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I appreciated how much Gillian Anderson's pregnancy forced more serialisation on the show, Little Green Men, The Host, Sleepless, Duane Barry, Ascension, 3, and One Breath all seemed much more tied together than you usually get with the X-Files, and I get the feeling that the show would have returned to the status quo pretty soon after Little Green Men if not for having to work around Gillian's pregnancy and not having Scully available as a full-time partner for Mulder. I really enjoyed having several episodes early on with Mulder and Scully dealing with their loss of their partnership, and for me the show loses something when we get to Firewalker with Scully's abduction already being brushed over with just a couple of lines of concerned dialogue from Mulder, and there's barely any attempt to get Scully talking about her abduction and her feelings on it.
Scully's feelings barely seem to come up in the abduction arc really, it's all about Mulder falling apart over the possibility of losing her. I know that Scully had to be side-lined early on because of the actresses pregnancy, but the narrative did seem to shift hugely to focusing on Mulder as the lead character and Scully as there to support him. To be fair it would probably have been difficult to work around that with Gillian's limited availability, but the abduction arc certainly could have given Scully more to work with, you'd think that it would have been something that she would have wanted to look into upon her return, but there's never any mention of hypnotic regression therapy or ANYTHING for Scully to try and regain her lost memories of what happened to her after she was kidnapped and nearly died. Instead it's back to business as usual in the very next episode, and if there is any focus on her abduction, it's again more from Mulder's PoV with him worrying about her safety and whether she's ready to return to work. I know that's mostly a consequence of 90's television not wanting to be too serialised, but it is frustrating these days to watch characters just shrugging off such major events once the episode is over with, I wonder how The X-Files would have handled it if it was airing today for the first time?
There also seemed to be a little bit of a fear with messing up the status quo in Sleepless IMO, with Krycek being revealed as a double agent in the same episode that he first appears, as if they wanted to immediately reassure audiences that there were no plans for him to replace Scully and be a real possibility as a partner for Mulder? It's a shame they didn't wait a little longer to reveal Krycek as a mole though, it could have been a fun contrast with Scully to see Mulder working with someone who appeared to be quite naive and just as eager to believe as Mulder, causing Mulder to realise just how much he needs someone as cynical as Scully to anchor him (and I think that it could have added something to "3" if Krycek had been Mulder's partner in that episode), instead Krycek really only seemed to be there for that quickly-revealed twist of him not being who he said he was
3 was a confusing episode for me because it felt like the writers thought that they were telling a revealing character study of how badly Mulder was coping without Scully, but then the episode seemed to be completely inconsistent with Mulder's characterisation as it went on? It almost felt like watching some random vampire B-movie, one with the hapless male lead being completely drawn in by the vampire and her tragic tale, rather than an episode of The X-Files. It's disappointing because you'd expect that episode to be a pretty important one in terms of showing how Mulder copes with Scully being missing, instead what they ultimately did with it feels like it barely had anything to do with the X-Files. Mulder did look SUPER HOT when he was brooding in that white shirt though...
I really loved One Breath and it was one of my favourite episodes, but I can't think of a ton to say about it. Somehow it's always easier to nitpick what you didn't like about the bad episodes, rather than find as much to say about the great ones XD But I did read some interesting commentary online about it at first glance seeming to be an example of the typical revenge fantasy with a male character wanting to avenge a female who has been raped or violated in some way, but One Breath then goes on to subvert that by having characters like Skinner and Melissa point out how futile that is, and the best thing Mulder can do for Scully is to sit by her bedside and "do nothing"
I wasn't really sure what they were going for in Excelsis Dei, it seemed like the teaser was pointing to the lecherous old men as being responsible for the rape, but apparently it was all ghosts? Urgh I hate when TV plays it as cute when old men are being gross and wanting sponge baths for their cheap thrills. Oh and one thing I thought was rather strange was how quick Mulder was to reject Scully's theories, even when she was the one veering off the beaten path for once. It seemed like the episode wanted to make a comment about gender politics by having Scully look for reasons as to how the invisible rape story could be true, while Mulder was the skeptic this time, insisting that he's never known one of those rapes to have real evidence behind them and that the nurse is faking to get sick leave. It came across as a bit forced to me though because it just didn't feel in character for Mulder to be so dismissive of a paranormal explanation?
