#txf30

[unremarkablehouse]

I just remembered when I was a kid for a class assignment on persuasive writing I created a cult based on the x files (xfilism) and wrote a brief manifesto that was shared amongst the faculty and converted several teachers into avid viewers. A better question was why a 9yr old was obsessed with The X Files, it was not remotely age appropriate 😂😂

[eurekavalley]

The show squirms most when it is closest to the fetal position. Stencilled across the stormy sky at the beginning of each “X-File” episode are the words “the truth is out there.” But the show is much more of an inward journey than even the hunkered-down “Twilight Zone” was. The truth is that the general population shows less interest in studying the sky for answers than it did in the early days of the space race. The fascination with U.F.O.s has flagged as the focus has shifted to alien abduction, which is more of a psychological event. Even the starship voyages on “Star Trek” look nostalgic now—rides on a riverboat. As the world becomes more wired, a giant cranium webbed with computer lines, it becomes too enmeshed in its own mental processes to extend an eye into the universe. Constant self-monitoring can lead to sick thought, hypochondria. “The X-Files” is the product of yuppie morbidity, a creeping sense of personal mortality. (The sense of mortality in “The Twilight Zone” was the prospect of mass annihilation—We’re all gonna die!) It tries to cheat the big sleep by prying open so many doors into the beyond. Where middlebrow culture has begun to ponder angels again, pop culture courts immortality through soul migration or in hologram images or through the rejuvenation of cells or conversion into electrical charges. Nobody on “The X-Files” is ever dead dead. People die with a shudder, their souls removed like luggage, to be rerouted elsewhere. Perhaps the afterlife will be part of the information superhighway, a hub in cyberspace. What’s erotic about the show is its slow progression from reverie to revelation, stopping just short of rapture. It wants to swoon, but swooning would mean shutting its eyes, and there’s so much to see. 

-April 18, 1994

[postguiltypleasures]

Thoughts on The X-Files as it turns 30 Years Old

I have not written much about The X-Files here because I have not revisited it in many years. The last time I rewatched any episodes was way back in 2015, after the revival was announced. I had no intention of watching  the revival, but I wanted to see how the series had aged. My reactions were kind of mixed. I didn’t continue to rewatch it was that I didn’t feel the spark that I got from it watching during the original airing. The show’s influence is such that there has always been something regularly on air that has been doing what a contemporary version of TXF should do, and doing it without the show’s baggage. And these later shows have all been unique programs that stand on their own. Only now there really is one show that does that I watch that fits this description, Evil. Do to world changing circumstances, including the COVID pandemic and the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, it does not air that regularly. So I find myself looking to who is posting about TXF now. What do they think? Do the things that made me not want to watch the revival bother them? How do they relate to the context in which it was made? How is that different for people who did watch it during the original run and bring hindsight vs. those who were too young or not born? What does any of this have to do with a potential reboot?

Much More Under the Cut

I remember TXF becoming uncool. It’s bizarre to me that it has any cultural presence because being disenchanted with it as it lost it’s cool was so painful. That said, I was a teenager at this time, so my emotions around it were stronger than they would be if I watched at another time of life. I am certain of this because of how much I hated the original series finale, and how I have been fine with a lot of controversial series finales since then.

Speaking of endings, these days discussions of television are too focused on ending. The idea that for most of the existence of television, shows were just supposed to go on until they became too expensive to produce and/or lost their audience seems to have vanished from people’s comprehension. This is a result of more television becoming more serialized and with short seasons. When an episode doesn’t work as something self contained, it has to lead to something. While it aired, TXF was celebrated for helping television become more serialized, making bigger, more epic stories. Now when it’s celebrated it’s for some wonderful self contained episodes, the kind they don’t make anymore. Even in 2015, when I had Person of Interest and Grimm satisfying the sci-fi/fantasy procedural itch for me I could see that. 

I know that there is too much tv for anyone to watch in one life time, but many the shows that TXF was compared to in it’s original airing seem notably absent in comparative discussions now. For instance, it was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series in 1995, 1996, 1997, and 1998. The other series nominated those years were NYPD Blue, Chicago Hope, E.R., Law & Order, and The Practice. While there is good reason to see TXF as more closely related to Twin Peaks or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, those fellow nominees provide some necessary context about how TV was made, in particular the alternating goals of making something for the syndication market and making something edgy that could elevate the medium. Also notable, most these shows went through a lot of cast changes over the years. It makes more sense that TXF would try to do that kind of transition in seasons 8 and 9 when you think of the series they considered their peers. 

