I was obsessed with The X-Files in the 90s. Loved it. And then as the seasons went along and the mythology got more convoluted and mixed up and doubled back on itself and there was Krycek and the big alien bounty hunter and the black goo and the cigarette smoking man was someone's father and he hated the Buffalo Bills for some reason and it just got to be too much and I realized there was no way (NO WAY) they were going to be able to tie this all together. And then I stopped obsessing about the mythology and just enjoyed it for what it was - until Doggett and Reyes showed up (or in my mind Coy and Vance Duke).
It was a good lesson for when "Lost" came around. A lesson I completely did not learn.
Hybrid MotW and longer arcs are clearly the ideal form of television and I hope we go back there. X-Files was great but it will be hard to top the best seasons of Buffy and Angel in this regard.
I loved the bonus chapter from Welcome to The O.C.! So funny/sad about the unheralded voice actors. Really looking forward to the whole book. I’m curious whether your rewatch changed your perspective on the show at all, from a critical standpoint? For instance, did Season 3 / Marissa get any better for you (or worse, somehow)? Or is your overall assessment largely the same as it was when it aired? (I read your blog then too!) Thank you!
I liked some parts of it more than I did back then, though not Season 3. (Everyone — Josh Schwartz included — is incredibly candid about all the ways that season was disastrous.) But I came out of season 2 more impressed than I remembered at the time, particularly in the second half. And there were also some stretches of season 1 that were less thrilling this time around, like almost anything with the parents in the second half of the season. (Did you remember that Sandy and Jimmy opened a restaurant?)
Haha I do remember the restaurant, I think that storyline played better weekly when we had hope it would be *going* somewhere. I agree that Season 3 is the weakest, but at the same time…Summer is a total delight throughout it (maybe the best Summer season!), as is Julie. Plus, Taylor (and Kaitlin)! And Mischa’s a much stronger actor by that point.
The 90s were a weird time for conspiracies about the government, from real-life events like Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidians to entertainment like JFK and all the oddball radio shows that existed back then (remember the craze with chupacabras?). I've always wondered how much the mythology of the X-Files and its fasciation with a small pox vaccine being used as part of an elaborate, bizarre, utterly nonsensical government conspiracy laid the groundwork for anti-vaccine conspiracies of the past 20+ years. I wouldn't suggest its the X-Files' fault, but it was in the zeitgeist along with everything else and leaned heavily on that storyline. I loved the show but the mythology storylines were a great example of writers making up complex back story as they went along and eventually writing themselves into all sorts of stupid corners.
I think I read somewhere that Carter had a two-season plan for the mythology storyline (since he had no idea if he'd even get a 2nd season when it premiered), and it was such a hit that he had to keep stretching and stretching and streeeetching out the mythology stuff until it was stuffed with dead ends and red herrings and silly cul-de-sac stories. I was too young to watch it in the 90's, but I tried watching it ~a decade ago and I only got through about 5 and a half seasons or so until I couldn't take the mythology jerk-around BS any longer. I LOVED the MotW episodes. I'm considering going back and only watching those ones. I don't know if I can get through the long, drawn out mythology stuff without rolling my eyes so hard that they threaten to get stuck looking at my brain.
That's what it felt like. I watched it as it aired, all the mythology storylines started out really fun and intriguing and some of the early 2- and 3-parters were great television (the lost submarine ones that introduce the black oil was an incredible bit of storytelling). But by S5 it was clear the mythology storylines were a mess. The MotW eps definitely hold up much better.
The problem with a potboiler like "X-Files" is that if they ever "solved" the conspiracy, the show would be over. So they had to keep "revealing" another piece of the conspiracy in those ultra-dramatic mythology episodes and season finales - but the "reveal" always turned out that there was yet ANOTHER layer to the conspiracy, and so on ad infinitum.
Thanks for your appreciation post about The X-Files, Alan. It’s my all-time favorite show.
(‘93 was a great year for tv drama debuts - Homicide: Life on the Street, Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, & NYPD Blue)
The one thing about the first movie and S5 is that the studio/network (which was all FOX) wouldn’t let Carter conclude the series and transition the franchise to become movies-only due to the high ratings. If the show had existed in a different ecosystem, I think FOX would’ve listened to him (ala the endgame agreement for LOST).
