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
― Cornelius Pardew (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, 23 February 2016 19:07 (eight years ago) link
gah do I even want to watch these last two episodes?
― akm, Tuesday, 23 February 2016 19:12 (eight years ago) link
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.
― Interesting. No, wait, the other thing: tedious. (Trayce), Tuesday, 23 February 2016 23:19 (eight years ago) link
c'mon the last ep literally had the line "This is so unnecessary, Fox!", gotta give Carter moxie points for that
― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 01:29 (eight years ago) link
can I just watch the Darin Morgan episode and skip the rest then?
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 24 February 2016 01:43 (eight years ago) link
(And is that episode even good?)
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 24 February 2016 01:44 (eight years ago) link
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.
― Clay, Wednesday, 24 February 2016 01:51 (eight years ago) link
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.
― erry red flag (f. hazel), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 01:51 (eight years ago) link
lol, the commonality b/w the other three episodes? written and directed by carter
― Clay, Wednesday, 24 February 2016 01:53 (eight years ago) link
"Babylon" was fucking insane.
― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 01:56 (eight years ago) link
I agree completely
― Cornelius Pardew (jim in glasgow), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 02:11 (eight years ago) link
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.
― Interesting. No, wait, the other thing: tedious. (Trayce), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 02:25 (eight years ago) link
And I refuse to believe the placebo effect can make people trip their balls off.
― Interesting. No, wait, the other thing: tedious. (Trayce), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 02:26 (eight years ago) link
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.
― glandular lansbury (sic), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 02:27 (eight years ago) link
refuse to believe the placebo effect can make people trip their balls
Fox wants to believe!
― glandular lansbury (sic), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 02:28 (eight years ago) link
I assumed she did not actually give him placebo, but was lying about it to cover her own ass
― Posts found in a bottle by (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 02:29 (eight years ago) link
That did occur to me, yeah.
― Interesting. No, wait, the other thing: tedious. (Trayce), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 02:35 (eight years ago) link
***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!!
― Posts found in a bottle by (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 02:42 (eight years ago) link
"longstanding convention" more like BONGstanding convention amirite folks /signs off
― Posts found in a bottle by (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 02:43 (eight years ago) link
Straigh up tho that whole scene was gratuitous and gross, but maybe I'm getting prudish in my old age who knows.
― Interesting. No, wait, the other thing: tedious. (Trayce), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 03:15 (eight years ago) link
that scene was america 2016 through filtered through chris carter
― μpright mammal (mh), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 03:35 (eight years ago) link
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.
― erry red flag (f. hazel), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 03:56 (eight years ago) link
Morgan and Carter are plainly two very different writers; this show is not group-written.
― glandular lansbury (sic), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 06:53 (eight years ago) link
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
― glandular lansbury (sic), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 06:55 (eight years ago) link
Mulder's brain has to be pretty mushy by this point after all the torture and alien abuse and profiling
― μpright mammal (mh), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 14:53 (eight years ago) link
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.
― erry red flag (f. hazel), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 15:01 (eight years ago) link
depiction of Philly totally otm though
― Blowout Coombes (President Keyes), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 15:40 (eight years ago) link
Did they ever actually set an episode in Vancouver?
― erry red flag (f. hazel), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 15:42 (eight years ago) link
the Marco Rubio one
― Blowout Coombes (President Keyes), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 15:44 (eight years ago) link
talk about a werelizard
― erry red flag (f. hazel), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 15:53 (eight years ago) link
Damn, that final episode was a-grade baloney.
― Interesting. No, wait, the other thing: tedious. (Trayce), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 23:37 (eight years ago) link
Carter has said FOX wants more episodes so I suppose there are more years of disappointment ahead
― akm, Thursday, 25 February 2016 00:04 (eight years ago) link
William peeks his head out of the ship. "It's ok mom and dad, I'm here!"
― μpright mammal (mh), Thursday, 25 February 2016 01:17 (eight years ago) link
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.
― nickn, Thursday, 25 February 2016 08:23 (eight years ago) link
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.
