I love this. In a weird coincidence, I find myself watching most of this show for the first time. But I had good friends of mine who talked about it all the time.
I think Humbug is the best episode, though perhaps because it's so self contained. Morgan had Mulder as an obsessive urban legends nerd who ignores reality decades ahead of the curve, apparently.
P.P.S., re: the third footnote: A little after the 11th season aired, I met Mark Snow -- y'know, the guy who did all the show's music -- and ended up having a four-hour phone call with him the next day. (Yes, yes, wild, I know.) IIRC he said his favorite episode of the series was RzX32jDd5f2jo (or whatever it's called), because the episode's score was completely diegetic but he got paid anyway. ;')
I loved reading this despite being an X-Files noob -- I have only watched, like, half of the first season a couple years ago. But I was amazed by that half-season, because the received wisdom about which episodes were "good" and which episodes were "bad" was so off. Like, yeah, "Squeeze" and the episode that was just "The Thing" were awesome like everyone said. But all the recappers thought, like, the NASA episode was lame, but it was actually great -- freaky and cinematic and moody! All the episodes are like that, honestly. You wouldn't expect the killer AI monster-of-the-week filler episode to be good on, like, Buffy.
(Well, ok, the killer AI monster-of-the-week filler episode of Buffy is charming and also very interesting in the broader series-wide arc of the show actually, but I will not elaborate on that unless pressed. And hey, since I mentioned it -- I mention BTVS a lot because it is my televisual lodestar, but obviously it and X-Files share a ton of DNA -- how likely is it that the Mary Sue joke and splice-the-dweeb-into-the-opening-credits gag in "...Forehead Sweat" were inspired by the Buffy episode "Superstar" -- which was written by Jane Espenson, who was arguably the Darin Morgan of the Buffy writers' room? I mean, Vince Gilligan is famously a huge Buffy fan, so it seems plausible.)
(Oh, and I'm 30 years late to the punchline, but the meta gag of casting Alex Trebek in "...Jose Chung" is that he, like The X-Files, is an American TV icon whose actually-a-Canadian-ness was an open secret, right??)
- Oh yes. The Canada-ness can be really distracting when a case takes them out to some rural area on the East Coast and the vegetation is all wrong. I can't even watch the Jersey Devil episode because they're *CLEARLY* not in any woods that exist in South Jersey and it just takes me out of it.
- Actually, I read somewhere that Morgan's first choice for the second Man in Black was Johnny Cash, not Trebek.
- I haven't watched Buffy, and I keep forgetting to ask my spouse if she has. She used to be into Supernatural, so maybe it would be up her alley?!
This is quite funny, my experience with the X-Files was almost the same as yours: watched bits and pieces of it in the 90s, started watching it beginning to end a couple years ago, but only really got into it this past year.
My "running from the room frightened as a kid" episode was Folie a Deux, the one with the monster running the telemarketing center. It's still a great episode. A few other personal favorites: the one with the holographic Lara Croft that starts murdering people, an awesome blend of grotesque and hilarious that was waaaaay ahead of its time. I loved the episode where Scully tries to save the four disabled girls who might be half-angels from the devil. I thought it was brilliant and fascinating the way it flipped her and Mulder's roles.
I actually think that the way we watched it in the 90s was probably the best way to experience it. Watching it randomly and out of order, you get to enjoy some really amazing solo episodes, and you get a sense of a greater mystery, but you never have to feel the disappointment of yet another stupidly done cliffhanger, or idiotic villain resurrection. You get the good stuff without having to feel the pain of watching as the Mythology degenerates into contemptible self-parody.
The show was always at its best when it was focused squarely on Mulder and Scully, two incredibly charismatic leads with phenomenal chemistry. It was a wellspring of creative ideas, great villains, fascinating locations. The sheer diversity of the subject material explored was really wonderful.
But it also tries to do way too much. Alex Krycek is the character who personifies what went wrong with the show. He was clearly envisioned as an evil foil of Mulder, and could've been a very interesting character, but his storyline never goes anywhere. It becomes clear eventually that the writers simply don't know what to do with him, they stuck him in the show with no idea how to tie him into the greater story. By the later seasons, he's just this sad Jack-in-the-box that pops up every now and then to menace the good guys for no real reason. Turns out he never had an arc in the first place. He was just a good idea that was never developed and didn't belong.
It was the best of shows, it was the worst of shows. But definitely more good than bad.
PS: I haven't heard Vince Gilligan talk about the X Files. But I will always believe that the reason Breaking Bad was so tight, focused entirely on a central character and story with no digressions, finishing up after a tidy five seasons, at the height of its powers, was because the X-Files just sort of went on forever and refused to leave the stage until it was dragged off, kicking and screaming.
