately, this time around, Disc One of Season Four is already in the mail.

As I mentioned in my discussion of Season One, it has been about ten years since I have seen The X-Files; and as I mentioned there, the series seems to have held up well over time. Happy coincidences seem to have us re-watching these almost as if in preparation for a coming film sequel.

Settling in to watch Season Two, it’s easy to find yourself tempted to skip entire episodes (e.g., “The Host”) and just focus on that central “Mythology” plot. However, it’s worth noting that there is a great deal of character development and exegesis on the milieu that takes place outside of those “core” episodes. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what to discard and what to keep. But part of you will no doubt know; and part of you will squirm through it.

One thing is for certain, Season Two opens without missing a beat.

1. Little Green Men. This is a great way to resume the series. It is not a straight-up “let’s pick up right where we left off” take on things; the writers honor our unambiguous end to the first season, put some distance between the characters, put some distance between the “old” story, and intelligently reel us back in. We are given a portrait of a Bureau that puts Mulder on some soul-deadening electronic surveillance as penance, a Bureau that farms out Scully to Quantico for classes in forensic medicine. One of the things that makes it such a strong start is that Duchovny and Anderson have already found their feet with these characters and dive right in; there are no awkward false starts like we had in the first season. We are presented a tough hiatus for our protagonists and are then thrust immediately into the core mythos with the right tension. Clearly with Deep Throat dead at the end of The Erlenmeyer Flask, we need to get some of that dramatic tension from elsewhere. The Cancer Man comes immediately back (though we still have no clue what his role is and under what pretense does he attend meetings at FBI headquarters); we also get an ambiguous friend/foe with Skinner, who appears to be back for good. We start the second season with more meat and bones than the first did.
2. The Host. What can you really say about Season Two’s second episode? It grafts itself onto Season Two’s story arc well enough (e.g., “You have a friend in the FBI…”) and we start to see Skinner emerge as a prominent character whose role is neither incidental nor entirely adversarial… But at the same time: isn’t this a little bit of an over-the-top monster-of-the-week monster? I’m down with the references to Chernobyl but this whole mutant man/fluke thing seems a bit… Self-mocking?
3. Blood. There is some of the core paranoia here, even if it’s not part of the core storyline. Some serious government conspiracy suggestions, all wrapped up around a hallucinogenic pesticide and its highly toxic, highly psychoactive side effects. The episode seems to serve as punctuation for the series’ milieu; it’s illustrative even if you don’t notice it and (in some ways) could do without it.
4. Sleepless. We follow Mulder as he chases down some sleepless Vietnam veteran that can turn his dreams into murderous reality through some latent psychic powers. Krycek arrives on the scene; it seems too obvious too early that he is not to be trusted. This is an oddly tempered “monster of the week” episode that seems (again) to help round out the milieu, focusing on what seems like the Cancer Man’s back story — inasmuch as he has a long history of involvement in secret Pentagon projects. The plot thickens around the characters central to the plot (even if the central plot itself goes unexplored).
5. Duane Barry. The most important part of the Season Two story arc begins with what feels like a throwaway episode. We are given the tale of Duane Barry, an alleged alien abductee whose legitimacy is immediately in question because of his residence in a psychiatric institution. As a viewer, we go along with this because the central premise (i.e., an alien abductee) is close enough to the central plot but all the while figuring that this must be a red herring. By about one-third to one-half of the way through this particular episode, we must start to credit the writers rather highly; we are given good development for Mulder here, keeping his character consistent while still giving him enough reasons to maintain some faith in Duane Barry (regardless of whether or not we do) while Scully gives us even more facts about Barry to confirm what we suspected from the beginning: that the man just has some head trauma that has permanently damaged him, cognitively. After Barry’s capture and surgery though, the story twists into one of the most Phildickian episodes to date and submits to us an intense intra-season cliffhanger.
6. Ascension. Deny Everything. We pick up where “Duane Barry” left off, with the shit hitting the fan in rather a big way. An extremely suspenseful and action-packed episode, it hits all the high notes that are the hallmarks of the show: suspense, action, conspiracy. We discover Krycek’s involvement with the Cancer Man, only confirming our suspicions from earlier. Scully’s abduction and Skinner’s reinstatement of the X-Files gives us several strong elements that shape the rest of the season.
7. 3. First: I found it strange that it took us 31 episodes to get to vampires; part of me was certain that this would be a Season One agenda item — relatively easy to work through while the actors, directors, and writers will still finding their feet. Ranking this episode on a scale of 1 to 5 for vampire tropes, it scores a 4; the story has a bit of Vampire: The Masquerade going on, manages not to be too Anne Rice, and has just enough folklore and mythology to keep it interesting. A couple of this episode’s strongest moments: it manages to humanize Mulder a bit and it’s interesting how Scully’s presence was worked into the show even while in absentia.
