Essential Guide to The X-Files

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in The X-Files movie.

For anyone unaware of The X-Files beyond alien conspiracies, UFOs, and evil government agents, you're in for a treat. I was just like you once. My favorite pastimes were professional wrestling, cartoons, and the NBA, while The X-Files was the furthest thing from my radar. It wasn't until the series was at it's end that I came aboard, which was in 2002, after watching an episode about a gigantic, worm-like creature that haunted the sewer systems in New Jersey. I was still a little slow to start, but a couple of years of reruns on the Sci Fi Channel, and even an old girlfriend at the time, got me to where I stand today. Consider this my best sales pitch...

Essential Episode Number One

"X-Files Pilot" (Season One)

This episode premiered in the Fall of 1993 and introduced television audiences to Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, who would be partners for the better part of a decade, as well as two feature films. The Pilot does a fine job of laying the ground work for the series- Mulder has been assigned to an office in the basement where he researches cases through magazines, classified ads, and also video tapes. Dana Scully has been assigned to work with him as a counter balance to his far-out theories, she keeps him grounded as the skeptic and must report back her findings. There's also a shadowy government conspiracy that steals their evidence, keeping Mulder in the dark and looking like a fool.

Why does he have such crazy theories and a job investigating the paranormal? I feel like each episode is similar to The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, in that each week there's a different tale of a supernatural happening or science fiction creature on the loose, and Mulder and Scully are sent to investigate. Coming into this series as a fan of The Twilight Zone, I liked that each episode offered a different self-contained story; there's something from every genre.
 

Mulder was a brilliant criminal profiler, yet his younger sister's disappearance as a child still haunts him, which led to his pursuit of her through these X-Files investigations. The arc of the series is mostly his, with viewers entering the story just as Scully does, and it's a good way to explore these themes and watch the conspiracy unfold; which she also becomes wrapped up in. Along with Mulder and Scully, another important character is introduced here as well, the shadowy Cigarette Smoking Man.

Essential Episode Number Two

"Sleepless" (Season Two)

On the surface "Sleepless" appears to be your basic case-of-the-week, but in actuality it could be one of the most important of the series, not just Season Two. Mulder is joined by a new partner, Alex Krycek, who sticks around the series for the entire run. Mulder's boss Assitant Director Walter Skinner is also present, as well as a new wrinkle in the series- a man by the name of X. While Season One was mostly conspiracy-free, mostly focusing on the paranormal investigations, this second season showed just how deep and deadly this conspiracy is. X acts a bridge for Mulder, giving him brief clues and leading him down this path to discovery. All that Mulder had to worry about in Season One was his evidence getting taken away, but this season he has to worry about losing his life...or even Scully's.

Essential Episode Number Three

"Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" (Season Three)

One of the finest episodes of the series, which earned Emmy Awards for it's writer Darin Morgan and also guest star Peter Boyle. I believe at one time it even ranked among Entertainment Weekly's 100 Essential TV Episodes. One of the earliest examples of the series stretching beyond monsters and conspiracies, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" is about a reluctant psychic played by Peter Boyle. The episode had me hooked from the early moments where he's confused about the pronunciation of Lollapalooza while the cashier he's talking to is equally baffled as to who Buddy Holly is; it's a prime example of the off-the-wall humor that Darin Morgan brought to the series. 

Bruckman joins Mulder and Scully as a psychic on their murder investigation, which is all about psychics being killed. I think the episode was written to highlight Mulder's quirky traits, giving him an equally quirky character to interact with in Clyde Bruckman.

Darin Morgan's brief tenure with the series saw him write two more this season, as well as one in the previous season, and also a guest starring role in Season 4's "Small Potatoes". He returned to the series as part of the upcoming 2016 mini-series, and his episode is the most-anticipated of the brief, 6-episode run.

Essential Episode Number Four

"Home" (Season Four)

While "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" was a famous episode, winning awards and critical acclaim, "Home" is the opposite. It is a notoriously grim episode that was even banned from airing in reruns on the FOX Network, though it gained enough fan votes to air during a Thanksgiving marathon on FOX's sister network, FX.

Mulder and Scully are called to investigate murders in a small town, seemingly out of their element, and find themselves up against an odd family of genetic freaks. It may seem tame now to TV audiences following cable shows like The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and even NBC's Hannibal. However The X-Files excelled at creating atmosphere in these early seasons filmed in Vancouver and this fact still sets it apart from it's TV peers.

Essential Episode Number Five

"Folie A Deux" (Season Five)

In some instances, these cases can bring out the craziness in Mulder. He's gone too far at times to link little girls to the disappearance of his own sister, personalizing investigations. He's disobeyed orders, putting his own job into jeopardy as well. Here in "Folie A Deux" Mulder ends up putting himself into the line of fire in a hostage scenario. It's a prime example of how far Mulder will go on a case, which is usually used in sound bites from various characters on the series' run- "'HOW FAR WILL MULDER GO!?' Tune in Sunday on FOX to find out."

