So…what the fuck? I know the two of them go forth and do this sort of thing for years to come and I have to ask:
and
That would be too simple.
Sort of. And the answers change from season to season. Don’t ask me why.
I love this show. It’s a bizarre, bizarre show.
The thing that keeps me watching (I am a lapsed fan and haven’t watched every episode yet) is the sublime sense of humor. The gallows humor. And the imagination.
It has its clunky episodes, and the “conspiracy” stuff gets old sometimes (layer upon layer upon layer of conspiracies, so it seems) but I am sucked in by the characters, and the sense of humor!
Favorite episodes are the ones with the freak show carnival (Season Two, I think) and “Rain Man” (Season 6, I think). Also, “Dreamland” and the Christmas episode (with Lily Tomlin and Ed Asner), both of Season Six. And then there was the “Hollywood” episode with Gary Shandling (I think that was Season 7?). And the “Cops” episode (they are on an episode of “Cops.”) Damn. It’s a great show.
It’s just a fabulous, bizarre show. Don’t expect perfection, but do go along for the ride. If for nothing else, go for the sense of humor!
My reaction was just like yours, Stoid. I watched one episode and shot off a WTF email to my brother who sent me an encyclopedic explanation that puzzled me even more.
I don’t know how it happened but I got hooked and didn’t rest until I’d seen 'em all. Weird, funny, paranoid, contradictory and even idiotic - I loved that show (until the last couple of seasons). The monster episodes were my favorites - don’t miss the creature in the perfect planned community “Arcadia Falls,” or the one where the P.T.A . opens their meeting with a prayer to Satan.
Enjoy!
It’s true that the conspirators are very powerful, but Mulder and Scully have very powerful allies (Senator Matheson, Mr. X and Skinner to name a few). Note, the conspirators did manage to demote or fire Mulder a couple of times.
Most of the questions are answered by the end, but there is so much obfuscation that you may need a full time X-Files consultant to help sort it out.
It’s true that the conspirators are very powerful, but Mulder and Scully have very powerful allies (Senator Matheson, Mr. X and Skinner to name a few). Note, the conspirators did manage to demote or fire Mulder a couple of times.
Most of the questions are answered by the end, but there is so much obfuscation that you may need a full time X-Files consultant to help sort it out.
If an episode doesn’t get you interested by the first commercial break, turn it off. There’s no rule that says you have to watch all of them.
I still have no clue how all the “questions” were answered… and I don’t care in the least. For me, that’s not what the show was about.
I’ve been told that the X-Files eventually revealed what really happened to Mulder’s sister Samantha. I remember an episode with lots of child clones of Samantha, and I remember one where one of the shapeshifting aliens took Samantha’s form (I think), but what was the ultimate answer?
Also, did they ever resolve the government/alien conspiracy plot where the aliens were supposed to colonize the Earth?
The X-Files is my all time favorite television show. Seasons 1 - 4 are especially good. I have the dvds to watch them all again in order. I miss X-Files nights…
ricksummon:
IIRC: Samantha was taken by CSM, and raised as his daughter, but she was subjected to painful tests and she ran away and ended up in a hospital. When the CSM and crew came to get her, she was gone. Vanished. It seems children who are in painful, hopeless situations occasionally vanish and go to somewhere better. Mulder finally saw that she was somewhere better, along with many other kids who had vanished.
Favorite episodes: Squeeze, Beyond the Sea, Darkness Falls, Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose, War of the Coprophages, Pusher, Jose Chung’s From Outer Space, Paper Hearts, Terma, lots more.
I loved the X-Files and did my best to follow the conspiracy/mytharc. The whole thing got so convoluted that you would basically need to make a chart to keep track of everything, except that doing so would instantly reveal all of the inconsistencies and plot holes that made it so hard to follow in the first place. Your best bet is to not take it too seriously and pretend that season 9 never happened.