8. One Breath. In what might also have been sub-titled “Mulder’s Crucible”, this episode is oddly dense and it is no wonder that it is widely regarded as one of the Series’ best. We see Scully return but she is in the hospital and at death’s door; her living will would have the doctors pull the plug. In his deepest depression, Mulder does everything he can think of to find ways to save her, playing his hand very heavily against the Cancer Man — we also get the first on-screen use of the name “Cancer Man”. The writers push the limits here and manage to pack a great many details into this standard-length episode. We have Cancer Man telling Mulder that he’s “becoming a player,” Deep Throat’s “replacement” intensifies his involvement, the Lone Gunmen come out of the woodwork… We find that the story advances in strange ways, often by side-stepping where we expect it to go and though a part of us (as viewers) is disappointed that Mulder misses his opportunity for revenge, we know that it is probably for the best.
9. Firewalker. This is the first episode with Scully back in action after her abduction. She and Mulder are called out to a volcano research site where they are tasked with researching a disappearance that has a few signs that point to “homicide”. The “silicon-based fungus” angle turns out to be one of the best non-alien, non-conspirator antagonists the show has had. Certainly by now the pattern has emerged on most viewers that the Series’ individual episodes fall into one of three categories: (1) aliens, (2) an X-Files spin on classic monster tropes, or (3) a vaguely scientific “threat” of a new species. This latter category has given us some of the best material (see also: “Darkness Falls” from Season One) and to be honest, this is one of my favorite episodes of the entire Series. That said: as of this episode, Mulder and Scully appear to be the most quarantined officers in FBI history.
10. Red Museum. This episode contains an interesting twist, I thought. It seems to start off as a relatively tame, throwaway “monster of the week” story about rBGH. It quickly gets weird though and by the end of the hour, we can see how it is a follow-up to “The Erlenmeyer Flask” episode that concluded Season One. Some unexpected thrills here; but I must say it also had moments that were oddly reminiscent of “Gender Bender” (from Season One) and I found myself asking, “Why do all of these cults have their convocations in barns?”
11. Excelsis Dei. Pretty damn creepy; all this business about run-down nursing homes and degenerative brain disorders and Malaysian spirit mushrooms tapping into some ghost world… It’s not a great episode but it sure seems to be the one most likely to make your skin crawl thus far in Season Two. One important thing that I did note here was how the writers seem to have cast Scully’s character just a little different in these post-abduction stories. She seems more sensitive than before, less callous, more likely to suspect that something strange is afoot. And in this particular story arc, you wonder if perhaps the rape element doesn’t change the stakes for her; perhaps it becomes a more emotionally charged item when that enters the equation.
12. Aubrey. Two episodes in a row where Scully is the driving force behind the investigation. Here, it’s implied that there is a genetic component to a certain serial killer’s tendencies (plus a spiritual connection?) and a pregnancy in that killer’s estranged granddaughter bring those tendencies out in her. Again, in some ways it seems like a bit of a throwaway episode (except for the spot-on suspense and pacing) but what makes it a keeper is how the writers have targeted Scully during these past couple stories, to focus on her character and highlight her post-abduction changes.
13. Irresistable. As this episode closes, you get the sense that Season Two should have been sub-titled “Scully’s Crucible”. Although this episode does not contain any paranormal phenomena, that only seems to make the sinister fetishistic/necrophiliac character that much more disturbing. We follow a Bizzaro World Six Feet Under‘s David (with even worse control issues) through a downward spiral of murderous perverse sexuality. What is especially well done in this episode is the camera work — e.g., you really notice how well they work with depth-of-field, lighting, and atmospheric effects like fog. This episode’s music is not the best in the series though and we could have done without Mulder’s post-script narration.
14. Die Hand Die Verletzt. This one throws us off our usual rhythm; why doesn’t the crime take place before the opening credits? The black magic/devil worship stuff is a little out there and strange (I presume that it’s supposed to be the case) but it gives us a supernatural angle to work with. And once again, Scully seems to catch the emotional brunt of it once the child molestation angle comes throttling into play. Overall, not a favorite episode but this one really underscores how dark the tone of this second Season has been.
15. Fresh Bones. Finally, we get to zombies; too bad they’re the not-really-dead-and-so-not-really-reanimated Voodoo zombies. If you hadn’t figured it out by now, the geist for Season Two seems to focus on the crossroads between life and death; this episode, with its Voodoo and zombie reanimation angle, is no exception. The writers do well to honor the Voodoo fiction tropes (with respect to raising the dead) though I have a margin of skepticism here about whether it honors the cultural aspects. The revenge angle in this episode is the most compelling element; the music is excellent, too.
16. Colony. There is a pretty strong “holy shit!” moment here when you realize that this is episode one of two. The show’s typical cold open takes on a double-meaning here as we discover that Mulder is subject to some intense hypothermia after following some alien-related evidence into the arctic circle. This one is part of that core mythos, and gets particularly explicit in its treatment of this part of the arc. The “Gregor” clones from all over the country are in danger from an alien bounty hunter, we get to meet Mulder’s family when his sister comes “back”, the conspiracy goes deeper than we suspected (hoped?)…
