frelling_tralk (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
frelling_tralk) wrote2015-08-21 11:42 pm
frelling_tralk) wrote2015-08-21 11:42 pm
Entry tags:
The X-Files season 2 rewatch
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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https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/HTML/Introduction Try playing with this?
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