On preview, I see that Nightime has beat me to the explanation of what happened to Samantha, so I’ll just delete everything I wrote. As for the alien plot, I’m not sure what they finally did with that. I didn’t really watch the last season except for the finale so I don’t know what, if anything, was done with it that year, and it had become hopelessly muddled even before that. There was something about supersoldiers in the last few seasons, and I think the shape-shifters were dropped about the same time the supersoldiers were introduced, but if there was ever any good explanation I don’t remember it. Mulder did learn the date of the final alien invasion in the finale though, so I guess they’re maybe keeping it open for the possibility of more movies.
I’m not a fan by any means: I hated the whole conspiracy arc and eventually got to the point where I’d just switch it off as soon as it became clear they were doing another “mythology” episode. However, I kept watching for the one-offs and monsters of the week, which were almost always superb. They could be haunting, hilarious, horrifying, or even some other adjective that begins with “H”. Usually all at the same time. The show would have been infinitely better if they had never tried for the big story and just stuck with a purely episodic format.
To answer question 2. No.
There are some very good episodes… there are some great episodes.
There is also great promise with the story arc that is never realized because it dissolves into pure idiocy (see your question 1 for one of the many reasons).
But it’s worth watching the good episodes.
I should watch as many as you can – not to understand the conspiracy arc, which as other posters have mentioned, is completely incomprehensible – but rather to get all the subtle character nuances and in-jokes. There are also loads of cool bit-characters who pop up ever so often and it’s always fun when you can recognise them from another episode. Relish the monster episodes, enjoy the conspiracy episodes for the action and cool sets – as well as the touching Scully and Mulder moments – and don’t watch beyond the end of Season 7. I mean it.
I suggest not getting to hooked into the show. It eventually turns into convoluted crap. If you feel like you can stand watching a show with characters you like who eventually act like pod people in episodes that make no sense, then go ahead. This show ain’t Babylon 5. Nothing was pre-planned or mapped out. Chris Carter is just a money grubbing egomaniac. Try to catch occasional episodes to get the flavor.
I watched devotedly, but I was always confused by the mytharc, and got annoyed that the character’s lives (particularly Scully’s) seemed to consist of one damn tragedy after another.
I pretty much thought the X-Files jumped the shark right around Season 6 (though it is of note that this didn’t stop me watching, perhaps indication of how good the show was to start).
Like others here, I didn’t like the bewildering mythology episodes as much as the ones with oddball monsters… And anything with Krycek. Mmm, Krycek.
I just finished watching the first seven seasons in order on my brother’s DVDs. IMHO, the problems started with the movie, which was between seasons five and six. In the movie, they came right out and explained exactly what was going on and what the conspiracy was all about. Then they destroy it. So when season six started, they essentially had to start from scratch. Every now and then, they’d try to tie things back into the original conspiracy, but it just never went anywhere and never got interesting again. The other problem was that they were never quite sure how many seasons they had to go, so they had to keep “ending” the series, while still leaving it open for another season. That happened a few times. Still, seasons six and seven contain some of the funniest episodes of the whole run, so they’re worth watching.
The answers sometimes are forthcoming, but as is the spirit of the show, you are never really sure who’s telling the truth.
First there are aliens. Then there aren’t. Then there are multiple kinds of aliens. It’s the problem inherent in shows that go on for as many seasons: they make up the story arc as they go along, so eventually continuity has to break down. I didn’t like the way they resolved some of the plots toward the end.
But sure, there are some great episodes. There are also some clunkers.
I got hooked big time after disliking the show for years. All it took to change my mind was to see three episodes (one from season 2, one from season 7, and one from season 8) and the movie in a week’s time. Then it became my quest to see all of the episodes as quickly as possible. There are still a handful of season five episodes I haven’t seen yet, but I do own them on DVD so I can see them at some point.