Oh and I LOVED Humbug just as much as I remembered, so many quotable lines! I was dying at the cut to Mulder's hero pose with "Imagine going through your whole life looking like that" XD And the angry hotel manager's irritation with Mulder was also perfect heh. The DVD played a really fun clip from that episode of Gillian Anderson actually putting a grasshopper in her mouth for real, and Kim Manners and all of the crew whopping and cheering her on after they ended the take *g*
And is there anyone who would be able to advice me on html for a friending meme? I'm rubbish at things like that :sheepish: I've been thinking that it might be fun to have an X-Files friendship meme and see how many fans are still out there on LJ, especially now that we have brand-new episodes coming out next year, but I'm not sure how you set up the little box of questions that you can copy and paste :P
Scully's feelings barely seem to come up in the abduction arc really, it's all about Mulder falling apart over the possibility of losing her. I know that Scully had to be side-lined early on because of the actresses pregnancy, but the narrative did seem to shift hugely to focusing on Mulder as the lead character and Scully as there to support him. To be fair it would probably have been difficult to work around that with Gillian's limited availability, but the abduction arc certainly could have given Scully more to work with, you'd think that it would have been something that she would have wanted to look into upon her return, but there's never any mention of hypnotic regression therapy or ANYTHING for Scully to try and regain her lost memories of what happened to her after she was kidnapped and nearly died. Instead it's back to business as usual in the very next episode, and if there is any focus on her abduction, it's again more from Mulder's PoV with him worrying about her safety and whether she's ready to return to work. I know that's mostly a consequence of 90's television not wanting to be too serialised, but it is frustrating these days to watch characters just shrugging off such major events once the episode is over with, I wonder how The X-Files would have handled it if it was airing today for the first time?
There also seemed to be a little bit of a fear with messing up the status quo in Sleepless IMO, with Krycek being revealed as a double agent in the same episode that he first appears, as if they wanted to immediately reassure audiences that there were no plans for him to replace Scully and be a real possibility as a partner for Mulder? It's a shame they didn't wait a little longer to reveal Krycek as a mole though, it could have been a fun contrast with Scully to see Mulder working with someone who appeared to be quite naive and just as eager to believe as Mulder, causing Mulder to realise just how much he needs someone as cynical as Scully to anchor him (and I think that it could have added something to "3" if Krycek had been Mulder's partner in that episode), instead Krycek really only seemed to be there for that quickly-revealed twist of him not being who he said he was
3 was a confusing episode for me because it felt like the writers thought that they were telling a revealing character study of how badly Mulder was coping without Scully, but then the episode seemed to be completely inconsistent with Mulder's characterisation as it went on? It almost felt like watching some random vampire B-movie, one with the hapless male lead being completely drawn in by the vampire and her tragic tale, rather than an episode of The X-Files. It's disappointing because you'd expect that episode to be a pretty important one in terms of showing how Mulder copes with Scully being missing, instead what they ultimately did with it feels like it barely had anything to do with the X-Files. Mulder did look SUPER HOT when he was brooding in that white shirt though...
I really loved One Breath and it was one of my favourite episodes, but I can't think of a ton to say about it. Somehow it's always easier to nitpick what you didn't like about the bad episodes, rather than find as much to say about the great ones XD But I did read some interesting commentary online about it at first glance seeming to be an example of the typical revenge fantasy with a male character wanting to avenge a female who has been raped or violated in some way, but One Breath then goes on to subvert that by having characters like Skinner and Melissa point out how futile that is, and the best thing Mulder can do for Scully is to sit by her bedside and "do nothing"
I wasn't really sure what they were going for in Excelsis Dei, it seemed like the teaser was pointing to the lecherous old men as being responsible for the rape, but apparently it was all ghosts? Urgh I hate when TV plays it as cute when old men are being gross and wanting sponge baths for their cheap thrills. Oh and one thing I thought was rather strange was how quick Mulder was to reject Scully's theories, even when she was the one veering off the beaten path for once. It seemed like the episode wanted to make a comment about gender politics by having Scully look for reasons as to how the invisible rape story could be true, while Mulder was the skeptic this time, insisting that he's never known one of those rapes to have real evidence behind them and that the nurse is faking to get sick leave. It came across as a bit forced to me though because it just didn't feel in character for Mulder to be so dismissive of a paranormal explanation?
Oh and I LOVED Humbug just as much as I remembered, so many quotable lines! I was dying at the cut to Mulder's hero pose with "Imagine going through your whole life looking like that" XD And the angry hotel manager's irritation with Mulder was also perfect heh. The DVD played a really fun clip from that episode of Gillian Anderson actually putting a grasshopper in her mouth for real, and Kim Manners and all of the crew whopping and cheering her on after they ended the take *g*
And is there anyone who would be able to advice me on html for a friending meme? I'm rubbish at things like that :sheepish: I've been thinking that it might be fun to have an X-Files friendship meme and see how many fans are still out there on LJ, especially now that we have brand-new episodes coming out next year, but I'm not sure how you set up the little box of questions that you can copy and paste :P
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(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-21 11:56 pm (UTC)I think it's even worse with the cancer arc later, when Mulder decides that even Scully's cancer was a punishment for him...
Mulder did look SUPER HOT when he was brooding in that white shirt though...
15-year-old baby!phile!Ruuger very much agreed with you :D
"One Breath" used to be one of my favourite episodes back in the day, but for some reason I didn't like it at all during my last rewatch. But "Humbug" is still one of my absolute favourites.
