The X Files Season One: "Conduit" - When Was The Last Time You Saw Your Sister?

It came from there!

- Thus far Agent Mulder has been to The X Files to what a thousand blank-faced leads have been to a thousand blank faced cop shows. He's a maverick with an empty motivation we neither see nor hear, the formula being x killed/took y family member, x is never caught leading Z to pursue him by solving crimes aggressively. This always bothers me because it feels like a short-cut to gravitas, the answer to the question of how to get emotional investment without having to spend any time on it, so its pleased me to see that with "Conduit", The X Files isn't just going to leave the abduction of Mulder's sister there as one of these empty motivations.

-It's a flawed episode, that has to do the character work essentially via surrogate because this is a case of the week series after all, but the intention is pleasing to see. In many ways though, I reward this episode more for its intentions then its actual content, because while it made the show's first attempt to get under the skin of its main characters, it also was the show's clumsiest episode to date.

- The mystery this week was particularly poorly drawn, feeling both lazy and incoherent, and while it had a couple of cool moments overall it didn't feel very considered and for a reset button type show that means the episode is going to feel grating, even if there are some elements that hold your interest.

- The opening teaser this episode was just awful. It saw an abduction done in the cheapest and ineffective way possible, and it just screamed the worst opening scene of a horror movie you've ever seen, where you have an unseen villain simply because you can't afford one, and featured some terrible guest star acting to say the least.

- The plot, as you'd imagine, was a mirror of Mulder's own origin story, seeing a teenage girl disappear in the middle of the night, with her younger brother being the only witness. Mulder and Scully turn up to the scene only top find local cops less the convinced by her story, as she herself claimed to be abducted by aliens thirty years before. Only Mulder believes her story, particularly since a local lake has been dubbed an alien activity hotspot.

- As always with The X Files, motions need to be gone through and we need to rule out that it was in fact not a human responsible. A process that seemed more arduous this week then in previous episodes, perhaps because there was an unfortunate and badly executed soap-opera sub-plot, where missing girl's boyfriend supposedly got someone pregnant, but it might not be missing girl. The problem being it didn't tie into the sci-fi of the show at all, and instead became a huge time-consuming anchor to "Conduit".

- I have no problem with the show trying to layer its guest characters, but frankly this didn't do that, rather filling in time for an episode that needed to pad its running length, and that's something hard to defend, mostly because its sort of cynical.

- Like I said, the guest performance of Carrie Snodgress as the victim's mother was pretty appalling. A performance you get in the worst kind of Sci-FI.

- Having said that, this is the most I've liked David Duchovny in the series thus far, perhaps because of his heightened emotional investment, Duchovny was a more sincere, focused presence, less the guy trying to prove a point and more a guy that actually wants to help someone. Mulder is a difficult character for the show to get a handle on because his mission to validate extra-terrestrial life supersedes empathy much of the time, but it was nice to see that not be the case in this episode.

- The interrogation scene between our agents and the teen girl suspect was pretty much the most stereotypical iteration of good cop, bad cop that at times it almost felt like a skit. I still liked Duchovny in it but that was pretty close to laughable.

- I do enjoy some of the re-appropriated cop cliches, for example every episode Mulder and Scully seem to go to a bar or a diner to garner information, in this caze grilling a one-eared bartender about the alien hotspot. That scene was kind of awesome.

- The stuff with Kevin, missing girl's sister was hit and miss. While seeing him decipher coded messages from the aliens was suitably creepy (and the reveal that he was secretly drawing her image.) But the conduit stuff was a again a little unspecific for my taste, and the episode simply didn't explain the how satisfactorily enough, something its been quite good for up to this point.

- The episode's plot ended in a way that I liked I suppose, even if I disliked much of the episode itself. Yet again it re-inforced the X Files core message of despair, in which the one can't be the many, and the weak get crushed by the powerful. Seeing the family with their freshly returned daughter decide to put their head in the sand as opposed to seek justice seemed like a credible and suitably downbeat ending, and Duchovny again was good in that moment.

- The final scene saw Mulder's recorded therapy session, in which he detailed his feelings in the moment where his sister was kidknapped. And that packed a bleak punch also, knowing that the aliens forced him into a sense of calm while his mind panicked.

- A mess of an episode, but it had its moments and showed The X Files does have the intention to layer and deepen its characters. An attribute that it pleased me to see, even within the skeleton of perhaps the most generic and unfocused episode of the show thus far, indicates signs of promise.

Rating: 5/10

The X Files Season One: "Squeeze" - Stretch and Tooms

So that's how santa claus does it...