Also worth considering earlier shows it was compared to, but the producers would likely discourage the comparison. I am thinking of Moonlighting and Remington Steele. At the time TXF aired people still talked about the “Moonlighting curse” as if it was just a given that once the couple on a show where the male and female leads solved mysteries while maintaining a will they/won’t they flirtation, would fail as soon as they got together. TXF writers were divided on whether or not it was a will they/won’t they, and definitely didn’t want to invite comparison to shows that had huge nosedives in popularity during their run. But in a lot of ways that was unfair to the earlier series. It denies how clever, inventive and experimental they could be. It also ignores how much behind the scenes strife contributed to on screen failings, especially on Moonlighting, where that has been better publicized. (And occasionally become newsworthy again such as when creator Glen Gordon Caron was fired from his job as the show runner of Bull.) I think there are episodes of Remington Steele and Moonlighting that are worth watching on there own just to get what the big deal was. But as always, how to bring knowledge of some behind the scenes study to it, is a difficult question to answer.

Another show people associated with TXF probably didn’t want to be associated with is Touched by an Angel. But for a while they both aired on Sunday nights and I know I watched it and TXF back to back a few times. A parental figure would have turned on 60 Minutes, and the ads for TBAA could be very intriguing. Then I’d watch the episode and be underwhelmed, especially because of the deus ex machina resolutions. So I didn’t make it a regular thing. But still as cases of the week that played on the news of the times with supernatural notes, they made an interesting case study.

I also sampled a few episodes of JAG: Judge Advocate General, a different CBS show that was frequently compared to TXF. The comparison had a sort of precursor to today’s periodic “why don’t publications write about shows people actually watch?” flair ups. It often had better ratings than TXF and a lot in common structurally, but had an older audience who was less likely to seek out writing about their show. It had a huge affect on the development of CBS procedurals from the late 1990s on, which is one of the areas where you can (arguably) see a lot of TXF’s influence.

I recently came across a post saying that David Duchovny wanted TXF to move to Los Angeles to facilitate his movie career. This is not true, he wanted to move to LA because he was with Téa Leoni at the time and she was staring in The Naked Truth, a sitcom that was shot in LA. The show was about a news photographer forced to work at a tabloid after an ugly divorce. It lasted three seasons, the first on ABC, the other two on NBC where it was essentially noted to death over two seasons. I am not surprised that it doesn’t have much hold on the cultural memory, but Duchovny was always open about this being his motivation so I am kind of surprised that it has been erased from TXF historic memory. 

Speaking of Duchovny and LA, the current season of the podcast, You Must Remember This, focus mostly on erotic films of the 1990s, but also included an episode about erotic TV from the era that focused on The Red Shoe Diaries, an anthology series in which Duchovny’s played a character named Jake, who was essentially the framing device. I didn’t quite appreciate that for the first four seasons of TXF he was flying to LA on weekends to shoot his parts in TRSD back-to-back. Between that and Gillian Anderson having a very young child at the time, it’s no wonder they developed reputations as cold and standoff-ish. It sounds exhausting.

Other places I have come across TXF referenced lately: 

finally reading Bruce Campbell’s memoire Hail to the Chin in which he declare that it is best to be a guest star in one of the first seasons of a show, mentions that his late in the series stint on TXF the whole cast and crew was tired of it; 

learning that there is a show on the History Channel called The Proof is Out There;

the Only Murders in the Building episode where Mable flashed back to watching the show with her father near the end of his life; 

Maureen Ryan in her Burn It Down reminisced about visiting TXF set in Vancouver as her first trip to a TV set, saying two important people were awful to her, one of whom gave her nightmares;

Some how the show coming up in a lunch conversation at work.

