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Reviews
The Last Horror Movie (2003)
Horror movie tells its audience off for watching horror movie. In 2003.
The Last Horror Movie is a 2003 horror, the premise of which is that you the viewer have rented a "video nasty" from your local Choices, only to find that a serial killer has recorded over it with some of his sadistic killings.
That's right: in 2003, you haven't made the switch to DVD yet.
It might seem like a minor gripe, but it highlights the larger problem with The Last Horror Movie - that it graces us with its social commentary roughly 20 years too late. The theme of viewer-as-passive-participant is one that's been knocking around the horror genre for decades now, and whether or not it's still interesting, it's works best when it sneaks up on you. Subtext without the "sub-" leaves the audience feeling lectured, patronised and preached at.
The Last Horror Movie takes this once-intriguing idea, waits til 2003, and then proceeds to bludgeon you over the head with. You're on the receiving end of a darned good telling-off for taking vicarious thrills in the suffering of others before you've even dunked your first hobnob.
And that's the problem. The horror fan is being framed for a crime that, for the most part, he does not actually commit. The idea that anyone who watches a murder is on some level a wannabe murderer is older than Freud and as hamfistedly simplistic as the moral outrage leveled at The Simpsons back in the day for failing to provide good role models (seriously kids, that actually happened!). Of course, our protagonist only tells us to ask (incredibly leading) questions about ourselves, rather than outright calling us sickos. But there might as well be a banner reading "WE ARE DEALING WITH ISSUES, GUYS" scrolling along the bottom of the screen the whole time for all the nuance in this.
It's ironic really that, of all the genres that might actually deserve this kind of treatment, it's horror that gets it. Horror has always had to fight to justify itself, sometimes with good cause. As a result, there's probably been more academic analysis of the genre than any other, and it _does_ filter through to the film-maker and to the viewer. Most serious horror fans (and those are probably the only people likely to "rent" this "video") at least have some inkling as to why they watch horror movies. Despite our intrepid serial killer host's assertions, it is a self-aware genre loved by a self-aware audience. A movie in which a trite Jennifer Aniston romcom is cut off after ten minutes by the twin video diaries of a couple who are horrifically mismatched and incapable of articulating even their most basic of feelings to one another might have been a much more interesting prospect, and possibly a lot more frightening.
All postmodern ramblings aside, what really undermines the movie is not the trite, misguided social commentary or the lazy misjudgment of its likely core audience, but the fact that, really, it's not a very good horror film. The real art behind even the most lunkheadedly depraved "torture porn" is to repulse just enough to fascinate - to have the viewer peering out from behind his fingers. The fact that The Last Horror Movie is intentionally written to be watched on video just highlights how very very easy it is to stop watching the movie, long before the first smug "if you don't like it, why are you watching?" comment from the protagonist. But then, given the analysis of the horror fan on display, they probably thought that just half-showing some murders was enough. After all, you like watching murders, right? =D
The short version is that this is a movie which is hampered by an implausible and dated premise from the word "go", and which does very little to redeem itself. If you want a tortuous unappealing slog through the ill-conceived mind of the serial killer, you could watch The Poughkeepsie Tapes. At least that guy knew how to point a camera.
The X Files: The Unnatural (1999)
Why baseball? Just... why?!
There's a few episodes of The X-Files that really jockey for the place of "worst episode ever", by being bland, unoriginal, dumb or lumbering. And yet, somehow, "The Unnatural" just walks it, without apparently even trying, by finding ways to suck you never thought possible.
The story is just... it's an alien who becomes human so he can play baseball. Which is fine... except it's not. It's being told as a joke, or a fib, or a fable, by a character who doesn't really have any reason to be there (Arthur Dales just kinda appeared and disappeared, didn't he), and it's not much more than annoying, folksy Americana with some kind of social commentary about the KKK crowbarred in there for good measure. The viewer is just left to ask "why?"
I get that it's just supposed to be a bit of fun, but it's not fun, it's an endurance test. I get that it's about baseball and that, as a Britisher, it's impossible to imagine anyone from outside America liking baseball, let alone coming from another planet for it. I get that. But I still don't like it. You give it the benefit of the doubt for a while, but it just persists in being nothing but bilge, so in love with its concept - that it's just a story and that it doesn't matter if it's true, and that everything comes down to baseball apparently - that it just doesn't notice how bad it's being.
