Photo: Robert Falconer/FOX
There’s a moment in an upcoming episode of the new season of The X-Files that’ll bring a smile to the face of anyone who’s stuck with this show through thick and thin. FBI special agents Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) are in a cemetery, trying to find a certain tombstone, when they begin attaching historically significant dates to the birth dates and death dates on the stones. This one was born on the day this famous person died, and this other person was born on the day another famous person died, and so on. They affectionately bust each other’s chops, as Scully and Mulder always do, and then it inevitably dawns on them that there is a pattern here, one that will lead them to the tombstone they seek, and they discover it intuitively, like little kids making up rules to a new game on a playground. And damned if they aren’t proved right. The most significant element that The X-Files borrowed from Twin Peaks is the freedom to let characters figure things out by listening to their feelings, analyzing their dreams, or just having fun. There are several scenes like this in the new season, and they’re all gifts.
The rest of it isn’t half-bad, either. The last season of writer-producer-director Chris Carter’s never-ending magnum opus got mixed to negative reviews, and deservedly so. You could always feel the goodwill emanating from the screen and fans returned it, but except for the episodes by Glen Morgan (“Home Again”) and Darin Morgan (“Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster“), none it it really clicked in the way that it needed to. It was hard to tell if the season had too few episodes, too many (maybe another stand-alone film would’ve been a better approach), or if Carter and company were simply rusty and slightly out of tune and missing the beat, which tends to happen whenever you try to get the old band back together after a decade-plus of not sharing a garage. This new batch of episodes is considerably stronger. Even the ones that don’t really do much but spin their wheels do so with feeling, and when the show is great — as it is, yet again, in Darin Morgan’s episode — it’s downright sublime.
The season more fully integrates the story of Scully and Mulder’s son, William, by putting him at the center of an international conspiracy to wipe out the world’s population with a plague. (As far as I can discern, anyway.) Intriguingly, while the filmmakers still mix densely packed and relatively humorless mythology episodes about the ongoing international plot to do yadda yadda with one-offs that let Scully and Mulder solve a mystery together, they also pull off a couple of episodes that feel like hybrids of the two forms, including one built around the bureau of the X-Files itself. It all kicks off with another exposition-choked conspiracy episode by Carter — titled “My Struggle, Part III,” unfortunately; let’s presume Carter embraced the Hitler-Knaussgaard echoes for a good reason — which picks up where the cliff-hanger ending of the preceding season finale left off. Carter is one of the most exposition-dumpy TV scribes of all time, and this one is a hall of famer: Not only is it stuffed with dialogue that amounts to little more than the writers preemptively asking and answering questions that might otherwise be posed by literal-minded fans on Twitter, it leans heavily on voice-over that doesn’t always feel organically anchored to the story. But it also features some of Anderson and Duchovny’s best close-up acting, particularly when they’re separated, and it’s a kick to see Carter, always one of the most formally adventurous of the show’s main voices, going wild with the parallel editing, jumping between multiple timelines and hypothetical scenarios as if he’d recently binge-watched the complete works of Christopher Nolan.
The other episodes are strong — maybe not season three or four strong, but season seven or eight strong, which is nothing to sneeze at. There’s an episode set in and around a ghostly tanker with a story line that has echoes of the Slenderman urban legend, and one that puts Scully and Mulder on a case in which multiple murder victims reported seeing doubles of themselves right before their demise. The Darin Morgan episode, titled “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat,” is a perfect swan dive into postmodernism and goofing around. Among other things, it shoots a stylistically spot-on, nonexistent Twilight Zone episode in black and white, posits an explanation for the phenomenon of false cultural memory that’s as good as the explanation for déjà vu in The Matrix, and treats us to a YouTube video that answers the burning question “What if Thomas Pynchon wrote Abbott and Costello’s ‘Who’s on First’ routine?’” (A comment below the video tells the creator, “The editing could’ve been tighter.”) We also get to see Scully and Mulder have multiple parking-garage conversations with the latest Deep Throat character, a brilliant and theoretically minded nebbish named Reggie (Brian Huskey, who could play Stephen Tobolowsky’s kid brother quite convincingly). “A conspiracy nut is right twice a day,” he tells them, misremembering the saying just as Mulder seems to be misremembering the very first Twilight Zone he ever saw. When Scully suggests that Mulder is confusing a Twilight Zone episode with one from The Outer Limits, he whines, “Do you even know me?”