I didn’t start watching until the 8th season, and unlike most long-time fans, I don’t think seasons 8 & 9 are the worst. Season 4 is the worst… or it is if you have far less interest in the mytharc than the monsters. If I’d seen season 4 from the beginning, back when it first aired, I probably would have stopped watching the show, but as it turned out, season 4 was one of the last I saw. Other fans loooooooooooove season 4, and many think it’s the best. ( I spend a lot of time at the XF boards, so I’ve read thousands of fan opinions by now) My point is, fans like the show differently, so you may get hooked on the mytharc and lament by season 7 that the show has gone to hell, or you might get hooked on the relationships between Mulder and Scully then have a fit that Mulder’s only in one episode of season nine, or you might like the monsters and actually enjoy the whole series since they’re the only single consistancy from start to finish, or maybe you just watch it because you find cast members attractive, or maybe a combination of all of them 
And answers? First you get frustrated that every answer brings more questions, some never fully resolved, then you discover fanfics and get over it, lol.
To answer your first question, the way I always understood it was this. There actually is (in the show) a conspiracy among a select group of powerful people. Not everyone is in on this conspiracy. Some of the activities of this conspiracy result in a lot of weird reports (ie, aliens).
Now, if they put a competent set of investigators on this, a good investigation should uncover the conspiracy, so they don’t want that. On the other hand, if they exert their power to keep all investigation away from these unsolved cases, their presence becomes obvious. So they do something in between.
They take “Spooky” Mulder, who has a bad reputation for believing Kooky things – so that people won’t believe him when he finds evidence of aliens or the supernatural. (It also helps that key conspiracy members think they have some personal leverage on him, because of his family history and connections.) You add a competent, but skeptical investigator (Scully), who you figure will never believe in the aliens even if they stare her in the face and abduct her. And you take every weird, unsolved and unsolvable case for the last umpteen years, mixed together with the actual cases that are connected with the conspiracies activities, and you put them all together (they do seem similar, after all). It’s pretty clear to me that they expect the team to fail, and yet the bureau has done its job investigating these cases. Ergo, the conspiracy will stay hidden.
But the team is more successful than the conspiracy wants. They didn’t count on Mulder cross referencing all of those cases and being able to see patterns and make connections that he wouldn’t be able to otherwise. They didn’t count on Scully being willing to use her skepticism to finally realize that some of these things were really true – when she sees it with her own eyes, and when there is no other explanation yet. They didn’t count on the team gaining credibility from solving some “supernormal” cases when they aren’t opposed by the conspiracy (because they aren’t related). They didn’t count on the two getting support from Director Skinner, who seems to want the cases genuinely solved, but has the good sense to tread carefully around the conspiracy until the evidence is firmly in place. And they didn’t count on a few traitors in the conspiracy helping M&S out occasionally because the conspiracy has gone too far. Or, for that matter, splinters within the conspiracy working at cross purposes, who occasionally find it useful to let M&S find out something.
As a result, they have to humor them, sometimes directly oppose them, demote them, move them off of a case, or give up sometimes. And all of this, too, generates more connections, evidence, or leads for the team to investigate.
That’s my take on it.
As for question #2: Well, it seemed to me that the questions from the first season get answered (sometimes more than once in contradictory ways, but answered), but each season generates more questions, and by the end, it isn’t wrapped up neatly. Nonetheless, there are plenty of enjoyable episodes in the meantime.
I also did not find Season 8 and 9 to be all that bad. True, I sorely missed Mulder being in the episodes (he was in some, but not that many). I thought the show had ended because he wasn’t in them. But, then I developed an attachment to Doggett and Reyes, and I decided that I liked them very much, after all.
Not all episodes from Seasons 8 & 9 were good, but some were—or at least no worse than from seasons past. I’d given up trying to figure out the whole conspiracy arc thing by then anyway. I thought there were some truly interesting and funny episodes in the last two seasons. (I saw the “Brady Bunch House” episode today. I thought it was pretty good.)
And the “final” episode? Now, that was bad. I still would like to see it again (just to figure out what the hell happened) but it was somewhat of a disappointment. If you see the last episode with real “lowered expectations,” you probably won’t mind it too much. But definitely—have lowered expectations.