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howe_sam posted:There are two episodes written by Darin Morgan that are a thousand percent worth watching. The rest eh. I thought the AI sushi episode was also pretty up there. But outside those three episodes there are basically half a dozen middle of the road MOTWs, and an equal number of bottom of the barrel quality Mytharc. Including some serious Reyes character assassination. And an introspect even more hilariously dumb attempt to make Alex Jones the new Deep Throat.
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Sep 2, 2023 14:08
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I started a rewatch from the beginning today. It’s been years since I rewatched the whole thing. I will pause and go check out the two newer Darin Morgan episodes, though. All of his are among my favorites and from what everyone says it sounds like these two are just as good as his older ones. e: The season 10 and 11 Darin Morgan episodes were 
MrMojok fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Sep 2, 2023 |
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Sep 2, 2023 17:04
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Considering the fanbase I bet there are a few best-of MOTW lists out there, I'd just stick to that unless you really have a hankering for bad writing.
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Sep 2, 2023 22:00
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Unironically think that Wellington Paranormal is a better modern X-Files on whole than the revival. Actually, it also has Rhys Darby in an episode involving a guy looking for a killer monster at night!
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Sep 3, 2023 02:47
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The recent seasons had no "writers room," the episodes were all one offs written by people on their own. And it makes it very, very clear why everyone else went on to great things and Cris Carter never did anything else. If you want to watch a train wreck, watch the Carter episodes in the new series. But be aware that they retroactively make the mytharc even worse. If you just want to watch fun tv with characters you like, avoid the Carter ones and focus on the Morgan, Morgan and Wong ones.
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Sep 3, 2023 23:42
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Hey now Chris Carter went on to make that extremely successful show about virtual reali-hahahahhaA Fancy Hat posted:The series finale is the worst episode of the show imho and one of the worst things I’ve ever seen on TV. It felt like an X Files episode written by someone who did not know what the X Files was and, in fact, actively wanted to kill off the show as messily as possible. Ginette Reno posted:I'm into season 2 of Millennium so far and I'm not digging the changes to the show. There was a purity to Frank's character in season 1. He wasn't socially adept. He couldn't fight. He was grim, and stoic, and the only thing for him was the job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzbDDa7REzA Season 2 as you correctly surmised was basically making it into "more X-Files" but at least the good episodes. Both are better than Season 3.
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Sep 3, 2023 23:54
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Assepoester posted:I just realized that I never saw the revival series finale. Is it somehow worse than the original series finale? The revival gives a more 'definitive' ending than the original finale did but it's still bad. It was awful enough that Gillian Anderson doesn't want to return to the show. IIRC Mulder just straight up ices all the new Syndicate members and Smoking Man; it's revealed that Smoking Man raped Scully with Alien DNA to get her pregnant and she's happy to have a new biological kid with Mulder now that she knows her kid's true parentage.
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Sep 4, 2023 00:15
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Their kid growing up to be a pick up artist and total piece of poo poo was a great reveal. Also that Marvin Candle from Lost survived death and writes books about seducing chick with hypnosis.
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Sep 4, 2023 00:17
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Disregarding the late seasons, you have to consider that this show was on in the 90s where you didn't necessarily know if the show would come back the next season. I feel like the writers worked themselves into the corner at the end of each season to make it exciting/a cliffhanger and the following season was spent figuring out how to make it work. After nine regular seasons, the mytharc was so ragged and they did the best they could. I obviously have an x-files avatar so my opinion is colored. The last episode sucked though.
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Sep 4, 2023 02:06
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They did have some ideas worked out for maybe the first 3 seasons. You have stuff like deep throat mentioning a town where kids are being drugged, and then that town shows up in season two. But at the same time, stuff like Mulder’s dad being anything other than a stoic new england rich guy emotionally destroyed by his daughter vanishing was clearly worked out after he was introduced. But everything they had probably ran out by the time they start hanging all this plot stuff on Scully’s abduction and having smoking man be present for world war ii boat accidents (he is obviously too young). The whole idea of a tv show being anything other than a shaggy dog story that just goes and goes until cancellation is pretty new. For guys like Carter, it was probably totally alien to think of a tv show as a story that builds to a conclusion or as something that should have a resolution at all. He was probably not even imagining that people would even rewatch episodes years later.