17. End Game. Part two of two and the conclusion to this arc is just as strong as the first. We have Skinner as the almost unlikely hero (the writers really like to have him play both sides, don’t they?); we learn more about the Bounty Hunter aspect of these aliens, more about the hybridization and cloning, more about their attempts to colonize and their justifying indictment of human civilization. Our picture of the alien conspiracy and the government’s (governments’?) involvement is becoming much more clear. We see how “Scully’s crucible” over the past 10 or so episodes has brought her character to this point, how it involves and invests her, and how it has prepared her for the role she takes. We also have a strong denouement with Scully’s closing narrative focusing on science and framing up Mulder’s closing remark about having “the faith to keep looking”.
18. Fearful Symmetry. Not so sure about this one… The plot goes like this: aliens start abducting animals from a zoo to impregnate them as a means of playing at conservationists. I suppose it ties in with the premise for alien colonization that we just finished learning about (see above: “Colony” and “End Game”) but something about it seems silly at the same time. On the other hand, any episode that features the Lone Gunmen (however briefly) is worth the viewing. The “keeper” moment here is when you (the male viewer) realize that Melvin Frohike is your on-screen proxy: nerdy and paranoid and ogling Special Agent Dana Scully.
19. Død Kalm. More questions than answers here; the episode features some inexplicable aging via a substance that Scully dubs “heavy salt”. What is the heavy salt? Where does it comes from? Why does it make you age faster when a diet heavy on the potato chips does not? There is some suggestion that this ties in with some old Norwegian folklore — but I’m unfamiliar with which myth and I certainly haven’t found it on my own yet.
20. Humbug. With a name inspired by folklore surrounding P.T. Barnum and his circus, it is no surprise that the backdrop for this episode is a (how shall we put this?) winter community for circus freaks. Seems some inexplicable and mysterious murders are taking place there which have the locals rather perturbed. Mulder & Scully’s investigation features multiple fact-or-fiction moments that are confounded further by the overtly surreal setting. By the end we have it pinned onto a conjoined twin whose twin appeared to have never quite developed; meanwhile, his fatal complications from alcoholism force the undeveloped twin to try and seek out new hosts. All very weird and implausible stuff but it works in a kind of allegorical sense. Also: any episode featuring Jim Rose and The Conundrum is worthwhile, even if it is on that basis alone.
21. The Calusari. Another episode that plays on that “frontiers-of-life-and-death” theme; this time we explore some Romanian superstition/folklore that would have a stillborn twin possess the still-living twin. Apparently the stillborn twin spirit doing the possessing is some kind of “pure evil” spirit; one of the Romanian priests likens him to Hitler. It’s a bit of a “B-” episode; but again, let’s not let Mulder have the closing narration.
22. F. Emasculata. Another of those “science as science fiction” episodes (see also: “Firewalker” from earlier this season). Here we have an insect that plays host to a microbe that causes some seriously disgusting flu-like symptoms and erupting boils (complete with instant death) after only about 36 hours. Ultimately, this is a bit unsatisfying because it’s never clear what causes death in these victims — one of the doctors says that it’s the microbe but everything else points to the larval gestation. The episode is significant however, because we have the return of Cancer Man (first appearance since “One Breath”) and his involvement (as the on-screen proxy for Big Government Conspiracies) is to co-opt Mulder/Scully by putting them at the center of the cover-up. After the last few episodes, this one snaps us back into the milieu without the distracting circus freaks or Romanian caricatures.
23. Soft Light. Not sure that I understand this one: a particle accelerator causes a man’s sub-atomic particles to come un-glued and turn him into a … human laser beam? A human black hole? I get the sense that this episode is meant to fill in a bit of Scully’s back-story (re: her former student) and to cast a little more viewer doubt on “X” — but none of those threads are fully realized and seem to have been played loosely.
24. Our Town. Yet again with our “life-and-death-crossroads” theme: an Ozark-area town in Arkansas plays host to a (cargo?) cult that prolongs their lives through cannibalism. Now, cannibalism is one of those goes-for-the-jugular plot devices that is almost certain to catch you as disturbing; then the writers here go and build it up in such an indirect way that it takes you by surprise. Granted, they have Scully play the “prions” card too early but you’re likely to be distracted by Mulder’s reiteration of the Indian folklore bit.
25. Anasazi. éí ‘aaníígÓÓ ‘áhoot’é. One hell of a cliffhanger to close Season Two. We end very much at the thick of the core mythos, with the government conspiracies running thick and wild and with Mulder getting “too close to the truth”. We open on a Navajo adolescent finding some mummified aliens buried in the desert; meanwhile “The Thinker” (some hacker friend of the Lone Gunmen) cracks the Department of Defense database and pull original (though encrypted) copies of the MJ12 initiative. Things unravel quickly: Mulder’s psychotic break after Cancer Man et al. poison his water; Mulder’s father was part of the MJ12 conspiracy; Krycek returns as an assassin… All of this building to Mulder following the Navajo boy out to the buried train car where he finds dozens (hundreds?) of mummified bodies with unusual features. Was he just burned alive…?
    

