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Don't worry about the mytharc. It will never make sense. Alternatively, stop watching at the end of season 7. As for the movies, the 1st one is good, the 2nd one is dog poo poo and completely unrelated to the mytharc. As for the politics, it is incoherent for the most part during the original run. Fox news level reactionary right wing stuff during the movie and follow up seasons. to wit 2nd movie A Russian gay immigrant couple abducts young white American women because they want to put the head of one of the gay men on the woman's body later seasons the Alex Jones type conspiracist is right from the start, and there's the episode where literally every Muslim save one is a suicide bomber
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Apr 20, 2020 01:58
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NikkolasKing posted:Also I'm still not sure why it's so hard to find people to talk about The X-Files. I used to post on a scifi forum and they got me to watch Stargate SG-1. It was...okay but nothing special. I have no desire to ever see it again and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. So why were people still talking about it ten years ago? And i think there's an active thread for it here, too. Funny thing: what got me to sign up for SA was one of the old xfiles threads that was doing a rewatch of the series. There used to be a ton of x files forums, but eventually they all died off. I think it was just a matter of a show overstaying its welcome. As someone old enough to have caught the original run, a lot of people I knew who were super into the show in the mid 90s all would react with "that show is still going on? huh" when it got to 2001-2002. At some point, people just burn out of all build up no payoff.
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Apr 25, 2020 18:35
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crispix posted:This became a real problem in the 00s imo. Shows would start out great and have a couple of good seasons but then the writing would get over encumbered with intrigue sometimes to the point where the writers themselves couldn't resolve plot lines convincingly and only attempted to after many had lost interest anyway When series were still a network affair and producers couldn't rely on subscription fees, the main way the TV business operated was that networks would spend less than cost for TV shows and production companies would only turn a profit if they made it into syndication. With the X Files, it was worse because fox had a couple of seasons where all their new shows flopped. I don't remember if it was carter or spotnitz who said at the end of season 7 that they still didn't know if there was going to be a season 8 so they filmed two endings. Gilligan was asked about the show staying too long and his basic take was that some 200 people are employed on a show that size, and that ending the show at the artistically satisfying time also meant 200 of your friends losing their jobs.
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Apr 25, 2020 20:56
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NikkolasKing posted:Thanks for the replies everyone. The incongruity between mytharc and motw is explained in large part because the writers for each were different. Early on, other writers like Morgan and Wong would contribute episodes to the mytharc, but after season 6 or so it becomes exclusively a chris carter thing. Meanwhile some writers focused only on MOTW episodes. These writers include Vince Gilligan, Darin Morgan, Howard Gordon, John Shiban, etc.
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Apr 26, 2020 03:55
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False posted:Anyone found a good "rewatch" guide they can recommend? depends on the type of rewatch you want to do. Mytharc or MOTW?
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Apr 28, 2020 16:09
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False posted:Both, really. I enjoy reading about why other people enjoy things before I enjoy them (and it helps to avoid the waste of time episodes). The list of mytharc episodes is in this post I made in the old thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3601247&pagenumber=34&perpage=40#post450954564 Mytharc gets incoherent at the end, but makes a vague sense till the end of season 7. This is the serialized part of the xfiles. Notable MOTW episodes, by season (these can be watched out of order, but i'd recommend not starting with the lighthearted ones, since they pay off more once you understand the characters better). Italics are the funny ones, bold are the really famous ones that get brought up all the time season 1: Squeeze Ice Fire Beyond the Sea Tooms (follow up to Squeeze) Season 2 Irresistible Die Hand Die Verletzt Dod Kalm Humbug F. Emasculata Our Town Season 3 Oubliette War of the Coprophages Pusher (Vince Gilligan's first episode as a staff writer, he had a previous credit, but it was a submitted script that initially got him the job) Jose Chung's From Outer Space Quagmire Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose Season 4 Home (probably the most famous episode of the x files, because it was only shown on broadcast tv once and then never again) Unruhe Paper Hearts Small Potatoes Season 5 Detour The Post-Modern Prometheus (a weird lighthearted episode that uses what is essentially rape for comedic effect) Kitsunegari (follow up to pusher) Chinga (actually pretty bad, but remarkable because it was written by Stephen King) Bad Blood Folie à Deux Season 6 Drive (Bryan Cranston is in this one) The Rain King Monday Arcadia Milagro The Unnatural Season 7 Hungry Millennium (conclusion to the show of the same name, since it had been cancelled) The Goldberg Variation Orison (conclusion to irresistible) The Amazing Maleeni X-Cops (Cops, but with x files) all things (actually pretty bad, but a favorite for the shippers for reasons that become clear at the very start) Hollywood AD Je Souhaite I dont remember any worthwhile s8 and s9 motw, though I am sure there are some.
