trust no one
In many ways, mrmoonpants and I had similar upbringings and influences. To commemorate our similarities, we have decided to start re-watching the X-Files -- from the beginning. Now, both of us stopped watching regularly around season seven, and she watched the first six seasons sporadically, but I've seen most of these episodes before, and it's a great way to flashback to my days in high school.
I don't believe I've seen any of these first season episodes since at least while the show was still airing, and around season two we're going to get into episodes I haven't seen since they aired the first time. Coming back to the show a decade later is a hell of an experience. I'd been a fan of more episodic shows before this, from the half-hour reruns on Nick at Nite to Star Trek, but the X-Files was the first serial show I'd ever followed with a strong overarching storyline where new episodes built on the last ones. I had to keep watching because I cared what happened next in the bigger story!
Now that I'm older and slashier (and now that I've got Yami no Matsuei under my belt), first season Mulder seems very oddly and subtly homosexual. He's really touchy with men, he's got all these strangely intimate male partners who keep coming up, and he seems to know what to do when Deep Throat starts cruising him -- to say nothing of how so many male criminals and UFO nuts are obsessed with him.
Mulder and Scully's relationship dynamic is so awesome! They're physically and emotionally interactive with one another in the way that two men or two women can get away with being, but without the associated suspicion of gayness. The way they become so immediately desperately important to each other feels natural and is terribly charming. Mulder/Scully remains one of my favourite slash pairings ever.
Speaking of: in high school, I gave my Academic Decathlon speech on why Mulder and Scully should never hook up. My basic rationale was that the tension was too great to be topped, and that the show would completely botch getting them together. Years later, I'm sad that I was proven right.
Watching both the X-Files and Supernatural begs many comparisons between the two, and the fact that the first season of the X-Files is so rough actually reflects well on Supernatural. While the X-Files had long, somewhat awkward monologues and dialogue among adult professionals, Supernatural struggles with middle-aged writers' trying to put hip new lingo in the mouths of renegade twenty-somethings; where it took the X-Files several seasons to stop taking itself so seriously, though, it took Supernatural only a few episodes. ...Of course, the X-Files' eventual decline and slow death makes Supernatural's future look a little grim, but there is still hope.
I have a condition where whenever the theme music plays, I have to sing the composer's own lyrics -- namely: 'The X-Files is a show / with music by Mark Snow....'
How this show survived through its first season, I have no idea. Some of the first episodes are so bad -- like the one about the face on Mars, and the one about the artificially intelligent computer, and the one about the gender-changing Amish -- and really, no matter what arguments you make for 'Squeeze' and 'Ice', it doesn't really find its footing until 'Beyond the Sea', where character development and great acting combine to make a solidly good story.
Oh, 1993, your CG was so bad. And so were your shoulder pads. And cell phones.
I don't believe I've seen any of these first season episodes since at least while the show was still airing, and around season two we're going to get into episodes I haven't seen since they aired the first time. Coming back to the show a decade later is a hell of an experience. I'd been a fan of more episodic shows before this, from the half-hour reruns on Nick at Nite to Star Trek, but the X-Files was the first serial show I'd ever followed with a strong overarching storyline where new episodes built on the last ones. I had to keep watching because I cared what happened next in the bigger story!
Now that I'm older and slashier (and now that I've got Yami no Matsuei under my belt), first season Mulder seems very oddly and subtly homosexual. He's really touchy with men, he's got all these strangely intimate male partners who keep coming up, and he seems to know what to do when Deep Throat starts cruising him -- to say nothing of how so many male criminals and UFO nuts are obsessed with him.
Mulder and Scully's relationship dynamic is so awesome! They're physically and emotionally interactive with one another in the way that two men or two women can get away with being, but without the associated suspicion of gayness. The way they become so immediately desperately important to each other feels natural and is terribly charming. Mulder/Scully remains one of my favourite slash pairings ever.
Speaking of: in high school, I gave my Academic Decathlon speech on why Mulder and Scully should never hook up. My basic rationale was that the tension was too great to be topped, and that the show would completely botch getting them together. Years later, I'm sad that I was proven right.
Watching both the X-Files and Supernatural begs many comparisons between the two, and the fact that the first season of the X-Files is so rough actually reflects well on Supernatural. While the X-Files had long, somewhat awkward monologues and dialogue among adult professionals, Supernatural struggles with middle-aged writers' trying to put hip new lingo in the mouths of renegade twenty-somethings; where it took the X-Files several seasons to stop taking itself so seriously, though, it took Supernatural only a few episodes. ...Of course, the X-Files' eventual decline and slow death makes Supernatural's future look a little grim, but there is still hope.
I have a condition where whenever the theme music plays, I have to sing the composer's own lyrics -- namely: 'The X-Files is a show / with music by Mark Snow....'
How this show survived through its first season, I have no idea. Some of the first episodes are so bad -- like the one about the face on Mars, and the one about the artificially intelligent computer, and the one about the gender-changing Amish -- and really, no matter what arguments you make for 'Squeeze' and 'Ice', it doesn't really find its footing until 'Beyond the Sea', where character development and great acting combine to make a solidly good story.
Oh, 1993, your CG was so bad. And so were your shoulder pads. And cell phones.