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piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg_vVKcVYbo

Hello, since I have the third post in the thread I felt like I needed to suggest some episodes in case anyone is starting fresh and doesn't know what to watch.

Season 1: starting out
The first four episodes are good and introduce you to the concept and the overarching plot (the "mytharc") of the show. After that is "The Jersey Devil" which is pretty boring. The rest of the episodes are hit or miss, with some gems (Fallen Angel, Eve, Tooms), and some more of the mytharc (Fallen Angel, E.B.E., The Erlenmeyer Flask).

If you're not that interested in the mytharc, you can try out some of the monster of the week episodes from other seasons that don't need to be watched in order:

Monster of the Week ones (no myth-arc)
2x14 Die Hand Die Verletzt
The occult, small towns, a teenager dies as part of a ritual, satantic cults. This episode is pure horror and incredibly creepy. It also takes a swing at -- what was for the time a current event -- the trend of satantic cult panics in small towns that turned out to be made up.

2x20 Humbug
Murders start occuring in a community of circus sideshow performers. Mulder thinks it's the "Fiji mermaid", but the reality is stranger. This is the first episode Darin Morgan wrote for the show, the next one he wrote won two Emmys, and the others are some of the other finest episodes of the show.

3x04 Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose
Quite frankly just an amazing episode of television, and my overall favourite episode of The X-Files. When a series of murders start occuring in a small town draws Mulder and Scully, a cranky insurance salesman sees visions of how people will die crosses paths with them. It runs a fine balance between comedy and tragedy, examining fate and the inevitability of death. This one won two Emmys, one for Darin Morgan for writing it, and other for Peter Boyle for guest actor in a drama series.

7x21 Je Souhaite
A man (MADtv's Will Sasso) finds a genie in an abadoned storage locker, and uses the wishes to enrich his life. As it usually goes in genie tales, the wishes misfire and end badly for all involved. This shows off comedy elements of The X-Files that the show was good at, while also humanizing the genie and examining the standard genie tale from the other side. Written by Breaking Bad's Vince Gilligan.


The X-Files was a show with a lot of variation in types of stories they tell. There's a little something for everyone. Are you looking for:

Aliens: Pilot, E.B.E., Fallen Angel, Duane Barry
Horror: Squeeze (and the sequel, Tooms), Eve, Die Hand Die Verletzt, Home
Gore: Sanguinarium
Great Writing: Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, War of the Coprophages, Jose Chung's From Outer Space
Monsters: The Host
Comedy: Humbug, Syzygy, Jose Chung's From Outer Space, Small Potatoes
Sci-Fi: Synchrony
New Age: The Field Where I Died
Plagues: F. Emasculata
Vampires: 3 (warning: boring)
Alternate History: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man
Rashomon: Jose Chung's From Outer Space, Bad Blood
90's Internet: 2Shy
Literally the movie The Thing: Ice
Vince Gilligan: Soft Light, Pusher, Unruhe, Paper Hearts, Small Potatoes, Unusual Suspects, Drive (with Bryan Cranston!)

piratepilates fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Apr 21, 2020

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piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.



Jerusalem posted:

One of my favorite ever episodes is Field Trip, which is from season 6. I loved the fact they kept figuring out they were hallucinating only to realize that just because they've realized they're hallucinating doesn't mean they'll stop. When the show first aired I always most looked forward to the big conspiracy episodes but I've found as the years have passed the stories I mostly remember are the standalone more Twilight Zone/Outer Limits style ones, like the flukeman episode or the two Tooms episodes.

