So I want to revisit this show… Start on season 1 eh?
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Originally Posted by Freeman 
So I want to revisit this show… Start on season 1 eh?
I think so. It doesn’t hit the highs of later seasons, but it’s entertaining as all hell. It starts good and gets better.
My personal favorite is the Peter Boyle episode ‘Clyde Bruckman’ in large part because of what he says to Mulder (implying that this is how Mulder would die)
Clyde Bruckman: You know, there are worse ways to go, but I can’t think of a more undignified way than autoerotic asphyxiation.
Mulder: Why are you telling me that?
Clyde Bruckman: Look, forget I mentioned it. It’s none of my business.
I also saw Home the first time it aired and was totally stunned by it. Beyond the violence and grossness of it though, what I love about it is the ending, the way that the mom is telling her son about how they’ll find a new place and start over again … and then he gets out of the trunk of the car. With the old time song playing and the car, just such an incredible takedown of the romanticized ideas of Americana.
For the early episodes I loved anything with Mr X, especially that unexplained elevator fight that he had with Skinner, wtf?
The El Rey Network, which I wasn’t even aware I received, has been showing this in HD and it looks pretty damn good for this show. I fired up the Netflix app on my iPad to compare the two side by side, and there’s some slight cropping at the bottom, but they also show more on the sides. Not sure what aspect it was filmed in, but thought it was a pretty good compromise to make the show more marketable in syndication.
Anyway, I’ve been watching a few random episodes as they air and at this point, I don’t think I want to revisit the series in full until it hits Blu-ray or Netflix gets an HD copy.
I’d love to get this on HD when the time comes, but I’ve really been enjoying this rewatch. I’m realizing just how little I’ve seen of the early seasons, and I’m having a blast catching up. This is easily one of the best network shows ever. (although the one about the space ghost possessing Ed Lauter gave me some chuckles)
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Originally Posted by Subotai
I mentioned this in the thread for Chris Carter’s new show, the one I can’t remember the name of any more. The list of writers and producers on the show was unbelievable. Glen Morgan and James Wong. Frank Spotnitz. The guy who created Homeland. Fucking Vince Gilligan. I don’t think we knew how good we had it at the time.
We knew.
Probably the best group of writers and producers since TZ. I can’t think of another show that spawned so many great ones.
It was a petri dish for talent and new ways of thinking about TV. Say what you will about Chris Carter, he had an eye for talent and according to all those guys, was always a generous and supportive leader.
But I have to say: I think the show was ultimately being pulled two ways toward the end of its run: Gilligan was evolving the crime/supernatural/monster of the week sensibility while Spotnitz seems to have clamped down on the arc episodes with “shipper” sentimentality. I could be wrong, but I recently got the blu-ray 2-pack of the two movies, and listened to the commentary (which I’ve never done before for any movie and it was exactly as goofy an experience as I imagined it to be), and Spotnitz couldn’t shut up about the MSR (Mulder-Scully Relationship, for the uninitiated). Just dwelling on every look or brush of the hand. Enough already.
I want XF3 to happen more than any other movie project, but I would love to see Chris Carter collaborate with either Gilligan or Morgan and Wong on it.
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Originally Posted by yt
It was a petri dish for talent and new ways of thinking about TV. Say what you will about Chris Carter, he had an eye for talent and according to all those guys, was always a generous and supportive leader.
But I have to say: I think the show was ultimately being pulled two ways toward the end of its run: Gilligan was evolving the crime/supernatural/monster of the week sensibility while Spotnitz seems to have clamped down on the arc episodes with “shipper” sentimentality. I could be wrong, but I recently got the blu-ray 2-pack of the two movies, and listened to the commentary (which I’ve never done before for any movie and it was exactly as goofy an experience as I imagined it to be), and Spotnitz couldn’t shut up about the MSR (Mulder-Scully Relationship, for the uninitiated). Just dwelling on every look or brush of the hand. Enough already.
I want XF3 to happen more than any other movie project, but I would love to see Chris Carter collaborate with either Gilligan or Morgan and Wong on it.
I’m pretty sure Fox was pushing to continue the series even though it expired. I bet you that’s why Vince Gilligan ended BB even though he was being pressured to continue it’s run. Lesson learned I’m sure.
I’d love to see another X-Files movie! A good one.
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Originally Posted by cccc
I’m pretty sure Fox was pushing to continue the series even though it expired. I bet you that’s why Vince Gilligan ended BB even though he was being pressured to continue it’s run. Lesson learned I’m sure.
I’d love to see another X-Files movie! A good one.
Yeah, totally. Gilligan did it absolutely the right way, with perfect grace and symmetry. BB is just masterful.
Re: XF3, all of them kept saying that it’s up to Fox, and I don’t see how Fox turns up its nose at making this movie after the ridiculously massive Comic Con response and the year of conventions and great work Gillian Anderson has been doing.