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May 8, 2020 16:19
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DorianGravy posted:I was doing a complete watch of X-Files a few years ago and got to the early parts of Season 8 before dropping off (specifically episode 5 "Invocation", my Netflix viewing history tells me). Is there anything past that in the series worth checking out? I've seen bits and pieces of the later stuff, but out of order, and I know that season 8/9 have a reputation for being pretty bad. Should I try to finish the series off? I liked the myth-arc stuff, and was kind of bummed about how it fizzled out. Only good stuff in the 10 and 11 seasons are the Darin Morgan episodes. The mytharc is completely incoherent after season 7. There are a couple of decent episodes in season 8. Vienen is one I remember enjoying. Now, season 9 has the one that made me the most angry at the time. Trust No 1. The premise is that Scully misses Mulder so much she asks him to come back, but some people might be waiting for him. So the entire episode is about whether or not Mulder got on a train, and it was entirely about teasing that maybe Duchovny was going to be in that episode.
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Aug 1, 2020 21:26
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My favorite Krycek moment is when he very dramatically drops the vial with the vaccine that could have saved Mulder, only for Scully to then use "an anti-viral" to save Mulder. It just highlights the incoherence of it all. There's an alien virus that incubates in seemingly dead people and transforms them into supersoldiers so indestructible that if even a single vertebrae is left they can instantly restore themselves to full health. There is a vaccine to said virus. But it doesn't matter, generic antiviral drugs just as well. The indestructible super soldier comes from a virus that is easier to treat than the flu.
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Aug 4, 2020 18:41
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algebra testes posted:I forgot that Mulder threatens to shoot the NSA agent in the dick. Syzygy is such a reminder of a pre-internet world for me. I didn't have internet at the time, and so the episode came out and I really liked one of the songs in it. All Over You by live. Of course, I had no way of finding out what the name was, so I would go to record stores and sing the refrain to see if anyone would know it. And then the next year I got the internet, so I searched for it and found it that way.
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Aug 16, 2020 16:21
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the start of the Corckroaches episode.
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After The War posted:Man, Live was such an alt-rock radio staple, buying an album would have seemed superfluous at the time. At the time, I was an exchange student in rural northwest Michigan. If they had an alt-rock radio station, I didn't know of it.
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Aug 16, 2020 19:32
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Milo and POTUS posted:Were Mulder+scully ever a thing? I never watched the later seasons but the fact that they stayed just friends + respected colleagues was shocking given the time and is still shamefully rare even today. I don't count one, two time things. Lol, yeah. Appealing and teasing shippers became Chris Carter's go to move in later seasons when he ran out of ideas. Not going to spoiler tag a 20 year old TV show, but people who don't want to know should stop now In season 7, all things starts with Scully getting up and getting dressed as the camera pans over to a nude sleeping Mulder in bed. By the end of it, Scully is pregnant and it is implied that it is Mulder's baby. Season 8 includes both a retcon of how Scully got pregnant (turns out her and Mulder had been trying for a long time), and the plot verges on the nonsensical: the aliens are trying to either kill and/or save their baby, because there is a prophecy that if the baby lives and Mulder lives he will lead the fight against the aliens, but if the baby lives and Mulder dies, the baby will lead the colonization efforts. Season ends with Mulder and Scully kissing as she holds the baby. One of the first episodes after Mulder came back was called "three little words" that every shipper freaked out about, but turns out the three words were "fight the future." Season 9 Duchovny is out, but they still used their romance in episodes. There is an episode where Scully misses Mulder so much she tells him to get on a train to go see her, even though she knows that is a trap. The entire episode is "did Mulder get on the train or not." And then the series finale they hook up and go on the run. 2nd movie they start out together, split up, and then get back together. The new seasons were a total mess, so I don't even remember if they hook up again or not.
