Well, most importantly, because there’s no more Mulder, or at least very little of him. He made the show, IMHO. But I’ve also stopped watching because nothing ever gets revealed. Or if something does get revealed, it turns out to be false. And there’s lots of meaningless exchanges. Here’s a typical Mulder/Scully conversation:
Scully gets some super-secret information that Mulder doesn’t know about. She goes to his apartment at 3am. Mulder is awake, of course.
Scully: Mulder, I have information about your sister. Information that could help you find her. Mulder: What information? From whom did you get this information? Scully: From the very men that are trying to put an end to the X-Files. Men without names, without faces. Men more concerned with closing down the X-Files than finding out the truth. Men who hide in shadows. Men with agendas we could never understand. Mulder: I don’t care anymore. It’s over. We’ve been looking for the truth for years and we’ve come no closer to it. Scully: Mulder, this information is very important. I risked my life for this information, and I want you to listen to what I have to say. If this information can help you find your sister once and for all, don’t you want to listen to it?
WHACK She gets hit from behind, from some guy who was hiding out in the apartment this whole time (no one saw him because Mulder never turns on his lights). Then Mulder gets knocked out next, and the information Scully wanted to tell him is all forgotten about.
And all the while I’m screaming in my head, just tell him the information for Christ’s sake!!! Stop dawdling!
I stopped watching because I got bored. Missed a couple episodes a few seasons ago and was never able to figure out what the hell was going on after that-- and I used to love the show. I actually picked it up again for a while when the new agent (Doggett?) started; though the Big Theme stuff kept running in the background they did some nice stand alone episodes. Eventually I just stopped caring again.
I stopped watching after the first William Gibson episode, the one with the raccoon girl. I had become fed up with the conspiracy plot, which had spiraled out of control to the point of ridiculousness. I had been disenchanted with the show for some time and for some reason that episode just finally made it all too much, even though it wasn’t a conspiracy episode. I never looked back and never saw the movie.
Actually I did see one more episode after that, the one about the virtual reality game. My friend thought it would be fun to watch and it was, but not for reasons they intended. Was that one written by William Gibson too? I like his books but damn he should stay away from tV and movies…
I stopped watching, not because Mulder left (a show can and should be bigger than any one character) and was replaced by Doggett (who’s a fascinating character, and I like how he’s replaced Scully as the skeptic and Scully has taken Mulder’s place), but because the writing became execrably bad.
There no longer seems to be any pretense that there’s a larger truth that we’re glimpsing pieces of, bit by bit. The threatened alien invasion has never materialized. The black oil aliens are apparently no longer a problem, nor are the shapeshifting aliens. What’s become of the human/alien breeding program? Who the fuck knows?
And increasingly, who the fuck cares?
And I can’t stand Agent Reyes. She’s going to be a regular this season, so I will be a non-regular.
There never was. Around season 4 it became clear, I thought, that the whole thing was being made up as they went along, with no intention of keeping any of it tied together. It became more and more absurd (the episode involving Skinner and the bees and the post office was what really underscored the idiocy of the whole thing) and what’s worse is, the monster-of-the-week episodes, which until then were the only ones worth watching, were suffering as a result. Absolutely no attention was paid to them in favor of the painfully dumb conspiracy arc.
In the meantime I had X-Files fans telling me to just be patient and Chris Carter woudl eventually reveal it all and it would all be a beautiful, interlocking work of precise craftsmanship. To my knowledge, that day never came.
This is why I get concerned about the future of Buffy…I see a lot of the same things happening there…
I caught it last night and ended up ignoring most of it in favour of a crossword puzzle. Until the end, when Mulder and Scully started arguing about the “spaceship”. Then I laughed like a hyena. And I remembered what made the show worth watching for me.
Legomancer, since this year is the second-last for Buffy, maybe they won’t have as much room to mess it up. How bad can it get with only 30 or so episodes left? Oh yow, don’t answer that…
I stopped watching around the time of the movie. I realized, like Fiver did, that there was going to be no “payoff.” We were never going to learn the truth. There was no truth. And, as Legomancer said, the MOTW episodes were getting lamer and lamer. So, I stopped watching.
I Was really into it for the 2 or 3 seasons preceeding the Movie that came out. The next season was not quite as good. The seasons since then have become painfully bad.
Okay, I’m willing to say it. I’m glad they got rid of Mulder. His character started out as intelligent, paranoid, and driven… and ended up being cocky and self-righteous. Blegh!
I started losing interest after the virtual reality episode and that godawful soap opera episode that Gillian Anderson directed.
Also, in 2/3 of recent episodes, Scully seems to cry. I miss my ol tough-as-nails-bitchy Scully.
And Agent Reyes is the next Deanna Troi.
I really like the character of Doggett and think that he is this best thing the series has going for it. I missed that last half of last season, so I never saw Mulder’s exit. I don’t really care at this point, though.
Did anyone else see the article at cinescape.com where the producers said the show will go on “indefinitely?”
I’m glad Mulder is gone! Well, I’m glad David Duchovny anyway. I think the X-Files started to go bad when it played out more like a comic book than a Sci-Fi/paranormal/drama. What made X-Files so good was that it was just as much “Sci” as it was “Fi.” The whole alien bounty hunter/shape shifting aliens should never have surfaced. I don’t think it was ever explained HOW these things shapeshift, (with eye color and hair color, bones structure, eyes seem to have the same function as humans but how?). Even in those times, the show still gave us some scientific explanation, now it’s rare they do. There are also 1001 ways for aliens to reproduce: Black Oil, alien fetuses, those regenerating… things! (I think there’s more!). “The truth”, gets bounced around, so there’s no real story.
