I was a fan of this for the first two series, until I realised that they had absolutely no intention of progressing the storyline in any reasonable manner (who was behind all the bad stuff and why), so I dropped it.
However, discussing with a friend who watched most of it the other day, I realised that there was some solid stuff in there. The episode where its viewed from a conspiracist’s viewpoint, with Men in Black appearing. They had a 3d shooter episode too which was good…
In which case I reckoned there could be demand for a redux of a series, a summary of the great episodes, with perhaps no real need for the overall plotline (and additional version could include the important plot arc episodes, there was a lot of spacefiller in Xfiles).
Other’s could include Buffy, I’ve got to the fourth series, and while there are classic episodes (Hush, for instance), there are still the monsters of the week episodes which are worth skipping (though I’d rate the one where giles gets turned into a demon as good too, shortly after Hush). Fringe might be a good example, too, might inspire people to watch the full series. However, there’s no chance I’ll be doing that with X-Files…
So, anyone got a reasonable estimation for good episodes of X-files?
I’d say in every season there’s about 5 to 6 good episodes that are worth watching the show for. Most of the filler episodes are not that great – however, I’m only caught up to season 4 (I watched them as a kid, but don’t remember much). My buddy has watched almost the entire show, he’s on the last season and he says that later seasons have more story.
Either way, I’d say there’s between 40 to 50 episodes that make the show what it is.
I have seen every episode of this show at least 5 times and I have them all on DVD.
My favorite 3 episode arc:
Ascension
Duane Barry
One Breath
One episode I loved that I’ve never seen replayed in syndication: Soft Light from season 2. It guest stars Tony Shalhoub.
A couple more favorites (there are so many): D.P.O guest starring Giovanni Ribisi as Darin Peter Oswald.
Darkness Falls - “C’mon Scully, it’ll be a nice trip to the forest”
Small potatoes - “F…B…I.”
Pusher - Cerulean Blue.
I have so many favorites. There’s talk of an X-files reboot with the original actors. Duchovny and Anderson both said they’d be on board. Chris Carter as well. I wonder if Vince Gilligan is free, since Breaking Bad is over.
Kumail Nanjiani has a podcast called “The X-Files Files” where he talks about episodes in the order they appear with a guest, covering one or two episodes per podcast and skipping the ones he doesn’t like. May be a good guide if you agree with his episode curation. So far he’s up to season 3, episode 23, “Wetwired”.
