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.