Yup, I remember this, too. But I've also interviewed practically the entire writing staff from that period at different points. What's fascinating is how much disagreement there is over whether Carter was ready to wrap up the mythology around the end of season 5, whether or not the show continued or segued entirely into movies. Some have argued that the conspiracy only became indecipherable and unwieldy because Carter had to keep it going far longer than it could sustain itself. The counter-argument, though, is that he simply didn't know where it was all meant to lead, and so he kept vamping.
About "The Morning Show": it's terrible and I watch every episode. That makes no sense but "look, it's Jennifer Aniston! It's Jon Hamm! It's the guy from 'The League'"! It thinks it's important but it's a mess. In the latest episode something new happens and I thought, "what crap is this?" Yet, somehow, I'll keep watching. (And it might have the worst opening credit sequence of any show at the moment.)
I haven't watched almost any of it up until this point, but my gf has followed along, and I've happened to be in the room when she's put on the first 3 episodes of season 3, and I actually feel like it's... OK? Like yes, it's not great or some ground-breaking show but it's watchable. And I actually enjoy the title credits and the song that goes with them! Perhaps that's only because I've seen 3 season 3 episodes though haha.
Honestly? I didn't love it. Cool as it was to see a live-action version of a Clone Wars battle, I didn't feel like Anakin and Ahsoka's interactions revealed much about their relationship. I'm glad Ahsoka came out of it in a lighter and more outgoing mood, as the version Rosario Dawson played previously seemed barely connected to the animated character, so there's that. And the pacing remains godawful. The space whale sequence was thrilling and beautiful at first, and then it. Just. Kept. Going.
I want to like this a whole lot more than I do so far. It's just not doing a whole lot for me.
Ahh bummer. Did it remind you of international assassin at all? Ahsoka had to battle a most powerful adversary to survive and make it back to the real world.
This is the first that comparison has even occurred to me, I'm afraid. International Assassin is such a deliberately strange, and ultimately emotionally overwhelming experience. This was like a few dozen episodes of other shows I've seen where a character hallucinates or magically gets a visit from a Ghost of Christmas Past/Present/Future-type.
Man, I want to like this show, and some of the visuals are cool, but it suffers from the heavy Star Wars Formula stuff that afflicts almost every movie and TV show since the original trilogy (besides Rogue One and Andor, of course). It feels like they have to follow the same EXACT plan for every episode: we must have one (1) lightsaber fight. We must have wipe cuts. We must have droids doing funny/cool droid stuff. We must have (in most eps) at least one cute animal to make people go "awww how cute". We must have at least one discussion of the force or being a jedi. It just feels so formulaic. I want them to mix it up and try different things so badly! That said, I still tune in to Disney+ each week, and I feel like each episodes is ever-so-slightly a net positive to watch. And I like the visuals and where the story arc is going in a macro sense. I just wish we could mix up some of these formulaic aspects sometimes. We get it, jedi are important/powerful, the force is important, every series/movie has to relate to the Skywalker family somehow, etc. etc. I know it's Disney so largely fat chance, we're lucky we got Andor, but mix up the formula a bit, dammit! Try new things! Try different editing! Introduce more characters that aren't jedi or sith or force-related! There's an entire universe in this world, of course.
I have been working through the X Files with a plan to stop after the movie (at least for a while) and am currently in early/mid season 5. I’ve been feeling exhausted by the mythology stuff for a season and a half now, muddling through it to reach the good stuff of the MOTW eps. “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man” was an exception. But now I’m at the point where Scully had a surprise daughter and what even...
One episode I’ll highlight as loving while the general reaction seems to be mixed: “The Field Where I Died”. A kitschy story with the characters having been connected in past lives, sure, but the acting is good (and I’m someone who thinks Duchovny is mediocre on the show) and the direction by Rob Bowman is superb. Up next for me: Chinga, the haunted doll, scripted by the King of Horror himself!