Long-time series writer Vince Gilligan wrote this script, whose name is familiar to TV audiences through his creation of Breaking Bad. Gilligan was an essential writer on the series, mixing both comedic and thriller episodes into every season he worked on, and also had a knack for furthering the series' continuity. Much like that old hair commercial for men with the line "I'm not just the owner, I'm also a client", Vince wasn't just a writer, he was also a fan. Likely the biggest fan of the series.

Essential Episode Number Six

"Monday" (Season Six)

Some die-hard fans will likely dispute these choices of only one essential episode per season, especially these middle years, but I stand firm in my choices as I feel they best highlight the evolution of the series. The X-Files began as a spooky conspiracy drama in 1993, yet by it's 5th year in 1998, it had begun a clear departure from mixing the two. "Sleepless" (from Season Two) was an example of that style at it's finest, with it beginning like a standalone episode but ending with it's roots in the government conspiracy. As the series progressed, those conspiracy episodes were featured as "event" two-part episodes only twice per season, typically book-ending each season.

In "Monday" Mulder finds himself caught in a time-loop, much like the repeating day scenario in Groundhog's Day. The writers also cited The Twilight Zone, which featured an episode where a man was doomed to being executed at the end of each day. The episode, also co-written by Vince Gilligan, blends comedic moments along with the serious ones.

Essential Episode Number Seven

"X-COPS" (Season Seven)

I chose seven episodes to highlight the seven seasons where David Duchovny was featured star, though he does make select appearances in the final two seasons. Just like the previous episodes, this is also written by Vince Gilligan, which blends his favorite show COPS with The X-Files.

On paper that sounds like one of the worst episodes you could ever see and its no surprise that the series producers nixed the idea at first. I was just as skeptical as Scully, yet for years every time I mentioned the series to my grandma, she always brought up "the one when they were on COPS." It created an aura surrounding "X-COPS", which may have set my expectations a little too high. My expectations aside, it does create a unique feel for the episode as it was filmed entirely by the COPS production crew. It's also ahead of it's time, maybe not intentionally, but in the years since it's aired, so many movies and television shows have used the "found-footage" handheld style.

As The X-Files return to the small screen is just days away, a week to be exact, if you want an introduction into the series, hopefully this is it.

"Of Monsters & Meth"

In my 6 years of consuming X-Files episodes like Leonard Betts eats cancer, I never imagined I would be able to see a new movie on the big screen, purchase brand new comics based on the series, nor witness one of its best writers become a household name. The X-Files' cast and crew have had varying degrees of success since the show ended in 2002 but none have struck gold quite like Vince Gilligan. Gilligan's Breaking Bad quietly debuted on AMC on January 20, 2008, though it built up steam and eventually captured an Emmy for Bryan Cranston's portrayal of Walter White, while also earning nominations in several other categories. The praise for Vince Gilligan came as no surprise to me because I've always enjoyed his darkly comedic style.

Though he never crafted his own episode of The X-Files' series mythology, which included government agents, aliens, and clones, he made his mark with standalone cases of the week that rank among the best of the entire series. In fact, he was cranking out more than any writer over a three-year period between the start of 1997 and the end of 1999. Despite never being called upon for one of the mythology episodes, he always found ways to work in references to those episodes and even past one-off monsters such as the Flukeman.

Luke Wilson in "Bad Blood"

One of his fan favorites is a tale about vampires called "Bad Blood" that featured guest starring appearances from Luke Wilson and the "Great Hambino" of The Sandlot, Patrick Renna. What made this episode special was not due to its guest stars nor because it featured vampires, its because of the way Vince holds up a microscope to Mulder and Scully. The episode is told in a series of flashbacks, with one being from Mulder's perspective and the other from Scully's. As viewers, we always watched the series from a third-person perspective outside of the characters, and rarely did the series use narrations from its two lead characters. The multiple perspectives in "Bad Blood" allowed us to see how Mulder views Scully and also how she views her partner.

X-Files villain John Lee Roche in "Paper Hearts"

Not only was Vince skilled at comedic episodes, he also wrote thrilling episodes like "Pusher" and "Paper Hearts." "Pusher" centered around the chase for a man who pushed his will onto his victims just by saying simple phrases to them. One of the long-running mysteries of the series was about Fox Mulder's sister Samantha, who was abducted as a child, and he believed aliens were responsible. "Paper Hearts" was the closest Vince came to The X-Files mythology and it offered another possible explanation, that she was abducted by a child killer. When you look closer at Vince's episodes, a recurring theme appears to be human monsters; either those who are misunderstood and only villains out of necessity or humans that obtain pleasure from their villainous acts. 

