Originally Aired 4/30/00
After 7 long years it finally happened... I watched an episode early! I'd done so good with sticking to air dates but I accidentally jumped the gun with "Hollywood A.D." and watched it a week early. I've been really off for much of this season as it is, since I put it on hold in February to watch "X-Cops" with my grandma, causing me to fall behind by two or three episodes. I did it again with "First Person Shooter" so I could watch that action-packed episode with a friend of mine. So I assumed I was back on track, only to realize after I watched it that my beloved X-Files actually took a week off. But hey, I lasted this long without a slip up, I think that says a lot to my dedication. I only goofed while I was house-sitting for my aunt, so I might even ignore that little mistake since I took on extra tasks like feeding her dog that distracted me.
Now that I'm allowed to watch it for real, I've watched "Hollywood A.D" several times this week in an attempt to fully form my thoughts on it but I still feel it's a mixed bag. While I enjoy the witty dialogue from Mulder, Scully, and their "hologram" sidekick Wayne Federman, I'm still not sold on the actual X-File. There's a religious artifact that can raise the dead, yet I'm lost with what happened between a cardinal of the church and some guy who had forged religious documents. I suppose all of that is meaningless anyway because this episode is really just an excuse to laugh and poke fun at the series, which it does with flying colors. I loved the back and forth one liners, which the series has been lacking since the days of Darin Morgan's episodes. Sure, I've laughed at many episodes since then, but nothing has felt as fresh and as witty as "Hollywood A.D."
"Hollywood A.D." also pokes fun at the series itself by featuring a movie about The X-Files, well, an amalgamation loosely based on The X-Files, starring Tea Leoni as Scully and Garry Shandling as Mulder. Much of this is actually based on real life events, as Duchovny's wife is Tea Leoni and David Duchovny made guest appearances on Shandling's cable series, The Larry Sanders Show. During David's appearance on that series his amalgamation loosely based on himself had a crush on Larry Sanders, so now that's reversed when Scully jokes that Shandling has a crush on Mulder. While many viewers might not be aware of that in-joke, the movie-within-a-tv series sequences still offer plenty of laughs, like the Cigarette Smoking Pontiff and eccentric actors that only eat "tofurkey."
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