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Originally Posted by yt
Yeah, totally. Gilligan did it absolutely the right way, with perfect grace and symmetry. BB is just masterful.
Re: XF3, all of them kept saying that it’s up to Fox, and I don’t see how Fox turns up its nose at making this movie after the ridiculously massive Comic Con response and the year of conventions and great work Gillian Anderson has been doing.
Yeah, she’s been knocking it out of the park. She looks amazing too.
Got season 1. Twenty minutes into the pilot. Forgot how full on funny Moulder is. Over the years and parodies my memories have designed him to be this incredibly subdued and monotone dude, but Duchovny is full on playful here. I love it.
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Originally Posted by Freeman
Got season 1. Twenty minutes into the pilot. Forgot how full on funny Moulder is. Over the years and parodies my memories have designed him to be this incredibly subdued and monotone dude, but Duchovny is full on playful here. I love it.
The chemistry between the two is golden. It’s what makes the series that much special. Damn dude you are making me want to watch the whole series again.
AIt be cool to see a third movie of the x-files I always enjoyed how Gillian Anderson character was on the series.
Another thing the rewatch reminds me of is how impressive it is they could make something this consistently entertaining and cinematic for *24 episodes a season.*With the rise of cable shows and their shorter, more focused seasons, future generations will look at that with the same awe that I look at those old 50s live shows like Playhouse 90 that would essentially create an original live 90-minute film every week. The first season has the lowest production values, but it still takes chances and, as the season goes on, gets more impressive visually.
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Yeah, totally. Gilligan did it absolutely the right way, with perfect grace and symmetry. BB is just masterful.
I think I’d rather Gilligan write a new X-Files movie than do the BB Saul spin-off. BB ended perfectly and definitively. The X-Files could easily continue.
ADORE this show. Got all nine seasons and both movies on DVD. It’s funny that I saw this thread today - since I’ve actually been revisiting a few episodes lately. I was just thinking about my favourite bad guy, the Bounty Hunter. Remember him? The shape-shifting alien assassin played by Brian Thompson? He was a bad-ass bad guy. I loved the way he was brought into it. Those his two episodes stripped away any ambiguity. When that Bounty Hunter guy showed up it was just like “BAM!!! YES THEY DO EXIST AND EARTH IS FUCKED”. LOVED it.
I was watching this from when it was very first broadcast in the UK - even before it’s popularity took off and became a global phenomenon. Before all that hoopla started it was sort of like my little secret. It was shown late nights on BBC2. I thought the first movie they did was amazing. I even liked the second.
Even though I liked the Doggett character introduced in Season 8 as a partial replacement for Mulder - I think a better way to handle his disappearance would be to have Skinner busted down to Special Agent and be forced to work the X files department as punishment - and sort of make him the lead character of the show.
I remember - at college we had a teacher who looked exactly like Skinner. The bald head, glasses and everything (although much younger). When we saw him we used to shout “DAMMIT MULDER!!! NOW YOU’VE GONE TOO FAR!!! I CAN’T COVER YOUR ASS THIS TIME!!!” He had a sense of humour about it bless him. He’d just smile and shake his head and say “Yes, Dammit Mulder indeed!”
He was a bit like Skinner in personality too. Bit of a hard-ass but all the students still liked him. Nice guy. Miss him a bit.
I bought the DVD boxed set in January 2010 cause it was a ridiculous bargain. Shortly after I bought it my wife and I went down with the “Swine Flu”. Remember that epidemic that hit the UK? Anyway, I was absolutely SICK AS FUCK. Could barely move. Absolutely horrible illness, and I was lying in bed just watching it to try and stop myself going crazy. At one point my fever spiked at 105 and I was completely delirious. I mean - I was absolutely on a different planet. And I began to hallucinate. During this period - I actually thought Mulder and Scully were in the room with me standing by my bed and I shit you not, I asked Mulder to go downstairs and get me a can of coke from the fridge - or buy me one and put it on the FBI expenses, cause my throat was really sore and wanted something cold. Then my fever came down and I came back to reality - and was able to crawl downstairs and get one for myself.
But still, love **The X Files.**I’d like to see it come back as a limited series like they are doing with **24.**12 new episodes to wrap up the mythology for good.
“Mulder, i think you’ve been in this town too long.”
Love that Cockroach episode with Bobbie Philips. Some great comedy gold there.
Also Bad Blood.
Since they’re all on Netflix I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve marathoned them THREE times. Yes, three times all the way through, including the movies. My favorite will always be The Erlenmeyer Flask, but all the Darin Morgan eps are amazing, especially Clyde Bruckman. And Morgan & Wongs’ Home and Beyond the Sea, and the Post-modern Prometheus.