Bryan Cranston in "Drive"

 A strong villain is always entertaining, and many writers and performers will tell you that the best villains are those who believe what they are doing is right. For example the main villain of The X-Files, the Cigarette Smoking Man, saw himself as a hero because he believed he was doing the right thing by protecting the government conspiracy. This should come as no surprise why Walter White is such an excellent character. He is very much a family man and only turned to his life of crime as a way to support them after he was diagnosed with cancer. His evil acts have been out of that necessity to protect his secret life and continue building a nest egg for his family. What makes this unique is Bryan Cranston was also a guest star in one of Gilligan's X-Files episodes called "Drive", playing an unlikely villain character named Patrick Crump. Crump was another unconventional villain, who only acted this way because low frequency waves could cause his head to explode if he didn't drive his car fast enough. It sounds a bit ridiculous on paper, but trust me, it's a great episode. A quote from Vince Gilligan on the casting of Cranston for The X-Files also mirrors why he selected Cranston for the role of Walter White: "We had this villain, and we needed the audience to feel bad for him when he died. Bryan alone was the only actor who could do that, who could pull off that trick. And it is a trick. I have no idea how he does it."

However, over the course of five seasons on Breaking Bad, Walter has transformed into Vince Gilligan's other archetype: the villain with a perverse pleasure for his villainy. At first Walter used his "Heisenberg" alias just for his dealings in the drug world, but he fully became Heisenberg once he was able to get the power he never had in his mundane life as a high school chemistry teacher. I guess the cost was that the further he got into the criminal underworld, the further away he was from being the “family man” that he believed he was. Once he realized that, it was too late; his family was gone.

 

Bryan Cranston as Walter White

It’s a risky premise for a television series, to take their main character and actually make him such an unlikeable character. However that’s what makes Vince Gilligan’s writing so special, whether it’s for Breaking Bad, The X-Files, or its own spin-off, The Lone Gunmen. He takes tv conventions and flips them on their head. And Vince, I love you for it. From babies with tails to a man in a wheelchair with a bell as his only means of communication, I love it all.

Season 3 Recap

Here's my first official X-Files blog post after trying out livejournal and Facebook Notes. I did watch "Talitha Cumi" this past spring, though I didn't review it at the time. I'm planning to rewatch that along with "Herrenvolk" so I can get the full effect of the story. In the meantime, here's what I thought of the amazing Third Season, but first!

With grading episodes, I've tried out giving them a letter grade as if I was making a report card for the season, then switched to a number score out of 10. I think I'm going back to a 5 star/letter grading scale similar to movies that way I can stay consistent. It seems like everything stays in the 7 to 9 range with few episodes falling below that. For now I'll post the original score, then the new 5 star grade in parenthesis.

"The Blessing Way"- 7 (3.5)
"Paper Clip"-9 (4.5)
"D.P.O."- 7 (3.5)
"Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"- 10 (5)
"The List"- 7 (3.5)
"2Shy"- 7 (3.5)
"The Walk"- 7 (3.5)
"Oubliette"- 7 (3.5)
"Nisei"- 7 (3.5)
"731"- 8 (4)
"Revelations"- 7 (3.5)
"War of the Coprophages"- 9 (4.5)
"Syzygy"- 8 (4)
"Grotesque"- 9 (4.5)
"Piper Maru"- 8 (4)
"Apocrypha"- 8 (4)
"Pusher"- 9 (4.5)
"Teso Dos Bichos"- 6 (3)
"Hell Money"- 6 (3)
"Jose Chung's From Outer Space"- 10 (5)
"Avatar"- 7 (3.5)
"Quagmire"- 7 (3.5)
"Wetwired"- 9 (4.5)

Wow! Looking at all of those rankings at once, this really was an amazing season of The X-Files. Everything finally came together behind the scenes to create a great balance of mythology episodes and standalones. Season Two is, well maybe was my favorite, since its hard to really compare the two. Season Two's peaks are higher but Three is much more consistent, which makes it a close call. Now I know the general opinion is the "Hell Money" and "Teso Dos Bischos" are two that stick out like a sore thumb and hurt the season but I don't think they do. "Teso" might have a poor straight to video horror movie plot but the special effect work and creepy visuals (like the rattling toliets) elevated it. The same goes for "Hell Money", which was saved by the Chinese version of The Smoking Man.

My favorites for this year were "Jose Chung's From Outer Space", "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose", I was really suprised by "Wetwired" (which unfortunately might be the last of this kind of episode), "War of the Coprohages", and "Paper Clip." Though it is difficult to pick "Paper Clip" as this season's best myth episode since all of 3 of the conclusions were loaded with moments like Scully confronting Luis Cardinal, Mulder's train ride with X coming to the rescue, and Krycek being locked away in the missile silo.

I can't wait for Season 4, which I begin tomorrow with "Herrenvolk." There are so many episodes I haven't seen from this season like "Memento Mori", Krycek & Mulder in that Russian two-parter, "Paper Hearts", and "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man." STAY TUNED!