- Mulder & Scully's chemistry is almost as remarkable as the show's managing to hold out for like six years before giving in and having them kiss onscreen. I don't like grumbling about modern television (since I don't watch much of it at all), but I've a sense that if the X-Files ran today, the writers would cave to fan pressure and have them hopping into bed together midway through season two.
- On the level of the individual episode, Krycek is great. He's a serial traitor who adds an element of uncertainty and tension to every episode he appears in. But in the bigger picture, his whole arc is just a lot of doing things for some reason. It's sort of the same problem with the later Mythology: if you're watching an individual episode without any context, it can be kind of cool, exciting, scary. But as soon as you start thinking about it in terms of its context and implications for the larger story, you wish you hadn't.
- "The best of shows & the worst of shows" is a great way of putting it. But when The X-Files is good, it's so good that it's hard to blame it for being so bloody inconsistent and even disappointing.
- Son of a bitch. You just reminded me that "Home" wasn't the last episode I watched as a kid. It was Folie a Deux. I don't think it scared me as much as "The Host," but I wouldn't be surprised if I slept with the light on that night.
On a lark, I decided to check out the Top 20 episodes by imdb user rating and see how many each season had.
The results:
Season 1 - 2
Season 2 - 3
Season 3 - 4
Season 4 - 3
Season 5 - 3
Season 6 - 4
Season 8 - 1
I'd say that tracks with what most fans would expect.
Two episodes are tied for #1: Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, and Bad Blood, which I'd say has the best opening segment in the whole series.
The only episode in the top 20 after the first six seasons is Existence, the final Krycek episode, where Scully ends up giving birth in Georgia.
The two worst-rated episodes are Techo Dos Bichos from Season 3, that focuses on a jaguar spirit, and Fight Club, which Kathy Griffin guest "starred" in.
"First Person Shooter" is also in the bottom 3. I actually like this one a lot, I think it aged well, given how AI, social media, and virtual reality are becoming ever larger parts of our society, and intersecting in creepy and dehumanizing ways.
I love this. In a weird coincidence, I find myself watching most of this show for the first time. But I had good friends of mine who talked about it all the time.
Strap yourself in for a lot of fun and a lot of disappointment! (The fun outweighs the disappointment, but....well, you'll see.)
I think Humbug is the best episode, though perhaps because it's so self contained. Morgan had Mulder as an obsessive urban legends nerd who ignores reality decades ahead of the curve, apparently.
Humbug is a trip. That moment where Scully and Lanny both catch the other staring and simultaneously adjust their bathrobes was brilliant.
P.P.S., re: the third footnote: A little after the 11th season aired, I met Mark Snow -- y'know, the guy who did all the show's music -- and ended up having a four-hour phone call with him the next day. (Yes, yes, wild, I know.) IIRC he said his favorite episode of the series was RzX32jDd5f2jo (or whatever it's called), because the episode's score was completely diegetic but he got paid anyway. ;')
I loved reading this despite being an X-Files noob -- I have only watched, like, half of the first season a couple years ago. But I was amazed by that half-season, because the received wisdom about which episodes were "good" and which episodes were "bad" was so off. Like, yeah, "Squeeze" and the episode that was just "The Thing" were awesome like everyone said. But all the recappers thought, like, the NASA episode was lame, but it was actually great -- freaky and cinematic and moody! All the episodes are like that, honestly. You wouldn't expect the killer AI monster-of-the-week filler episode to be good on, like, Buffy.
(Well, ok, the killer AI monster-of-the-week filler episode of Buffy is charming and also very interesting in the broader series-wide arc of the show actually, but I will not elaborate on that unless pressed. And hey, since I mentioned it -- I mention BTVS a lot because it is my televisual lodestar, but obviously it and X-Files share a ton of DNA -- how likely is it that the Mary Sue joke and splice-the-dweeb-into-the-opening-credits gag in "...Forehead Sweat" were inspired by the Buffy episode "Superstar" -- which was written by Jane Espenson, who was arguably the Darin Morgan of the Buffy writers' room? I mean, Vince Gilligan is famously a huge Buffy fan, so it seems plausible.)
(Oh, and I'm 30 years late to the punchline, but the meta gag of casting Alex Trebek in "...Jose Chung" is that he, like The X-Files, is an American TV icon whose actually-a-Canadian-ness was an open secret, right??)