I'm glad this episode came this early, because I was getting a little worried about preemptively committing myself to a show I was only ever going to think was OK, but Squeeze showed me a side of the show that is willing to be a horror movie, willing to be out and out scary as opposed to an effective but unknowably menacing atmosphere. In the previous two episodes the villains were unseen and unaccountable, but here the villain takes centre stage, and I have to say that even though Squeeze is probably a less intelligent episode then those previously, it's a damn sight more effective then either. Complexity can make for great sci-fi, but so can simplicity.

- In a way Squeeze is the most obvious incarnation of The X Files 'cop show with monsters' twist, in that this is a straight forward serial killer narrative, only the serial killer has a few supernatural tricks up his sleeve. Perhaps because of its increased obedience to the deafeningly familiar cop-show structure, more time was freed up to simply do cooler shit. Or maybe it just had an antagonist memorable enough to make anything work. Either way, I enjoyed the crap out of this episode, which dispensed with some of the conspiracy and upped the creepy considerably.

- The plot sees a series of people getting murdered in locked rooms, with no known method of entry or exit. An old agency contact of Scully's (Played by Terriers' Donal Logue) brings her in on the case, and everyone makes fun of her for working on the X Files.

- What I did like about the episode is that there was never any doubt about who the killer was, the first suspect being the only suspect. a Eugene Tooms, a man with the ability to elongate his body to squeeze into all manor of tight spots. So kind of a horror movie answer to the question how does Father Christmas get down the chimney. I concept it sounds a little silly, but thanks to a supremely creepy performance by Doug Hutchison, Tooms is a pretty iconoc bad guy.

- I did notice the banter between Mulder and Scully feeling a little less stiff this week, with Gillian Anderson in particular developing a wry sarcasm amidst Scully's usual idealized pragmatism. Duchovny gets better I think, but it still feels like line-reading rather then acting at the moment. And he continues to be the worst actor at listening ever known to man.

- The Tooms kill scenes were pretty cool, although the second one was much better then the first one, probably because he no longer remained unseen. Watching him go down the chimney was one of the creepier things I've seen in a TV show for a long time.

- Not sure how I felt about the character of Colton, Scully's agency pal though. Felt like an easy way to pass the torch of skeptic to show us that Scully's coming around to Mulder's way of thinking. Did enjoy the scenes of Mulder openly mocking Colton though, perhaps because he's such a rote character for a procedural show. One that every show roles it when they want to show you the straight man warming to the maverick's way of thinking. Like Donal Logue though.

- Tooms is over 100 years old, having committed a similar rash of killings in both 1903, 1933, and 1973. He does this by taking all of his victim's livers, absorbing them, and hibernating in a nest made of newspaper and his own bile for periods in between murders. Pretty cool right.

- Perhaps the final showdown was a little less then well executed. They defeated Tooms by handcuffing him to a bath, but couldn't he just elongate his fingers to escape the cuffs, or maybe he just wanted to get caught who knows. But an easy way out.

- It also was the most cliched slasher movie sequence ever, with Scully running a bath, whilst Tooms stalked around her apartment.

- Like I said, I don't think Squeeze is necessarily the most intelligent or progressive episode of the X-Files, but there's something to be said for just hitting you're audience in the gut, and I think this was an important side of the show to reveal, because the problem with a conspiracy show is that you have a long-term faceless enemy, whose stature is drawn from that namelessness, its good to have bad guy on the screen every once in a while.

- Doug Hutchison's performance does kind of bring to light an immediate concern I had with the show, which was the lack of a supporting cast, and given that while Anderson and Duchovny are growing into their roles, it would be still nice to have an actor's who is always good on the show, because at times the bad acting is the show's Achilles heel. It stops you really committing to some of the scenes, which is a shame.

- I liked that Tooms was mostly quite animalistic, he had no speeches or reasons why, rather just an organism doing what it has to do to survive.

- While I did think the Scully-Mulder dialogue was better, some of Colton's dialogue was awful. One interchange between him and Scully was pretty laughable containing a line like ' If this is what it takes to climb the ladder, then I can't wait to watch you fall on your ass.' It was kind of made awesome by Anderson's extremely reluctant delivery of it. Almost as if she knew it was a piece of shit line.

- The final scene of Tooms staring at the letter-box slot on his cell door lasted forever, and was pretty fucking terrifying. I guess they knew they were onto something, so they didn't kill him. I look forward to his inevitable re-appearance in a lesser episode.

- Oh I almost forgot, there was an entire subplot about a cop who chased Tooms in 33' that took place in about two scenes. He gave a bizarre, pointless monologue about how places where bad things happen smell of evil, and then segued right in to giving Mulder the evidence to solve the case. Bizarre character and scene.

- Its stuff like that that makes me think The X Files is stuck in some netherworld between a cheesy 80's cop show and a progressive, intellectual sci-fi series. It's just fused both realities together regardless of whether they fit or not. At the moment there's some tonal irregularities for sure.