Yeah, that's about where I fell off. I just felt beaten to death with the mythology BS that went in circles ad nauseum and never actually went anywhere. The MotW episodes left me so happy and then a mythology episode would drag me back down, and I just couldn't handle it anymore. Hope you keep going though! I want to get through it all one day.
The only episode of the X-Files I've seen is Drive, probably at your recommendation because of the Cranston-Gilligan connection. Agreed that I needed no context to enjoy that episode on its own. So I can see why the Monster of the Week episodes remain the most popular ones.
Also, complete tangent, but speaking of you writing books. Do you and Matt have any plans to update TV (The Book)? I was skimming it last weekend and realized how many all-timers you had to relegate to the "in progress" section (Game of Thrones, Bojack, Better Call Saul, Leftovers, Americans etc...). Granted some of that might be recency bias, but I'd be really curious see where a second edition would rank them.
We talk about it periodically. Other projects and life things have gotten in the way. Plus, ideally there would be a decent gap between them. Maybe we'll aim for 2026, as a 10th anniversary thing? Regardless, I hope we get to do it at some point.
Whenever it gets released, I think the rankings & scoring will be intriguing as a lot of the streaming shows (& even recent cable shows) have a relatively short span compared to pre-2013 shows so how to balance that out.
It reminds of something you wrote in the section about The Office - that you’d choose the unevenness long run of the US version over the more consistent 14-ep run of the UK original.
Wow I would not have been happy in the Spook episode had been Atlanta’s last one. Some of the one-offs are brilliant but that wasn’t one of my faves. The last few eps were some of the best of all - the Alfred cabin ep, the Earn and Van camping ep, and the final Darius ep.
I was obsessed with The X-Files in the 90s. Loved it. And then as the seasons went along and the mythology got more convoluted and mixed up and doubled back on itself and there was Krycek and the big alien bounty hunter and the black goo and the cigarette smoking man was someone's father and he hated the Buffalo Bills for some reason and it just got to be too much and I realized there was no way (NO WAY) they were going to be able to tie this all together. And then I stopped obsessing about the mythology and just enjoyed it for what it was - until Doggett and Reyes showed up (or in my mind Coy and Vance Duke).
It was a good lesson for when "Lost" came around. A lesson I completely did not learn.
Hybrid MotW and longer arcs are clearly the ideal form of television and I hope we go back there. X-Files was great but it will be hard to top the best seasons of Buffy and Angel in this regard.
I loved the bonus chapter from Welcome to The O.C.! So funny/sad about the unheralded voice actors. Really looking forward to the whole book. I’m curious whether your rewatch changed your perspective on the show at all, from a critical standpoint? For instance, did Season 3 / Marissa get any better for you (or worse, somehow)? Or is your overall assessment largely the same as it was when it aired? (I read your blog then too!) Thank you!
I liked some parts of it more than I did back then, though not Season 3. (Everyone — Josh Schwartz included — is incredibly candid about all the ways that season was disastrous.) But I came out of season 2 more impressed than I remembered at the time, particularly in the second half. And there were also some stretches of season 1 that were less thrilling this time around, like almost anything with the parents in the second half of the season. (Did you remember that Sandy and Jimmy opened a restaurant?)
Haha I do remember the restaurant, I think that storyline played better weekly when we had hope it would be *going* somewhere. I agree that Season 3 is the weakest, but at the same time…Summer is a total delight throughout it (maybe the best Summer season!), as is Julie. Plus, Taylor (and Kaitlin)! And Mischa’s a much stronger actor by that point.
The 90s were a weird time for conspiracies about the government, from real-life events like Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidians to entertainment like JFK and all the oddball radio shows that existed back then (remember the craze with chupacabras?). I've always wondered how much the mythology of the X-Files and its fasciation with a small pox vaccine being used as part of an elaborate, bizarre, utterly nonsensical government conspiracy laid the groundwork for anti-vaccine conspiracies of the past 20+ years. I wouldn't suggest its the X-Files' fault, but it was in the zeitgeist along with everything else and leaned heavily on that storyline. I loved the show but the mythology storylines were a great example of writers making up complex back story as they went along and eventually writing themselves into all sorts of stupid corners.
