Rewatching season 11 of The X-Files

Jan 14, 2019 13:07

My Struggle was just urgh such a bad way to start the season off unfortunately. Lol at the super unnecessary Mulder voiceovers, like you really don’t think you couldn’t have just shown him spotting that someone was tailing him, you have to have a whole voiceover of his inner thoughts to tell us what’s happening?! The car chase scenes felt weirdly small-scale as well, it seemed like Chris Carter used to be a much better director back in the day? And then you can tell that he thought it was such a genius twist to throw in a retcon based on an episode from 17 years earlier, but first time around the whole thing was so sick and disturbing that I honestly believed that CSM must be lying, that all would be explained later :(

And I noticed that Agents Einstein and Miller got *very* short shift in this one compared to all of the time spend on them at the end of last season, I wonder if CC really was originally thinking of setting them up for a younger spin-off, and then changed his mind after audience feedback proved to be so negative?

On a more positive note, I remember an interview with CC talking about one complaint they took onboard with season 10 was the lack of Mulder/Scully interaction disappointing fans, and I think it really comes across that they’re making an effort to correct that in This. They’re having Mulder/Scully work together in nearly every scene, as well as throwing in some cute asides for the fans like Mulder’s joke about handcuffs, or telling Scully how adorbs she looks when she’s sleeping. Shipper me lapped it all up naturally lol, and of course I loved seeing them sleeping on the sofa together <3 The scene by Deep Throat’s grave was a nice touch too.

In fact this was actually an episode that I overall found a lot better than I remembered once I started getting into it. I wasn’t always a fan of their virtual reality episodes tbh, but this one turned out to be pretty fun in the end. It felt a bit like a Black Mirror episode even. Aww poor Skinner though, Scully and Mulder were super rude to him in this one!

Plus One was a mixture for me. I wasn’t a big fan of the main plot, it felt like it was mostly there as an acting showcase for the actress playing the twins. CC seems to love episodes with doubles, but it didn’t quite work for me, it all seemed so random and didn’t come together as a proper case at all. However I loved the Mulder/Scully scenes naturally, so they pretty much made the episode for me :D Admittedly I was kind of frustrated that they didn’t get even one onscreen kiss this season, but I actually really liked how Plus One handles them sleeping together. I mean it probably would have felt a bit weird and out of the blue if we had actually seen Mulder and Scully rolling around in bed together lol, instead their scenes here were very sexy in a more understated way which is perfect for them really

One thing that stood out to me this time around though was that, not only did Judy guess Scully’s age as 40’s, but also Mulder asked Scully what was stopping her from having another kid, so it almost feels like CC wanted the audience to forget Scully’s real age in order to set up the pregnancy reveal in the finale? At the time I thought that Mulder was just being kind after Scully brings up that he could meet someone younger and have kids, but now I’m wondering if CC actually meant for Mulder to be throwing it back to her as a serious option? It’s well-known by now though that Gillian has always played older than her real age on The X-Files, Scully should be well into her 50’s by now, and in the context of the series (William being 16, Scully already being a qualified Doctor when we first met her) it just doesn’t work to try and retcon that...

And The Lost Art Of Forehead Sweat is an all-time classic for me! It felt a bit like Darin Morgan’s attempt of a sequel for Jose Chung’s From Outer Space when it comes to looking at how objective truth can be, and really it had too many hilarious moments to count (Mulder in his Bigfoot outfit, ‘I’m Fox freaking Mulder you punks!’, the butterfly net and the straightjacket, ‘bing bing bong bong bing’, Scully tuning out Mulder’s Bigfoot ramblings, the Twilight Zone opening parody, Mulder falling on the floor in a tantrum and kicking his legs, and well I could go on and on really lol). I especially loved the flashbacks incorporating Reggie in all of the classic episode clips, and taking a shot at themselves with the comment on this one had better not be about killercats 😂

It was nicely self-aware too with Scully drawing attention to Mulder maybe losing his taste for conspiracy after all the birther theories from this century, this was basically The X-Files wanting to make it clear that they don’t want the classic conspiracies of their show to be associated with the current far right. (I remember there were a few angry murmurs at the time when season 10 incorporated vaccinations into season 10 as part of the government conspiracy, even though that was always something that the show traditionally did.)

