Guess I should get off my lazy ass and write something, yeah? It's been a kind of long dry spell thanks to not taking any time off work for the string of winter holidays ancient man invented to keep Western civilization from committing mass suicide from lack of endorphin and vitamin D deficiency (Merry Christmas friends; I just got you some insight.)
So the X-Files wrapped up Season Ten last night and mercifully it was shorter than the basically unwatchable Season Nine -- the one were Gillian Anderson reads her lines as great as ever, but her face makes all the words come out as, "Holy shitballs I am so done!" I can't tell of the flash of THIS IS THE END after the credits was a signal that the rebooted series' six episode pseudopod lurched out of its hardened bunker where it's been holed up eating baked beans for the passed 14 years into warm and familiar waters where an adoring viewership and gentle caress of renewal awaited, or the entire thing got cracked open with shucking knife and slurped down with butter to a guttural sucking noise, or it was just trying to be clever.
It wasn't clever, in any case. The intro tries to make sense of the fabled X-Files core mythology and while my memory of the original series is only partly intact, I get the feeling it skipped about half. Mind you, this wasn't for time constraints: the seasons of writing ignored to make the finale work were the bits that make the entirety of the show make not a solid but of fucking sense. The truth is indeed out there. And it's really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really dumb.
The sendoff felt more like an X-Files medley than an actual episode, but then again, that was the general feeling and indeed the likely purpose of the reboot in the first place: the next station stop of the Reboot Train. The first and last episode are the weakest of the six, and not just because they try to take root in a fictional narrative that has long since duct-taped itself to the wall for fear of self-harm. More time is spent showcasing Soup host Joel McHale's character -- a kind-of Glenn Beck spoof who serves as a jumping-off point for Mulder and Scully's eventual reunion and also as a one-man Greek chorus to remind the viewers were we left off. Much of the dialog follows suit. Mulder's final confrontation with The Smoking Man is laughable, and aside from a quick fight scene that's somehow never resolved, he's barely in the episode. Most of Scully's lines are wasted explaining things to the viewer as they're happening on the screen, and then after commercial, we get McHale's Tad O'Malley repeating them. I won't spoil the end but suffice to say it wraps up kind of awkwardly with Scully explaining the plot of more episodes to come before credits roll. Look, I get that people felt the original show didn't explain itself that well but this isn't really the best way to -- where the friggin' crap that UFO come from, come on guys!
The thing that feels so un-X-Files this go around is that it's all just so fast. X-Files didn't invent the slow burning story but honed to almost perfection, doling out breadcrumbs of both the FBI's most unwanteds' burgeoning love plot and the fate of the human race through 24-episode seasons. Like the way it tapped into the everyman's distrust of his government in the 90s and American's fascination with and indeed willingness to believe urban legends, it was really a show of its time. Syndicated shows gave you something to look forward to every week -- a kind of way to mark the time passing -- and allowed for a real dedicated fanbase to grow, not unlike that layer of orange slime you wipe out of the vegetable crisper every few months. Nowadays, you can binge Orange is the New Black in a coffee and pizza-fueled day, and then its over. The discussion lights up like a supernova for a few weeks, and then eventually it all fades to black and silence until the next season drops. The irony is that the delivery of more content instantly leads to less of an impact. Back in X-Files time, you got a big moment every week for months on end. Now you get one a show, maybe once a year.
The only episode that came close to good was the third, a kind of obligatory joke episode with a reverse-werewolf plot. It takes a while to get there, and most of it is Mulder discussing life's harsh realities with monster, whose turned into a man, and whose brush with humanity is turning into a monster, while Scully slowly and methodically discovers the real monster is only too human. It's almost like watching Scooby Doo on acid and thinking the entire experience is, like, transcendent, only to come to your senses amid urinating on your own couch.
But it hit that sweet spot of being funny but meaningful, and outlandish but allowing the viewer to hang disbelief on the coat rack for the evening. None of the other episodes quite did that, and worse, every time I felt like getting on board with the finale, a line of terrible dialog or the fact that the next generation of Mulder and Scully are named Miller and Einstein (sweet Jesus!) would curb-stomp me down back on the pavement. And can someone please explain how an 80-year-old intubated burn victim took down Mulder during a commercial break, after Mulder totally kicked some much younger dude's ass?
My hope is that this puts the final nail in X-Files coffin and we can bury that shit for good. Fiction is the world's magic mirror: it doesn't always show us exactly what we want to see -- when the Queen asked who was fairest she was left shouting at her glass, "You had one job!" -- but it shows us something about ourselves we perhaps don't realize or accept. We still need myths to explain the things we can't quite comprehend or reconcile, and those are what become handy placeholders for facts. The X-Files was not so much about the gap between myth and fact, but the journey from one to the other. From belief to evidence. Feeling to truth. Will it ever get there?
Not in six episodes.
