Unforgettable msr moments I’ll go first there are many that stay with me and typically I cite the ftf confession or the spaceship cpr but honestly? The one that sticks out forever to me is that one where Mulder and Scully are hogtied together on the floor, they’re about to be shot, and the last thing that Mulder chooses to do is roll to shield her. They’re both bound at the hands and feet and still he does every thing he can to protect her. Much of their relationship is like this
Mulder spends so much time trying to prove what is “real” as real to other people is understood and defined, while he himself is not understood very much at all until Scully comes to see him
Once again reminding everyone to read this article (even if you love
S10-S11.) It is so incredibly insightful.
“How The X-Files Revival Betrays The Original Series” – X-Files Analysis
The season 10 premiere “My Struggle” reveals that Mulder and Scully are no longer romantically involved and haven’t seen each other for quite a while. Nonetheless, aside from some noticable tension in that episode, their interactions with one another throughout the season are not much different from the later seasons of the original series. The break-up seems forced and artificial, without much thought and backstory put into it. And this senselessness itself in a way actually makes sense, considering that Chris Carter seems to have suggested at one point during NYCC 2015 how it was a “road sign” he saw in real life that inspired him to introduce the break-up in season 10. With that in mind, the reasons for the break-up are never really explored, aside from a vague reference to depression, and how Mulder supposedly became impossible to live with.
Looking at the original series as a whole, it’s extremely difficult to believe that Scully would leave Mulder because of depression, seeing how these two have been through hell and back, yet nothing was able to separate them. Their lives were in constant danger, among other things because they were together, and because they always stuck together. Mulder was physically dead for three months in season 8, and hiding from alien replicants in season 9, but they did not go their own separate ways. Yet in season 10 we are supposed to believe that Mulder became so depressed that Scully couldn’t help him, and finally had to leave him. There are no details and there’s no background to it whatsoever throughout the remaining episodes.
The important questions to ask are, what has the break-up really accomplished from a storytelling perspective? What did it add to the season? Wouldn’t the six episodes of season 10 have unfolded almost exactly the same way if Mulder and Scully had been portrayed as a normal couple without any forced break-up being introduced? Surely this would’ve required some writing adjustments, but nothing that would’ve influenced the individual stories being told. Nothing that would’ve had any real impact on the season’s episodes.
One could say with a great amount of certainty that the only thing the break-up has accomplished is disappointing and angering a significant portion of the fanbase. Not only those fans who label themselves “shippers,” but also those who simply see the romance between these two as something normal and rational. Although I personally do not consider myself a shipper (merely because I don’t need the romance to enjoy the series), I still see these two as soulmates and a true romantic couple. After everything that’s happened, everything they’ve been through together and experienced, portraying them as anything other than a romantic couple seems implausible and absurd. It is non-functional, out of character and simply not believable at this point.
It would appear that a platonic relationship is Carter’s comfort zone. Even though there are hints of romance sprinkled throughout the original series, it’s mostly in season finales (“Requiem,” “Existence,” “The Truth”) where we see a clear, undeniable romance between the two. The second movie – “I Want To Believe” – is an exception. It definitely portrays them as a couple, but it also makes one wonder about the revival. It’s no secret that the second movie was not a big success. And although logically the reasons for this have nothing to do with Mulder and Scully being a couple in it, one has to wonder whether Carter believes otherwise. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that he thinks the romance in that movie was a big mistake, and one that needed to be fixed as soon as possible, the next chance he got. He truly seems uncomfortable depicting them as a couple while they work together and solve cases, therefore only allowing the real romance to show its face in various season finales. Perhaps the second movie’s romance was an experiment in Carter’s mind to see if it’ll work, and he interprets the movie’s lack of success as proof that platonic is the only way to go, except for endings. So maybe, he begins season 10 by fixing that “mistake,” and then, similar to the original series, proceeds to sprinkle hints of romance throughout the revival, and then finally portrays them as a true romantic couple again at the very end, in the season 11 finale “My Struggle IV.”
