The truth was out there: Reviewing the X-Files revival

A few weeks ago, I got the chance to get a sneak peek at the premiere episode of the "X-Files" revival in preparation for an article I wrote for the Deseret News. Never previously had I seen an episode (or probably even a full minute) of "The X-Files," but I'll never turn down an opportunity to get my writing published, so I gladly accepted, watched the show and submitted my article. I figure that, since I dove in head-first by watching the first episode of the reboot, even though I didn't fully understand everything that was going on, I might as well keep watching the mini series; it was only going to be six episodes long, anyway.

So I watched it. I watched it all. And, as predicted, I didn't catch every Easter egg or reference to any of the old episodes from the original series, but hey, I thought the six-week episode "event" was pretty entertaining, overall. I thought it might be good, educational or entertaining to capture my thoughts electronically, on the heels of that crazy "series finale" and see if anyone actually has the guts to comment and open up correspondence with me. Time will tell.

Anyway, here are my thoughts:

A beginning... for starters

I thought the first episode was pretty good. More than anything, I thought it did a great job catching up non-believers like me. It gave me enough background information to go off of without boring me or freaking me out. Enough to whet my whistle, you might say. I thought Joel McHale was surprisingly good as that know-it-all Internet host, Tad O'Malley. My favorite part of the premiere was the scene revolving around the conspiracy theory, where O'Malley and Mulder (David Duchovny) spout off rapid-fire, real-life instances where the government had been involved in shady business, unbeknownst to practically everyone else in the world. I liked that. The end of the episode, I assume, would have been a real kick in the pants for fans of the series, as the Cigarette Smoking Man made an ominous appearance, but that didn't mean much to me at the time. Perhaps the most important aspect of the first episode was that it made me curious about what else would happen throughout the other five episodes. It left me interested enough to keep watching. So... mission accomplished.

Human instinct... or was it??

My favorite episode - by far, probably - was Episode Three: "Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster," or, as I like to call it, "The Episode with the Lizard-Man." In the third show, Mulder and Scully (Gillian Anderson) meet an eccentric man who claims to actually be a lizard that occasionally turns into a human. The sequence where the Lizard-Man explains how he first turned into a man, then immediately felt impressed to get his job, hate his job, quit his job, then un-quit his job were probably the funniest 15 minutes of television that I have seen in a long time. Bravo for that, "X-Files" revival. It was strange to me, not previously having known that there were infrequent "funny" episodes of the show, to watch an hour of TV that felt more like a comedy than anything else, but I really enjoyed that episode.

Free reign... but at what cost?

Having a short, pre-determined life is not a terrible way to go, as far as "TV events" go. It worked wonders for "Wayward Pines" last summer and had a similar effect on "The X-Files" this winter. I feel like having so few episodes to work with gives the producers, essentially, unlimited possibilities for their story. It's not like they have to "vamp" or stretch things out for a few episodes in the middle of the season - they don't have time for filler. It's heavy-hitting stuff from the get-go. But whereas "Wayward Pines" had one continuous storyline to build upon, "The X-Files" chose to play around with genres from week to week. Episodes One and Six were conspiracy thrillers. The aforementioned Episode Three was a comedy. Episodes Two and Four were horror-themed. And Episode Five was, what? Psychadelic, I guess? It was fun to see everything that they could do, incorporating all those different styles into one show, but I felt like it didn't totally hit home with me because they felt like one-off/monster-of-the-week shows that weren't entirely dependent on each other. Thinking back, other than the obvious connections between the premiere and finale, what were the running story arcs? Scully and Mulder's kid? But what else? Nothing, really, right? Agents Einstein and Miller showed up in Episodes Five and Six, so those episodes were somewhat connected, but that was really it. I feel like you could basically have watched Episodes One, Five and Six and called it good, totally ignoring the others. Am I wrong?

Fresh faces... for me

I really liked David Duchovny in this series. The dude just seems like a total baller. I thought he did a great job - and I'm not sure, obviously, what he was really like in the original series, but I thought he was awesome here. I also quite liked Robbie Amell as Agent Miller and it seems like, if they continued the series at some point down the line, he has been appointed as the chosen heir to the Throne of Mulder, no? Agent Scully was a bit different for me. I thought she was fine and, if I do say so myself, Gillian Anderson is looking way hotter in 2016 than she was in 1993. *cough* Anyway... But yeah... She had a lot of storylines that I didn't really dig that much - the DNA testing, her dying mother (rest her soul) and pretty much anything else related to a hospital. Nah, not for me. She and Duchovny are a great team, though, and I can see why so many people really love them.

The grand finale... the public outcry!

I thought the so-called "series finale" was really good. I thought it was a nice way to wrap a bow on the little revival, connecting the premiere with the final episode. (Tad O'Malley is back!) I thought it was quite an intense 45 minutes, from the disappearance of Mulder to the gradual and widespread decline of health in America, up to that final scene on the freeway. There was that Agent Reyes chick (Annabeth Gish) that showed up... She meant absolutely nothing to me. (A character from the past, I presume?) The showdown between Mulder and the Cigarette Smoking Man was another thing that I assumed would have been really powerful if I was more familiar with the show - don't get me wrong, it was tense and exciting, but I just have no connection to "Ol' Smokey." The finale was the classic race-against-time drama, where people are getting sick and dying and Scully has the cure, but there's traffic and she has to get out and run and all that... It was intense! I kept checking the timer on Hulu to see how they could possibly have wrapped things up in four minutes... two minutes... a minute-fifty...

Here's an honest question: are long-time fans of this series not totally and completely outraged by the way things ended?? Mulder is lying there in the car, dying. Heck, the entire continent is wasting away before our eyes! (A minute-twenty...) Like... is she going to jam the IV into his arm? Is he miraculously going to be healed? But even then, there are 45 seconds left in the episode... What about the other couple millions of people who are dying? What about them?? Then, suddenly, their kid shows up in his spaceship?? And beams a light down on them? But then what?? WHAT?!?

That can't be how the series ends. I've thought all along that the whole "six-episode" premise was a ton of crap. I think they wanted to start with six episodes and see what the public reaction was. If it was popular (which it was - and which they knew it would be), they'd surprise everyone and either extend the season or have it continue with other seasons in the future. You've got to think that, with an ending like that - an ending that basically resolved nothing - they've got to have more seasons planned, right?

Right??

Conclusion... for now

Anyway, I'm just going to leave you hanging there, just like "The X-Files" left us all hanging this past Monday night.