This season also stages a close-quarters gunfight that’s surprisingly intense for The X-Files, lets Mulder hold forth on his lifelong fascination with Bigfoot, and has Scully talk about a brand of gelatin she loved as a child (except for the lime-flavored version, which she says tastes like “Leprechaun taint”). If you’re a fan of this series, I can’t imagine watching the new season and finding nothing to enjoy. It’s a pleasant, clever, and sometimes inspired reunion with old friends who were right on the verge of wearing out their welcome when they suddenly reminded you of all the reasons why you loved them in the first place.
So much of what made “The X-Files” wonderful is impossible to attain in 2018. When the series debuted, it presented a twilit, rain-soaked landscape of mysterious occurrences, investigated by two terribly dressed FBI agents who barely knew each other. The show thrilled because of how smartly it turned bureaucratic rigor into the characters’ struggle to understand and accept the unknown — and, of course, because of the devastating sexual tension between Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (a then-unknown Gillian Anderson).
But 26 years and 11 seasons later, the initial charm has been stripped to its bare bones. The mystery, whatever it was, spiraled out of control, got Scully pregnant, made Mulder disappear, and now still taunts the viewer with promises of further answers. The show decamped from its original shooting site in gloomy Vancouver to first Los Angeles and now New York City. Anderson, increasingly a grande dame of Hollywood, becomes more glamorous by the day; Scully’s oversized blazers, severe bob and round glasses have been traded in for a hip, mod-ish wardrobe that accentuates her wasp waist, wavy TV locks and, apparently, contact lenses. Meanwhile, Duchovny — tanned, built and fashionable — looks like the California rocker he’s become, not an aging, nerdy conspiracy nut. (His glasses have also not-so-mysteriously disappeared. Maybe the FBI now covers LASIK.)
As a result, much of the 2016 event series felt hollow, a resurrection gone awry. Showrunner Chris Carter leaned into the mythology of the series with an expanded cast and a matryoshka of conspiracies, each more elaborate than the last. It was a run of episodes that squandered any remaining goodwill I had for “The X-Files.”
Or so I thought.
“The X-Files” returns tonight for a Season 11 that is still uneven, but far more satisfying than the warmed-over mysteries of last season. Carter’s mythology for the series as a whole has never seemed more superfluous, and the episodes still linger too long on the confabulations of the paranoid. But even when stripped down to its bare bones, “The X-Files” has plenty to offer its audience. For one thing, the show appears to be more committed to the relationship between its two leads than ever — the friendship, compromise, cooperation, and yes, romance between the two, a connection that defies most ordinary labels. But perhaps more importantly, the series’ paranoia about a shadowy cabal of men in suits running the national security infrastructure of the nation has never seemed more vital. “The X-Files” is riding the thermals of our current mindboggling political situation to new heights of righteous antiestablishmentarianism; when former FBI director Robert Mueller’s name gets dropped, it’s not a coincidence. And let’s not forget that just a few weeks ago, the Pentagon confirmed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a classified defense effort to investigate UFOs. Mulder’s feverish monologues have never seemed more sensible; even the rehash of his greatest hits (Roswell, a faked moon landing, the invasion of Grenada) carries with it a frisson of new fear. After the year we’ve had — after the idiocy, selfishness, and cruelty displayed by the highest echelons of power — it’s much easier to see things from Mulder’s point of view, to give credence to the relentless suspicion of government power that characterizes his paranoia. By contrast, Scully’s faith in common sense — in a reasonable explanation — has never felt more naive.
It’s not just the vivid backdrop that makes this season of “The X-Files” work, though. The episodes released for critics are just better episodes than the first time around — episodes that continue to stage adventures in an inexplicable world, some standalone, some not. Three of the first five episodes are written and directed by longtime “The X-Files” writers — Glen Morgan’s “This,” which revives the specter of the Lone Gunmen; James Wong’s “Ghouli,” which moves the mythology forward in the most meaningful way we’ve seen in approximately two decades; and Darin Morgan’s “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat,” which has for me made its way to the top tier of “The X-Files” episodes. In the midst of mythology, conjecture, and suspicion, it’s an episode about confronting the past and meaningfully engaging with the present — about the futility of nostalgia, in a vehicle defined by nostalgia. “The X-Files” is doing what few broadcast shows have the opportunity to: It’s mindfully allowing itself, and its characters, to age to the point of obsolescence.