I'm amazed to find that people actually like this one.
The X Files: Arcadia (1999)
Utopia revisited
After the grand plot arc, established so early in The X-Files' life and gathering pace until now, it was difficult to see where the series was going to go. "Arcadia" is the first of the episodes that follows the "Two Fathers/One Son" two-parter which gives much indication that the show can still deliver.
A very knowing episode, "Arcadia" takes the idea of an idyllic setting with a dark underbelly and really runs with it. The planned community is a gift to this, as the whole idea is both bizarre and unnerving to many of us. What this provides is ideal for circumventing preconceptions. The utopian smiles are strained from the off, even before the horrors begin, and what follows is a town apparently built upon irony rather than a simple landfill.
The episode swaggers back and forth between the grim and horrific and purely playing for laughs - Mulder and Scully's "homelife" as the Petries is pretty hilarious, and plays off the "will they won't they" tensions that supposedly existed (they always seemed rather overstated by the media, I have to say) by showing the two living together and, as you'd expect, bugging crap out of each other. It's an absolute corker, and the monster of the week, together with his anally retentive "owner" Mr Gogolak, make perfect sense in context, something which sets "Arcadia" well apart from lesser episodes.
The X Files: Lord of the Flies (2001)
The Dumbass Show
Going through reviewing X-Files episodes, I'm seeing a pattern of the show consistently messing up in the same one or two ways whenever it dropped a stinker.
1. Nice teaser, shame about the everything else: "Soft Light" and "Lord Of The Flies" both suffered the same problem here, of a brilliantly intriguing teaser that only served to throw the crumminess of the explanation into stark relief. Never has this been so true than with "Lord Of The Flies", however. It looks like it's going to be funny. It looks like it's going to be creepy. It looks like it's going to be anything BUT what it turns out to be - a dumb high school story that's only unintentionally hilarious when it's trying to be sincere. It might be that I'm misreading it, but it's either weak comedy or REALLY weak drama.
2. Swarms of something controlled by some guy: like "Teso Dos Bichos" before it, "Lord Of The Flies" feels like it was constructed by committee.
"Let's do one about a guy who controls... something... somehow... for some reason." "How about some kind of animal?" "Maybe. Which ones haven't we done yet?" "Umm.... how about flies?" "Yeah, whatever."
At its best, this formula produces the likes of "D.P.O.", an episode which knew it was rather silly but played itself deadpan. But with that, "Fire", "Schizogeny" and a fair number of others basically rehashing the same supernatural elemental force, what matters is what you do with it. A simple love story doesn't quite justify it.
Even if you try and ignore these things, you're still left with a rather flaccid, rather mundane tale of a high school kid who - get this - gets bullied by some jocks and likes listening to awful music. What can I say? It's a big bag of clichés whether it's serious or not, and the weird continual references to Syd Barrett kind of suggest that it might actually have been someone's important childhood memories or something. Whatever. It's as dumbassed as the show it lampoons in the teaser, if not more.
The X Files: All Souls (1998)
Revelations II
Picking up more or less where the third season episode "Revelations" left off (thematically; it's not a sequel or anything), we're back in X-Files Christianity Land. So, no rational explanations, ever, and Scully being persuaded to just go along with what any lunatic says, with okay maybe a little soul-searching but not much.
It's not that that's a bad thing, but these episodes really do feel like a whole other show. "All Souls" - a story about the "collection" of the souls of polydactic girls by some Heavenly agent, stemming from some part of the Book of Enoch - balances Scully's foray into open- mindedness a little more this time. The bulk of the episode takes the form of flashbacks, told by a tear-strewn Scully into the gauze of the confessional, as she struggles to reconcile her behaviour in allowing the final girl's soul to be taken.
It's actually pretty powerful stuff, if you can get over that, brilliantly acted by Gillian Anderson. The real letdown is Mulder, to be honest; for no apparent reason, he's been transformed into a total arsehole, and what makes it worse is that he's barely even needed in this episode. It would've been far easier to just use another detective, who might actually HAVE the kind of sneering, dismissive personality that Mulder displays in this episode. It's true that Mulder has shown perverse skepticism in the previous religious episodes, but it never got much less jarring over the years.