- A lean, mean slasher-movie of an episode. Which ditched larger arcing for the sake of scaring the shit out of you, and for the most part it was largely effective. Its still got the rough around the edges feel, and a worryingly blase attitude toward specificity and the reality of its universe but its bigger picture approach does allow for some of the ideas to shine. Creepy as balls.

Rating: 7/10

The X Files Season One: "Deep Throat" - Unidentified Flying Objects

I'll put this in my field report!

I'm glad I'm watching this weekly instead of on marathon, because The X Files is such a bleak show at its core, where the message reiterated is that the house always wins and it crushes your face for good measure. It's a show about questions that have answers always an inch out of reach, and while it's still rough around the edges at the moment, only two episodes in I can feel the atmosphere growing on me already, even if there's yet to be an episode that bowls me over. I can feel it coming though, any moment now.

- So our plot this week involves a US military pilot with a name way too difficult to spell, having a psychotic break, and upon the military police's arrival to fuck him up, they find him cowering in the corner, covered in sores looking pretty crazy. Mulder thinks that the pilot is part of a secret program to blend UFO technology with regular military aircraft. Because of course he does.

- David Duchovny's performance in The X Files is bad, but it can be kind of awesome if you let. I loved the scene where the woman whose husband got nabbed by the military was like 'how will I support my family', Duchovny made a sound equivalent to 'ergh'. He stopped just short of saying that's why they're called your problems. He doesn't seem to be listening to anyone who's not Gillian Anderson, too awesome is he to look guest stars in the eye.

- Someone who I assume to be a recurring character was introduced this week, a fairly generic government type called Deep Throat. See what they did there. Yeah. Chris Carter nailed that one. He's fairly superfluous to the episode, showing up almost as an afterthought at the beginning and the end. Meh on that guy.

- I liked the concept at the centre of this episode, but I think they were kind of vague with it. Deliberately of course, but sci-fi is smarter with specificity and particularly because this was kind of a grounded idea, military accessorizing their planes with some alien hubcaps, but it was treated with the same kind of mysterious reverence as last week's aliens, and I;m not sure that was a good idea.

- The procedural aspects of the show haven't quite found their footing just yet, while I think the characterization is fine, the plots seem to peter out too early, Carter definitely telegraphs the resolution of the mystery half way through the episode if not before. He doesn't seem all that onvested in making that aspect of the show rewarding. Although it could just be the lottery of the stand-alone show, some weeks are strong, others less so. The plotting hasn't been the show's forte yet though.

- Seth Green! Or as he will be forever known Oz from Buffy, playing the most stereotypical stoner teenager ever. Like totally rad dude.

- The wife of the military pilot is perhaps the most plot device a human being can possibly be.

- The X-Files does well not to portray small-towners as hicks, most of them seem to be onto the governments tricks and seem to react to situations in a non-retarded manor. A rare feat for a procedural show.

- The sci-fi horror of the week was actually quite clever. Telling us that the aircraft were so advanced it was beyong human capacity to pilot them, so prolonged cockpit time left you with your brain fried. Or as Mulder says ' How much human cost is necessary to build a better machine?'

- There should be a drinking game, in which you drink every time Scully mentions her field report.

- Very dark ending. Mulder lays eyes on the freaky planes, then is abducted by the military and has his brain wiped, in a very bleak scene. Isn't he supposed to be our badass hero? So the way it pans out, the audience gets the information, but Scully and Mulder basically get beat down by the conspirators. That's like a cop show having the criminals win every week.

- Gillian Anderson is also growing on me, gets a chance to be a little less square in this one. Some supporting cast would be nice, but I guess this photogenic, charmingly wooden twosome will do for now.

- Again solid, but not quite great. Perhaps the like of a compelling villain as of yet is the problem. The dark turn in the latter half of the episode means I got more out of it, and it took further steps to setting up a master plot, or at least a master arc. The deep throat guy is a very generic, easy way to do that though. Still, getting better and shaking off the rustiness as it goes.

Rating: 6/10

The X Files Season One: " Pilot" - Should You Go Down To The Woods Today

I Want to believe. I'm sorry but grown ass Mulder wouldn't have that in his office.

This will be an interesting experiment for me, because while I've seen episodes of The X Files here and there I've seen much too little of it, and certainly nothing out of the first season. And while the show's critical reputation is holding, I'm getting the sense that nobody is watching The X-Files anymore. Buffy holds strong, yet the most successful genre series of all time, at least in terms of viewers (nobody watched Star Trek until way after), the colossus of a genre everybody complains is too often marginalized, is apparently not worth watching for the direct subsequent generation? I'm not one to point fingers, I've seen every episode of Buffy at least twice and not a single complete season of the X-Files. So I think its time to put that right, and discover whether this show for all its supposed influence, actually holds up. Without further etc.