I liked Doggett and Reyes too. The problem with seasons 8 and 9 wasn’t them or the writing (Gilligan has some amazing eps those seasons), it was weepy Scully and the whole William debacle, which still irks me.
AI’m making my way through season two, so it’s a lot of Mulder solo missions and Scully sitting behind a desk to hide the actress’ pregnancy.
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Originally Posted by yt
It was a petri dish for talent and new ways of thinking about TV. Say what you will about Chris Carter, he had an eye for talent and according to all those guys, was always a generous and supportive leader.
Man, that’s not what I heard. Even at the time there were lots of rumours flying around that Carter was a bit of a petty dictator, which is why there was so much turnover early on. Certainly it was always a little ridiculous that the show was billed, at the time, as being somehow sprung purely from the brow of Chris Carter–I remember an article attributing him “as close to sole authorship as is possible with TV”–when it was so obviously the work of a team of talents. I don’t know if Carter actually promoted that idea in the press or if it just somehow stuck and gave Carter a huge ego, but either way he apparently had a propensity for rewriting everyone’s scripts, rarely for the better. I mean the guy rewrote STEPHEN KING for Christ’s sake (I remember an article in EW that lavished praise on King’s episode based on the script and then, a few weeks later, the same critic sheepishly mentioned that the finished episode was disappointing, apparently because Carter rewrote it). It also sounds like Carter shot down or reworked a lot of good ideas, many of which involved actually moving the show’s mythology forward, because despite all the teases at being a serialized show he was determined to make something that suited the old model of television, where nothing ever changes for the sake of syndication. (The one I remember was “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man”, which was supposed to kill off Frojike at the end, but Carter apparently vetoed it–making the episode’s framing story pretty pointless–and insisted on introducing a lot of ambiguity into whether we were REALLY seeing CSM’s backstory, just in case he wanted to go back to it later. So basically he was kind of an early model for JJ Abrams.) Oh, and there was the thing where he adapted the comic “Harsh Realm” without crediting the creators…so maybe he was actually an early model for Shia LaBeouf.
I know, I know, this is mostly rumours from when I was a teenager. Maybe it’s all bullshit and Carter was an awesome dude. I can’t help noticing that he flamed out after The X-Files, though, whereas his writing staff have gone onto solid careers and acclaim.
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Originally Posted by The Prankster
Man, that’s not what I heard. Even at the time there were lots of rumours flying around that Carter was a bit of a petty dictator, which is why there was so much turnover early on. Certainly it was always a little ridiculous that the show was billed, at the time, as being somehow sprung purely from the brow of Chris Carter–I remember an article attributing him “as close to sole authorship as is possible with TV”–when it was so obviously the work of a team of talents. I don’t know if Carter actually promoted that idea in the press or if it just somehow stuck and gave Carter a huge ego, but either way he apparently had a propensity for rewriting everyone’s scripts, rarely for the better. I mean the guy rewrote STEPHEN KING for Christ’s sake (I remember an article in EW that lavished praise on King’s episode based on the script and then, a few weeks later, the same critic sheepishly mentioned that the finished episode was disappointing, apparently because Carter rewrote it). It also sounds like Carter shot down or reworked a lot of good ideas, many of which involved actually moving the show’s mythology forward, because despite all the teases at being a serialized show he was determined to make something that suited the old model of television, where nothing ever changes for the sake of syndication. (The one I remember was “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man”, which was supposed to kill off Frojike at the end, but Carter apparently vetoed it–making the episode’s framing story pretty pointless–and insisted on introducing a lot of ambiguity into whether we were REALLY seeing CSM’s backstory, just in case he wanted to go back to it later. So basically he was kind of an early model for JJ Abrams.) Oh, and there was the thing where he adapted the comic “Harsh Realm” without crediting the creators…so maybe he was actually an early model for Shia LaBeouf.
I know, I know, this is mostly rumours from when I was a teenager. Maybe it’s all bullshit and Carter was an awesome dude. I can’t help noticing that he flamed out after The X-Files, though, whereas his writing staff have gone onto solid careers and acclaim.
Morgan and Wong always had a chip on their shoulder, and most of the badmouthing of CC came from them. But I think they’ve come around. They did write some great episodes, but they also wrote some bad ones - the Field Where I Died is unwatchable, and while Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man is fun to watch, it DOESN’T fit in with the mythology as it had been set up to that point. It’s funny to think of CSM as a failed writer - to me, it went along with the “funny” episodes, like Bad Blood and Darin Morgan’s stuff, but I’m glad CC didn’t let them kill Frohike. He’s one of my favorite characters. I don’t even like what happened to the Lone Gunmen in the end.
Who knows, it could all be true, but as far as I know, Morgan & Wong were the only ones saying those things.