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

Reviews were pretty dire.

Joel McHale always seems to look younger than he actually is, but it's like he had 20 years cgi'ed off of him for this.

Super dumb. Trying to do too much in a single episode. They should have kept it simple. Also, the show already did the "everything we've discovered about aliens and the gov't was a lie!" thing back in season 5. It's such a cheap move.

Anyway I did enjoy watching it and it was great seeing everyone back and I loved how much Mulder looked like complete garbage.

Mulder in 2016 is problematic, especially since he doesn't seem to be working for the FBI anymore. He is now an old unemployed white dude ranting about government conspiracies, which these days means racist right-wing lunatic. Teaming up with mirror-world Glenn Beck helps this image not at all. Writers should have taken steps to avoid this, although I'm not sure what that would be.

I did think it was funny they took a pretty nice swipe at O'Reilly on a Fox show.

weird that they even bother with the mytharc/continuity stuff - isn't it abundantly clear by now that the best stuff about this show was always the "monster of the week" episodes? They should've just stuck with those.

Up until the first movie, a lot of the mytharc episodes were really good! Certainly essential to the show, even if the monster episodes are a lot more pleasurable to re-watch (and at their best, manage to hit all of the show's major themes with requiring a ton of continuity).

without requiring that is

I was fairly invested in the mytharc until it became apparently they didn't have any idea what to do with it.

tbh, I don't even remember what happened in either of the movies now except that one of them had to do with bees.

I was also invested in the mytharc during the shows earlier years. although I found the monster of the week episodes more entertaining I was excited when it became apparent that an episode was going to advance the overarching plot. then of course the whole damn thing, but especially the mytharch, came off the rails and I ended up not even watching the show.

the contrast between schlubby mulder in his army jacket and botoxed, besuited scully was pretty funny

I really enjoyed the first movie despite the plot being incredibly silly

This first episode felt like Carter was trying to write to every one of the 5,167 X-Files-related notes he'd jotted down over the past 15 years. A little rushed, a little OTT. It was all right. I'm down with more.

FWIW, we're supposed to get a mixture of mythology and monster of the week episodes with this revival.

I'm not sure there's anything you can do about it... the thrill of uncovering a conspiracy kind of relies on most of the conspiracy still being uncovered. After 80-100 episodes, there just won't be any dark spots left on the map, and the exercise ceases to be exploration and becomes... keeping an org chart up-to-date.

Seasons 1-5 and the first movie are classic. The show became less classic after the movie, for sure, to the extent that I went from watching religiously to maybe only seeing 4 or 5 episodes from the last three seasons. I didn't feel a burning need to catch up prior to the revival but I would kinda like to try watching through the original series again.

I just checked and saw that we're getting a Darin Morgan episode!

oh did anyone else notice the fairly poor cgi trying to make it look like they were in dc?

The show really lost something when they moved production from Vanvouver to Los Angeles.

I literally can't remember a single thing about the mytharc conspiracy, it all got so convoluted - there was the smoking guy, and aliens abducted Mulder's sister, and then Scully had an alien baby? or something?

The Darin Morgan episode is supposed to be on par with his classic episodes, if the journos who got preview copies are to be believed.

E2 was quite an improvement.

feels like this whole thing is a reboot so far, with most of the old episodes with alien mythology swept under the rug. episode two was decent, although apparently the alien hybrid children are the x-men

Haven't watched e2 yet, but e1 was so wack. It felt like a neverending parody sketch without a punchline. And for me most egregious was presenting that grab bag of midnight AM radio conspiracies, Mulder AND Scully teaming up with a 9/11 truther, barely batting an eye...bleuch. It was all just too stupid & on the nose for me

Yeah, the scene where Winger comes back to tell Scully important plot stuff and then ends with his mouthbreathing "and... I wanted to see you again" being followed with a scene of Scully sipping champagne in his limo is just utterly mystifying. That line worked? The old Scully would have shot him and gone home to read medical journals.

In other news, episode two was about a hundred times better.

E1 was a strong reminder of how much I hated all the conspiracy shit. I could watch MOTWs for days on end but drop some alien illuminati bullshit (without a solid MOTW) and I'm out.

omg ep2 is like night & day

yeah episode 1 didn't do more than make me thankful that my x-files influenced interest in conspiracy stuff was nothing more than a passing teenage phase, otherwise i too would be living in a world where alex ross / glenn beck were actually right about everything. but maybe that's the point! fun weirdo spooky mulder is actually a tea party loony. guess i'll watch episode 2 and find out!

uh alex JONES, that is

Alex Ross conspiracy: his dad did 9/11 / aliens / the illuminati

lol at Darin Morgan's IMDB bio photo - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0604587/

same reaction as everyone else; episode one pretty bad, episode two marked improvement (although still not great). I'm still down for several more of these miniseries and would watch them if they made them.

i kind of missed how they reopened the x-files at the end of episode one though; like episode two starts and they got their suits back and they're back investigating shit like nothing ever happened?