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Sep 4, 2023 03:10
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UnknownMercenary posted:The revival gives a more 'definitive' ending than the original finale did but it's still bad. It was awful enough that Gillian Anderson doesn't want to return to the show. IIRC Mulder just straight up ices all the new Syndicate members and Smoking Man; it's revealed that Smoking Man raped Scully with Alien DNA to get her pregnant and she's happy to have a new biological kid with Mulder now that she knows her kid's true parentage. I AM GRANDO posted:Their kid growing up to be a pick up artist and total piece of poo poo was a great reveal. Also that Marvin Candle from Lost survived death and writes books about seducing chick with hypnosis. 
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Sep 4, 2023 03:47
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Given the posts that people have made since, I suppose I was a little bit harsh with my recent post about the Mytharc. I also tend to forget, because so much time has passed, about the nature of television back then. They were trying to do something new with this show, and it was a milestone and a bellwether of what was to come. I dearly love the show, warts and all, and I can’t say enough about my own experiences during my recent rewatch that I’ve started. Such a good and fun show. When you are doing 20-25 episodes per season, there are going to be some clunkers, and the show has a lot of those. But man… what a great series it was overall. DISCLAIMER: I have not watched the last two season in their entirety yet, only the two Darin Morgan eps.
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Sep 4, 2023 04:08
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I tend to skip mytharc episodes on rewatch. The part of it I liked when it was new was aliens and. Knowing it kind of ends up with the aliens being like "eh gently caress all this nevermind bye" just has me more interested in motw stuff.
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Sep 4, 2023 04:12
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UnknownMercenary posted:The revival gives a more 'definitive' ending than the original finale did but it's still bad. It was awful enough that Gillian Anderson doesn't want to return to the show. IIRC Mulder just straight up ices all the new Syndicate members and Smoking Man; it's revealed that Smoking Man raped Scully with Alien DNA to get her pregnant and she's happy to have a new biological kid with Mulder now that she knows her kid's true parentage. I think the part I bolded was heavily, heavily implied in the original series episodes.
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Sep 4, 2023 04:15
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I like the myth arc up until the syndicate dies. Once that plot line resolves it's kinda lovely from then on.
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Sep 4, 2023 04:16
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For me, the tipping point is when that DoD guy shows up and tells Mulder aliens are fake and everything he’s seen was actually a hoax with people in costumes and poo poo set up to fool him specifically, all because otherwise people would realize how much money the military gets and protest. It actually works well if that guy is just a crackpot, because they show him at work and he’s just like a mid-level guy in an office tangentially related to conspiracy stuff. Also decades later Alex Jones posted a behind-the-scene photo from that episode of a bunch of alien corpses on gurneys on twitter saying it was real. Even in the context of the episode, they’re supposed to be fake alien corpses.
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Sep 4, 2023 04:34
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Gravitee posted:Disregarding the late seasons, you have to consider that this show was on in the 90s where you didn't necessarily know if the show would come back the next season. I feel like the writers worked themselves into the corner at the end of each season to make it exciting/a cliffhanger and the following season was spent figuring out how to make it work. That is pretty much what happened. There's essentially a number of points that were designed to be the end of the series. The original idea was 5 seasons and then a movie franchise. After all, while not perfect, the mytharc could have the 1st movie as an ending. But season 5 was the highest rated fox TV show and the highest rated season of X-Files. Duchovny wanted out because he wanted to be a movie star, but Fox wasn't about to cancel their most watched show. As a result, they moved to LA to appease Duchovny. Ratings started to decline in seasons 6 and 7, and 7 would have been the natural end point for the mytharc: the rebels came and destroyed the syndicate, everything is fine. But this is the season where every single other Fox drama outside of Ally McBeal went off the air. Harsh Realm, the other Carter show that was supposed to take over from x-files, was canceled after 3 episodes and had the remaining episodes dumped on FX. There was at the time a Frank Spotnitz interview talking about how like they had 2 endings for season 7 and 2 weeks before it went on the air they still didn't know. So they bring the show back for season 8. But Duchovny isn't under contract anymore, really thinks he's going to be a movie star (who can forget the classic comedy Evolution), so he agrees to just a few episodes. Anderson is still under contract so she has no choice to be back. Series ratings decline even further, once again they shoot the season finale as a potential series finale. Except once again all the shows they thought would replace the X-Files, including Lone Gunmen fail. So back for season 9 it is. And even then they had to change things mid-season 9. Lucy Lawless was going to be the big bad super soldier, but had a high risk pregnancy so had to drop out. Ending was a mess, and after season 9 Anderson wasn't under contract anymore, and so they decided to pull the plug.