- Oh yes. The Canada-ness can be really distracting when a case takes them out to some rural area on the East Coast and the vegetation is all wrong. I can't even watch the Jersey Devil episode because they're *CLEARLY* not in any woods that exist in South Jersey and it just takes me out of it.
- Actually, I read somewhere that Morgan's first choice for the second Man in Black was Johnny Cash, not Trebek.
- I haven't watched Buffy, and I keep forgetting to ask my spouse if she has. She used to be into Supernatural, so maybe it would be up her alley?!
This is quite funny, my experience with the X-Files was almost the same as yours: watched bits and pieces of it in the 90s, started watching it beginning to end a couple years ago, but only really got into it this past year.
My "running from the room frightened as a kid" episode was Folie a Deux, the one with the monster running the telemarketing center. It's still a great episode. A few other personal favorites: the one with the holographic Lara Croft that starts murdering people, an awesome blend of grotesque and hilarious that was waaaaay ahead of its time. I loved the episode where Scully tries to save the four disabled girls who might be half-angels from the devil. I thought it was brilliant and fascinating the way it flipped her and Mulder's roles.
I actually think that the way we watched it in the 90s was probably the best way to experience it. Watching it randomly and out of order, you get to enjoy some really amazing solo episodes, and you get a sense of a greater mystery, but you never have to feel the disappointment of yet another stupidly done cliffhanger, or idiotic villain resurrection. You get the good stuff without having to feel the pain of watching as the Mythology degenerates into contemptible self-parody.
The show was always at its best when it was focused squarely on Mulder and Scully, two incredibly charismatic leads with phenomenal chemistry. It was a wellspring of creative ideas, great villains, fascinating locations. The sheer diversity of the subject material explored was really wonderful.
But it also tries to do way too much. Alex Krycek is the character who personifies what went wrong with the show. He was clearly envisioned as an evil foil of Mulder, and could've been a very interesting character, but his storyline never goes anywhere. It becomes clear eventually that the writers simply don't know what to do with him, they stuck him in the show with no idea how to tie him into the greater story. By the later seasons, he's just this sad Jack-in-the-box that pops up every now and then to menace the good guys for no real reason. Turns out he never had an arc in the first place. He was just a good idea that was never developed and didn't belong.
It was the best of shows, it was the worst of shows. But definitely more good than bad.
PS: I haven't heard Vince Gilligan talk about the X Files. But I will always believe that the reason Breaking Bad was so tight, focused entirely on a central character and story with no digressions, finishing up after a tidy five seasons, at the height of its powers, was because the X-Files just sort of went on forever and refused to leave the stage until it was dragged off, kicking and screaming.
- Mulder & Scully's chemistry is almost as remarkable as the show's managing to hold out for like six years before giving in and having them kiss onscreen. I don't like grumbling about modern television (since I don't watch much of it at all), but I've a sense that if the X-Files ran today, the writers would cave to fan pressure and have them hopping into bed together midway through season two.
- On the level of the individual episode, Krycek is great. He's a serial traitor who adds an element of uncertainty and tension to every episode he appears in. But in the bigger picture, his whole arc is just a lot of doing things for some reason. It's sort of the same problem with the later Mythology: if you're watching an individual episode without any context, it can be kind of cool, exciting, scary. But as soon as you start thinking about it in terms of its context and implications for the larger story, you wish you hadn't.
- "The best of shows & the worst of shows" is a great way of putting it. But when The X-Files is good, it's so good that it's hard to blame it for being so bloody inconsistent and even disappointing.
- Son of a bitch. You just reminded me that "Home" wasn't the last episode I watched as a kid. It was Folie a Deux. I don't think it scared me as much as "The Host," but I wouldn't be surprised if I slept with the light on that night.
On a lark, I decided to check out the Top 20 episodes by imdb user rating and see how many each season had.
The results:
Season 1 - 2
Season 2 - 3
Season 3 - 4
Season 4 - 3
Season 5 - 3
Season 6 - 4
Season 8 - 1
I'd say that tracks with what most fans would expect.
Two episodes are tied for #1: Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, and Bad Blood, which I'd say has the best opening segment in the whole series.
The only episode in the top 20 after the first six seasons is Existence, the final Krycek episode, where Scully ends up giving birth in Georgia.
The two worst-rated episodes are Techo Dos Bichos from Season 3, that focuses on a jaguar spirit, and Fight Club, which Kathy Griffin guest "starred" in.
"First Person Shooter" is also in the bottom 3. I actually like this one a lot, I think it aged well, given how AI, social media, and virtual reality are becoming ever larger parts of our society, and intersecting in creepy and dehumanizing ways.