Yeah, that seemed weird. Just back in the ol' office, taking a case, no biggie.

Gillian has so much more gravitas than DD these days that their scenes together are almost embarrassing

Not watched it but

He is now an old unemployed white dude ranting about government conspiracies, which these days means racist right-wing lunatic.

is what I'd be looking for.

lol at casting McHale as "charming"

this seemed rushed but i'm along for the ride

It's not an X-Files episode unless Mulder spends half the episode earnestly convincing Scully to take his batshit crazy line of inquiry seriously and then once she does, follows her around cracking jokes.

best thing about the debut was Annet Mahendru because

I just watched the first new episode, and it was OK, but it displayed some of Carter's worst tendencies in writing MythArc eps. Characters stating that someone or something is really important in some way, without convincingly showing how or why. Why exactly was this woman "the key to everything"? What about the multitudes of abductees M&S encountered throughout the series?

Anyway, I'm more looking forward to the Morgan(s) and Wong episodes.

second episode was good! a few pieces being moved around with the mytharc stuff but mostly felt like an enjoyable standalone episode

I couldn't make it past the first 15 minutes of ep 1.

"I have alien DNA" was the last line I made it though.

Yeah it was moronic on every level. I suspect a psyop.

Glad to hear the next episode is better!

yeah the first episode was monumentally terrible. just a badly written piece of tv, and the acting wasn't much better.

episode 2 was better. episode 3 the best of the first 3 according to a few critics, nice traditional monster of the week, big lighter and more humorous too apparently. looking fwd.

first ep should've just gotten it over with and had a montage of mulder sharing 'jet fuel can't melt steel beams' posts on social media

haaaaaa

otm

chemtrails!

episode 3 the best of the first 3 according

If anyone didn't expect episode 3 to be the best of the six, they hadn't looked at the writing credits

truth. 'Humbug' is still one of my favorite episodes

oh god this is hilarious

A Gilligan would be sick.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't rewatched any of Gilligan's episodes since BB fully opened my eyes to his talents.)

Oh, I see that that's not true. I just saw 'Pusher' the other night. I guess I didn't realize he started on the show that early.

He said he would have loved to do one this year, but couldn't work it around Better Call Saul's schedule.

might be remarkable or might flop,

I loved the mushroom trip and the dynamics of the ersatz Mulder & Scully with Lauren Ambrose in btw, as incredibly bad as the pacing and ~race~ issues were in that ep btw. But I also recently saw the teenage witches ep that Carter wrote, & enjoyed that hugely too

they need to do another season to wash the taste of this last one out. I think I liked one episode out of that run.

did he do the episode where mulder needs to keep driving or the guy's head will pop? or possibly mulders head will pop?

i watched that one "recently" (couple years back) and was p impressed

That was a Gilligan. The guy was Cranston.

also according to cranston on npr a while back, that episode was integral to his being cast as Walter White.

back again next year, per the X files FB page.

If they try a big effects scene like the nu-finale, I hope they have a higher budget

I hope they just pretend that Carter two-parter didn't happen

we all got mindwiped

100% agree

cosign

we have a third motion passes

i'd be interested in them bringing it back and making it even worse. why stop where they did; lets see just how low the x files can go

on the bright side, maybe more Dagoo

Anyone going to bother with the new season? I’ll at least watch the Darin Morgan episode.

of course I'll watch it. I don't have high expectations but maybe it'll surprise me.

Gillian indicated she's probably out after this, which is unfortunate. I hope it will actually finish then and they don't try to do another season without either her or Duchovny, there's zero point in that now.

bring back john doggett

in for Darin Morgan, happy to lay back this time unless any others get especially good reviews

nice that there are a bunch of new writers, shame that Gilligan couldn't come back too but I'd rather have Better Call Saul

had not noticed that the guy from the "x-files agent everyone forgot"/mandala effect episode, which was the fourth episode of the ill-conceived second revival season, appears in the scanned x-files documents in the second episode. his badge clearly visible for a moment when Skinner opens up the scans

say Brian Huskey's name u bitch