I've had 20 years of writing on this site, writing & referencing my love of X-FILES when AICN joined the world during the 3rd Season of THE X-FILES and when it left television we mourned... not profusely, because the end of THE X-FILES had lost the vital enthusiasm that it captured for so much of its run. But we have been screaming for new movies... fairly constantly... And tonight, after a decidedly one-sided pounding of a football game... damn the Panthers looked fantastic! Well THE X-FILES' first new hour of television in.... damn... so long.
I didn't need tonight's episode to be great great, just being the first hour meant in my mind that we were going to have to deal with a reintroduction of the mythology, the relationship between Scully & Mulder, and I knew they were going to hatch something crazy scary paranoia driving... and I knew we'd see some kind of ROSWELL reenactment - and all of that was fine by me.
Folks have described David Duchovny's MULDER as looking tired, but he is tired. And this situation doesn't particularly thrill him because... well it puts him back with his ex-wife and you definitely see that they're both in that... chipping of the dark crystal of their past love... seeing who can cut deeper. It weighs on Duchovny. This isn't Duchovny of CALIFORNICATION, but in a way it is. You can tell he's been in hibernation with his computer, scanning for information around the clock... he puts tape over the embeded camera in his computer so the world can't just see what he's doing. He's bitter, losing Scully to... well, we can imagine. To me, it is this series that should reinvigorate Fox. We'll see how this pans out, but I get it... He's hurting. Knowing, but not being able to prove, not being able to unveil. Fox is tired. And Joel McHale woke him up - and it looks like Skinner is going to put Fox and Dana back out in the field, I'm betting in this next episode.
Scully, Gillian Anderson, is stunning in this episode. She seems to love what she's doing, helping humanity to live better, rather than taking apart cadavers to discover how to combat an imminent threat. That's killer. She's distracted herself completely from her past. Working and feeling good about life, so she is of course the more engaging of the two. Though you see that Mulder is trying to still press her buttons, when he puts the dig in that he left the X-Files for Matromony - and then later, when she confesses to double testing the tests cuz she still... TRUSTS NO ONE... it's smoldering stuff... There is an uncomfortable air about these two. So much trauma, good times and unthinkably horrible times between the two - and that it isn't Mulder & Scully as usual... This is great stuff. There's no doubt that these two have history - and there's also no doubt that they both care about each other, but they are still at odds of his embrace of the unknown and her passion to adhere to logic and what can be proven. A truly great dynamic.
One of my favorite scenes is when Joel McHale's ALEX JONESy character asks her about her time upon the X-Files and you see this longing and hear her passion for what that time represented to her as being an extremely exciting and vibrant period for her. It's good stuff. I love that even what she's doing to pay the bills, the work to give children ears, that were born without them... She's still dealing with X-Files scientific mysteries. Great stuff.
I love the Roswell crash and military investigation. Also, that was a damn fine CG Alien and I love the transparence of the "Metal" on the Roswell ship itself. That's just killer cool.
Another is the idea that Dana had something in the past with McHale's O'Malley... it suggests so much to me. That after Mulder, she needed to find someone not unlike Mulder in her life. She sought the conversation, if not the man. That he was in the relationship for what he could learn about the X-Files. Who knows, but I find it fascinating. Whatever it was, it is something Mulder didn't know about cuz until she said that Skinner wanted to set up a meeting with O'Malley, Mulder had to look him up. So that's definitely something she's holding back from Fox - and just the withholding of any information is fascinating to me. Did they just have sex... or possibly even worse... what if they did some investigations just the two of them. That could break Fox.
Now, I find it hilarious when people try to compare something about THE X-FILES to any other show... What I love about this show are the loud paranoia inducing mouth vomiting of theories as fact, as delusions as truth and the world upon yet another precipice of doom. They're great. I love Rance Howard's trenchcoat autopsy man. Watching Duchovny opposite Howard is great. You can see his passion starting to light - and the best part of Duchovny's MULDER tonight was... when that "alien" ship floats, and he can touch it, and see it, and he's got this great childlike wonder goofy smile upon his face and THAT'S MULDER!
I love that argument on the porch between Mulder and Scully... She almost tells her about O'Malley and her, but she wants to keep that to herself. Mulder hasn't earned that information, because he's not listening to Scully, he's got his own mental BS firing, but he has tuned out Scully. This is great old couple shit!
Can't wait for this next episode. And each one after! I love these characters and I could watch them playing them forever. They're absolutely iconic roles. And I'd love to see STAND ALONE movies done like the old SHERLOCK HOMES series - where it is a series of MONSTER features. It'd be so cool. I'm just happy we're getting this, it's been a long time coming! I've watched this episode 3 times already. It isn't best, but it is the newest... and like Mulder seeing a floating alien tech ship... this has me twitching for the next episode. The relationship with these characters go all the way back to night one. This series has been a magnificent obsession of mine, I for one, welcome it back!
Keep it cool,
Harry
