I Wanted To Believe (Part 2)

 

 

Following the cancellation of  The X-Files, I began to view my history with the series the way I viewed an unsuccessful romantic relationship. The memories of the early years were magical and gratifying, but thinking of the later years brought forward feelings of melancholy and regret that things didn't end on a better note. By the time the second movie, I Want to Believe, hit theatres in the summer of 2008, I wasn't exactly excited. The show had ended six years earlier and I was still skeptical that it would offer anything fresh and new. The hope that it would get better was still there, and even though I wasn't the devoted follower that I had been years earlier, I still went to see it out of a sense of obligation, the way that a lapsed Catholic will sometimes still attend Christmas Mass. Once again, the movie was a big disappointment and I felt like Charlie Brown having the football pulled away from him by Lucy. I wasn't the only one who felt this way. The response from the American public was a collective shrug and the movie died a slow death at the box office, unable to compete with blockbusters like Iron Man and The Dark Knight. The movie's title said it all. I wanted to believe, but I couldn't. Chris Carter had let me down again.

When rumors of a TV reunion started floating through the internet, I had those mixed feelings of hope and skepticism again. My brain kept saying no, but my heart said yes. When the rumors were confirmed by Chris Carter, David Duchovny, and Gillian Anderson, I actually began to feel a little excited. Surely, Carter would get it right this time. It had been eight years since the last movie and fourteen years since the original finale. That was enough time for him to cook up some fresh, original ideas and to move the series in a bold new direction. The premiere of the new mini-series was going to be, if not mind-blowing, at least a rich, solid, satisfying episode of television, one that would provide me with the ecstatic rush that I felt when I was an adolescent. January 24th couldn't get here soon enough. I tuned in that night and was annoyed by the NFL post-game show that was delaying the episode. Shut up, Terry Bradshaw! Nobody cares about your stupid football crap. Mulder and Scully are coming back! The Fox clock ticked off the time until the premiere aired and I was certain to be blown away. The return of The X-Files was coming in 5,4,3,2...

The premiere aired and, suffice it to say, it did not blow me away. The title of the episode was "My Struggle", which is the title of Hitler's Mein Kampf translated into English, but was also an accurate description of my experience watching it. As the story unfolded, I started to get the same sinking feeling that I had when I went to see The Phantom Menace in the theatre. I kept telling myself that it was going to get better if I just stuck with it, but that was not to be.

Where to begin? Everything about the episode was one huge cliché composed entirely of recycled bits of the series' ongoing mythology. The teaser begins with the alleged UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, a tired old chestnut that needs to be retired from the entire sci-fi genre as soon as possible. Then, we flash forward to present-day Washington D.C., where Scully is still a medical doctor and Mulder is...I dunno. Retired or something. The show never really explains what he's been up to for the last decade and a half. The show then awkwardly drops in references to 2016 America, such as a clip of President Obama appearing on Jimmy Kimmell and a catty put-down of Bill O'Reilly. (Though even that seems dated. O'Reilly hasn't really been relevant in least ten years.) That dis is delivered by Tad O'Malley, a stereotypical far-right conspiracy theorist of the Glenn Beck/Alex Jones variety, played by a badly miscast Joel McHale, who somehow manages to convince Mulder that everything he believes is a lie. This is just plain sloppy writing that makes Mulder look like a dope. His unshaking belief in extraterrestrial life is going to be swayed by a third-rate wannabe Fox News host?

O'Malley then takes the two agents to visit Sveta, a young alien abductee who has been impregnated several times. There's also a UFO hidden away in a secret airplane hangar and a meeting with a mysterious informant who is (surprise!) the very same doctor who was at Roswell in '47 in the teaser, which begs the question, how fucking old is this guy? He seems about 30 in the teaser, which would make him roughly 98 or 99 when he and Mulder have their little chat. The episode ends with Mulder spouting a bunch of expository dialogue about a global conspiracy to dupe the U.S. public so that they can be easily manipulated while a montage of stock footage of 20th-Century American history plays. Also, the military is called in and blows up the UFO in a raid in order to destroy evidence. And the Cigarette Smoking Man is back, though I'm at a loss to explain how he survived getting blown up by a rocket at the end of the original season finale. It's good to see old Smokey again, but all this ret-conning is getting ridiculous. I wanted to shout, like Annie Wilkes in Misery, "He didn't get out of the cock-a-doody pueblo!"

Another problem with the premiere is that it highlights all of Chris Carter's worst tendencies as writer: his overuse of voice-over narration and long exposition-filled monologues in which a character rambles on explaining away what's happening instead of trusting the audience to figure it out for themselves. Show, don't tell. Film and TV are visual mediums and that don't require somebody explaining to the audience what's going on all the time. And yes, I've heard the argument that he needed to introduce new viewers to the series and welcome back old fans with foggy memories to understand what's going on. However, it is possible to  re-boot a popular sci-fi series without having to recap every single thing that's gone before, as the success of Mad Max: Fury Road and Star Wars: The Force Awakens have proven. The premiere was just plain boring, and boredom is not an emotion one should have while watching The X-Files.