Now we wait for Season Three’s arrival…

Amazon correctly recommends:

The X-Files: The Complete Collector’s Edition.

Maybe it’s because we’ve been re-watching the series lately but our interest has been seriously rekindled.  And what a handsome collector’s edition.

1. The Pilot. Where the fun begins, eh? It is interesting to watch this first, pilot episode after such a long break from the series. Carter & co. do such an excellent job with the set up in this first hour. We are immediately given the central premise and in such an easily digestible way that we expect a great deal of story back-fill to follow — should enough people “get” the show as to warrant continuation. We get a David Duchovny trying on Fox Mulder’s skin, making him a little geekier and a little less melancholy than the character we accept as the series develops. We get a proto-Dana Scully out of Gillian Anderson: a bit more bristle but just about the right amount of confrontational empathy. We also get the conspiracy theory hints dropped; the Cancer Man is in our introductory scene and also files away our evil little metal device… A strong start to the series.
2. Deep Throat. The “in case you missed the pilot” episode… Replace Cancer Man with Deep Throat, re-inject the government conspiracy and alien abduction-slash-alien technology themes, and we’re off and running. We still have Duchovny playing a little more on the geeky elements of Mulder’s character but you can see the melancholy emerging a bit more; it is a bit of a satire unto itself but the levity seems to be necessary to keep us from taking things too seriously. At the same time, we also get a little more emotionally involved. The stakes seem higher. Perhaps it’s the well-played repetition of the alien and conspiracy themes. Perhaps it’s the weird cross-section of side characters Carter gives us as part of the back-drop. Perhaps it’s the more plausible way that Dana Scully handles her pistol.
3. Squeeze. Our first “off-topic” episode. We back off from the central plots and themes, we back off from the aliens and instead toy around with bizarre murdering monster-ific mutants in (where else?) Baltimore. Duchovy and Anderson are starting to really hit their respective strides as Mulder and Scully, to really nail down their characters. A part of you wishes that the stretchy mutant villain has a tie-in with the central alien plot themes but there is another part of you that recognizes how important it is to deviate from that. We need some breadth of subject matter in addition to the depth of that central mythos; it will give the show some stamina. Plus it lets us see our Special Agents in some “more curious” scenarios. Things become a bit more unpredictable.
4. Conduit. Back to the central alien theme; Duchovny nails Mulder and brings out the combination of quirk and moroseness that is this character’s hallmark. On the DVD series’ first disc, this is by far the best episode thus far. It has nuanced variations on the character archetypes that will become part of the show’s signature but more so than that, this episode has a wonderful rhythm and balance. We keep swinging nicely between the conventional and the fantastic; as if the field report narration wasn’t enough, it becomes apparent in this episode that Scully rules the narrative: bikers have crazy stories and a burned-off ear isn’t “evidence” of UFO shit but you’ll be damned if you don’t witness some creepy and not-quite-explicable shit of your own…
5. The Jersey Devil. An apparently Neanderthal “wild man” comes out of the Pine Barrens to terrorize Atlantic City, NJ. It’s a bit jarring to go from “Conduit” to this episode though. “Conduit” is in the central narrative arc; “Conduit” is structurally sound and establishes Scully as our narrator; “Conduit” is emotional. “The Jersey Devil” seems to discard some of this. It’s played a bit flat. Scully-as-narrator seems almost discarded; but we do get some fair characterization with respect to Scully trying to “have a life” and a bit more Mulder’s obsessive tendencies.
6. Shadows. A decent rebound off of “The Jersey Devil”; we still don’t get back to the central narrative but we do get Scully-as-narrator back in substantive effect. We don’t mind that there are no aliens because the story is strong on its own. Poltergeists versus terrorists? Hell yes.