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Aug 22, 2020 16:51
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Milo and POTUS posted:Man that's disappointing. Again, I wouldn't be surprised if they did once, twice or even if it was an occasional thing. But trying for a baby give me a break They broke up and got together more than Ross and Rachel. Which is remarkable when you think they only got together in season 7. There was an interview at the time of the 2nd movie where Spotnitz talked about how they actually rewrote that movie to make it more ambiguous as to whether or not they were together at the start of the movie. And so there is this scene about 1/3 of the way in where Scully is laying in bed saying something, and it is shot at the same height as her face, and then Mulder gets up from behind her, making it clear that they were in bed together. And Spotnitz talked about it as if it was a great scene that the fans loved. Then they break up during the movie, but the after credits sequence is them on a boat in the Caribbean or something.
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Aug 22, 2020 18:33
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Oh, god, I forgot the other kick in the balls for shippers: there's also a season 9 episode where you have "deformed Mulder is back, look at his DNA test, oh no it is actually Spender" episode.
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Aug 23, 2020 04:29
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This thread inspired me to re watch the series and I'm watching fallen angel. Mulder asks max how he recognized him, and Max says from an article on omni. To which Mulder replies "but i published that under a pseudonym." Which is great, because it means that Mulder publishes under a pseudonym but uses his actual picture. joepinetree fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Aug 28, 2020 |
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Aug 27, 2020 05:47
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Chairman Capone posted:I remember when they were filming the second movie, they released a lot of fake "leaks" and blurry "set photos" to throw bloggers off the scent, and all the fakes made it seem like the movie was going to be about a werewolf or wendigo or something like that, and I still wish it actually had been that instead. It goes a step further: not just a gay marriage, but also kidnapping and killing young girls to steal their bodies to implant the head of the lover to become a woman.
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Sep 9, 2020 18:46
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As a bit of meta commentary, I love how this story essentially repeatedly calls Chris Carter full of poo poo https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-x-files-chris-carter-season-12-unresolved-storylines/
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Oct 18, 2020 02:10
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Payndz posted:My wife walked out on our watch of 'F. Emasculata' because the idea of Scully, a medical doctor, poking around in oozing, pustule-covered corpses that have died from some highly contageous cause with practically no precautions or PPE actually made her angry. Scully's medical expertise, like everything else on the show in a long enough horizon, makes no loving sense. She sometimes does autopsies, sometimes treats the black oil and deals with vaccines and antivirals, in the movies does brain surgery, in the new seasons is back to creating vaccines...
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Nov 12, 2020 01:51
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I think that the revival series and how bad the episodes for the mytharc were are just proof positive of how much Chris Carter sucks. The big difference between the revival and the original show is that in the revival there was no "writers room," all the scripts were submitted individually. So Carter's was just Carter's instead of being thought up in general in the writer's room. And it shows why he's career has been just a string of failures after the show. The original series had probably one of the best writer's room of all time. Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad), Frank Spotnitz (man in the high castle), John Shiban (Breaking Bad, Supernatural, Ozark), Howard Gordon (24, Homeland, which at least initially wasnt terrible), Morgan and Wong (final destination movies, AHS), Darin Morgan... like, you can probably trace most post 2000 crime/scifi series writers to the x-files. And the deterioration of the mytharc and the series can probably be nearly perfectly mapped on to those writers leaving the show to start their own series and Carter having to actually write by himself.
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Feb 8, 2021 17:07
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Chairman Capone posted:If I remember rightly (and I think this was covered in Kumail Nanjiani's podcast) was that the original plan was for the show to end with season 5, and transition into a movie series, but they went back on that late in development. The show had like two or three points before the (original) finale that were meant to be endings but they kept going because the network pushed for it. It was supposed to become a movies series after 5, but Fox liked the show and still had the Duchovny under contract for 7 seasons. At the end of season 7, there is an old interview, I think with Frank Spotnitz, about how they shot two finales for season 7, and how, with like 2 weeks to go until the finale was aired, they didn't even know if the show was going to continue. And then pretty much every single Fox drama got cancelled. Party of 5 ended, and all the wannabe xfiles clones failed (Harsh realm). So Duchovny's contract was over, so he signed up for part time in season 8. Anderson's contract was for 9 seasons, so they had her. Same deal with season 8: it was supposed to be a series finale, but every wannabe xfiles show fox had on failed (freakylinks, lone gunmen, etc). So they renewed it. Season 9 was Anderson's last under contract, and ratings were bad enough that they just gave up then. I don't remember where I heard it, but there was a pretty insightful interview that Gilligan gave about ending the series at the right time. Someone asked him what he had thought of the x-files staying on for so long, and he said while it would be nice to make decisions driven by artistic concerns, at the end of the day a show will have some 200 people working on it, people you get close to, and so would you really want to make them all unemployed for the same of your "vision?" It might be easy for the lead writers or series creator to get another project after a successful show. But there's no guarantees that all the staffers, technical people, etc. will have the same opportunity.