In our current environment of reboots, reunions, and revivals, “The X-Files” might get lost in the shuffle of another beloved property suffering from the imperfection of never quite ending its story. But Season 11 indicates a movement towards resolution and completion, one that nods to the show’s early unexpected greatness and obliquely admits its mistakes. Not everything makes sense — among other things, it’s not totally clear how Mulder and Scully drop back into investigating mysterious phenomena on a regular basis. But it is such a relief: In a world of chaos and confusion, at least we know they are on the case.
The hit sci-fi show returned last night
The X-Files returned last night with the hit sci-fi show’s 11th season premiere, and fans aren’t too happy.
The show, which was originally broadcast back in 1993, follows the exploits of FBI agent Mulder and Scully, who investigate unexplained cases involving the supernatural or paranormal. After initially running for a nine season run, the show was shelved in 2002, before a 2016 revival series was aired. Last night (January 4), the show’s 11th season premiered on Fox.
Spoilers for The X-Files Season 11 Episode 1 ahead:
Fans on Twitter have been reacting negatively to the show’s return, with many slamming the confusing plot and insensitive handling of an unwanted impregnation, after the ‘cigarette smoking man’ character impregnates Scully against her will.
“I feel sick to my stomach and it’s just getting worse instead of better,” wrote one fan, while another noted: “Forgetting the fact that we know the Smoking Man is full of shit, that was too confusing to even enjoy. What just happened to me?”
“Impregnating someone without consent IS RAPE,” wrote one incensed fan. “And I am so fucking sick of victimization being used as an “interesting and emotional” plot point by tone deaf men. Our suffering is not your entertainment, Chris Carter. You just fucked over my favorite character AGAIN.”
Check out a bunch of fans’ reactions to The X-Files Season 11 Episode 1 below.
Back in December, Scully actress Gillian Anderson confirmed that she would be leaving the show after season 11. “I’ve said from the beginning this is it for me,” she told TV Insider. “I was a bit surprised by people’s [shocked] reaction to my announcement because my understanding was that this was a single season.”
Last year, Anderson expressed her disappointment at the news that the writing team for the X-Files would remain all-male. In response to the news Anderson tweeted: “I look forward to the day when the numbers are different”, noting that only two of the show’s 207 episodes to date have been directed by women.
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After her response was interpreted by some as “slamming” or “ripping” The X-Files, she tweeted: “Not ‘slam’, not ‘rip’, just stating truth. I believe we can do better.”
Image: Fox
This week, Gillian Anderson re-iterated a statement she’d already made clear: X-Files’ new season would be her final outing as Dana Scully. But in the wake of Anderson’s comments, X-Files creator Chris Carter has told fans and outlets that he still sees the potential for Scully’s return... because he doesn’t think there’s an X-Files without her.
Carter’s first response to Anderson’s comments to TV Guide—who she told that she’d “said from the beginning, [season 11] is it for me”—came in an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit last night, responding to a fan who asked Carter if Scully had been given a fitting sendoff in the new season:
For me, the show has always been Mulder & Scully. So the idea of doing the show without [Gillian] isn’t something I’ve ever had to consider. Was her character given a proper goodbye? I think you will want to sit down and watch the series finale very carefully.
Here, Carter makes it seem like Scully’s exit from the series is left open-ended, leaving the chance for Anderson to return rather than crafting a definitive end for the character. It’s a feeling Carter went on to re-affirm to Collider today, going even further to add that he doesn’t want to do more X-Files if it’s without Anderson, and maybe Duchovny as well:
I wouldn’t. For me, The X-Files is Mulder and Scully. I think if it were without Scully, I wouldn’t do it. That’s not my X-Files.
Which, when you think about all this for a little bit, is odd to say considering good chunks of seasons eight and nine were missing Duchovny’s involvement altogether! But that aside, Carter’s bullish affirmations that there’s no X-Files with Scully, and Anderson’s commitment to being done with the show again after season 11, it seems like The X-Files’ future is in yet another weird place after the current season wraps up. Maybe it’s time to start dreading that potential spinoff with cardboard cutout agents Einstein and Miller.
[Reddit, Collider]