The X Files: Teso dos Bichos (1996)
Maybe lay off the Yage
If there's one thing the X-Files generally avoided, it was filler. But "Teso Dos Bichos" definitely qualifies.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly *why* this feels so generic and lazy, as I'm not sure that it had particularly been done before in the show, but it seems like a loose mish mesh of "Shapes"' werewolf/manitou plot, but with cats. There's a shaman whose grave is desecrated, and a guy who's hitting some kind of spiritual herbal drug, but their relevance to the events of the episode aren't all that clear for the most part, and while some episodes play that kind of ambiguity to their advantage, here it just seems sloppy and devoid of any logic.
I think the real problem is that "Teso Dos Bichos" is just charmless. There's nothing that really stands out as unique or original here, and mainly, nothing that couldn't have been done by any other show (The Outer Limits springs to mind). Mulder and Scully are just flaccid and boring, wandering through the episode in the same kind of daze that the rest of us do, and really, they could be anyone. It almost seems inconvenient to have to deal with two characters when one would do, and since this was before the show got into focusing on one character or another, one of the agents always seems like a "second wheel".
Not the worst episode, but definitely not worth seeking out.
The X Files: Revelations (1995)
Oh god, it's Windam Earle
First thing's first: the casting in this one is EXCELLENT. We have the bad guy from The Hills Have Eyes as the good guy, and the bad guy from Twin Peaks as the bad guy, and even if you've seen enough TV to guess that Owen Jarvis isn't going to be a monster purely because he looks like "Homer Simpson's evil twin", the two really offset one another. And on top of that, the boy Kevin succeeds in not being irritating. Really, that's an achievement in itself.
"Revelations" depends quite heavily on "the ineffable plan" to patch up a few holes in its story, something which became an annoyingly common theme of the show's Christianity- themed episodes. We don't particularly know why any of what's happening is happening, and Scully's out-of-character open-mindedness - extending to an alarming willingness to let heavily medicated fanatics tell her what to do - is almost all the proof we get that it wasn't all just a great bit fiasco. The thing of flipping Mulder and Scully's believer/skeptic relationship is still kind of interesting, but it's frustrating that Scully is persuaded more easily by schizophrenics than by all the evidence of the paranormal she's been shown over the last three years.
In the end, I know nothing about the Bible, and this episode is pleasingly apocalyptic for me. I've since learnt that, as is mentioned in one of the other comments, St Ignatius' bilocation is made up for the sake of this episode, and it's annoying, but not enough to spoil it. So much is left unexplained, and you are rather battered around the head with the notion that faith is a good thing, but it at least makes sense within itself.
The X Files: Soft Light (1995)
Weird science?
"Soft Light" was one of my favourite episodes when I was a kid, and as such, I can't quite bring myself to hate it now. But it's not good.
"Soft Light" is science-fiction, rather than being about the supernatural, but the science behind it is just mental. A theoretical physicist is zapped by a particle accelerator, and is, as a result, lumbered with a shadow that eats people. Without being an expert in particle physics, I can promise you that this has absolutely zero basis in fact or even speculation about the nature of reality, nor do I think there would have been any doubt about this in the early 90s.
Once you get past the disappointingly silly pay-off to one of the second series' better teasers, there's the plot. X is in this one, trying to... I don't know. Kidnap the physicist's shadow? Possibly. It's never really clear, and seems like taking the show's early conceit that every paranoid lunatic is absolutely right to be paranoid a little too far. Tony Shalhoub is brilliant fidgety and convincingly jittery as the physicist, and it seems almost a waste to have him be a genuinely wanted man, given how well he portrays someone on the edge of insanity.
The upsetting thing about this is that it *could've* been so much better. A people-eating shadow is a good enough idea to back up with something more supernatural or whimsical. As it is, the episode becomes severely bogged down by the conspiracy gubbins, and the science is a rather boring explanation for something that looked rather cool.
