Entries in the Category "the x-files"
The Great X-Files Rewatch: Season One, Part Two
Initial Thoughts
One big bonus of the second half of the first season of The X-Files: the introduction of Assistant Director Skinner! The Skinman! He only appears in one episode (“Tooms”), but apparently he made enough of an impression that he became a regular starting with Season Two. And this is back when we were all supposed to haaaaaaaaate Skinner. See, Skinner eventually becomes Mulder and Scully’s ally, in an awesome moment where he told the Cigarette Smoking Man to “bend over and kiss my ass,” but before that happens, he’s in league with the mysteriously oppressive government forces.
Another big bonus of the second half of the first season: Scully Pregnancy Watch! Yes, Gillian Anderson managed to get herself knocked up in the first year of the show, leaving her costumers with little else to do but drape her in mannish suits and an enormous trenchcoat that becomes omnipresent at the tail end of the season.
"Scully, do you have something to tell me?"
"No, Mulder, why do you ask?"
Brilliantly, the show wrote around it by having Scully be abducted by aliens in the first part of season 2.
Continue reading "The Great X-Files Rewatch: Season One, Part Two"
Liberal crisis!
I want to buy a new TV—a small one, for my bedroom, so that I can move the one that’s currently in my bedroom into my kitchen. I’ve decided this is a necessity based on the fact that ever since I discovered The X-Files was on Netflix Watch Instantly, and that my laptop fits very nicely on a corner of my kitchen counter, my dirty dishes have been cleaned much more regularly. (While I’m still locked into finals, my deal is that I’m only allowed to watch The X-Files if I’m also cleaning the kitchen. See how my mind works? I have to trick myself into doing things like I’m a kindergartner.)
Anyway, I was looking at various online deals, when I suddenly had a guilty little urge to check Wal-Mart.
I don’t shop at Wal-Mart. I have been indoctrinated to think Wal-Mart is terrible. I know that everything in there is way cheaper than you will get it anywhere else, but I also know WHY that is—price gouging and cheating their employees out of health insurance are their main strategies, but, of course, there’s a lot more unnecessarily evil things they are doing.
I ran the search on TVs, and now I have to sit here and know that they have this well-reviewed 19 inch Sharp for about 75% of what other stores are charging for similar products. I want to show integrity and not buy my cheap TV off the backs of the working poor.
But I’M poor! I’m a soon-to-be-unemployed grad student! I hem and haw about whether I really need to buy the name-brand cheese or not!
But…Wal-Mart Watch! Nickel and Dimed!
Now I feel bad for wanting the extra TV at all.
The Great X-Files Rewatch: Season One, Part One
Initial Thoughts
So I’m about halfway through the first season of The X-Files right now. (If my academic work were finished I would probably be done with the whole series at this point. Right now I’m basically on an episode reward system and plodding slowly through.) Though something like seventeen years has passed since the first season of this show (1993, people) it’s only been around five or six years since I’ve seen it. At that time, the show was in pretty regular rotation on SciFi and TNT, and I watched all the time. (Specifically, I think that episodes aired at 5 and 6pm on weekdays, and that I watched them when I got home from work. Foolproof way to get me hooked on a show is to air it in syndication at such a convenient evening hour.)
Still, the first thing that struck me on this rewatch was the passage of time. Why? Notably because Season One is pre-internet. Not only are Mulder and Scully carrying and trading around like, manila file folders with all their research and evidence in them, but the research and evidence is compiled via microform readers! You know those things? They’re teeny-teeny photos of old texts (like newspapers) which you thread into this thing, and it magnifies the image, and you turn a knob to turn pages and scan through the information that way. I have only done this once in my life; I found it fussy and headache-inducing. I imagine people who were in grad school as recently as 10 years ago used to do this almost every day. Anyway, Mulder and Scully are microform experts; they rock the archival research. They also record witness interviews on cassette tape. They still communicate via cell phone, but the phones are preciously large. Not quite reaching Zack Morris brick phone proportions, but …
The other extra-special blast from the past occurs in the second-ever episode, "Deep Throat." Mulder and Scully drove many rental cars of many makes and models over the years, but in this episode, they drive the same car I drove throughout college: a tan Cutlass Ciera.
Look at 'em go!
Click ahead for more about Scully's clothes, Duchovny's acting, and that blasted myth-arc.
Continue reading "The Great X-Files Rewatch: Season One, Part One"
Trouble brewing...
I have two papers to write in the next five days, and I just discovered that the entire run of The X-Files is on Netflix Instant View!
In this moment, I am desperate for some supernatural investigation and mid-nineties style. (Oh, Scully. The poofy hair. The big burly business suits. She was only 25 in the first season of that show, but she looked 40. Of course, Gillian Anderson looks awesome now, and Duchovny is crawling with sleaze.)
I occasionally catch The X-Files playing at 2am on the no-longer Sci-Fi channel, what is it again? but that's not exactly a prime time to catch up on my high school viewing pleasures.
When these papers are written, I am hitting Season One SO HARD! "Tooms"! "Beyond the Sea"! "E.B.E." and the introduction of the Lone Gunmen! Not to mention the awesomeness of playing Spot the Now-Famous Bit Player! (Oh, right, Jack Black was in this episode! Hey, is that Lucy Liu? I think that high school boy is Ryan Reynolds never mind he's already dead!)
P.S. One of my favorite current shows, Breaking Bad (in its third season on AMC right now! how about some money, AMC?) is heavily populated with X-Files alumni behind the scenes. Both shows are thus similar stylistically even if their content is pretty different. Just a word to those who might not have known of the connection.
P.P.S. And now back to, you know, the work.