7. Ghost in the Machine. Not exactly brushing against the paranormal. Which maybe explains why our principals are involved only at the behest of some estranged colleague of Mulder’s. Narrative structure (viz. Scully) returns rather strongly here, more so than in “Shadows”. But ten or so years after this episode was produced, this one feels oddly dated. It isn’t the DOD involvement (that shit never goes out of style); it’s the modems and the huge honkin’ CRTs and the impossibly sophisticated AI apparatus. At least their AI “death” scene gives the appropriate propers to Kubrick and HAL9000.
8. Ice. Core subject matter but not the core story line; all done with ice cores. I find myself missing the Scully field report here but I suppose it would not work in the overall narrative structure of this particular episode. Über-hostile ammonia breathing space worms infecting an arctic ice crew and then Mulder and Scully get on the case. Probably the best-paced episode yet; certainly the most suspenseful.
9. Space. I cannot tell if this is supposed to be part of the core story line or not. The central mythos is certainly implied every time space comes up and the suggestion of extraterrestrial life comes into play. But this episode’s near disasters with the space shuttle? The space ghosts? They just feel a bit silly and tangential.
10. Fallen Angels. The central mythos that whose connection to the previous episode was tenuous is back in full effect here. A downed alien space ship in Wisconsin and some government cover-up yield a suspenseful, action-driven episode. There isn’t much character exposition here but if nothing else it seems like a restorative good-faith gesture after Ep. 9. Duchovny gives us a most excellent Mulder here.
11. Eve. The Litchfield experiments! The evil “Eves” (clones #7 through 10 of some defunct eugenics experiment) run amok, terrorizing their families. An average episode over all; it wears its period assumptions about genetics on its sleeve but doesn’t feel terribly dated. The strongest thing this episode has going for it is that it jerks you (the viewer) around a bit, toying with your assumptions about where the story will go.
12. Fire. A psychic firebug! We get some great dramatic tension here; it plays out with a lot of suspense and honors the right tropes of its flame-based horror predecessors. Also, the episode has some nice exposition on Mulder and more than a few light moments, the levity of which seem very much on purpose.
13. Beyond the Sea. Some great ambiguity here in the “psychic or fraud?” department. Excellent exposition on Scully’s character; that works well for me.
14. Gender Bender. The Amish-esque Kindred are all … “gender-bending” murderers? Alien cultists? Mutants? This ambiguous episode gives no real exposition and grants no closure.
15. Lazarus. Naturally, your expectations must run a bit high with such a loaded title. Some perp that Scully takes down mindswaps his way into her fallen partner at time of their concurrent deaths. There is some serious beyond the grave shit going on here and the writers have a little fun with the plot twists of putting some “mind” into someone else’s body; the bit about the soda-loving criminal mind in the diabetic cop’s body. The episode never really hits its stride though and the most we get out of it is some background info on Scully.
16. Young at Heart. Some doctor finds a Fountain of Youth gene with regenerative properties by reversing some disease’s function and adding a splash of salamander genes? It makes for a weird episode. But the writers give us a little more of Mulder; there is no way that you’re not invested in his character by now.
17. E.B.E. Nice to get back to the core plot after six off-topic episodes. Here we get some Iraqi pilot that shoots down a UFO and US (allegedly) recovers the body. This particular episode is probably the best-paced episode of the entire first season and strikes the perfect balance of tension, release, and levity. The focus isn’t really on Mulder and Scully though; the focus here is much more on the series’ milieu and rounding off some of the setting’s corners that we have just sort of had to deal with for seventeen episodes now. Also: the Lone Gunman are introduced (bonus!).
18. Miracle Man. An X-Files take on faith healers. Good: well-played signature sense of humor. Good: adds a uniquely creepy twist to the whole idea of faith healing. Good: really drives home the ambiguity with respect to “was it real or not?”; there is a distinctly Phildickian feel to this episode. Bad: for as much as it fits the series profile, it seems a bit off its game coming hot off the heels of of “E.B.E.”. Also: we find out that Scully is was raised Catholic.
