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Musings of an X-Phile
The upside of being sick and stuck in my apartment for the last four days is that I've watched a lot of X-Files DVDs. I finished up season five yesterday (though I may not have had my eyes open for all of it…but I've totally seen those episodes before!), which brings me right about to where I started as a viewer. I started watching X-Files mid-season six, caught the first half of that season in reruns, saw the movie, then saw previous seasons completely out of order on FX. Now I can safely say I've seen every episode of the X-Files, and I have a bit more perspective on the arc of the show as a whole.
In previous debates with other X-Files fans, when they had said the X-Files jumped the shark somewhere around season five, I'd always denied this fact. After all, I started watching season six, and it was clearly still good enough to draw me in. But with the perspective of seeing everything in order—I'd say the X-Files probably jumped the shark at the beginning of the fifth season, maybe as early as the fourth, and definitely by the beginning of the sixth.
I'm basing this on the number of stand out episodes per season. I'm completely ignoring the mythology episodes because, frankly, the X-Files mytharc is a freaking mess and it's impossible to address any one of those episodes independently since they invariably don't have a definable storyline and tend to be filled with long pseudo-philosophical voice-overs about life over starscape visuals and lots of scenes with the Syndicate saying vaguely threatening but meaningless things to each other. So basically, though the mytharc episodes have some cool shit sometimes (exploding oil guyser? Fuck yeah) they really don't enter into my evaluation of the show.
No, the best part of the show has always been the monster-of-the-week episodes. In rewatching, I was amazed by the number of episodes I would recommend to anyone, not just X-Files fans, and that I would rank as some of the best hours of television out there. Episodes that were creepy, tense, suspenseful, with few or no plot holes, great details and lots of snappy dialogue.
These are my personal "god, I love this one," episodes. I know some of these are disliked by most X-Files fans ("Born Again," I know), but these are my favorites. The rest of each season is made up of usually around six mytharc episodes and then a bunch of standard, nothing special, filler episodes, with one or two clunkers a season (hello, "Fearful Symmetry").
Season 1
5 of 24 Episodes
Squeeze, Ice, Eve, Beyond the Sea, Born Again
Season 2
6 of 25 Episodes
Blood, Duane Barry, Ascension, Aubrey, Irresistible, Humbug
Season 3
10 of 24 Episodes
Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, Oubliette, Revelations, War of the Coprophages, Syzygy, Grotesque, Pusher, Hell Money, Jose Chung's From Outer Space, Wetwired
Season 4
6 of 24 Episodes
Unruhe, Paper Hearts, Leonard Betts, Never Again, Kaddish, Small Potatoes
Season 5
6 of 20 Episodes
Unusual Suspects, Detour, Bad Blood, Mind's Eye, Pine Bluff Variant, Folie a Deux
Season 6
2 of 22 Episodes
Tithonus, Monday
Season 3 is clearly a high water mark. What's more noticeable, though, is that in later seasons the show relied heavily on gimmicky or funny episodes. Yes, "Bad Blood" is a classic, but it only works because the show was so set in its formula by then. And you can only do a show like that once. "Unusual Suspects" is cute, but "Three of a Kind" presages the atrocity that was The Lone Gunman TV show. By season five, there are several episodes with little or no of one of the characters (like "Chinga" or "Unusual Suspects") and one with almost none of either Mulder or Scully ("Travelers").
Season six trotted out one ridiculous premise after another. We had bodyswaps, Mulder and Scully have to pretend to be married while undercover, romantic triangles, both cheesy and melodramatic, several they-kiss-but-not-really moments, time travel, stunt casting (Bob Newhart, Lily Tomlin, Bruce Campbell), a pretentious, non-sensical script by David Duchovny, even Groundhog Day. I liked all these fine at the time, but now the difference between these and the meat and potatoes episodes of previous seasons is clear.
I continued to watch X-Files as it aired through season eight, but this had more to do with it being new to me than with the show itself. By the time season eight ended, I realized there was only one episode in there that I thought was good (for anyone curious, that episode is "Badlaa"), and if that episode had been in season three, I would have thought it mediocre at best. (I did watch all of season nine out of sadisctic need for completeness, but the less said about that the better.)
What hurts for so many disenchanted X-Files fans is that when it was good, it was so very, very good. So even when it had declined, as it had in season six, to a level still greater than most TV shows ever reach, it felt like a betrayal. We knew what it was capable of, and instead we got this. Part of that was the inevitable toll of a long-running show—there are only so many relatives you can kill or villains you can resurrect or alternate theories you can float. But a lot was just the degradation of the in-between episodes. Episodes like "Pusher" were genius and had nothing to do with the ongoing storylines. Maybe the mytharc would have been tolerable if the filler episodes had been as good as they used to be.