I’m not sure how much some of the references in this episode are going to date it in the future mind you, but lmao you gotta love the commentary on ~fake news~ with the little evil Dr. They in the red MAGA cap among the ‘hundreds of millions of people at the inauguration’, and well I think the hilarity of the following moment speaks for itself 🤣

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And I was really impressed with the direction for Ghouli. This isn’t something that I picked up on as much first time around, but when bingewatching the season I definitely noticed that the direction here is noticeably improved compared to the first couple of episodes especially feeling a bit small scale in comparison to the original series. But Ghouli really brings back the kind of of scope in the shoots outdoors that reminds me of ~back in the day~ Very nice job from James Wong.

Admittedly I wasn’t a big fan of William as a character though and how the show attempted to make him sympathetic. I mean I guess he was meant to be a villain in the end kind of, but when he snuck into one of the girls bedrooms to explain that he never actually meant to hurt anyone (and then it was revealed that he wasn’t the one to kill his adoptive parents), it came across like we were meant to think that we misjudged him, that he wasn’t as bad as initially perceived? But I find it hard to buy that when you look at how he was manipulating the feelings of the two girls he was dating, considering it to just be a funny prank to try and terrify them in the opening sequence, only to be surprised for some reason when believing that the other girl was a monster resulted in them lashing out. I don’t know what other conceivable reaction he expected them to have though after he send them convincing enough visions to make them believe that they were genuinely under attack by a monster? Hilarious prank, truly 🙄 And the casting wasn’t bad or anything, but I don’t think the actor they got to play William was as strong as he could have been either. I mean he was fine, but he didn’t end up making much of an impression on me which is a shame when he’s such an important character

It was all worth if for Mulder and Scully’s beautifully played reactions though, the emotional impact that giving up their son has had on them really comes across. Gillian especially was giving her all at showing how badly Scully was grieving the loss, so it’s no wonder she was so pissed with CC after the finale. Watching Ghouli just makes me even more disgusted with how he chooses to wrap everything up, Ghouli ends on quite a poignant note and they could have had a really strong arc here if he had bothered to end it in a meaningful way :takes deep breaths to avoid going into CC rant:

I’m afraid that I found Kitten to be a real snooze fest though. I love Skinner as a supporting character to Mulder and Scully, but I’ve never been drawn in by the Skinner-centric episodes, and I didn’t care about any of the guest stars in this one either or the Vietnam flashbacks. If we were supposed to feel bad for Davey and believe that he had once been a good person and friend of Skinner’s, it didn’t really come across. I did like the closing scene with Skinner, Mulder, and Scully, but otherwise meh

It’s interesting that the writer and director mention in the commentary that they had a lot more humour in the script originally, but FOX insisted on cutting it because Mulder and Scully supposedly needed to be more serious while they were trying to find Skinner, but I probably would have found the script less dry if they had been allowed to keep more humour in. (And even the few funny lines that did make it to the script apparently only did so because David fought for them to be kept in). It’s not like it’s not in character for Mulder and Scully to banter during serious cases though! They also mention a scene that they were really upset to lose, but FOX again insisted on it because they didn’t think that the actor resembled younger Davey enough and were concerned about viewers being taken out of the story, so it came across like they were having to deal with quite a bit of network interference

And Rm9sbG93ZXJz was a really fun gimmick episode! I remember hearing that they were planning an episode with hardly any dialogue and wondering how they would pull it off, and I think they did. It is an episode that you have to pay attention too though, and honestly I was playing on my phone a lot first time around at the same time, so it wasn’t really until this rewatch that I completely appreciated what a strong episode it is *g* I noticed that it was rated very low on TV Time, and I suspect that’s because a lot of other viewers were doing the same thing!

But yeah on rewatch it’s actually a really clever episode. It did start to run out of steam a little bit for me towards the end, but then I loved the closing scene with Mulder and Scully putting aside their phones and connecting on a one on one level again <3 And lol I totally missed the little joke first time around on Scully having to throw out her vibrator, and then deciding not to buy another one in the end, but start connecting with Mulder on a personal level instead. Some of it did feel a little contrived though I guess as we’ve never seen them *that* wrapped up in their phones before, and while they did manage to pull off the opening scene, it wasn’t exactly realistic for them to not speak to one another at all. That’s just me nitpicking though :P (Another very tiny nitpick is that I’m not really a fan of the new wig, I thought it was too obvious that it was a wig, especially when they filmed the closing scene with the back of their heads)

It was still a very effective commentary on how we use tech these days. Some of it really spoke to me, like Scully’s frustrated screaming that that IS the right password (been there!), or her unease when she gets a notification on buying more styling cream, and she starts to gets paranoid about who is watching. (That exact same thing has happened to me, I was reading a physical copy of a book, not an ebook, and then I get a recommendation on Amazon’s homepage for more books by that author??? I swear my phone was spying on me that day lol).