Jennette McCurdy mentioning in I'm Glad My Mom Died that her first job as an extra was on TXF 

Ryan’s book is as good a place as any to segue into discussing the show’s legacy via former writers and producers. It’s worth noting that Chris Carter has been unable to get another series off the ground. While TXF ran he tried to launch three other shows, Millennium, Harsh Realm and The Lone Gunmen, and only one of them got to a full season. There was an Amazon pilot that didn’t go anywhere. Frank Spotnitz was the writer with the second most credited episodes of the series and most high profile gig since was the not well received Amazon adaptation of The Man in The High Castle. Kim Manners’ time with Supernatural is something of an anomaly, in that it feels directly related to TXF and ran a much longer period of time. (I’ve only seen one season of Supernatural. It was fine, but I was late to the show, felt I’d never catch up and gave up.) Glen Morgan and James Wong wrote some of my favorite episodes, but between them they have the Final Destination film franchise, some one season series and American Horror Story, which is more attributed to Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk than Wong. (I’ve never watched AHS.) Darin Morgan was something of a special star on the show, his episodes being singled out for awards and fan favorites. But he never got this kind of response to any of his subsequent work, including on Fringe where he was a consulting producer early on. The most high profile shows that feature alumni from TXF are the ones that feel most like they were made for a era of television that wanted to distance itself from the procedural aspects of TXF. Among the most famous are Breaking Bad created by Vince Giligan and its spinoff, Better Call Saul, which he co-created with a non-TXF alumn, Peter Gould. Also notable is Homeland, whose creators Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon worked on early seasons of TXF. Most of the shows that I think of as sharing a lot with TXF in the outline for, don’t have much of a direct connection to the series alumni in writers/producers/directors. 

Earlier this year I briefly wrote about how I liked seeing both William B. Davis and Nicholas Lea in Continuum. While thinking of that series as a successor to TXF is interesting, I don’t generally think of the cast’s later roles as directly related to the show. Maybe this is because I watch so little of what they’ve done since. The greatest impression any of them is Anderson in Sex Education and Bleak House, both of which were pretty far away from TXF. 

When news came out that Chris Carter was working with Ryan Coogler on a potential reboot I decided I did not know enough of Coogler’s work to say if he’d be a good fit, or have any idea what his take on the subject matter would be. But I am familiar with Disney, TXF current owner, and in particular there current “milk all recognizable IP for ever and ever” ethos, so the probability of a reboot seemed inevitable. I mostly hoped the new crew would take the title and try to create something very different under it. Then the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes started and nothing seemed inevitable about a reboot. Hollywood as it’s been known, feels like its ending. All I can say is that I hate the idea of TXF being made with AI, or for that matter, scabs.

When I did my rewatch back in 2015, the episodes included “War of the Coprophagens” and “Syzegy”, episodes that are both are partially about mass hysteria. They’re comedic, but I didn’t find them funny. I thought this is probably something that didn’t age well. In the nineties, just pointing and laughing and people getting upset over stupid stuff sort of felt like enough to defang the danger. By now that seems hopelessly naive.

I know how people are now more willing to say that the plots of “Small Potatoes” and “Post Modern Prometheus” treat serial rapists as sympathetic outsiders, and rape as something to be brushed aside. Neither were part of my 2015 rewatch.

Some of my disenchantment during the original run was that while I was watching I was also becoming more aware of the movies that influenced the show. I hated how Fight the Future made the black oil alien possession turn into something that would claw its way out of the host body, reminiscent of the Alien franchises’s xenomorph. I also hated all of the Mulder and Scully as a couple teases from episodes like “The Rain King”, “The Ghost Who Stole Christmas”, “Arcadia”, et al because it was too much like things I was seeing in romcoms that I didn’t like. (I can’t remember any specific examples of these romcoms while writing this.) Any specificity as to what it meant to Mulder and Scully’s and their relationships at that moment was lost on me.  

I might as well admit, during the shows original run I was a NoRomo. I did not tune in to TXF hoping for Mulder and Scully’s relationship to become romantic, and I kind of hated when episodes explicitly flirted with the possibility. I tuned in because I wanted to have first hand knowledge of what it was like to watch my generations version of The Twilight Zone. (In retrospect, I don’t think its a good comparison.) As the relationship now feels like what people think of when they think of TXF, I have wondered if the show now only appeals to those on the shipper side of the debate. I was really surprised while listening to Not Another X-Files Podcast Podcast when one of the hosts of the TXF Preservation Society admitted to not being a shipper on an episode.

Similar to what I said about being fine with many controversial series finales, I am also fine with many controversial television series couplings. As long as the writing is direct, I don’t really care if the actors have chemistry or if the show “needs” to pair these characters. To the extent that what relationships on screen one likes reflects on what one wants to have in real life, I really want people to be direct with me, and make me comfortable being direct with them.