If you want to see a similar idea done MUCH better, check out the Doctor Who "Silence In The Library/Forest Of The Dead" two-parter. I'd be surprised if the writers hadn't seen this episode and thought "hey, there's a good idea in there somewhere".
The X Files: The List (1995)
An underrated episode
Marred by comparisons to "Duane Barry", Chris Carter's previous directorial effort, "The List" used to get a bum rap. It's not perfect, by any means, but there are some nice ideas here.
The basic concept, of the reincarnation of a death row inmate, possibly involving flies although we're not entirely sure how or why, is fairly standard X-Files fair, and not particularly any great advance upon the first series episode "Born Again". Indeed, it's not hard to see this as "Born Again II", but it's a far more considered product.
The green of the prison scenes, compared to the more "normal" lighting and colour of the outside world, creates a nice sense of two worlds, one kept separate and inferior to the other in every possible way, and foreshadows the brutality and nastiness of J.T. Walsh's character, one of those genuinely love-to-hateable figures that can make episodic TV so appealing. Where some X-Files are, intentionally or not, a little more morally ambiguous, "The List" works in binary, sledgehammer strokes.
It's a little obvious, perhaps. Almost from the second Walsh appears on-screen, you know he's going to be "the bad guy". Almost as soon as we see Neech (the condemned), we know that he's not going to be a clear-cut bad guy. We know how the show works by now. But really, all this means is that the show is about Walsh, and his desperate attempts to prevent his own imminent demise, his fear and horror. We know what's going to happen to him, there's never any doubt, and there's an appeal to our dark sides as we watch him panic and bargain and generally refuse to accept that he might have it coming.
If there's one thing that "The List" really gets across, it's how much of a loss J.T. Walsh was to television. For this alone, it should never be dismissed.
The X Files: Die Hand Die Verletzt (1995)
The hand that wounds...
It was hard to imagine when I first watched this just how devastating the hysteria over Satanic Ritual Abuse was to families and communities during the 1990s. Having since looked into it, the episode becomes a lot more powerful, and a lot more interesting. The reactions make a lot more sense, and the characters seem less like obsessive lunatics and more like genuinely frightened people.
"Die Hand Die Verletzt" starts out so quirky, with the rain of frogs and the teens out to try and "get some". Or maybe it's the welter of teenage horror since then that makes these things seems light. Either way, even for The X-Files, this one gets dark fast, and the moral ambiguity present is wonderful as the cultists' lies turn out to be rather more well- intentioned than the comparatively friendly words of the demonic substitute teacher. Ms. Paddock is remarkable in her power to dominate the episode, even when not on screen, and it's great to see the agents (to quote a later episode with similar themes) not knowing which side they're on.
In a way, the story tries to do a little too much in too little time, but does at least show the right things. We don't need to see the rituals, the sacrifices or whatever; they're far more interesting for being a mystery to us. Through skillful editing, we as the audience are kept only slightly less in the dark than the agents, enough to trick us into thinking we know what's going on and which side we're on, but at the end, we're left with a bittersweet little epilogue that serves best to show us how foolish we were for thinking we understood what was going on. It encapsulates everything the preceding hour was about, and if that means we don't get all the answers we want, it's much better for it.
The X Files: Irresistible (1995)
Hair and nails, girly girl.
"Irresistible" is dark, bleak, and nasty, the story of a "death fetishist", mutilating the dead post mortem as a means of gratification, before later going looking for the dead themselves. All well and horrible, but then he fixates on Scully.
Make no mistake: this is psychological, rather than showy. Apparently the demonic images surrounding the killer - in which, at times, he morphs into another person - were added to the show very late on in the proceedings, when they realised that there was nothing technically paranormal about the story. The agents are called in to investigate the mutilations as evidence of UFOs, something which Mulder dismisses off-hand early on, and other than that, our killer is just a bad, messed-up person. It's frustrating, because without those images, the show works fine as a stand-alone, and we know the characters well enough by now for them to do a show about them, without having to crowbar some paranormal element into it.