Again, much of the revival was a mess, but I did appreciate Mulder outright saying that conspiracy theories didn't feel quite so fun anymore.
I think I read somewhere that Carter had a two-season plan for the mythology storyline (since he had no idea if he'd even get a 2nd season when it premiered), and it was such a hit that he had to keep stretching and stretching and streeeetching out the mythology stuff until it was stuffed with dead ends and red herrings and silly cul-de-sac stories. I was too young to watch it in the 90's, but I tried watching it ~a decade ago and I only got through about 5 and a half seasons or so until I couldn't take the mythology jerk-around BS any longer. I LOVED the MotW episodes. I'm considering going back and only watching those ones. I don't know if I can get through the long, drawn out mythology stuff without rolling my eyes so hard that they threaten to get stuck looking at my brain.
That's what it felt like. I watched it as it aired, all the mythology storylines started out really fun and intriguing and some of the early 2- and 3-parters were great television (the lost submarine ones that introduce the black oil was an incredible bit of storytelling). But by S5 it was clear the mythology storylines were a mess. The MotW eps definitely hold up much better.
The problem with a potboiler like "X-Files" is that if they ever "solved" the conspiracy, the show would be over. So they had to keep "revealing" another piece of the conspiracy in those ultra-dramatic mythology episodes and season finales - but the "reveal" always turned out that there was yet ANOTHER layer to the conspiracy, and so on ad infinitum.
Thanks for your appreciation post about The X-Files, Alan. It’s my all-time favorite show.
(‘93 was a great year for tv drama debuts - Homicide: Life on the Street, Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, & NYPD Blue)
The one thing about the first movie and S5 is that the studio/network (which was all FOX) wouldn’t let Carter conclude the series and transition the franchise to become movies-only due to the high ratings. If the show had existed in a different ecosystem, I think FOX would’ve listened to him (ala the endgame agreement for LOST).
Yup, I remember this, too. But I've also interviewed practically the entire writing staff from that period at different points. What's fascinating is how much disagreement there is over whether Carter was ready to wrap up the mythology around the end of season 5, whether or not the show continued or segued entirely into movies. Some have argued that the conspiracy only became indecipherable and unwieldy because Carter had to keep it going far longer than it could sustain itself. The counter-argument, though, is that he simply didn't know where it was all meant to lead, and so he kept vamping.
About "The Morning Show": it's terrible and I watch every episode. That makes no sense but "look, it's Jennifer Aniston! It's Jon Hamm! It's the guy from 'The League'"! It thinks it's important but it's a mess. In the latest episode something new happens and I thought, "what crap is this?" Yet, somehow, I'll keep watching. (And it might have the worst opening credit sequence of any show at the moment.)
This is more or less how my critic friends talk about it. (Including their shared hatred of the title sequence.)
Episode 1 this year didn't have a "Skip Intro" option and the 3 minute opening felt like 30 minutes.
I haven't watched almost any of it up until this point, but my gf has followed along, and I've happened to be in the room when she's put on the first 3 episodes of season 3, and I actually feel like it's... OK? Like yes, it's not great or some ground-breaking show but it's watchable. And I actually enjoy the title credits and the song that goes with them! Perhaps that's only because I've seen 3 season 3 episodes though haha.
Season 2 was god-level bad but I’ve heard s3 is an improvement and I’ll basically watch anything with Hamm in it.
"I’m very proud of how it turned out, and pleased with how candid almost everyone was on almost every subject, and it turns out."
Now I want to know who wasn't candid and on what subjects!
You'll be able to tell. Believe me.
What about this week's Ahsoka?!?! 🤯
Honestly? I didn't love it. Cool as it was to see a live-action version of a Clone Wars battle, I didn't feel like Anakin and Ahsoka's interactions revealed much about their relationship. I'm glad Ahsoka came out of it in a lighter and more outgoing mood, as the version Rosario Dawson played previously seemed barely connected to the animated character, so there's that. And the pacing remains godawful. The space whale sequence was thrilling and beautiful at first, and then it. Just. Kept. Going.