― suffeeciant attreebution (aldo), Thursday, 25 February 2016 09:03 (eight years ago) link
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.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 25 February 2016 14:31 (eight years ago) link
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.
― Lisa Welchel's Madcap Macrame Adventure for Windows 2000 (Old Lunch), Thursday, 25 February 2016 14:40 (eight years ago) link
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.
― Lisa Welchel's Madcap Macrame Adventure for Windows 2000 (Old Lunch), Thursday, 25 February 2016 14:44 (eight years ago) link
The porn Mulder and Scully really need to be axed... no chemistry at all, especially next to Duchovny and Anderson.
― erry red flag (f. hazel), Thursday, 25 February 2016 14:57 (eight years ago) link
Agree, but Lauren Ambrose is Lauren Ambrose.
― nickn, Thursday, 25 February 2016 21:26 (eight years ago) link
it's not enough.
― erry red flag (f. hazel), Thursday, 25 February 2016 21:28 (eight years ago) link
Agree with that too, but I'd probably give it a one or two episode trial run.
― nickn, Thursday, 25 February 2016 21:32 (eight years ago) link
Generally enjoyed the minseries, but the Carter episodes had a lot of problems. He was always hit or miss as a writer (and in the latter half of the original series' run, more miss than hit) but it's a pity the guy who wrote "Deep Throat", "Paper Clip" and (Millennium episode) "Lamentation" seems to have forgotten how to write an episode of television altogether.
The two new agents seem to be Carter's attempt to create a new long-term continuity (or the potential for one); I don't think he's quite given up the idea of "franchising" his one and only commercial hit.
― Duane Barry, Thursday, 25 February 2016 22:21 (eight years ago) link
It was almost as though the show did everything possible to sabotage itself-- from that Joel McHale character who simultaneously supposed to be ridiculous and right about everything, to Scully making crazy leaps of logic, to having Mulder be depressed, drugged or sick all the time, to relying on continuity nobody remembers or cares about, to those new agents out of some CW show.
― Blowout Coombes (President Keyes), Monday, 29 February 2016 21:15 (eight years ago) link
Yeah the Alex Jones-esque character rang so false for me. Maybe the concept of truthers and shit has taken on a tarnish rather than just being a flight of fancy, since the Xfiles was around initially? I dunno.
― Interesting. No, wait, the other thing: tedious. (Trayce), Monday, 29 February 2016 23:00 (eight years ago) link
I couldnt at all buy Scully believing him tho. WTF.
My question from having missed basically everything after season 5 to now - didn't this use to be more equivocal? Wasn't that largely the thing, where something was going on but maybe Mulder was right and maybe Scully was right and even when it was something weird, there was always the possibility kept alive that the government was just fucking with them? But by the second episode of this season, there's kids throwing people around with telekinesis - did this happen in the later series of have they just gone for broke with this one?
― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 1 March 2016 00:31 (eight years ago) link
There was definitely another episode with kids throwing people around with telekinesis. They kind of gave up on the attempts at balance later on.
― JoeStork, Tuesday, 1 March 2016 00:37 (eight years ago) link
My hot take is that these last 6 episodes are mostly farce and camp, and I appreciate them in that light. I think some people if not everyone involved in making them are just fucking with us. It all seems too knowing to be just a simple failure. I mean, the new agent is named Einstein? Come on, that's ridiculous. Having a lark was all that was left to do after Chris Carter ran the show into the ground the first time... Even if Carter really was honest in his intentions about the episodes he wrote, Duchovny is supposedly a Beckett scholar IRL. He must appreciate the unreality and absurdness of the writing, right? He seemed to be playing those aspects up in his performance. Anyway, he and Gillian Anderson grew a lot as actors since the original series, and that seeing them acting together again was my favorite part of the whole thing.
― davey, Tuesday, 1 March 2016 02:00 (eight years ago) link
tl;dr: I want to believe they were just dicking around and having fun
― davey, Tuesday, 1 March 2016 02:07 (eight years ago) link