The point being made, all the way through, is that the human "monster" can be as dark and disturbing as any ghoul or ghost. Personally... I'm not so sure it comes across. It seems a little unfair to criticise Scully's reaction to the desecrations of the bodies - her fear and disgust is palpable and perhaps intended to indicate an innate understanding of the evil which Mulder is able to dismiss - but the scheduling of the show precludes the depiction of a real monster. Pfaster is horrible, sure, but no more horrible than a lot of the monsters the show has depicted (personally I found the guy from "Young At Heart" a lot creepier). I'm not sure if there was something screwy with the sound, but he always sounds slightly too loud when he talks, which is more disconcerting than a lot of his more ghoulish behaviour.
The "sequel", surprisingly, works a lot better, so this is worth watching if only to make that better. And it's not a bad little episode. But a few little flaws - the unnecessary morphing being a major one - undermine it really badly.
The X Files: The Calusari (1995)
It knows you now.
No matter how many times I see this one, I always get chills from the teaser for this one. There's something truly horrible about a poor kid dying just because his brother happens to be a bit of a jerk. Of course, this being The X-Files, there's a little more to it than that, but still... ugh, just horrible.
"The Calusari" does what The X-Files does best, which is to play with the familiar, the foreign and the totally alien. Without knowing much about Eastern European folklore, the references and the overall feel of the episode are convincing enough that the supernatural parts are that much creepier. The family drama is intriguing, and the fear of the mother is palpable and seems totally genuine. The scenes during the exorcism are fantastic, and the central idea - the notion of a child haunted by his twin - is quite genuinely disturbing. It's a little unfortunate in that context that this episode follows "Humbug" so closely!
The X Files: All Things (2000)
Scully gets spiritual, possibly.
Scully's past: let's find out about it!
Personally, I never cared about or even really picked up on the "will they? won't they?" tension that seemed to have been the hot water-cooler topic since the show began. Was it that hard to imagine that two people of opposite sexes could work together without Stuff Happening?
Whatever. "All Things" decides that, rather than continue with the occasional hints at the nature of Mulder and Scully's relationship offered over the last 7 years, we're just going to find out the story of how they first "did it". And we're going find out about it through the medium of some vaguely New Agey stuff, some repetitive tapping, and some guy who may have had an affair with Scully who is dying. As a sort of subplot to get rid of him, Mulder is now apparently really interested in crop circles.
There's a little more to it than that, but nevertheless, it's slow, plodding, perplexing fluff for the most part. Scully's spiritual awakening, if that's what it's supposed to be, is just weird, for the same reason that it's weird when she starts believing in aliens in later episodes despite being perfectly capable of ignoring overwhelming evidence and her own senses until then. Gillian Anderson's creative role in this episode is perhaps the source of this, since she seems to be playing herself rather than Scully a lot of the time.
The whole point of it seems to be: look out for the moments that change your life, and you might get laid.
The X Files: 4-D (2001)
Huh?
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!" is basically what I thought, for at least half of this one. As it turns out, the plot is actually fairly simple and a nice twist on the standard serial killer story: the killer, Lukesh, finds his prey in a parallel universe, avoiding capture in his own. During a stakeout in one universe, Lukesh kills Reyes, and shoots Doggett, paralysing him, after he has followed him into the *other* universe. BUT, and this is where it gets tricky, when Doggett A steps through into universe B, Doggett B disappears from Reyes B's flat after she gets the call about Doggett A's shooting.
Confused? So was I. And, to be honest, I still am.
The great thing about 4-D is that, for once, as the viewer, you don't have that privileged position you often have (and seemed to get more and more throughout the last few series) of knowing much more than the "hero". The teaser and the scenes of Lukesh's home life poses more questions than they answer, although the link between Lukesh's nagging mother and his penchant for cutting out women's tongues is a nice if disturbing touch.
The bad thing, to me at least, is that it really pushes the credibility of Reyes' astute intuition. Do we honestly believe that she just *guesses* this stuff about parallel universes? I really struggle to, and it feels like a bit of a cheat to have people "just knowing" anything, particularly when it's the kind of idea you'd dismiss offhand if you even had it in the first place!
But yeah, the big problem here is: how the hell does this ending work? The whole story happens, and then, for some reason, Reyes B is not only back in her flat, but no time appears to have passed. Why? Who knows?