I will give this year a chance, only because I think the writers have an opportunity. Whatever happens, I don’t think we can blame Chris Carter… I think he SERIOUSLY wanted the series to stop after season 6. FOX would have ran the show without him, and who could let their brain child be in the hands of people who didn’t think up the show?
It’s so sad… this show used to be #3 TV show of all time by entertainment weekly.
I look at star trek (NOT A FAN) and I wonder if X-Files will/could ever redeem itself
I agree with the whole “making it up as you go along” syndrome. It really bugged me that for everyone 1 question that got answered, 10 more were raised. I was so interested in figuring out what the hell was going on that as a result I tended to tune out the “monster of the week” episodes. Ultimately I just couldn’t keep up with everything that was going on and lost interest. I guess this show has jumped the shark.
Fiver, actually, if you dislike Agent Reyes, you might want to watch the season premiere.
kaylasdad99, Scully did have her baby, in the season 8 finale. It was a boy, and she named him William, “after (Mulder’s) father”. Her own father’s name was William as well, IIRC, so why he’s named after Bill Mulder moreso than Bill Scully, Sr. is beyond me.
Anyway… they should have ended the show around Season 6. Like him or not, Mulder and his search for the truth was the show. To have neither now sucks the life out of the whole thing.
On the other hand, it’s nice to not have Duchovny’s “I’m leaving! And I’m suing you, too!” whining as a distraction.
Of course, assuming this season is the show’s last, I’ll probably watch it anyway and even tape it, because it’ll annoy me royally to have all but the last season on tape. (I’m also looking forward to seeing how Cary Elwes fits in to things.)
The conspirarcy nonsense totally destroyed the show. Only someone addled by years of drug abuse would be so paranoid as to be fascinated by the idea of a conspiracy. And they never bothered to come up with an intelligent explanation.
The stand alone episodes were the best. If they make another movie, I hope Duchovny comes back for it and it is simply a creature feature. Leave the conspiracies to Oliver Stone.
The last episode of last season is what did it for me. The show had become rotten over the past few years, but I watched it hoping that it would become better. But when Scully had her kid – the child whose father is not known, whose mother was supposed to be unable to have children, and whose birth was attended by various shepherd-types – I said, “Enough!”
Originally, I liked the MOTW episodes because they were good and suspenseful. I never cared for the grand government conspiracies because, having worked for the government, I knew it could never be so well-organized.
Mulder walks down the street, and bumps into Tom. Tom says, “Pardon me,” and moves on.
Mulder continues walking down the street and runs into Dick, who asks, “Excuse me, what time is it?” Mulder tells him, Two fifteen." Dick says, “Thanks and moves on.”
Mulder continuees down the street, and runs into Harry, who asks, 'Do you have change for a dollar?" Mulder gives him the change, and they both move on.
Meanwhile, government conspirators who’ve been watching all this report to the cigarette smoking man, who says, “Mulder is getting too close. Kill Tom, Dick and Harry.” The operatives ask, “Why don’t we just kill Mulder?”
“No,” sneers the cigarette smoking man. “We can kill HIM any time. Just leave him be.”
The cigarette smoking man obviously studied the methods of Goldfinger and the Riddler, who’d NEVER do anything as simple or sensible as shoot their foe… not when they could drag things out forever.
I don’t like the fact that when Mulder left, Scully became the believer and Doggett became the skeptic. What - they can’t both be skeptics? We have to have the same personality conflict? I find it hard to believe that Mulder’s exodus had such a huge effect on Scully that she changed her personality.
I also got bored with the conspiracies. If I missed one episode, it was hard to stay on track. I really like the stand-alone episodes where it doesn’t matter who the hell is Mulder’s father and who took his sister and what the hell the bounty hunters are up to.
I used to be a pretty big X-Phile back in 6th grade, but the show started sucking (to me, anyway) and I got less and less interested in it. I don’t even remember half of the episodes now.
I have never said “screw it” to a show based on one episode, and at the time X-Files was appointment TV for me. Then, after five (?) years of the show they go through this entire two-part episode about a little girl who was murdered mysteriously while her mother wrote a note through “remote viewing.” It made little sense. They never caught the guy who did it, and they never explained why all these mothers were writing these notes. Their explanation was “starlight” all these little girls were trapped on starlight. That’s it. No explanation of why, how, why the parents wrote these notes, etc.
And even that I could have lived with, after all, I could have chalked it up to a bad two parter and been done. But nooo, they had to put Mulder’s sister on the starlight. The entire motivation for Mulder’s search, his sister is on “starlight” (which apparently boils down to being a happy ghost) and that’s it. Plus he’s happy with it. And lets just ignore the implications about his sister and CGM as well the clones in one of the great early episodes, lets just drop it entirely. I saw that and immediately said, “How could they waste my time, I’ll never watch again.” And I haven’t.
Memo to Chris Carter, if you are going to have a long-running mystery, you have to know WHO DID IT! OTHERWISE THE CLUES DON’T MAKE SENSE! SEE DAVID LYNCH ABOUT THIS PHENOMENA.
[SUB]Sorry, but I loved that show and they ruined it.[/SUB]
I can forgive the Scully having a baby surrounded by “shepherds” moment, because of the best line in the series (spoken by Alex Krycek) describing Scully’s baby as “more human than human”
