frelling_tralk

I was reading that apparently Amor Fati was written when Chris Carter and David Duchovny weren't speaking, so they both wrote their their half by themselves, and then Chris Carter merged them. Seems like an awkward way to co-write an episode! My main comment on this episode would be that the dream of an ordinary suburban life made no character sense for Mulder, it was Scully in season 6 that asked Mulder if he ever wants a normal life, and he's the one to respond that, "this is a normal life", so what exactly was CSM supposed to be tempting him with here? The only part I could see tempting Mulder would be getting to see Samantha again, but living in the suburbs with Fowley? Living next door to CSM? That made NO sense when Mulder has never seemed the least bit conflicted about his life choices, he never wanted to do anything but chase aliens and look into the paranormal


Hungry and Millennium were both pretty good, you can really tell that they're trying to get back to the darker and more traditional episodes at the beginning of this year. And finally Mulder and Scully kiss :D I know there's speculation about whether Millennium was their first kiss or not, but I always felt like it was just based on how Mulder was obviously hesitating a bit at first, and then the looks they give one another afterwards. It just feels like a first kiss to me :shrugs:


Rush was the first episode in season 7 to disappoint me unfortunately. I mean it was okay, it's watchable enough, but it just feels like such an unambitious attempt to ~get back to basics~ Also I'm really not a fan of the episodes where Mulder and Scully barely play any role in resolving the plot, it reminds me of what I disliked about The Walk back in season 3


I really enjoyed The Goldberg Variation, the main guest actor was perfect for the role, and it was just a really charming and whimsical episode. This one, and The Rain King, are my favourite episodes by Jeffrey Bell. I enjoyed The Amaing Meleeni a lot as well, it really comes across how much fun David and Gillian were having with those episodes

And hmm with Orison do people generally feel like Donnie Pfaster turns into a literal demon or not? I always thought that the scene in the graveyard was supposed to be similar to the one in Irresistible with Scully just imagining seeing a demon because of how she sees his true nature, but reviews I've read seem to see it as the sequel letting down the original episode by making him a literal demon and no longer a man?

And it's really starting to get tiresome that, whenever Scully's the one with a more out there theory, Mulder immediately has to dismiss it. It feels like a pretty lazy way of bringing in their usual skeptic and believer conflict, he would have been all over it if some random person on a case believed that they were being haunted by a song, but with Scully he near enough rolls his eyes at her

And Scully's rather severe new haircut is going to distract me for the rest of the season, I hate this haircut of hers /shallow


And I really found Signs & Wonders quite offensive. ( Read more... )

I of course absolutely loved Drive, episodes by Vince Gillian are nearly always a win for me. I believe the casting of Bryan Cranston in this episode was what made Vince think of him for Breaking Bad, and you can really see why when Bryan does such a great job with a deeply unsympathetic character, so that by the end you're really rooting for him to make it


I felt like Triangle was an episode that I should have liked more than I did. It was very well-done, you could tell that a lot of time and attention had gone into it, but it all felt a bit too much of a directors and actors exercise to me quite honestly. The whole deal with all of the actors playing different 40's versions of themselves idk, it just all felt a bit self-indulgent and cheesy at times. It was very wacky time travel with Nazi's and terrible accents, but it just didn't feel like much of an X-File to me. Maybe I needed to be in a certain mood to enjoy it. I did like the ending scene though, and the kiss of course :P


And I hate to say it, but I wasn't crazy about Dreamland either :( That was another case where I couldn't help feeling like it was more about thinking up something different for the actors to do six years in, so they had the body-switch and the jumping around in front of the mirror. I normally like the funny episodes, but this just felt too much like a sitcom. It also felt way too padded-out for a two-partner, and I'm sorry, but they made Scully look like a complete dumbass! Normally I don't have as many issues as some do with her always sticking to the scientific answer first and being skeptical, but it made NO sense here for her to not listen to "Fletcher" about the body swap when she was dealing with a "Mulder" who was slapping her on the ass, turning her in to their superiors and insisting that they need to do everything by the book, and saying, "Don't worry your pretty little head about it, little lady". COME ON! Yeah she acknowledged that he was "acting bizarre", but when she had "Fletcher's" explanation right there for what was really going on, it made no sense for to not take him more seriously