It doesn't actually matter though. It's good fun while it lasts, and you'll stay tuned in if only to figure out how they're going to finish this. I may be jaded and cynical, but I can hardly have been the only one thinking that a show wouldn't kill off two of its characters in the first five minutes of the fourth episode of a new series. So the teaser is less about me wondering whether they'll survive, but how.
The X Files: Je Souhaite (2000)
The X-Files goes postmodern (again)
It's difficult to express how stupid I thought this episode was when I first saw it, knowing how much I've come to love it since. A story about a genie seemed so totally out of character for the show, as if they were desperately trying to find any ideas from the supernatural that they hadn't already done. But in retrospect, it's actually perfectly *in* character.
A lot happens: A guy (Anson Stokes) finds a woman rolled up in a rug in a storage locker. His boss instantly loses his mouth. Anson then gets a boat in his driveway and *then* is found dead, invisible, having been hit by a truck. Cue a wonderful scene of Scully dusting an invisible corpse with lycopodium powder while grinning like an idiot.
And it goes on, in the manner of what I think is called a "romp". And it sounds so profoundly stupid. But it isn't.
Rather than invent some tenuous explanation for the genie (possibly realising that, no matter how seriously they did this episode, it was always going to be *a bit* silly) they instead appear to have gone back to the roots and the whole point of the genie story. Far from simply giving us a parable about being careful what you wish for, by giving the genie to someone we know to be an intelligent, sophisticated person trying to act as selflessly as possible, we get the real message, ultimately, from Scully: these wishes represent not the danger of getting what you want, but of being able to get what you want without trying. Power isn't just dangerous for stupid people; it's even dangerous for people like you.
It seemed a little trite when I was a kid. In fact, it made me downright angry. Because at the time, I guess, I would've been totally convinced that, if I'd had the genie, I would've done things differently. Years later, rewatching it, I'm very aware of how poignant it actually is, in a very devious way, in telling us that basically we'd never be able to deal with all that power, no matter how wise we thought we were, and that the smart thing to do would be to just roll the rug back up. As such, it's a neat little story, deceptively lighthearted but not lightweight.
On another note: Paula Sorge is fantastically beautiful.
The X Files: Small Potatoes (1997)
Sci-fi about sci-fi.
"Small Potatoes" got many plaudits on airing. It was called the best episode of any TV show ever by some magazine or other. It's.. it's just not.
The episode is by no means bad. Its premise - five babies, born to different mothers, all with tails - is actually pretty good and interesting. But what you're very aware of, right from the off, is that this one is a comedy. Now there's nothing wrong with that. The show has always had little gags, even in its darker episodes, and some episodes have stood out as being more ironic or quirky than others. But I'll admit, that's kind of my issue with "Small Potates"; whereas the impeccable "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" manages to be damn funny one minute and crushingly tragic the next, this story of a woman impregnated by a fat nerdy janitor who disguises himself as Luke Skywalker is, funnily enough, not much of a tear jerker.
Now I'm done slagging it off, I'll freely admit: it's still very good. Darin Morgan does some nice acting (after playing the Flukeman in season 2) as the touchingly pathetic Eddie, and Duchovny is particularly surprising in his ability to play someone else pretending to be him. The scenes with Eddie as Mulder are the real moneyshot of this episode; there's something very fan-fiction about it, hardly surprising given the Star Wars references and in-jokes and general geekery on display throughout.
So yes. It's actually okay. Just not the best. Comedy is great and everything, but the show can do comedy fantastically, and has done before this, without resorting to farce.
The X Files: Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose (1995)
Best. Episode. Ever.
"Small Potatoes" got way more attention than it deserved. Yes, it was good, but it was very obviously meant to be a joke, from start to finish.
I say this because a lot of people don't realise that "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" is one of the finest pieces of television ever made. What the aforementioned episode does with a sledgehammer, this episode does with sophistication, subtlety and care. The result is a very intricate, gradually unfolding piece of dramatic, emotional and tragicomical origami, which can make you laugh out loud and mist up in the space of seconds.