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Feb 8, 2021 17:47
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Open Source Idiom posted:Here's a (relatively) unpopular opinion: I really like what they were setting up in Season 8, and I like the back half of that season more than any protracted stretch of episodes since the fourth season. Season 9 is another one that got derailed by extra series stuff. Lucy Lawless, who played the main super soldier early on, was pregnant, and her pregnancy turned out to be high risk so she couldn't come back to shoot more episodes and they had to change the story around a little bit.
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Mar 12, 2021 19:58
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The mytharc sort of works if you take that season 7 episode with the eyeless rebels as the series finale. Ignore even the season 7 finale and it's fine.
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Jun 1, 2023 19:14
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The recent seasons had no "writers room," the episodes were all one offs written by people on their own. And it makes it very, very clear why everyone else went on to great things and Cris Carter never did anything else. If you want to watch a train wreck, watch the Carter episodes in the new series. But be aware that they retroactively make the mytharc even worse. If you just want to watch fun tv with characters you like, avoid the Carter ones and focus on the Morgan, Morgan and Wong ones.
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Sep 3, 2023 23:42
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Gravitee posted:Disregarding the late seasons, you have to consider that this show was on in the 90s where you didn't necessarily know if the show would come back the next season. I feel like the writers worked themselves into the corner at the end of each season to make it exciting/a cliffhanger and the following season was spent figuring out how to make it work. That is pretty much what happened. There's essentially a number of points that were designed to be the end of the series. The original idea was 5 seasons and then a movie franchise. After all, while not perfect, the mytharc could have the 1st movie as an ending. But season 5 was the highest rated fox TV show and the highest rated season of X-Files. Duchovny wanted out because he wanted to be a movie star, but Fox wasn't about to cancel their most watched show. As a result, they moved to LA to appease Duchovny. Ratings started to decline in seasons 6 and 7, and 7 would have been the natural end point for the mytharc: the rebels came and destroyed the syndicate, everything is fine. But this is the season where every single other Fox drama outside of Ally McBeal went off the air. Harsh Realm, the other Carter show that was supposed to take over from x-files, was canceled after 3 episodes and had the remaining episodes dumped on FX. There was at the time a Frank Spotnitz interview talking about how like they had 2 endings for season 7 and 2 weeks before it went on the air they still didn't know. So they bring the show back for season 8. But Duchovny isn't under contract anymore, really thinks he's going to be a movie star (who can forget the classic comedy Evolution), so he agrees to just a few episodes. Anderson is still under contract so she has no choice to be back. Series ratings decline even further, once again they shoot the season finale as a potential series finale. Except once again all the shows they thought would replace the X-Files, including Lone Gunmen fail. So back for season 9 it is. And even then they had to change things mid-season 9. Lucy Lawless was going to be the big bad super soldier, but had a high risk pregnancy so had to drop out. Ending was a mess, and after season 9 Anderson wasn't under contract anymore, and so they decided to pull the plug.
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Sep 4, 2023 05:57
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The annoying thing is that they wasted some of his few episode on teasing shippers. One of his few episodes back is all flashback to him agreeing to have a baby with Scully. And the second movie was like a bad attempt to cater to the most insane conservative tropes. Gay immigrant couple moves to the US and starts murdering women so that one of them can be on a woman's body.
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Sep 4, 2023 06:49
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There's one i only remember because the lead singer for rancid is a guest star
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Sep 4, 2023 14:58
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You try to do it on the cheap, so instead of having a writer room where people break poo poo down and make a season ark, you purchased a bunch of unused scripts from previous writers and then leave the new stuff to the worst writer on the series and you let him write those with no input from others or supervision.
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Sep 4, 2023 22:09
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The greys are shown inconsistently in the same way that the black oil is shown inconsistently. Early on, greys are just regular aliens, and the black oil was a form of alien that would take over people. So the greys were infected by the black oil to be sort of colonial workers. The shape shifting bounty hunters (played by Brian Thompson in the early seasons) had their true form as a grey. Then around the movie, the black oil would infect people and people would incubate a grey who would come out and kill people. Mulder saves scully from the space ship where she was supposed to be incubating a grey. Then season 7-ish or so the black oil is about making human alien hybrids and greys sort of disappear.