A few years ago started wondering if it would have been more emotionally healthy if I spent the years I watched TXF watching Beverly Hills, 90210 instead. I started wondering this while coincidentally coming across of couple of personal essays that reflected warmly on watching BH90210 and how it affected the writers at impressionable ages. As someone who doesn’t exactly reflect warmly on TXF, and has a hard time putting how I feel about things into words, I was kind of jealous. I know there was some overlap in the audiences. There isn’t a “If you were a teen in the 1990s you either watched BH90210 or TXF and it affected you in this way…” But coming across those essays does have something to do with why I am writing this now.

Around that time I also started worrying about how TXF’s popularity lead to today’s age of dangerous conspiracy theories. Before I gave up on the site formally known as Twitter, I’d occasionally look at who was still discussing it online with the fear that it’s been used by right wingers looking for ways to justify their persecution complexes. I didn’t find much. There was something of peak in these posts around the time Trump announced that the FBI had been searching for documents at Mar a Lago. This past decade has been wild as far as guessing how things will be read along partisan lines. If anything the posts were mostly about nostalgia and it’s appeal as a brand.

Given that I’m so uncomfortable with that potential aspect of the show’s legacy, a how did I end up watching so many shows that in some way are direct successors to the show? And the answer is, mostly not consciously. I was reluctant to start Fringe and Evil because from the outset their premises looked too much like TXF, though ultimately they’ve gone in directions TXF would never.  I still want something that can excite me, and has hints of the epic. And I am going to seek it in vaguely familiar formats. 

[carefulfears]

#MY top 10 x-files episodes vs. what i view as some of the OBJECTIVE best

wait...ascension should def be on the objective best one......like i said, i just flitted off the top of my head

[unremarkablehouse]

fic stats game!

rules: give us the links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most bookmarks, fourth most comments, fifth most words, and your fic with the least amount of words.

stolen from @agent-troi and @thatfragilecapricorn30 (who are also some of my fave fic writers)

most hits: The Party one of my first fics; set during S7, Scully shows up at TLG party with plans to have make up sex with Mulder- only to find him there on a date.

second most kudos: Laundry post revival smut, Mulder and Scully have sex on a washing machine

third most bookmarks: Field Evaluations Following the journey of Scully's field evaluations through the eyes of her friend Frank at the Gun range.

(or Laundry again depending if it’s cumulative or not).

fourth most comments: The Declaration Despite their relationship being fairly new, Mulder blurts out three words to Scully.

fifth most words: Love & Lasagna Mulder decides to cook for Scully in an attempt to discuss their living arrangements and future plans.

least amount of words: Her Own Desk This is actually one of my favorite fics of all time (also my first official Tumblr fic post), it’s musings on why Scully doesn’t have her own desk from both of their perspectives.

[carefulfears]

txf30 day 4: favorite dynamic (besides the obvious): scully/mulder/skinner

y’all mind if i ramble for a second?? there are so many connections that are so important to this story, but i always come back to these three. i think everything does.

i say that memento mori is the most loving episode of the series, but when i think about that one, it’s not even the kiss in the hallway that stays with me. it’s skinner coming in to work, the first time scully was in the hospital, and finding mulder sitting in his office. and he’s just been sitting there. bypassed the secretary (lol), and just sat and waited. he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

and the way that skinner tells him, no. don’t do it to yourself under any circumstances. that he is not to risk himself to try to save scully. ultimately, it’s not mulder that made the deal with the devil, it’s skinner who didn’t follow his own advice. (gave up everything he has, to save them both).

and these are just two weirdos who work for him in the basement!! he doesn’t owe them anything. but he’s the one there, at the end, no matter what. he’s the one who comes to get them when they’re hurt, or lost, or need help. they’re his emergency contacts, the people who show up, the people who advocate for him. the people who know him. (the bigfoot division are a.d. skinner’s silly rabbits etc etc etc)

in iwtb, after six years away, it’s skinner who comes to get scully, on the side of the road, next to mulder’s flipped car. tells her that they will find him, that he’s okay, to breathe. it’s skinner that holds mulder on the ground, in the end.

when mulder went back to bellefleur, it's skinner that scully sent with him. that girl has never trusted a single soul to so much as breathe mulder's air, but "i won't let you go alone," is immediately followed by skinner packing the car.

like trish said last night:

i think telling scully he "lost" mulder was the hardest thing he ever did. skinner loves mulder too, but mulder is scully's entire world. and this time around, he won't let scully be alone the way mulder was.