In previous debates with other X-Files fans, when they had said the X-Files jumped the shark somewhere around season five, I'd always denied this fact. After all, I started watching season six, and it was clearly still good enough to draw me in. But with the perspective of seeing everything in order—I'd say the X-Files probably jumped the shark at the beginning of the fifth season, maybe as early as the fourth, and definitely by the beginning of the sixth.
I'm basing this on the number of stand out episodes per season. I'm completely ignoring the mythology episodes because, frankly, the X-Files mytharc is a freaking mess and it's impossible to address any one of those episodes independently since they invariably don't have a definable storyline and tend to be filled with long pseudo-philosophical voice-overs about life over starscape visuals and lots of scenes with the Syndicate saying vaguely threatening but meaningless things to each other. So basically, though the mytharc episodes have some cool shit sometimes (exploding oil guyser? Fuck yeah) they really don't enter into my evaluation of the show.
No, the best part of the show has always been the monster-of-the-week episodes. In rewatching, I was amazed by the number of episodes I would recommend to anyone, not just X-Files fans, and that I would rank as some of the best hours of television out there. Episodes that were creepy, tense, suspenseful, with few or no plot holes, great details and lots of snappy dialogue.
These are my personal "god, I love this one," episodes. I know some of these are disliked by most X-Files fans ("Born Again," I know), but these are my favorites. The rest of each season is made up of usually around six mytharc episodes and then a bunch of standard, nothing special, filler episodes, with one or two clunkers a season (hello, "Fearful Symmetry").
Season 1
5 of 24 Episodes
Squeeze, Ice, Eve, Beyond the Sea, Born Again
Season 2
6 of 25 Episodes
Blood, Duane Barry, Ascension, Aubrey, Irresistible, Humbug
Season 3
10 of 24 Episodes
Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, Oubliette, Revelations, War of the Coprophages, Syzygy, Grotesque, Pusher, Hell Money, Jose Chung's From Outer Space, Wetwired
Season 4
6 of 24 Episodes
Unruhe, Paper Hearts, Leonard Betts, Never Again, Kaddish, Small Potatoes
Season 5
6 of 20 Episodes
Unusual Suspects, Detour, Bad Blood, Mind's Eye, Pine Bluff Variant, Folie a Deux
Season 6
2 of 22 Episodes
Tithonus, Monday
Season 3 is clearly a high water mark. What's more noticeable, though, is that in later seasons the show relied heavily on gimmicky or funny episodes. Yes, "Bad Blood" is a classic, but it only works because the show was so set in its formula by then. And you can only do a show like that once. "Unusual Suspects" is cute, but "Three of a Kind" presages the atrocity that was The Lone Gunman TV show. By season five, there are several episodes with little or no of one of the characters (like "Chinga" or "Unusual Suspects") and one with almost none of either Mulder or Scully ("Travelers").
Season six trotted out one ridiculous premise after another. We had bodyswaps, Mulder and Scully have to pretend to be married while undercover, romantic triangles, both cheesy and melodramatic, several they-kiss-but-not-really moments, time travel, stunt casting (Bob Newhart, Lily Tomlin, Bruce Campbell), a pretentious, non-sensical script by David Duchovny, even Groundhog Day. I liked all these fine at the time, but now the difference between these and the meat and potatoes episodes of previous seasons is clear.
I continued to watch X-Files as it aired through season eight, but this had more to do with it being new to me than with the show itself. By the time season eight ended, I realized there was only one episode in there that I thought was good (for anyone curious, that episode is "Badlaa"), and if that episode had been in season three, I would have thought it mediocre at best. (I did watch all of season nine out of sadisctic need for completeness, but the less said about that the better.)
What hurts for so many disenchanted X-Files fans is that when it was good, it was so very, very good. So even when it had declined, as it had in season six, to a level still greater than most TV shows ever reach, it felt like a betrayal. We knew what it was capable of, and instead we got this. Part of that was the inevitable toll of a long-running show—there are only so many relatives you can kill or villains you can resurrect or alternate theories you can float. But a lot was just the degradation of the in-between episodes. Episodes like "Pusher" were genius and had nothing to do with the ongoing storylines. Maybe the mytharc would have been tolerable if the filler episodes had been as good as they used to be.