I rewatched Field Trip a few nights ago and had forgotten about the scene with the grey being in Mulder's apartment. I love how they took the opportunity with that episode to throw in something so shocking and show-changing, but then gets rolled back since it's just a dream


What I watched for the first time the other night was The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat, which was uh, interesting. I enjoyed it, and it made me wish Darin Morgan had more opportunities to write episodes for TV on successful shows. What a strange episode though. Not only is it not really an X-File in the end, but it seemed like a metacommentary on the show, its fanbase, the current state of the world, and the premise of the show within the current world. It was probably the episode most unlike any other episode on the show, and now I'm sad that there aren't more like it :(


edit: To help me with my critical lack of X-File episodes that I haven't scene and that are actually good, I've also started watching some Kolchak, Millenium and the original Twilight Zone. I feel a bit foolish for never considering watching the original Twilight Zone before, as it turns out it's exactly what I'm looking for in terms of premises and execution, with the bonus that it's the 50s and 60s encapsulated in a time capsule.

piratepilates fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Apr 21, 2020

piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.



grassy gnoll posted:

The absence of "Bad Blood" in the Rashomon list is an appalling miscarriage of justice.

your recollection seems to be faulty, from my recollection of the list, bad blood is in there :thunk:.

piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.



The production and the writing are top notch and still some of the best in television. Completely holds up and the only parts that feel aged are parts related to the period.

The uh, mytharc and such, Chrissy boy really should have cut those loose at some point. If the show miraculously comes back he should definitely not keep trying to keep the mytharc going in some kind of sunk cost frenzy.

piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.



I watched my first post-Duchovny episode today -- season 9's Sunshine Days.

The guy from Lost owns a one story house in Van Nuys. The kid from married with children all growed up breaks in at night, and it's somehow the exact house from the Brady Bunch (a multi-level set in a soundstage). Turns out he's making this happen with his mind.

It's very unsettling seeing the show but without Duchovny (and mostly without scully, she's a supporting character). The show still has the trappings of the one I know (the music, the look and feel, the plot progression and writing) but it all feels very......off, because of Doggett and Reyes driving the action instead of the familiar leads. They just don't quite feel like the right characters for the show, Doggett has his own niche that works in place of mulder, but Reyes doesn't seem to have much going for her.

When Scully shows up the whole thing feels even weirder. I forgot she's still kinda in the show at this point, so my first impression was "huh they really went and got some redhead to play the autopsy part when scully used to do it" before realizing that no, Scully is still in the show somehow.

The kid from Married With Children is in this, and I think it's the only time I've seen him cast in something outside of MWC. He's not particularly good.

The most hilarious part of the episode is that they keep talking about needing for the telekinetic guy to demonstrate his powers in public so they can prove that the paranormal is real, and the X-Files (Mulder's life work) isn't all for nothing. It really makes you aware of how dumb the premise of the show is after 9 years of the same thing. Paranormal happens, Mulder is believe, Scully is skeptic, by the end of the episode any proof is gone and only those two will know the truth. It's easy to look past normally since it's what happens in each episode that is the real draw, but man that whole illusion falls apart when they start treating that as an actual concept with actual sad implications.

The episode overall was alright but not great. You're really drawn in the first half of the idea of this guy just having a supernatural brady bunch house in his house, and somehow the characters from the brady bunch appear to be inside the house, but they really had nothing else going past that. The second half is just "yep this guy has telekinetic powers, brady bunch house is done by his mind, now he's dying, he always wish he had a real father, and the episode is over, everyone go home. Feels like a great one liner idea a writer had that they kept bringing up in meetings, but could never develop a real story out of.

piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.




Sounds just awful.

piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.



Payndz posted:

...
Me: shows her a GIS of Mr Noseybonk...from popular 1980s BBC kids' show Jigsaw.

the gently caress?

ok I just looked him up and what the gently caress.

why did they do this??

piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.



alexandriao posted:


The single best mytharc episode is honestly S1E24. Mulder finding the vats of people is so loving cool. A lot of this show runs on vibes and that's absolutely the most vibey episode out there.



The mytharc worked best when it had striking imagery and didn't tell you what was really happening. It worked the worst when they threw in another twist when explaining how it all works. Kritschgau being introduced is when it really turned me off, get back to creepy places and mysterious guys in suits.

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piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.



barnold posted:

i can already tell i'm about to make x-files my whole personality for the next 2-3 years. i'm hooked

It's definitely that kind of show. Only downside is once you finish it, there's nothing quite like it to watch next.

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