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Sep 4, 2023 05:57
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I thought it was a good move for them to put the half of that season with reduced Duchovny at the end and have him be around the new characters solving mysteries instead of just keeping the status quo until episode 10 and disappearing. It would have allowed a nice series finale where things are kind of like normal and everyone has closure, plus Robert Patrick could be in the movies they’d make. But they drove it into the ground and the one post-series movie sucked poo poo.
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Sep 4, 2023 06:23
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The annoying thing is that they wasted some of his few episode on teasing shippers. One of his few episodes back is all flashback to him agreeing to have a baby with Scully. And the second movie was like a bad attempt to cater to the most insane conservative tropes. Gay immigrant couple moves to the US and starts murdering women so that one of them can be on a woman's body.
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Sep 4, 2023 06:49
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I AM GRANDO posted:For me, the tipping point is when that DoD guy shows up and tells Mulder aliens are fake and everything he’s seen was actually a hoax with people in costumes and poo poo set up to fool him specifically, all because otherwise people would realize how much money the military gets and protest. It actually works well if that guy is just a crackpot, because they show him at work and he’s just like a mid-level guy in an office tangentially related to conspiracy stuff. I kinda fell off the show around this time as the whole "Mulder now disbelieves everything" reversal was pretty much the shark-jumping moment for me, I didn't realize the bolded part was the reason behind it. That's just sad, everyone already knows how much the military gets, has known for decades and are mostly fine with it. quote:Also decades later Alex Jones posted a behind-the-scene photo from that episode of a bunch of alien corpses on gurneys on twitter saying it was real. Even in the context of the episode, they’re supposed to be fake alien corpses. Lmao I never knew this, incredible
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Sep 4, 2023 08:50
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Uri Geller just reposted the same picture as ‘evidence’ of dead aliens, which is especially funny considering the Uri Geller knockoff X-Files had as the host of their version of Alien Autopsy.
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Sep 4, 2023 09:50
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I just looked at the episode summaries for the revival seasons, and apart from the Darin Morgan shows, the four (!) lovely Chris Carter Mein Kampfs (one of which was retconned as a vision), the Mr Noseybonk child-killer story and the AI one, I couldn't remember anything about them. "When an old friend reaches out to Mulder and Scully in a way previously thought impossible, a chilling secret comes to light" - 
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Sep 4, 2023 11:19
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There's one i only remember because the lead singer for rancid is a guest star
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Sep 4, 2023 14:58
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Payndz posted:"When an old friend reaches out to Mulder and Scully in a way previously thought impossible, a chilling secret comes to light" - pure lol that that describes a good 75% of all mytharc episodes. IMHO the single best mytharc ep is s1e24. After that all the mytharc stuff starts getting disappointing
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Sep 4, 2023 16:31
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I still don't get how you gently caress up a revival (twice even) where you have two actors with incredible chemistry doing the heavy lifting. All of that mytharc garbage as a framing device was absolutely not needed, they come back for whatever reason you want it doesn't really matter, and they investigate weird poo poo, weekly. That's all we wanted. Not a show so bad that half of the stars said they would only do it if someone else took over.
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Sep 4, 2023 21:42
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You try to do it on the cheap, so instead of having a writer room where people break poo poo down and make a season ark, you purchased a bunch of unused scripts from previous writers and then leave the new stuff to the worst writer on the series and you let him write those with no input from others or supervision.
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Sep 4, 2023 22:09
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I AM GRANDO posted:For me, the tipping point is when that DoD guy shows up and tells Mulder aliens are fake and everything he’s seen was actually a hoax with people in costumes and poo poo set up to fool him specifically, all because otherwise people would realize how much money the military gets and protest. It actually works well if that guy is just a crackpot, because they show him at work and he’s just like a mid-level guy in an office tangentially related to conspiracy stuff. It’s fairly obvious, early on in the show, that “Greys” are fake as gently caress - and this becomes explicit around the the end of Season 3 and partway into Season 4. Jose Chung’s From Outer Space kills that aspect the show, in a good way, when it effectively confirms the unstated point that Duane Barry’s ‘abductions’ were actually the product of a mind-control experiment. Trigger a violent response just by flashing the lights on and off, etc. By the time of episodes like Musings and the chupacabra story, the presence of a Grey onscreen straight-up announces that what you’re seeing is bullshit. But the show limps on, with the premise that aliens do exist but they’re all just strange worms and bacteria that occasionally infect people, with a particular strain of black goo having the goal of turning humans into xenomorphs (as seen in the movie). Other hybrids are obvious Terminator references, making the “Fight The Future” subtitle fairly literal: the baddies’ evil plot is simply to accelerate some inevitable looming techno-apocalypse, negotiating with the alien Skynet to secure a place for themselves in the future-world of genetically-engineered super-drones. So you really have seen basically everything when you get to the movie.