I want to like this a whole lot more than I do so far. It's just not doing a whole lot for me.
Ahh bummer. Did it remind you of international assassin at all? Ahsoka had to battle a most powerful adversary to survive and make it back to the real world.
This is the first that comparison has even occurred to me, I'm afraid. International Assassin is such a deliberately strange, and ultimately emotionally overwhelming experience. This was like a few dozen episodes of other shows I've seen where a character hallucinates or magically gets a visit from a Ghost of Christmas Past/Present/Future-type.
Man, I want to like this show, and some of the visuals are cool, but it suffers from the heavy Star Wars Formula stuff that afflicts almost every movie and TV show since the original trilogy (besides Rogue One and Andor, of course). It feels like they have to follow the same EXACT plan for every episode: we must have one (1) lightsaber fight. We must have wipe cuts. We must have droids doing funny/cool droid stuff. We must have (in most eps) at least one cute animal to make people go "awww how cute". We must have at least one discussion of the force or being a jedi. It just feels so formulaic. I want them to mix it up and try different things so badly! That said, I still tune in to Disney+ each week, and I feel like each episodes is ever-so-slightly a net positive to watch. And I like the visuals and where the story arc is going in a macro sense. I just wish we could mix up some of these formulaic aspects sometimes. We get it, jedi are important/powerful, the force is important, every series/movie has to relate to the Skywalker family somehow, etc. etc. I know it's Disney so largely fat chance, we're lucky we got Andor, but mix up the formula a bit, dammit! Try new things! Try different editing! Introduce more characters that aren't jedi or sith or force-related! There's an entire universe in this world, of course.
I have been working through the X Files with a plan to stop after the movie (at least for a while) and am currently in early/mid season 5. I’ve been feeling exhausted by the mythology stuff for a season and a half now, muddling through it to reach the good stuff of the MOTW eps. “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man” was an exception. But now I’m at the point where Scully had a surprise daughter and what even...
One episode I’ll highlight as loving while the general reaction seems to be mixed: “The Field Where I Died”. A kitschy story with the characters having been connected in past lives, sure, but the acting is good (and I’m someone who thinks Duchovny is mediocre on the show) and the direction by Rob Bowman is superb. Up next for me: Chinga, the haunted doll, scripted by the King of Horror himself!
Yeah, that's about where I fell off. I just felt beaten to death with the mythology BS that went in circles ad nauseum and never actually went anywhere. The MotW episodes left me so happy and then a mythology episode would drag me back down, and I just couldn't handle it anymore. Hope you keep going though! I want to get through it all one day.
The only episode of the X-Files I've seen is Drive, probably at your recommendation because of the Cranston-Gilligan connection. Agreed that I needed no context to enjoy that episode on its own. So I can see why the Monster of the Week episodes remain the most popular ones.
Also, complete tangent, but speaking of you writing books. Do you and Matt have any plans to update TV (The Book)? I was skimming it last weekend and realized how many all-timers you had to relegate to the "in progress" section (Game of Thrones, Bojack, Better Call Saul, Leftovers, Americans etc...). Granted some of that might be recency bias, but I'd be really curious see where a second edition would rank them.
We talk about it periodically. Other projects and life things have gotten in the way. Plus, ideally there would be a decent gap between them. Maybe we'll aim for 2026, as a 10th anniversary thing? Regardless, I hope we get to do it at some point.
Whenever it gets released, I think the rankings & scoring will be intriguing as a lot of the streaming shows (& even recent cable shows) have a relatively short span compared to pre-2013 shows so how to balance that out.
It reminds of something you wrote in the section about The Office - that you’d choose the unevenness long run of the US version over the more consistent 14-ep run of the UK original.
Ten year anniversary would be great!
Wow I would not have been happy in the Spook episode had been Atlanta’s last one. Some of the one-offs are brilliant but that wasn’t one of my faves. The last few eps were some of the best of all - the Alfred cabin ep, the Earn and Van camping ep, and the final Darius ep.
That Darius finale really is such a masterpiece.