(and the kindest thing scully ever did: squeezing his hand, saying "i already heard.")

(skinner returns the favor: he tells mulder about william, so that scully doesn't have to.)

my favorite moment in requiem is the final scene, the two of them crying together. the only two people. the only two people who know.

when she tells him that she's pregnant, he's the first to know. the only person to know, for most of her pregnancy. 18 years later, he's still the first person thinking of their baby, looking out for him.

honestly, it always comes back to sein und zeit for me. when after 7 years, after 27 years, mulder says that it's just too much, and he wants to go home. he wants time away from work. the sequence in the car: mulder in the backseat, skinner behind the wheel, scully on the passenger's side. for so many years, mulder had to be searching, so that he wouldn't be alone. but now he stands in front of two people who love him, and admits to needing a break. to wanting it to stop. he's guided, he's guarded.

skinner is a hardass. it's not easy to manage their madness. it's not easy to write the footnotes, to be the person waiting, in this particular story. but like he tells mulder, 14 years after they last worked together: not a day goes by where he doesn't just wish they were there, trying to make things better.

[carefulfears]

happy txf30 you guys i love you so much. you’re so much of what makes this show such a special thing in my life so thank you for sharing your thoughts with the world and with me and for caring what i have to say. it means so much. kisses

[carefulfears]

i know we’re all gonna be really surprised at my “favorite character” answer for txf30 and i’m proud to have contributed a truly obscene amount of mulder apologia this year, but when i was going through tweets yesterday, i found this one

(this got vulnerable and i turned reblogs back on for now but y'all please be conscious xxx)

that's from my first week watching the show, and it's the first thing that i really connected to. it's hard to move through the world having seen the worst of it. i think you reach this point after trauma where like...you've already had to process so much of it and kind of piece a life back together, in a way, and you're just left with the damage done to your worldview. the way you see yourself, the way you see other people. and that's permanent and hard in a way that's really isolating.

and mulder knows how difficult it is, because he tries not to do it. he tries to find better. he's smart and he's aware and he was "the best" and "scary" at catching serial killers, getting in the minds of "monsters"; he knows so intimately and so completely what people are capable of. luther lee boggs "kills because he likes it," mulder is "the only one who truly understands what he is."

he just wants more, he wants more for people. he wants to believe that the world is good, that people are good, that there's some other explanation. he thinks people deserve more, and that they do want to take care of each other, all to the contrary.

when i watched sein und zeit/closure, i remember seeing this post:

the whole arc of the show was always supposed to be that Mulder would overcome his obsession with conspiracy and face the humanness of his grief, accept it, and still find hope in what was left. It was never about grand espionage, it was about living with inescapable trauma, being stuck in the worst night of your life, keeping others stuck in there with you.

and i literally just fell out crying and sobbed all night. because it is hard, but you have to make something out of the cards you were dealt. and after seven seasons of relentless hope and wishful thinking, mulder was always going to have to come to terms with grief, with loss, with trauma. it couldn't go on forever. and that's what closure, as an episode, is all about: there is no closure, but there's support, there's grace.

there are a lot of things i really love about mulder, he is a sci-fi hero whose only personality traits are crying and believing women. he wears goofy ties and talks about aliens in public. he's the best. and there are a lot of things i love about this show, a lot of convoluted reasons that i'm grateful to have watched it. but it's when i think about that night 6 months ago, literally weeping on a bathroom floor, that i feel the most moved, and connected to the things that i avoid. in a way, a lot of us create methods and worlds to escape our realities. it may not be alien abduction, but it may be professionalism, or humor, or caretaking, or academia. a lot of us are stuck in our worst nights, and have curated an image outside of it. but what struck me about mulder in the beginning, and how he grew from it by the end, is that for as much as the series was structured around his coping methods, he was always meant to lose them. and "maybe there's hope," still.

[carefulfears]

happy txf30 <3 my response to the first prompt is up

[carefulfears]

i’m kind of in/out of the txf30 game because i’m kind of in/out of life at the moment but my favorite season, if anyone wondered, is forever and always season one <3 just a completely inimitable magic and joy and kindness and curiosity that i’ve seen like four times over this year alone and will never tire of

[carefulfears]

resharing my essay on samantha mulder for txf30 day 5: favorite arc