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Sep 4, 2023 22:40
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Yeah, I don’t know that they ever try to reconcile the pop-culture greys of the early seasons with the actual original mythology they create with the oil and buff shape-changing guys. They just kind of drop out after some half-hearted “they’re the hybrid children of [something] and humans kept in concentration camps” and “the monsters people turn into when they’re infected by [???] kind of look like greys with big fangs and teeth.” They just kind of drop away with the move to LA.
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Sep 4, 2023 22:50
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Look , all I'm asking for is more Lord Kimbote.
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Sep 4, 2023 23:25
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thweet padayda pie
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Sep 5, 2023 02:48
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Madurai posted:Look , all I'm asking for is more Lord Kimbote. Good news, Vladimir Nabokov has you covered!
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Sep 5, 2023 02:51
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The chupacabra episode annoyed me to no end attributing it to Mexican folk lore instead of a Puerto Rican lady’s bad recollection of species.
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Sep 5, 2023 03:40
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The episodes right after the movie depict a real rear end grey alien as an adult form of a larger, feral xenomorph like large alien. It needed radiation to gestate or something? These were the episodes with the psychic chess kid, IIRC.
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Sep 5, 2023 04:14
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Assepoester posted:The episodes right after the movie depict a real rear end grey alien as an adult form of a larger, feral xenomorph like large alien. It needed radiation to gestate or something? These were the episodes with the psychic chess kid, IIRC. Psychic chess kid was the season 5 finale (which ends with CSM torching the X-Files office). Season 6 was the first LA season and the first two episodes take place immediately after the movie. Edit: Oh, that's right, Gibson Praise was also in the season 6 premiere.
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Sep 5, 2023 04:16
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Assepoester posted:The episodes right after the movie depict a real rear end grey alien as an adult form of a larger, feral xenomorph like large alien. It needed radiation to gestate or something? These were the episodes with the psychic chess kid, IIRC. The one thing I remember from those episodes is smoking man covering up some murders those large aliens do by telling one of his guys to put a story in the paper that an insane Navajo man did it with a tomahawk, with an aside like “never underestimate the public’s capacity to blame the red man” like he had just done something really clever. I don’t know if there was some kind of critique in that statement, but even as a kid I remember thinking that cover story was stupid as hell. I still want to know the story behind including that in the episode.
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Sep 5, 2023 04:26
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The greys are shown inconsistently in the same way that the black oil is shown inconsistently. Early on, greys are just regular aliens, and the black oil was a form of alien that would take over people. So the greys were infected by the black oil to be sort of colonial workers. The shape shifting bounty hunters (played by Brian Thompson in the early seasons) had their true form as a grey. Then around the movie, the black oil would infect people and people would incubate a grey who would come out and kill people. Mulder saves scully from the space ship where she was supposed to be incubating a grey. Then season 7-ish or so the black oil is about making human alien hybrids and greys sort of disappear.
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Sep 5, 2023 04:52
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What was that episode where Mulder and Scully are hot on the trail of what they believe to be a grey the govt has, and at the end when they get to area51 or wherever it was, it’s not there. And either Deep Throat or CSM tells them that he shot it, and says something like “When I raised the gun, there was no understanding in its eyes. Maybe it didn’t even know what a gun was.” For some reason that’s one that always stuck with me.
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Sep 5, 2023 05:07
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MrMojok posted:What was that episode where Mulder and Scully are hot on the trail of what they believe to be a grey the govt has, and at the end when they get to area51 or wherever it was, it’s not there.
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Sep 5, 2023 05:22
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I believe that is EBE, in season 1
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Sep 5, 2023 05:24
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Thank you both.
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Sep 5, 2023 05:37
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