If The X-Files had ever really lived up to its true potential, it would have been the best television series ever made. When it worked – in particular, when Darin Morgan wrote an episode – it just transcended television. That sounds like typical geek fanboy hyperbole, but I stand by it.
“Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” is still the best hour of television ever made, because it took the whole urban legends/paranoia/conspiracy theories/aliens theme of the show, turned it on its head, and then made it say something about everything. It was like a Charlie Kaufman movie before he started making movies. And when you start listing brilliant episodes of the series, it just goes on and on: “Humbug,” “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose,” “Dod Kalm,” “Night of the Corprophages,” “Ice,” “Roland,” “EBE” – and those are just the ones where I remember the title.
Buffy also had some brilliant episodes, but it lacked the scope. It was always a “high school” show, even after they graduated. It focused on self-indulgent teen-age angst, that my personal problems are the most important thing in the universe. (And yeah, they’ve made it abundantly clear that that was the point – the whole thing was a metaphor for feeling like the entire fate of the universe really is in your hands). There was always this layer of artifice around the whole thing, even when they made fun of themselves for doing it. There was always a feeling than none of it really mattered.
Still, Buffy’s the better series. As others have already said, The X-Files was completely muddled and directionless. During the show’s heyday, Chris Carter was proud (even smug) of saying that they explicitly did not have a “bible” and were making the show up as they went along – he put that out as an example of why it wasn’t as tedious and formulaic as “Star Trek.” But when it became more and more clear that all the hints of greater things to come were really just smoke and mirrors, it felt like pulling the rug out from under us.
Both series had terrible final seasons, but at least “Buffy” had satisfying story-arcs along the way. So when it tanked, you still felt like it was worth your time. X-Files kept promising and promising something huge, and then just made it clear that they were stalling and not only would they never deliver on it, they couldn’t deliver on it.
And by the end of “Buffy,” all the characters annoyed me, but I didn’t really dislike them, I just didn’t care about them anymore. By the fifth or so season of “X-Files,” I hated the characters. They kept doing the same things and saying the same things. I wanted Scully to stop just droning on and on about her cancer and die already. I realized that Mulder was really an obnoxious prick without Scully around to keep him honest.
I watched every episode of “Buffy,” although the last season was a chore. But somewhere around the sixth season of “X-Files,” I had a “fuck THIS!” moment and just stopped watching. I’ve read a synopsis of how it all turned out, and it just reassured me that I hadn’t missed a thing.