But to quote Al Pacino in The Godfather: Part III, just when I think I'm out they pull me back in. Episode two, "Founder's Mutation", was a significant improvement over its predecessor and a reminder of just how great the show could be at times. Ostensibly a monster-of-the-week story about a sinister doctor performing strange experiments on preganant women, the episode is a good example of the show finally pushing the series' mythology in an exciting new directions and exploring the complex relationship between Mulder and Scully. It's scary, original, and most importantly, filled with real human emotion. Despite the references to Edward Snowden and Obamacare, this is a show that seems like it could have aired back in 1995, which is about the biggest compliment I can give. It's not perfect, but at least it looks and feels like a real X-Files episode and not just a lame re-hash. It's a rich feast instead of microwaved leftovers. I can't tell what the rest of the mini-series will bring, but I remain optimistic. The Scully in me says that it might suck, but the Mulder in me still believes that the truth is out there.

I Wanted To Believe (Part 1)

I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe so much.

I wanted to believe that the new reboot of The X-Files was going to be every bit as great as the show I fell in love with as a lonely small town teenager in the mid-'90s. I wanted to believe that the series would hit the same high points that left me breathless at the end of each episode and have me thirsting for the following week's installment. I wanted to believe that the passion and energy that Chris Carter's writing once had was going to return with a vengeance and that the new episodes would capture my heart and imagination in the same way that the series did during my adolescence, that it would give me the intoxicating rush that truly great entertainment can provide. I wanted it so much to be the way that it was before. After watching last night's premiere of the limited six-episode run, I am disappointed to say that my hopes have been dashed yet again.

I remember when the show first aired and I didn't quite get into it at first. I heard it was this funky weird sci-fi show that was on TV, but had read mixed reviews of it that didn't seem very promising, so I ignored it during that first season. By the time season two rolled around, it had started getting better reviews, so I decided I'd check out a few episodes. The first one I saw was kind of a disappointment. It was one entitled "Ascension", which I didn't realize was the second half of a two-parter, so the story didn't really make any sense to me at the time. It was the second one I saw that got me hooked, though. The title of the episode, according to the newspaper TV schedule, was "Blood" and I knew nothing about it, other than that it was a word that promised horror and violence. I retreated to my bedroom later that night and watched it on the crappy hand-me-own black-and-white TV I inherited from my older brother. The episode unfolded and I was quickly drawn into the story of ordinary residents of a small town going on bizarre killing sprees after receiving creepy subliminal messages on their electronic devices. I was blown away (no pun intended). Here was an hour of television that was scary, original, imaginative, and exciting. There was no turning back after that point. I was an X-Files junkie and like most junkies, I tried to keep my addiction a secret. For some reason, I didn't want anyone else in my family to know I was a fan. I don't know why, exactly. I mean, I'm sure they already knew I was pretty geeky at this point and didn't know why my secret love of a brilliant TV series would make them think any lesser of me. My secrecy didn't last long though and it wasn't long before I "came out" as a huge X-Files nerd.

My obsession with the show lasted for most of my teenage years. I devoured the episodes, and purchased magazines, comic books, trading cards, and T-shirts devoted to the ongoing adventures of true believer Fox Mulder and his skeptical partner Dana Scully. I even sculpted a clay bust of the Flukeman (the giant worm man from season two's classic "The Host", still its greatest monster-of-the-week episode, in my humble opinion) in my sophomore art class, but forgot to hollow out the head, so it was super-heavy. Its exact whereabouts remain unknown, but it's rumored to be collecting dust somewhere at my parents' house.

The X-Files was the perfect show for an awkward introverted teenage outcast. Here was a program that proved that not only could geeks be cool, they could be downright sexy. And for someone who had a hard time making friends and getting through school without being teased at least once, what better motto was there than "Trust No One"? The paranoia and anxiety that Fox Mulder dealt with on a weekly basis mirrored my own paranoia and anxiety, although his were concerning a massive global conspiracy regarding extraterrestrial life, while mine were about surviving until the end of the day without getting made fun of or slammed into a locker. His villains were shady government officials, shape-shifting alien bounty hunters, and liver-eating mutant serial killers. Mine were condescending preppy douchebags, assholes jocks, and unsympathetic teachers. It wasn't hard to relate to a protagonist who felt that the world was conspiring against him.