During “X-Files Redacted,” a 30-minute special that aired during the revival, Carter has said that “Mulder and Scully, for 9 years, had a platonic relationship.” This makes no sense, but Carter clearly wishes for it to be true. Sometimes I think he wants them to be soulmates in an unusual, non-romantic, almost spiritual type of way. Look at “Babylon” for example. Did that entire sequence, while being quite beautiful visually, really need to be about mother love and the power of suggestion? Seeing how the season began with the break-up, wouldn’t it have been plausible to devote at least a portion of this sequence to talk specifically about their relationship? Shippers expected much more and they see it as a missed opportunity, especially considering the fact that Mulder and Scully were apart during the entire season 10 finale, except for the final scene in which Mulder was almost unconscious.
Their behavior and dialogue in “Plus One” is quite bizarre, and while it’s clear that they had sex in that episode, they appear to be much more like “friends with benefits” instead of how they’re portrayed in let’s say “Requiem” or “I Want To Believe.” And while one could argue that this entire issue of the break-up has been resolved because they’re a couple again at the end of season 11, there’s still something about the break-up, the mere pointlessness and terrible handling of it with zero backstory, which destroys something special about these two: a powerful bond that they had, considering their extraordinary journey together since day one. The break-up has ruined and taken away something special these two possessed, and I’m afraid it can’t be fixed by simply saying they’re back together “again” at the end of season 11. The break-up has caused irreversible damage in that regard, and it was, like most things in this revival, just so completely unnecessary in every way.
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There seems to have been a lack of coordination between the writers as well. In an interview with Glen Morgan (SyfyWire – Tara Bennett – Jan 10, 2018), he goes on to say:
“We never had a writers’ room. We would laugh because things would change in production and argue, “No, we did that!” and others saying, “We did?” We just put a panel with index cards for this, this, this, and then Darin and Jim throw rocks at that writer and it gets adjusted, which is how it goes.”
And there’s also the following from an interview with James Wong (TVInsider – Marisa Roffman – Jan 31, 2008), when asked about the casting of Miles Robbins:
“It was interesting, because Chris and I didn’t talk about how important Jackson/William’s character could be to the show and its impact on the rest of the season. When I cast that, I cast Miles just for this episode. And it was really to the credit of Miles—he’s so great. He has a quality that really reminds me of how David is.”
In another interview (SyfyWire – Tara Bennett – Jan 31, 2008) Wong says “It’s that kind of Mulder coolness that he has that made him attractive to me,” which is pretty odd considering William is not Mulder’s son. But of course, Carter being Carter could always place a twist on a previous twist and declare in a future season that William is indeed Mulder and Scully’s child. Because nothing can be considered permanent anymore, and there’s no point in trying to find answers, since (a) true answers simply don’t exist, and (b) everything can change at any time. I actually learned that all the way back after Samantha’s “Closure” in season 7. I learned that there’s no point in trying to put pieces together to find out answers regarding mysteries on the show. Although both “Sein und Zeit” and “Closure” are extraordinary episodes, with the latter being especially emotional and beautiful, looking at it realistically, the end of Samantha’s arc did not fit with all the previous hints and clues related to her. Yes, I know we can fix all of that with a generous amount of creative mental gymnastics, but it would simply be artificial. And it’s similar with William too, because his “purpose,” true nature and everything else, can change at any time, depending on Carter’s mood.
The interview with Kristen Cloke and Shannon Hambling (SyfyWire – Alyse Wax – Feb 28, 2008) regarding episode “Rm9sbG93ZXJz” is insightful as well. They didn’t appear to be that interested in the characters or previous episodes, but rather they focused exclusively on the technology aspect, without any regard for the past present and future of Mulder and Scully. So the end result was indeed a very interesting episode, but it had nothing to do with the X-Files or our two main characters. They were just shoehorned into a non-X-Files script.
The chemistry between Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny is fucking insane. Every time Scully touches Mulder, she's so tender and slow. But when he touches her, he's teasing, brushing his lips past her ears in a whisper and then pivoting away from her, or tugging on her necklace and then moving his hand away like nothing happened. She's always trying to reel him in, tether him to earth, and he's always trying to pull her along with him. He's like a current she knows she should resist, but she can’t bring herself to push against it. So she follows him wherever he goes, and he keeps looking back to make sure she’s still there.
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