The Ghosts That Stole Christmas is one of my favourites, it was actually pretty creepy in the beginning when they're exploring the haunted house, and LOL at David Duchovny's line reading of, "How embarrassing" when Scully realizes that one of the corpses is wearing her outfit. I just thought that it was a really clever and funny episode, I enjoyed the ghosts psychoanalysing Mulder and Scully's relationship, and how Scully's greatest joy in life is supposedly following Mulder around to prove him wrong :P My one very small niggle would be that Scully felt a bit out of character in the beginning when she was so jumpy in the haunted house


And this is probably a controversial opinion, but I really enjoyed Tbe Rain King too, I just thought that one had so many hilarious moments. Particularly Sheila's cry of 'Not his face', Scully's expression at hearing that Mulder is giving dating advice, Scully checking Mulder for concussion after the cow in the tornado, bringing back Mootz's leg as a romantic gesture, just loved all of it :D


For Arcadia they talk a bit on the DVDs about how surprised and gratified they were at fans embracing that episode, because they had so many production nightmares with it they were convinced that it was going to be seen as a dud. And yeah they don't always carry off the monster effects, but it was such a fun idea to have Mulder and Scully going undercover in suburbia that it all kind of worked anyway. I do think it's a bit overrated by fandom though, it was a fun episode, but I would never include it as one of the greats personally


Monday however is an absolute classic. Monday's use of the timeloop kind of reminded me of Vince Gilligan's previous episode Folie á Deux (office work transforming people into zombies), when it came to imagining hell as a working day with endless meetings that never end. Note that even when the time-loop is finally over, it still ends on the implication that Tuesday isn't going to be all that different a working day, the day opens in the exact same way, and Mulder then gets the call from Scully about needing to turn in a report to Skinner. Buffy's use of the time loop to represent working life was similar as well actually, in Life Serial Buffy has to go through the same depressing routine with the same customer again and again. “Don’t you see?” “We’re all in hell. I’m the only one who knows it.” It definitely resonated with me lol

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To be honest I'm not sure quite what to make of Never Again. I think that it was a really interesting idea for an episode to take a closer look at Scully's character and how Mulder's quest has overtaken her life as well, it's the kind of examination of the central character that we expect in shows this days as a matter of course, but I'm not sure it really works as an X-File? Shows today would generally build up to a development like this over several weeks, making sure that Scully's complaints feel organic and we understand where she's coming from, obviously that was never going to happen in a 1990's episode of the X-Files, so instead it feels a little too random for Scully to suddenly come up with all of these frustrations with Mulder out of the blue. Certainly interesting, but with no real groundwork for us to understand why she is suddenly so sick of her life. I've loved past examples of episodes taking a closer look at the main characters, but I'm inclined to say this one is an awkward fit in the context of the show, it's all about Scully expressing her frustration with the current state of her life, and yet we know that it's never going to get followed up on or even mentioned again. I guess you can fanwank it as being part of the cancer arc and Scully reevaluating her life because of that, but the diagnosis is never brought up in this episode (it was apparently intended to air earlier in the season), so it never actually comes across as that being the case idk

I found the episode a bit slow and draggy in parts too tbh, it felt like Scully's ~walk on the wild side~ should have been more exciting than it ultimately was, and it says a lot about CC's view of the character that he reportedly insisted on any potential sex scene being completely cut out, even though the writers have talked about how they (and Gillian) had been excited to create a steamy sex scene for her character in this one. (Complete sidenote, but it did strike me as funny on this watch that the X-Files was the opposite of most shows in that it took pains to never sexualise the main female character, yet Mulder and Skinner are shown shirtless in quite a few gratuitous shots over the years! It really stood out to me just how often Skinner is shown with no shirt on when he's at home, or he'll be answering the door to Mulder in just a towel or something. And the show seemed to *really* like their scenes playing up Mulder being naked and vulnerable, whether it's Scully coming across him shivering in a bath, or she's putting him to bed in his boxers. And then there's the infamous red speedo shot from season 2 as well. Whereas Scully is pretty much always kept in the professional business suits...)