Seasons two through four were the glory years, when the show seemed to be firing on all cylinders. Sure, there were a few clunker episodes here and there, but they were few and far between.  The writing, directing, acting, and special effects were all top-notch and my passion grew. I became a devoted congregant to the church of The X-Files and regularly attended service every Friday night at 9 pm (and then later, Sunday at 9pm). I would become irritated if I had to miss a show due to a Boy Scout camping trip or some bullshit school function. Fuck tying knots! Mulder and Scully are chasing monsters! I would always make my family members promise to tape episodes that I had missed, which they rarely ever did, and on the rare occasions that they did so, would whine about stupid it was. I didn't care, though. I was a fanatic and nothing was going to change that. Then season five rolled around.

Something about season five was...off. It wasn't bad exactly, but the episodes didn't leave me with the giddy high feeling that previous ones did. It was during that season that I noticed the writing was starting to slip a little. Cracks and inconsistencies were showing in the show's already complicated overarching mythology. One problem was the dissatisfaction I had with the previous season's finale. It ended with Dana Scully solemnly declaring before a senate committee hearing that Agent Mulder had recently killed himself, before cutting to the end credits. I knew that was bullshit. There was no way they were going to kill off their main star and I had read that David Duchovny was contractually committed for a few more seasons, so I knew something was up. During summer vacation that year, I guessed what the secret plot twist was going to be and sure enough, when the two-part fifth season premiere began, I found my instincts had been confirmed. It was at that moment that I realized that the show could no longer surprise me. I still turned in to catch the "monster-of-the-week" episodes, but the mythology had lost me at that point. What was one intriguing and provocative was now convoluted and silly. What the hell did corn and killer bees have to do with alien invasions?

I dutifully watched the first feature film (The X-Files: Fight the Future) and trudged on for the next two seasons, mostly out of a sense of obligation and a hope that things would return to how they were before, but my heart was no longer in it. My faith was lapsed. By the time Duchovny left at the end of season seven, I could see red flags ahead, warning me that the show was going to turn from mediocre to awful. My worst suspicions were confirmed during season eight, when Duchovny was replaced by Robert Patrick and the show descended into outright silliness. (This is no disrespect to Patrick, who is a good actor, but wasn't given an interesting role to play and had the thankless task of replacing such a memorable character.) By season's end, I gave up entirely on the show. I wasn't alone. Cinefantastique critic Paula Vitaris (the Pauline Kael of X-Files reviewers) also bailed after panning nearly every episode of the season and expressed her opinion that Carter's heart didn't appear to be in the show anymore. I didn't even bother with season nine, the last before the reboot, only turning in to watch the long-awaited finale "The Truth". The truth was that the show that I had once loved was now a joke, and the episode itself was two hours of exposition essentially recapping the entire series up to that point. I was heartbroken. I consoled myself with the knowledge that the first few seasons were readily available on DVD and that I could revisit the glory years over and over again. After all, season four did end with Scully saying that Mulder was dead and that seems like a nice alternative way to reimagine the series. Just pretend that it ended in tragedy and ignore the years after that when it all went downhill.

TO BE CONTINUED (cue whistling theme music).

Book Review: "Perfidia" by James Ellroy

(Note: this review is an expansion of a "staff pick" that I had written for the Half Price Books website nearly a year ago. The limit for the text was 200 words and with my diarrhea of the mind, I ended up vastly surpassing that. Here's the full, expanded review that has not been published until now.)

       The novels of James Ellroy are rich feasts of pulp fiction and his latest work, Perfidia, is no exception. Set on the brink of America's entry into World War II, this densely-plotted thriller is the first in a brand new series of prequels to the author's popular "L.A. Quartet" and "American Underworld" novels. This "Second L.A. Quartet" follows the early years of many of the characters from those wroks and the result is a richly entertaining read that will satisfy fans of hard-boiled crime fiction and vintage film-noir.

      Perfidia begins with the horrific murder of a Japanese family on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attacks, an incident that sets into motion a chain of events that lead up to an elaborate conspiracy involving racial warfare, eugenics, Communist activists, shady real estate dealings, and sinister plastic surgery procedures. That description barely scrapes the surface of Ellroy's labyrinthine plotting, and those who aren't paying close attention may find the novel to be a bit confusing and convoluted. Ellroy is an artist who works on a large canvas and the book's multitudes of storylines and characters can be a little overwhelming at times. Those who stick with it will be richly rewarded, however. Fans of the original novels in particular will be delighted to see some failiar characters making a return, such as Kay Lake, the femme fatale of The Black Dahlia who appears here on an assignment to infiltrate a radical subversive group and the corrupt Dudley Smith, an ex-IRA enforcer eager to pin the massacre on a convenient suspect and cover up his own crooked agenda. The most interesting character in the novel is the conflicted Dr. Hideo Ashida, a Japanese-American chemist for the LAPD  with his own secrets to hide who quickly becomes an outcast when racial tensions begin to mount. Ellroy has fun introducing real-life historical figures into the mix as well, including Bette Davis, Eleanor Roosevelt, and a young naval officer named John F. Kennedy.