19. Shapes. This makes our first werewolf/lycanthropy tropes for the X-Files series; frankly, I’m surprised it took nineteen episodes to get here. During this episode, we discover that Mulder and Scully are working the alleged “oldest” and “first” X-File; but whereas “Miracle Man” played up the ambiguity and implicit invisibility of the boy’s “power” for dramatic tension &c., this one is a bit too visible; the werewolf bit comes off campy and 50′s drive-in movie instead of high-class ambiguously real sci-fi. Also: the “Native American” bit seems to hurt rather than help here.
20. Darkness Falls. When it comes to the monster-of-the-week episodes, those off-topic mysteries that Mulder and Scully work, they can be really hit-or-miss. The monster-of-the-week mystery in this episode however, is one that I particularly enjoyed and though was quite strong. Instead of playing on the old mystery/horror movie tropes, it works through some kind of semi-plausible ecological freakshow; it is well-paced, stressful, has great tension, and it very fitting for a horror-based episode. Also: was that Deadwood‘s Silas Adams?
21. Tooms. We get some added closure here for the season’s third episode (“Squeeze”); but whereas that one was a bit awkward (what with the show still finding its feet), this one comes off much stronger in both acting and attitude. That said, I feel as if the writers returned us to this scene not to wrap up Tooms’ story but to give Duchovny and Anderson a chance to reinsert their characters in a way that is consistent with the eighteen episodes between these two. There is some nice on-screen additions to our understanding of the Mulder/Scully dynamic in here though. We also get introduced to Skinner, the Cancer Man is back, and we get hints at the season closure (with an “out” if it the series isn’t successful). Also: was that “Spiros” from The Wire?
22. Born Again. What’s with all the beyond-the-grave shit in season one? Here we have a ghostly “revenge from beyond the grave!” mantle worn by some little girl in Buffalo, NY. It isn’t so much that this is a bad episode so much as it just is not as compelling as it could be; especially so since we know that we are nearing the season finale and it has been about four episodes since our last alien encounter. The other half of that, too, is that now that the series’ writers have found their collective voice, this episode comes off simply as “adequate”; had it been episode five, it would have been awesome. Other things that we take away from this episode: Mulder’s field-journal-as-narration does not work on the same level as Scully’s (they don’t feel right with respect to narrative and voice); it’s good to see more continuity between episodes (e.g., the cop that mentions the cousin in Baltimore that knew Mulder/Scully because of the Tooms case); but as long as we are talking about continuity — where is the mention of the X-Files closure and all that foreshadowing?
23. Roland. Two “life after death” episodes in a row? One is wrapped up with reincarnation but this one is psychic power projected from a semi-dead brain flash frozen in liquid nitrogen? And sending those psychic commands to a semi-retarded twin brother? Weird and creepy and well-played; even if the plot is a little flaccid.
24. The Erlenmeyer Flask. Trust no one. If “E.B.E.” was the best-paced episode of the first season, then this one is the definitive X-Files episode; whether you qualify that statement with “so far” or “of Season One” or however, there is no denying that it is incredibly strong. This is a great closing note for Season One and the major milestone for the core mythos and central storyline. This brisk episode is dramatic and tense and has a nearly perfect symmetry with the pilot episode (both visually and with respect to characters). We have closure on the season plus we get the X-Files equivalent of the moneyshot: a hands-on experience with a supposed alien fetus.

Even 15 years old, these episodes are still great. There’s some serious suspension of disbelief that needs to happen here (who but Mulder could get shot in the stomach and arrested by the military and spend time in a CDC quarantine (twice!) all in the same year?) but it’s great to let your imagination run wile right alongside the series’ writers. Sure the background music and pantsuits all come off as a bit dated but whatever; you’ve got to love this stuff.

Looking forward to Season Two.