As for the html, you put the questions inside a <*textarea*> tag (remove asterisks). It's easiest if you just do plain text - if you want to do bolding, etc, then you need to convert those tags into html symbols.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-22 09:56 am (UTC)And One Breath was always one of my favourites, I used to watch my old video tape of that so many times *g* It was rare for the show to devote so much time to the characters emotional journeys, so it always stood out in my mind. (ETA Although I suppose I can see that some of the monologues with Scully and the snake didn't age all that well? I mostly just liked all of the drama over Scully being hospitalised and near death tbh lol)
It's just a shame that they returned to the MotW status quo as swiftly as they did after Scully was returned. I mean I get that those episodes were the main point of the show, but it would have been nice if they had at least kept some kind of running thread in there of Scully wanting to look into her abduction, it's really not until season 3 with the implant discovery that you even get the sense that the whole thing bothered Scully that much. For a character that spend her life looking into the unexplained, you'd think that she would want to look into who exactly took her way before that
And the first season did feel a lot more balanced character-wise, but because of Gillian's pregnancy, the second season really did feel like it was slotting Mulder into the position of lead and main focus with Scully mostly being there to support his story, so it will be interesting to see if later seasons were as balanced as I remember. The show did always emphasise Mulder's angst more though I suppose, especially when it came to Samantha, even though arguably Scully had a much shittier time of it with some of the things that happened to her
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-25 08:22 am (UTC)Me too. It was on the same tape as "3" and two documentaries about Queen (who were by favourite band already then), so it was my most cherished VHS tape :D
I was really surprised when I didn't like it at all during my latest rewatch. I really don't know why my reaction to it had changed so much (I thought it was OK the previous time I rewatched it).
It's just a shame that they returned to the MotW status quo as swiftly as they did after Scully was returned
Yeah, I remember that frustrated me lot already back in the 90's. That's one of the reasons why I loved Babylon 5 so much a few years later, because it was the first scifi show I'd seen that had proper continuity between episodes.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-25 09:46 am (UTC)I remember Joss talking abut how Buffy was partly a soap opera, and that was partly because those were the main shows in the 90's who did feature long-running storylines that you needed to watch every episode to keep track of, the focus on most mainstream shows was on being being to pick up an episode at any time/your characters not changing too much
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-22 03:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-22 09:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-23 05:23 am (UTC)I think I would need like a top 10 or best of the seasons or whatever to see if I could like it and want to start from the beginning. I don't even know. There was something like that for Doctor Who and even though Eleven is my fave, I pretty much enjoyed what I saw so far.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-23 09:54 am (UTC)I'm not sure I'd agree with all of their choices, but those are all more or less the classics. Maybe a list of the must-watches from each season would be more helpful though, I'm not sure that I'd be able to get into a show if I watched ten completely random episodes, even if they were the best examples of the format. I think that with the X-Files you need to at least watch the pilot for your first episode as it's not a bad episode as far as pilots go, and it does feature Scully's first intro to Mulder and the X-Files, so you're not thrown in there as much
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-23 01:16 pm (UTC)I'll see. I'm open to anything old and new... as long as it gets my curiosity going. X-Files always kinda did as it's si-fi but that one took a step down compared to others as I'm a vampire-werewolf,witches chick. The only show that came close without being all that close was Roswell, with the whole aliens thing. Haha!
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-22 04:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-22 09:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-22 10:45 am (UTC)https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/HTML/Introduction Try playing with this?
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-22 11:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-22 11:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-22 11:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-22 12:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-22 11:53 am (UTC)A text-box format I have via those means looks like this (without the spaces):
< textarea id="ta1" name="ta1" style="overflow: hidden"rows="5" cols="40" >
< b>Author:< /b >
< b >Title:< /b >
(etc.)
< /textarea >
And if you want to do linked banner + text box c+p for pimpage, the format I have looks like this, if it isn't borked:
< center >< a href= your link here>< img src="image link here" >< /a >< /center >
< textarea id="ta1" name="ta1" style="overflow: hidden" rows="5" cols="40" >
< center >< a href=link >< img src="image link here" >< /a >< /center >< /textarea >
(Again, deleting the spaces.)
(With the X-Files, Scully's abduction was the first episode I saw, but I am so vague on much of it, especially S2. I got into it because I was at uni and my friends watched it - we used to stuff ourselves in her tiny room (she was the only one with a TV in the flat) and turn all the lights off and have Mulder vs Scully arguments. And one time the flatmates who didn't watch it crept round and knocked on the window in the middle. From S3, I actually know episodes and things, and then maybe again not for S4 and 5, but am great with S6 because I missed half of it by accident and bought the DVD set one time).
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-22 09:52 pm (UTC)Season 2 was around the time that I started watching as well, although I did catch up on some of the earlier season 1 episodes on those old video tapes that you could buy. I'm fairly good with the episodes up until season 5/6 time, but I fell out of watching it in the end. This is actually my first time rewatching all of the episodes in order from the beginning
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-31 07:09 am (UTC)I'll be sure to check in as I go because I love having other perspectives/virtual partnership through this. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-31 09:38 am (UTC)