Oh look the last ever episode of the X-Files is on!

yeah this sounds like its about as good/consistent as the original run

Well, Homeland is still airing.

You saying you think Gordon ghostwrote this one due to contractual issues?

a trash Gollum anti-gentrification monster

guys, golems and Gollum are different things

watched this because of reaction. really enjoyed the alternate Mulder & Scully, seeing Lauren Ambrose onscreen in general, the Mulder tripping sequence, the extra joke of the placebo, wrapping it up with a painful extended self-important dialogue between ersatz M&S... though that was ruined by then having another actual extended etc from the real M&S. Without insane racism/bigotry/clichesplosion and hideous tonal shifts, some of Carter's ideas for this could have been an interesting and fun stand-alone.

wow, this finale was really the nadir.

lol at Smoking Man hiding out in Spartanburg, SC (I live in Greenville)

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/fef72609be4842b395fab06ed7c384b2dfbf0073/c=251-0-2307-1546&r=x483&c=640x480/local/-/media/2016/02/23/CarolinaGroup/Greenville/635918138887021470-Screen-Shot-2016-02-23-at-8.44.16-AM.png

But yeah this whole revival has been mostly atrocious aside from the Darin Morgan episode

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/02/23/its-time-for-chris-carter-to-pass-the-x-files-to-the-next-generation

Yeah :(

I give them a half point for CHEMTRAILS!!!! in the last episode, but that might be the only point

ALIEN DNA

literally everyone in America's immune system has shut down but not to fear scully is homebrewing some antidote in a d.c. hospital, there'll be plenty to go around folks

gah do I even want to watch these last two episodes?

guys, golems and Gollum are different things

I am really embarrased I spelled that like I did, because I do know the difference. WTF me.

c'mon the last ep literally had the line "This is so unnecessary, Fox!", gotta give Carter moxie points for that

can I just watch the Darin Morgan episode and skip the rest then?

(And is that episode even good?)

it's not terrible, but not really on the level of the great darin morgan episodes. i think people are overrating it some because of how absolutely dire every single other episode of this run was.

The Darin Morgan episode was great, except for the transphobic stuff about which they should have known better, and then Founder's Mutation and Home Again were passable with some great Mulder/Scully interplay. The other three episodes were complete garbage.

lol, the commonality b/w the other three episodes? written and directed by carter

"Babylon" was fucking insane.

it's not terrible, but not really on the level of the great darin morgan episodes. i think people are overrating it some because of how absolutely dire every single other episode of this run was.

I agree completely

One question re the suicide bomber ep (which yeah, that was a pile of insulting dung). What was with the 2 "homeland security" guys. Were they HS? Why did one speak to the other in Arabic and they started looking shifty, then cover their faces when their photo was being taken. Were they part of the terrorist cell? That bit was compeltely wtf confusing - hell the whole everyone fighting over him in the hospital bit was, tbh.

And I refuse to believe the placebo effect can make people trip their balls off.

It's the third-best Darin Morgan episode, and the trans stuff is unfortunately a little clunky but plainly ally-focused, not phobic. M&S accept her wholly on her stated identity, and Mulder tells Mann that it's entirely common and no big deal.

refuse to believe the placebo effect can make people trip their balls

Fox wants to believe!

I assumed she did not actually give him placebo, but was lying about it to cover her own ass

That did occur to me, yeah.

***WARNING***NERD ALERT&&&I mean one of the things I liked most about original X-Files was that it exploited the "diegetic reality"(??) of the implausible things we witness *typically in the opening sequence, so that we spend a good deal of every episode yelling "Shut up! You weren't there!" at all the people who are pooh-poohing Mulder's crazy explanation for this week's crazy phenomenon (NB this is not so much true of the mythology episodes)

... so I feel like with the drug trip itself, they were already violating this longstanding convention of having the camera give us "objective reality" and not subjective delusion (although I can think of counterexamples & I'm sure you can think of more); but to then follow up with "SIKE! that drug trip wasn't a real drug trip; Mulder is an unreliable narrator of his own mental state" just pissed me off more!!

"longstanding convention" more like BONGstanding convention amirite folks /signs off

Straigh up tho that whole scene was gratuitous and gross, but maybe I'm getting prudish in my old age who knows.

that scene was america 2016 through filtered through chris carter

the trans stuff is unfortunately a little clunky but plainly ally-focused, not phobic.

I dunno, the reactions of trans people online were pretty uniformly negative. Also following up two episodes later with some lazy Muslim-bashing doesn't really make me feel like giving them the benefit of the doubt on the trans thing.

Morgan and Carter are plainly two very different writers; this show is not group-written.

also lol at "he couldn't have freaked out on a placebo!" when last night I watched the Vince Gilligan episode where a serial child-killer can implant dreams into Mulder's head a decade later because Mulder profiled him so hard that he understood his mind

Mulder's brain has to be pretty mushy by this point after all the torture and alien abuse and profiling

Morgan and Carter are plainly two very different writers; this show is not group-written.

A lot of people work on that show, in 2016 at least one of them should have realized that a scene with a crack-smoking prostitute trans woman might need a rethink. Doesn't matter who is writing the episode. Same goes for having Muslim characters that are suicide bombers. Their terrible depiction of Texas can be chalked up to the crippling jealously non-Texans have for our state, however.

depiction of Philly totally otm though

Did they ever actually set an episode in Vancouver?

the Marco Rubio one

talk about a werelizard

Damn, that final episode was a-grade baloney.

Carter has said FOX wants more episodes so I suppose there are more years of disappointment ahead

William peeks his head out of the ship. "It's ok mom and dad, I'm here!"

Does anyone else think that they may continue the series with the two younger agents (Lauren Ambrose and the other guy) as the leads? I can't believe Duchovney and Anderson want to restart their roles, and maybe Carter picked the other two because they look so much like them. When I saw ep 5 I thought it was going to be a joke episode because of how similar they looked.

When I saw ep 5 I thought it was going to be a joke episode because of how similar they looked.

Well it was a complete joke of an episode so they were nearly there.

I really don't get how after all this time, with so much potential and just a few eps, they messed this up so badly and so lazily. What happened? Did they have a week to write and shoot everything? So weird.

Chris Carter happened, is what happened. He needs to relinquish the reins, but the fantastic ratings and the nearly assured renewal is just a refutation.

Carter explicitly said (sometime this week, I believe) that there are no plans to pass the baton to the younger agents.

WTF, not a refutation. Too damn early. I'm sure at this point that Carter is convinced that he's still got it when in fact he hasn't had it in a long time, and when he did have it, 'it' wasn't much to write home about.

The porn Mulder and Scully really need to be axed... no chemistry at all, especially next to Duchovny and Anderson.

Agree, but Lauren Ambrose is Lauren Ambrose.

it's not enough.