Welcome to Plain Spoken Critic! First Up: The X-Files – I Wanted to Believe

I love watching TV and movies, and I love reading reviews of the things I’ve watched, to see how my views match up with others. Here’s what I don’t love, though: Wading through unintelligible, high-falootin’ critiques that make use of as many multi-syllable words as possible, to showcase the reviewer’s superior intellect and grasp of the English language. So this blog will be devoted to my down-to-earth takes on entertainment, delivered in what hopefully will be plain speak!

I’m kicking things off with thoughts on the recent revival of the X-Files. Let me start by saying I wanted to believe – I really did. You see, somehow, the X-Files mania skipped me over during its first run. Which is weird, because I’m as big a sucker as anyone for a conspiracy-themed show. Well, not necessarily conspiracy, but a show with a big, overarching plot that slowly unravels week after week, a large mystery revealed small bit by bit, with twists and turns that hopefully the viewer doesn’t see coming. I guess I’m always hoping that the writers have some ingenious story arc planned, that they have in fact planned out a beginning, middle and unbelievable ending that will leave my jaw on the floor and my heart in a flutter.

But more often than not, I’ve found that TV writers excel at beginnings but really suck at endings. Look no further than Lost (oh, I could write a book on the disappointment that was Lost, never mind a blog post)  or Battlestar Galactica (which still ranks up there as one of the best TV series ever, despite its lackluster finale) for proof. Yup, it seems TV writers are great with coming up with ideas and premises to kick things off, but because they likely never know whether their show will be picked up, canceled or extended, they never seem to have really thought beyond the first season or two. And if a show proves popular, they’ve got to exteeennnnd out the storyline, which never leads to anything good.

Anyway, for some reason I didn’t jump on the X-Files bandwagon back in the day. Somehow I overlooked Duchovny’s value as a hottie (Handsome and funny? That’s an irresistible combination as I saw so well in Californication, so now I’m pretty much a fan for life). And I couldn’t get past Gillian Anderson seeming like a drip in every scene that I happened to glimpse; I saw no chemistry between Mulder and Scully whatsoever. But the thing that really put the nail in the coffin for the show at the time, for me, was that it seemed to abandon the overarching conspiracy plotline on a dime and instead pivot to monster-of-the-week episodes with no connection whatsoever to aliens or the search for Fox’s sister.

Now, I can handle the occasional standalone episode; shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (love!) did it quite successfully. As long as it furthers character development, or even sheds some small light on the larger conspiracy, all is well. So I decided to go all in on the X-Files reboot. The trailers promised to set the show’s original mythology on its head; plus, the original series ran for like nine or 10 seasons – a veritable gold mine for this TV junkie during the cold Massachusetts winter. Duchovny, aliens and hours of TV to catch up on? Sign me up!

Unfortunately, though, the X-Files revival – as well as the original series, it seems – didn’t give a whit about seeding a larger plotline slowly in each episode, building to a climactic finale. Which is a shame, because despite episode one’s cheesiness, I thought the framework was there for an interesting story: (SPOILER ALERT) Turns out the alien abductions Mulder’s been obsessed with all these years weren’t actual aliens, but instead the government using alien technology (gained from the infamous alien crash landing in Roswell in the ’50s) to steal away humans and perform dastardly experiments. And I enjoyed that our hero agents had lost their super seriousness of the ’90s – the dialogue this time around occasionally allowed them to poke fun at themselves. Like Scully, we can all acknowledge that our Fox is “batshit crazy” but still love him.

Sadly, it was downhill from the premiere. In typical X-Files fashion, Mulder and Scully once again proved to have the worst case of Attention Deficit Disorder ever, because after learning that HOLY CRAP, EVERYTHING WE THOUGHT ORIGINALLY WAS WRONG AND DANA HAS ALIEN DNA early on in episode one or two, their attention is diverted to the next bright shiny object – namely, evil scientists, were-monsters (admittedly, that was a great episode thanks to the guest turn by Rhys Darby, from Flight of the Conchords – love that guy) and terrorists.

By the last episode of this mini-revival, our heroes turn back to the main plot at hand, but for me, by then it was too late. It’s laughable to try and cram into the 60-minute finale a pandemic whereby the world’s inhabitants, their immune systems having been compromised for years by a shadowy group of villains through the smallpox vaccine, are now being laid waste by some “Spartan virus” that’s been unleashed by said villains. Everyone except a few elite members of society (anyone who’s been injected with alien DNA) will perish.

In record time, pandemonium breaks out, but luckily Scully and new character Agent Einstein (yes, you heard that right – “Einstein” …. Lauren Ambrose of Six Feet Under fame does the best she can here but there’s only so much a gal can do with such painful dialogue) concoct a vaccine based on Scully’s alien DNA. Scully rushes to save a dying Mulder, who’s been rescued from his anti-climactic showdown with Cigarette Smoking Man, but upon seeing Fox’s desperate state, she pronounces the vaccine won’t be enough (Um, isn’t the vaccine brand new? How does Scully know how any patient will respond?). In any event, Mulder will need stem cells from, you guessed it, their long-lost son, William, whom they gave up years ago and whom I and every other viewer on the planet had assumed would play a larger role in the show, considering mom Dana spent a considerable amount of time confessing her guilt over giving him up.

But nope, we don’t have time for any of that, since approximately three and a half episodes of this six-episode arc were devoted to one-off nonsense. So instead, series creator Chris Carter does what he does best – he teases the audience with a big cliffhanger, as an “alien spaceship” (or evil government using alien technology?) arrives to hover menacingly over our heroes. All that would be well and good, if I had any rational hope that Carter and company would offer up some kind of resolution when the series inevitably returns (oh, you know it will – money talks).  But I know the truth – which is, the truth may indeed be “out there” as the show claims, but damned if Carter’s going to give it to you in any satisfying fashion, because he’s all about the tease, not the payoff. Sorry, but that’s just not enough for me as a viewer. You can string me along for a while (who doesn’t love foreplay?) but ultimately you’ve got to put up or shut up.

We’ll see how desperate I am for television viewing come next year or whenever this show returns … If they can offer some rapid plot progression or real answers in the first episode, I might stick around. But if it’s more of the same – a tease of some resolution, followed by the equivalent of someone shouting “Squirrel!” to distract Scully and Mulder so they’ll go hunt down a vampire or some other nonsensical episode – then I’m out … Duchovny’s hotness be damned.

What did you think, X-Files fans? Am I right on target? Way off base? Let me know!