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Sep 5, 2023 04:52
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I believe that is EBE, in season 1
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Sep 5, 2023 05:24
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Isn't tibetan numerologists of appalachia from the Xfiles episode of the simpsons?
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Sep 5, 2023 19:02
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The episode he comes back on season 9 deformed and pretending to be Mulder is just the hackiest, laziest writing possible trying to cash in on people not knowing when duchovny would be back.
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Sep 16, 2023 17:21
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Eh, I don't think a Anderson-less show that was already without Duchovny would have gone anywhere.
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Sep 17, 2023 09:04
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MrMojok posted:Has anyone ever done a Mytharc-only rewatch? Perhaps not from beginning to end, but maybe from beginning up through s6? It doesn't play any better because the changes over time become more instantly jarring. Like, the black oil first appears in Piper Maru, season 3. But in that episode, they even test the oil and find it is just motor oil. But the oil can contain some form of sentient being that jumps from person to person. So oil goes in person, takes over the person, comes out of person, takes over someone else. The 2 episodes end with Krycek puking the black oil on top of a hidden UFO and then locked to die inside the missile silo the UFO was in. That is late season 3. Ending of season 3 start of 4 doesn't mention black oil at all, and instead there is a colony of drone clones. Then you get to the Terma/Tungusta 2 parter where the black oil is back, and its not tied to a sentient being, and Krycek is alive and the Russians are testing a vaccine for the black oil. And then suddenly the black oil is something that makes you incubate a grey alien inside of you that is like the xenomorph in aliens. That shift is not something you question too much if it happened 20 episodes earlier. But 3 episodes earlier and its hard to miss.
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Sep 18, 2023 19:39
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:Are there any good write-ups or summaries of stuff the writers have said on what the plans and stuff were with the Mytharc? Like I know we hear a lot that they intended to end it with the movie, etc etc, but like what about the stuff before that? Because as noted, it's clear there's retcons and changes even before the film. Like was this a result of different writers, writers forgetting/not caring what they had previously written, or what? Like were they writing by the seat of their pants even prior to the film? I don't think there was a big plan, and as other people have said they were always flying by the seat of their pants, not knowing if the show was going to end. But Gilligan said in a podcast a long time ago something that kind of stuck with me. People were asking about the x files overstaying their welcome and how it should have ended a lot earlier, and his point was that for the writers and actors its "on to the next job," but in any TV show there are 180-200 people who depend on the show and who may not be able to find another job as easily, and so it would be a bit egotistical to send 200 people you care for to the unemployment line to protect your "vision."
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Sep 20, 2023 00:43
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Chairman Capone posted:Wasn't he the one who decided to end Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul when they did? That seems to fly in the face of the argument he's making. The interview in question was early in Breaking bad. He probably saw Carter's career after x files and thought "maybe an early end is the way to go."
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Sep 20, 2023 03:19
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Je souhaite for me is the most underrated episode of the x files. Like, everyone will list Jose Chungs or Clyve Burkmans or bad blood, but je souhaite is every bit as good as those.
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Oct 31, 2023 00:48
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A Fancy Hat posted:I'm not the first person to say it, but the show 100% loses something when they move the filming from Vancouver to Los Angeles. It's just not as dreary and moody, you don't get those cool shots of somebody in a forest with a huge flood light illuminating the horizon. Plus its when you go from rando canadian being extras and minor parts to a bunch of aspiring LA actors, making the show look a lot more mainstream tv.
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Nov 2, 2023 19:00
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And by "once you finish it" we mean once you've watched season 7, when the show officially ended
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Feb 18, 2024 20:50
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I guess now it is official that ryan coogler is doing an x files reboot...
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Feb 29, 2024 08:26
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I honestly think the best option is for them to make it a completely different thing in a universe where folklore and aliens are real, rather than trying to do like a 1 to 1 type of reboot. Dont do like a will they wont they partners with a begrudging but supportive boss and a mysterious, except now its the vaping man.
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Mar 1, 2024 03:34
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And his avatar would be his picture. Just like when Max Fenig recognized him because while Mulder used a pseudonym Max had seen his picture in the nicap paper
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Mar 3, 2024 01:07
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