The story goes that one man is murdering psychics, cutting out their eyes and reading their entrails, because he believes he has predicted that he will. So far so odd, but then enter the psychic detectives, in the form of a wonderfully weird caricature of Yuri Geller, and his exact opposite, the old, unglamorous and awkward Clyde Bruckman, an apparently totally genuine psychic who is totally dismissive of his ability to see the future. While his obvious hindrance - that he can only see how people are going to die - is referred to, the story gains its real beauty from his belief that he cannot do anything about the futures he predicts, and from the agents' attempts to motivate him to actually help them.
The little insights the story shows into the characters - Mulder's inability to sleep after Bruckman describes his recurring dream, or Bruckman's little comment that he wishes he knew why he sells insurance, obvious given his gift, or the strangely endearing exchange between the killer and the psychic - elevate this episode above its quirks and gags, creating something which is genuinely very emotionally powerful as well as being very thought- provoking. Unlike episodes which rely on visual surprises, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" benefits from repeat viewings, since details emerge which can only be understood in retrospect - something entirely appropriate, given the theme of the episode.
The X Files: Humbug (1995)
Just... wow.
When people tell me that they were never that into The X-Files, I show them Humbug. It's definitely among the best episodes of the show's run, and at the time a totally unexpected departure from a show which had no right coming up with anything this good so early on in its life.
In the space of 45 minutes, writer Darin Morgan creates a sense of a quirky but totally plausible and enthralling mini-Twin Peaks (and not just because of the dwarf), and rather than muck about with endless talk of coffee for hour upon hour, the story kicks off immediately with a fantastic curveball - the disfigured man lurking in the bushes by the pool turns out to be far less dangerous than the *other* thing...
Really, you don't want to spoil it. There are so many surprises, strange visuals and genuinely very funny moments through "Humbug", but for all its weirdness and whimsy it is a solid episode plotwise, and also one of the few where neither Mulder nor Scully seem to have a clue what's going on for most of the time.
In terms of the cast and performance, it's a testament to the show that they don't try and get cheap laughs out of the freakier members. While there's a recurring theme about prejudice and what is "normal", it's nice that this theme ultimately has very little to do with the episode's conclusion. All of these things add up to a damn near perfect episode, one of a handful by the same writer which, far from being mere novelties, simply trounce everything around them.
The X Files: Aubrey (1995)
Overlooked classic
Bang in the middle of the second series, "Aubrey" is very easy to overlook. After the overt weirdness of "Blood" and the gross bodyhorror or "The Host" and "Firewalker", we have a story very much about characters. And it's pretty damn good.
It's a little unclear what's going on at times, but essentially: a female detective (called B.J. - I laughed, but then, I would've been about 13 at the time) discovers the body of the victim of a serial killer who - we later find out - is her grandfather, now well into his seventies and on a ventilator. Meanwhile, similar murders are being committed, and B.J. keeps finding bodies. It ends up as a story about genetic memory, or something, and in truth, I don't fully understand it even after watching it a few times. But to be honest, it doesn't matter much; the plot and direction are gripping, and the performances are fantastic, particularly Deborah Strang as B.J., who seems to literally become a different person when she "becomes" the serial killer.
In a way, the uncertainty makes this one. You feel that what's going on is powerful and elemental, hypernatural rather than supernatural, and it's far more frightening than a lot of the more flashy episodes that surround it.
The X Files: Fearful Symmetry (1995)
Abduction goes weird
It's easy to forget, once later series had developed the alien conspiracy plot arc more, that once upon a time, The X-Files' wrote episodes like "GenderBender" and "Fearful Symmetry", where the aliens weren't all little grey men or mind-control goop, but could actually surprise you.
"Fearful Symmetry" starts with an "invisible elephant" - actually an elephant somehow dislocated in space and time, not a mile away from "The Walk" - and ends with a pregnant gorilla being abducted. And it's very much an episode of wonderful moments. The subplot is annoyingly worthy - yeah, we get it, zoos are bad except when they're not - but the ideas that within it are fascinating, visually powerful, and very memorable, and it covers an angle on abduction that is largely overlooked - why *would* humans be the only things that aliens are interested in?
In the end, it wasn't an instant classic, but it was enjoyable viewing while it lasted, again, very memorable, and mainly, it's something that you couldn't imagine many other shows doing.
