one thing i need you to understand and truly appreciate about the x-files is that it could do comedy.
like, yes, it's a critically acclaimed, iconic sci-fi drama with a myth arc. it has cinematic moments of monster-of-the-week horror, thriller, and suspense.
but it was also incredibly funny at times.
we got some irreverent and even absurdist humor that didn't just get the characters, it got the audience.
it knew when to pull out the jabs and the slapstick. it knew when to get self-referential and tongue-in-cheek. it could give you laugh-out-loud setups and snarky one-liners.
obviously, a large part of the reason it worked was that david and gillian can be comedians while also maintaining the truth of mulder and scully.
you never could have an episode like "bad blood" (vince gilligan script) or "dreamland" 1+2 (vince gilligan, frank spotnitz, and john shibaneven) with actors who don't get that, no matter how punchy the writing is.
i think there was also an element of truly understanding pacing and respecting the fans enough to wait until the show had hit its stride before taking those brief, witty exchanges that had been peppered in as moments of levity earlier in the series and cultivating them into these comedic storylines that still had depth—they weren't just throwaways.
i mean, i know some of you haven't been in the fandom 20 years but "jose chung's from outer space" and "clyde bruckman’s final repose" (darin morgan's scripts) was not like "oh, this just a farce." and even "bad blood" is one of the most quotable episodes in the entire series ("it wasn't even real cream cheese!"). they were gifts we didn't even know we wanted! that we needed.
and chris carter even got it enough to give us "how the ghosts stole christmas" and "triangle." david went there with "the unnatural" and "hollywood a.d."
i mean, the x-files never went so hard that it forgot what it was; it never tried to be a sitcom. not even "x-cops" was legitimately trying to genre-bend.
and sure, some episodes were just...not it. and us laughing at them was not intended. they were just...kinda bad (sorry, "teso dos bichos").
it's been really something to watch a new fandom discover the show for the first time, and in such a different way than we did when it was airing weekly, we had to sit down and stay sat for it. or we had to tape it (and some of us did, and kept those vhs's until they wore out).
then we had the vhs sets. the dvds. the blu-rays. we wondered if it would ever show up on streaming. and now, there's free tv streaming it 24/7 (thanks, pluto).
when i tell you that my 12 year old x-phile heart would fucking ASCEND if you told me that??
well...ranks right up there with getting a pony and learning to braid my own hair.
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