- Its easy to understand the show's mass appeal almost instantly. Its essentially a detective show with a twist. We've still got detectives solving murder cases, only they're FBI Agents and instead of the culprits being gangsters and serial killers, we've got Aliens and monsters. Score for one for The X Files as opposed to Law And Order, is that while there's only so many variations on psychopath, aliens and monsters adds another dimension, one where you can be intrigued by the idea even if the episode itself doesn't work all that well.

- The episode's introductory scene couldn't be more alien abduction for dummies though. But that's exactly the point I suppose. Ingratiate you into the world with familiar imagery and all that. Girl in pajamas wondering through the woods, bright lights, she looks up amazed and then we cut to the morning and she's dead. The cops exchange suspicious glances and one of them implies that this isn't the first time. Cue Credits.

- Gillian Anderson has done some interesting work post Files, she was very good in Bleak House, amongst other things, but Scully looks like the worst role in the world at this point. It sucks to be the skeptic in a sci-fi show, because you're always wrong. But Anderson is making it work best she can, selling both the naivete and the intelligence of Scully.

- I love how 90's TV shows don't give a shit about delicacy, just had a 5 minutes scene which not only introduced the show's main character, but also the show's central thesis, the Scully-Mulder dynamic, Mulder's main motivation and the narrative of this week's episode. Working up to stuff is for WIMPS.

- Duchovny is maybe trying a little too hard as Mulder. I think he's capable of being a good actor, in the specifically right circumstance, because he's got an innate roguish charm/douche thing going on, but he is always asked to play intelligent characters and that i find harder to swallow. Call him TV's Keanu Reeves.

- Still as hero names go, you could do worse then Fox Mulder. That's badass.

- So a series of girls are being found with the exact same unidentifiable marks on their back, naturally Mulder thinks some nasty Aliens are afoot. Scully thinks there must be a rational explanation for all this. I think that line should be banned from TV and Movies.

- What I do like, is that its setting up the conspiracy angle nicely, the villains of this show, both alien and human, are unseen. So it has a nice us vs. The World quality, but also a sense that they're fighting a losing battle. I like this tone.

- Mulder's one-liners are having a very low rate of conversion though, When he and Scully exhumed the body of one of the victim's and the corpse looked positively Alien, cracking jokes didn't really seem appropriate. Particularly for a man on a passionate crusade for validation and answers. Still got to be that maverick cop I suppose.

- Suspects are a mysterious cop, a morgue attendant, a comatose boy and his crazy chick friend. I think we all know who its going to be. I mean beside the aliens of course.

- Very cynical Scully shower scene/fake-out. She thought she had the alien mark, but it turns out it was just mosquito bites. As long as we got her in bra and panties, says Fox studios.

- A kind of cool scene, where Mulder and Scully lose 10 minutes of time instantaneously. Something mysterious is going on. Yeah.

- Our second exposition scene is more character based, Mulder explains his 8 year old sister just disappeared one night, no warning, no trace. It's what drives him on his crusade to prove aliens exists, coz you know he hopes they took her.

- I instantly hope his sister disappeared for human reasons, instead of supernatural ones. Would be poignant. Chance of that happening equals zero though.

- Anderson grows on you as the episode progresses. It's a difficult role, but she is likable and a reasonable enough audience surrogate. This episode's plot though is kind of weak. Such is the lottery with stand-alone cop dramas. You roll the dice with that shit every week.

- So it was in fact comatose boy, under guidance from the aliens who abducted him at his graduation, with an assist from his cop dad. Guest characters all drawn pretty broadly though.

- The final confrontation scene was kind of poetic, in its own rough around the edges kind of way. The advantages of sci-fi, in a procedural series. Shit can at least be different.

- Probably a better pilot then it is a stand-alone episode. The world is well established, and I dug the conspiracy element, the final scene of a ominous man who was in a few scenes but had no lines, jacking Scully's evidence and taking it to a top secret Pentagon base was a nice, Good guys lose in this world moment. The whodunit of the week story was a little predictable and rushed but, it had a lot to get through. Potential problems? Well at the moment it seems like an exclusively two character series. Not sure about that. Duchovny and Anderson both have their merits, but I'm not sure they can engage me on their own forty minutes a week.

- I also think the strength of each episode is going to be a monster of the week lottery, but having said that there's promise here. And if it goes a more mythological route then they may be something unique. I guess we'll see. But it set up a dark tone well and right now, intrigued if not invested. But something tells me I may be soon.

Rating: 6/10