The X Files: Patience (2000)
Scully is the new Mulder
Scully's not actually the new Mulder, but "Patience" sees her suddenly being The Open- Minded One when she's paired with the more traditional Doggett. It's a little disconcerting, to be honest, but it doesn't get in the way too much, since they at least avoid trying to make Doggett "the new Scully".
"Patience", for those of us who weren't too fussed about the whole "mythology arc", is the first "proper" X-Files of the 8th series, and I'll be honest, when I first saw it, I didn't really know what to make of it. The whole look of the episode is very slick, with little of the murkiness of the earlier series even during the nighttime scenes. It seems like such a little difference, but it's odd, a nagging doubt about where the show is going that never quite leaves you alone.
Plot-wise, what we have is a bat/man (for some reason). To me, that's a vampire, given the long speech given in "Bad Blood" about the different types of vampire... but it doesn't seem to be mentioned at any point. The bat/man has some connection to a severely burnt corpse that's been dragged from a lake, and it goes after anyone who has any contact with it. We find this out from a guy living out on an island somewhere. At the end, it might be dead, or it might be out to get Scully and Doggett because they were somehow contaminated by the whole experience.
Honestly? It's all very sketchy. It's not exactly bad, but unless you just started watching, you know that the show has done much better than this. The "monster of the week" is welcome if only because of the three episodes of very weighty, plot-heavy stuff that's preceded it, but it's marred somewhat by Doggett and Scully's constant sniping at each other about nothing in particular, which gets in the way of actually following the investigation, in understanding how the agents get from A to B to C. Suddenly they're staking out a guy with a weird hat and you have no idea why.
It's a shame really. It's not bad by any means, but you'd think they'd have wanted to impress us a bit more, or at least not draw quite so much attention to the fact that the show has changed a hell of a lot in a very short space of time.
The X Files: Roadrunners (2000)
Jumping the shark?
Way back when, the X-Files was an intelligent, thought-provoking show. A big part of its appeal was that the writers looked to folklore and science for their ideas, tying the plot to the spooky side of real life.
I was incredibly wary of the 8th season when it aired. The show had already provided two perfectly good episodes to bow out on ("One Son" and "Requiem"), and the 7th season had seen a sharp rise in episodes that scraped the barrel for ideas that were far-fetched, implausible, or downright silly. But I figured, hey, give it the benefit of a doubt, maybe they're bringing it back because they've got some great ideas lined up.
"Roadrunners" really was upsetting. Following "Patience", which at least offered an interesting angle on the vampire folklore that the show had done well to avoid, the episode sees a strange (alien?) parasitic slug with the power of mind control worshipped by a cult of backwoods Christians. Oh, and they think it's the second coming of Christ, but you only find that out in the last couple of minutes. Seriously. There's never *any* attempt to make sense of this, to explain what the slug is, why anything that's happening is happening, or anything. Even in the show's early years - in fact, *especially* then - you could expect a little bit more depth, a bit of background, or if not that then the opposite - a bit of mystery, some uncertainty about what this was all about.
It's Scully that really kills it though. You could put up with the silliness of the premise, but to have a character who has been developed over a good 7 years as a rational skeptic transformed into a gullible maverick purely for the sake of advancing the plot is bizarre to watch. You feel like you're watching some godawful teen horror, except that it's a woman well into her thirties throwing herself into the kind of creepy isolated community that she's spent the best part of a decade uncovering the sinister underbelly of, being either outwitted by very stereotypical hicks or utterly indifferent to her own safety. Oh, and by the way, Doggett, the new Mudler, isn't around. Scully just wandered off into the desert to look into a brutal murder on her own without him. He shows up at the end to save the day - I can't even remember why - but apart from that, he's not really in it. Again: seriously.
In short, it feels like either a generic script written for another show, or someone's pet movie project which they've been allowed to shove like a mutant leech into the spine of an existing, long-running show at a time when it was at its most vulnerable. It might've worked on a lesser show, where the characters are more archetypal and the audience expects less. But The X-Files had a good thing going, and Scully was one of the strongest and most idiosyncratic TV characters of the 90s. Deciding that you're going to change her personality for the sake of a story that they must've done on Star Trek a good fifty or so times is pointless.