Familiar was another great episode, the small town and the creepy Mr Chuckleteeth had the classic eerie feeling of the early seasons that everyone remembers fondly, and it’s one of the few episodes from the revival that feels like it could have fit in an earlier season seamlessly. I think the revival series could have done with a few more of these classic scary MotW episodes actually, there were surprisingly few fairly straightforward cases for Mulder and Scully to investigate (it’s only really been this one, Plus One, and Nothing Lasts Forever). But then seasons 5-7 were kind of like that too with feeling the need to come up with something different or more experimental, I suppose that it’s hard for the writers to produce a bunch of just solid MotW cases without being met by a resounding chorus of ‘meh/we’ve seen this before’, so they feel the need to keep stretching themselves instead

My only real complaint with this episode is that the conclusion felt very rushed when it was suddenly revealed that it was the jealous wife, they could have spend a little more time on that! But otherwise the buildup and the atmosphere were all terrific, and Mr Chuckleteeth was certainly one of the most memorable monsters they’ve had yet.

It pains me to say it, but Nothing Lasts Forever was pretty boring to me though for being the last MotW episode ever. It felt like the writers were were really excited about the MotW part of the episode and very invested in spending a lot of time with the guest cast, but most of those scenes in the house just really dragged for me

Best parts of the episode were Scully teasing Mulder about his needing glasses lol, and their final conversation on ‘are we together’. Even though it wasn’t a favourite episode of mine, I kind of wish that it could have ended here with Mulder saying that he believes in Scully and the two of them reaffirming their commitment to one another.

And then My Struggle IV was completely lacking in any kind of heart, you get all of these character reveals thrown in there without any time to watch the characters take it in. Scully just dismissing William as never truly being her son was especially awful after all the time that we’ve spend on how much she loved that little boy, and I still don’t really get why Monica ended up working for the CSM? If it was just a minor character then okay, but she was one of the main leads towards the end of the original series, and yet there’s no explanation at all for why she’s now working on the other side?!

I actually didn’t hate Scully getting pregnant again though as it was at least a somewhat happy place to end it on for M/S, I can handwave away the logistics of it (Scully does have alien DNA after all!), but Scully just dismissing William in one scene was AWFUL after all the time the show had spend on him! He wasn’t just some experiment that she happened to give birth too for goodness sake, she raised him for the first year of his life, she spend the next 16 years thinking of him as her son?!?!

I honestly don’t get what happened with CC, he did used to direct really strong episodes like Duane Barry, PWP, How The Ghosts Stole Christmas... And yet there’s no heart at all to these mythology episodes, they feel so flat and soulless when everything is just crammed in there with no real impact. One minute you’re watching Mulder take down all these armed men (?), the next you’re watching William make a bunch of heads explode, and then sudddnly Monica, Skinner, and CSM are all dying one after the other in scenes that are nowhere near momentous enough for such significant characters. I say it yet again, but what happened to CC’s direction exactly?

Overall though I don’t share the opinion that a lot of viewers seem to have that seasons 10 and 11 should not have happened at all. Yes the mythology was a disaster, but otherwise I thought there was a nice mix of MotW episodes. I mean I liked some more than others sure, but then every single season of the show has had its fair share of skipable episodes! I’m almost definitely going to skip all of the My Struggle episodes (other than the season 10 premiere) in any future rewatches, just as I’m likely going to practise some selective viewing of even the classic seasons of 1-6 when I next rewatch the series as a whole, but I’m still happy to have seasons 10 and 11 as additions to the canon with brand new cases for Mulder and Scully. I mean we got two brand new Darin Morgan episodes! A few crappy mythology episodes doesn’t wipe that all away for me anyway

If I had to rate the episodes it would be:

My Struggle III ⭐️

This ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Plus One ⭐️ ⭐️ (and a half)

TLAOFS ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Ghouli ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Kitten ⭐️ ⭐️

Rm9sbG93ZXJz ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Familiar ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Nothing Lasts Forever ⭐️ ⭐️

My Struggle IV ⭐️

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