When X files came out, I remember thinking it was not that great (like, why did they always go into dark places witha gun, and not let’s say, a flashlight???), years later I appreciated the fantastic dialogues, the witty lines, and Scully ebign a kickass female lead like no other. Not a fan of the conspiracy within conspiracy plot. But the first 5/6 seasons (and even then John Doggett’s episodes minus the aliens), so good.
I was not a fan from the very beginning, because, as one might imagine, The X-Files was way too scary for me. It took falling ass crazy in love with David Duchovny to get me to watch the show, but once I did, I found that I enjoyed it on its own merits. I actually liked the atmospheric darkness, because that was new and different back then; I think The X-Files was the first show to try that approach. It felt fresh in other ways. Back then, a lot of ‘serious’ shows didn’t really interact with pop culture. The X-Files was totally serious, respected its audience, and you could also hear the Vandals. I still have the original cassette tape copy of “Songs In the Key of X” that I got in 1996, a stand-out soundtrack in a decade where everything had a soundtrack album.
Unfortunately, to my mind, the show doesn’t hold-up in other ways. Watching a lot of those episodes, I’m reminded of how shitty the 90′s were for women. Mulder’s watching porn in his office. There’s the fixation on Scully’s reproductive system. Mulder seems to believe in every paranormal phenomenon but laughs off a woman’s assertion that she was sexually assaulted by a ghost. A woman’s fear of sexual assault is treated as a pathological phobia in “Blood”. There’s the half-baked attempt to justify the Donnie Pfaster storyline by making him, like, the Devil*, or something. There’s that stupid crap in “Kill Switch” and “First Person Shooter”, where Scully’s jealous because she’s not the only girl in the club house anymore. In fact, Scully seems to get jealous anytime Mulder has any meaningful interaction with any other woman. Later seasons find Scully dressed like she’s going to the club, in stiletto heels and tight pants, not what you’d want to wear when you run after people for a living. The closest we get to an acknowledgment of the daily shit Scully has to shovel is in “Never Again”, where she admits, as much as she can on a TV show in the 90′s, that she’s a submissive attracted to dominant men. That was cool, that was psychologically complex, made sense of the character, showed that she was self-aware, not a doormat, even she got frustrated by Mulder’s behavior. Unfortunately, this seems to have been too much for the writers to handle, and soon enough, Scully’s back to playing the nagging wife to Mulder’s dickhead husband.
To spite the above, I do, actually, like The X-Files. Even thirty years later, I think it stands out, in terms of complex storytelling, working within genres, deconstructing, and reconstructing them. There are rare moments of great insight into the characters and their relationships. And I acknowledge that it was probably a difficult show to run, and a lot of my problems with it probably come down to fatigue on the part of the writers, because they were juggling multiple storylines and character arcs, but The X-Files, I think, is also an object lesson in why you need at least one woman on your writing staff, “A barren mother’s barren womb”, really, you guys really thought that was a good line, for Christ’s sake.
* I’m insulted on the Devil’s behalf, frankly; Donnie Pfaster was just gross.
Then, we get that weird send-off line from Scully in “Orison”, about what was working through her when she shot Donnie, like she’s inviting us to think that shooting him was evil, too. Like, no, Scully, that was God acting through you to take out the trash.
Though, Donnie’s interesting in other ways, as his storyline loudly proclaims the debt that The X-Files owed Silence of the Lambs. I think they probably wanted to do a story like that, and tacked on the supernatural stuff afterwards. There’s also the one and only reference to Scully having PTSD after being abducted by aliens. Nice try? Maybe?
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