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I wasn't really a big fan of The Blessing Way tbh, it felt very typical Chris Carter with the looong monologues and all of the new age mysticism. It feels like the kind of thing that everyone would roll their eyes at CC for these days, but I guess that it worked for audiences more in the 90's, these days it feels really self-indulgent

Scully looking into the chip and (finally!) getting curious about her abduction and undergoing hypnotherapy was the more interesting part of the premiere for me, in fact there's a deleted scene with Scully and her family members talking which I would far rather have seen in the episode than the Mulder monologues *g* CSM and Skinner also got some pretty great scenes in both episodes, Paper Clip dealing more with the conspiracy was a lot more interesting than The Blessing Way for me, and who could forget, "This is where you pucker up and kiss my ass" <3

And then D.P.O was a pretty good MotW episode. Having Kim Manners there to direct really helped make a lot of the sequences stand out, the opening teaser was fantastic and very creepy, the lighting getting called down from the sky was another great moment, and the death of Jack Black's character

Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose was absolutely brilliant, but it's harder to think of what to say when you basically loved everything about an episode *g* I love all the comedy of course, especially the twist in the opening teaser when it's Mulder that gets thrown out for being the skeptic lmao. But also I loved what a tragic character study it was, Scully had some really touching scenes as she began to emphasise with Clyde and how meaningless everything seemed to him. I liked that it was an episode more from the PoV of Clyde Bruckman, so that you kind of saw Mulder and Scully through his eyes a little bit and emphasised with how disturbing he found the show's typical detachment to death

Sadly I wasn't crazy about the next run of episodes. They all felt competently done at least, but nothing particularly inspired either. The direction of The List was actually pretty scary and really made me jump in places, but the story itself felt kind of pointless in how little Mulder and Scully understood of the case in the end. I didn't understand what Chris Carter was trying to say with it anyway tbh, all the talk of reincarnation was pretty confusing when the episode seemed to be presenting it as a typical tale of a ghost seeking revenge after death, where does reincarnation come into that? It's not how I understand that concept at all.

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I've really been enjoying the new series of the X-Files, but episode 3 is without a doubt my favourite so far

Apparently it's been getting slammed quite a bit on facebook and twitter though, and it seems to be a real love it or hate it episode...( Spoilers )

Next episode is looking pretty good too!



If I may nitpick for a moment though, I do think it was a mistake to change the order of episodes 2 and 4, from the trailer it looks like episode 4 is going to be addressing more that this is their first case they've taken back on since the re-opening of the X-Files (the clip of "We used too", and I think that Scully commenting on how she used to run in high heels is also from this episode?) I thought that was what was missing from the second episode, it felt a bit too abrupt to have them straight back on a case without acknowledging that it's been a while. Oh well, I can always watch in the original order on the DVD's anyway! (And David and Gillian have apparently been recording commentary for the DVD's, I do so hope that will include a commentary for this episode XD)

Also smashed worldwide records :D

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?

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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

David Duchovny & Gillian Anderson Begin Shooting 'X-Files' Reboot in Vancouver!






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And there are TONS more pics at the link :D :D :D I really need to get started on a rewatch soon, I think I keep putting it off because rewatching the entire series seems so daunting though lol. What are the single favourite seasons that people would most recommend for rewatch? At the moment I'm thinking of going with season 3, 4, 5, and 6?

[Poll #2013603]

Smallville


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BSG

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X-Files

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Buffy

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Doctor Who

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