      Because Perfidia is a prequel, it does curb the story's suspense quite a bit. Knowing that many of the characters will appear in the other books and aren't in any serious threat of being killed prevents it from reaching the most nail-biting moments of the other works. Ellroy's blunt language and uncompromising depictions of graphic violence and sexuality may also turn off more sensitive readers. These are minor flaws, however, in an otherwise engaging and satisfying crime epic that will leave fans of the genre hungry for more.

Hello, It's Me...

             When I was a little kid, one of my teachers asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted be an author. Not just a writer, you see. Anybody can write, after all. Authors, on the other hand, were published and had their books readily available in every reputable bookstore in the world. They were considered geniuses and had legions of devoted followers who had memorized their every single word. They received prestigious awards and had their novels assigned to high school students, who would then be forced to write essays against their will on the brilliant themes and symbolism hidden throughout the text, like vegetables secretly baked into your children's favorite desserts. A lifetime of greatness and respectability certainly awaited me as adult, or at least I thought when I was seven.
           Also, writing for me was just plain fun. I loved creating bizarre characters and convoluted plots set in fantastical worlds. I fondly recall writing and drawing my little magnum opuses on scratch paper that my dad would bring home from work, stapling the pages together and showing off the new "book" that I had just completed and would certainly be on its way to topping the New York Times bestseller lists. My memories are pretty vague after three decades, but I recall one of them being a fantasy about one of the bullies from my school being shrunk down to the size of a bug and then getting stomped on by a large heavy boot, which I still consider to be a fairly happy ending. Bob Smith Shrinks was sure to be short-listed for Pulitzer consideration that year, I was convinced. (Note: Bob Smith is not the actual name of the kid who picked on me. His name has been changed to protect his identity and/or to avoid a lawsuit.)
          It was around this time that my older brother Mike took me to a Young Writer's Conference at the University of Toledo. I had written a story entitled "The Beast from the Planet Sedan". (I don't even think I knew that a sedan was a type of car. I thought it was just a cool-sounding word.) The story I submitted didn't win any awards, but I did get to meet noted children's author Dav Pilkey, and received a freshly signed and inscribed copy of his recently-published first book World War Won. (This was many years before he would he would create the publishing juggernaut that was the popular Captain Underpants series, although he did describe his idea for the character during one of the writing seminars we had, meaning that the idea had been cooking around in his head since at least the late 1980s.) In the inscription, he told me to "keep writing and drawing", advice that I would heed for much of my childhood, at least. In the back of the book, there were pictures of other kids who had had their own books published and I strove to top them, to create the Great American's Children's Novel, to become the next Roald Dahl and walk around wearing top hats all day and lighting cigars with $100 bills, which is what I imagined successful children's authors did all the time. I was quickly on my to literary glory, or so it seemed.
          I continued to write fiction in high school and even seemed to enjoy many of my English courses. Some of the books we read were pretty enjoyable (Slaughterhouse-Five, Things Fall Apart, Lord of the Flies, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and others I had to struggle to finish (The Sun Also Rises and The Color Purple). In any event, I enjoyed writing about them, and coming up with my own interpretations about what their authors were trying to say. It was one of the few classes where I actually enjoyed doing the required reading and assignments. In college, though, I decided to major in telecommunications and film stuides and although I didn't do much creative writing, I still had a great time analyzing and discussing the movies we watched in our film courses, and wrote passionately about what I liked and disliked about the cinematic landmarks that we were viewing. I also maintained a blog at around the same time, which I used as an outlet for all of the crazy ideas that had been running through my brain. That came to an abrupt end when I posted a hurtful entry about somebody whom I felt had treated me disrespectfully and I held nothing back in insulting and degrading this person. Out of shame, I shut down my blog permanently, though the damage has been done. I learned that while it while it might be okay to talk trash about an obnoxious celebrity like Donald Trump, it's not okay to talk trash about someone that you actually know personally in a public forum. To quote a line from The Social Network: "The internet's not in pencil, it's in ink."
         I hadn't really written much since then. I half-heartedly started a few blogs, but nothing really stuck. I'm hoping to change that with this one and try to tap back into the ambition and creative spirit that I had when I was younger. I don't really have one specific topic that I'm planning on writing about, either. This will be an outlet for all of the mad musings going through my head: movie reviews, book reviews, humorous pieces, political rants. Anything that I find interesting or that I'd like to share with you. This site will be 100% bullshit-free too. Anything that I post will be my true and honest feelings, although I will hopefully be tactful enough not to include any personal attacks that will hurt anyone's feelings. It's time to clean the cobwebs out of my brian and get those old creative juices flowing again. These muscles have atrophied long enough. Time to exercise.

Note: This blog will also be 100% completely devoid of any gossip relating to the Kardashian/Jenner family. If you're looking for that, please search elsewhere. Thanks!