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My Struggle was just urgh such a bad way to start the season off unfortunately. Lol at the super unnecessary Mulder voiceovers, like you really don’t think you couldn’t have just shown him spotting that someone was tailing him, you have to have a whole voiceover of his inner thoughts to tell us what’s happening?! The car chase scenes felt weirdly small-scale as well, it seemed like Chris Carter used to be a much better director back in the day? And then you can tell that he thought it was such a genius twist to throw in a retcon based on an episode from 17 years earlier, but first time around the whole thing was so sick and disturbing that I honestly believed that CSM must be lying, that all would be explained later :(
And I noticed that Agents Einstein and Miller got *very* short shift in this one compared to all of the time spend on them at the end of last season, I wonder if CC really was originally thinking of setting them up for a younger spin-off, and then changed his mind after audience feedback proved to be so negative?
On a more positive note, I remember an interview with CC talking about one complaint they took onboard with season 10 was the lack of Mulder/Scully interaction disappointing fans, and I think it really comes across that they’re making an effort to correct that in This. They’re having Mulder/Scully work together in nearly every scene, as well as throwing in some cute asides for the fans like Mulder’s joke about handcuffs, or telling Scully how adorbs she looks when she’s sleeping. Shipper me lapped it all up naturally lol, and of course I loved seeing them sleeping on the sofa together <3 The scene by Deep Throat’s grave was a nice touch too.
In fact this was actually an episode that I overall found a lot better than I remembered once I started getting into it. I wasn’t always a fan of their virtual reality episodes tbh, but this one turned out to be pretty fun in the end. It felt a bit like a Black Mirror episode even. Aww poor Skinner though, Scully and Mulder were super rude to him in this one!
Plus One was a mixture for me. I wasn’t a big fan of the main plot, it felt like it was mostly there as an acting showcase for the actress playing the twins. CC seems to love episodes with doubles, but it didn’t quite work for me, it all seemed so random and didn’t come together as a proper case at all. However I loved the Mulder/Scully scenes naturally, so they pretty much made the episode for me :D Admittedly I was kind of frustrated that they didn’t get even one onscreen kiss this season, but I actually really liked how Plus One handles them sleeping together. I mean it probably would have felt a bit weird and out of the blue if we had actually seen Mulder and Scully rolling around in bed together lol, instead their scenes here were very sexy in a more understated way which is perfect for them really
One thing that stood out to me this time around though was that, not only did Judy guess Scully’s age as 40’s, but also Mulder asked Scully what was stopping her from having another kid, so it almost feels like CC wanted the audience to forget Scully’s real age in order to set up the pregnancy reveal in the finale? At the time I thought that Mulder was just being kind after Scully brings up that he could meet someone younger and have kids, but now I’m wondering if CC actually meant for Mulder to be throwing it back to her as a serious option? It’s well-known by now though that Gillian has always played older than her real age on The X-Files, Scully should be well into her 50’s by now, and in the context of the series (William being 16, Scully already being a qualified Doctor when we first met her) it just doesn’t work to try and retcon that...
And The Lost Art Of Forehead Sweat is an all-time classic for me! It felt a bit like Darin Morgan’s attempt of a sequel for Jose Chung’s From Outer Space when it comes to looking at how objective truth can be, and really it had too many hilarious moments to count (Mulder in his Bigfoot outfit, ‘I’m Fox freaking Mulder you punks!’, the butterfly net and the straightjacket, ‘bing bing bong bong bing’, Scully tuning out Mulder’s Bigfoot ramblings, the Twilight Zone opening parody, Mulder falling on the floor in a tantrum and kicking his legs, and well I could go on and on really lol). I especially loved the flashbacks incorporating Reggie in all of the classic episode clips, and taking a shot at themselves with the comment on this one had better not be about killercats 😂
It was nicely self-aware too with Scully drawing attention to Mulder maybe losing his taste for conspiracy after all the birther theories from this century, this was basically The X-Files wanting to make it clear that they don’t want the classic conspiracies of their show to be associated with the current far right. (I remember there were a few angry murmurs at the time when season 10 incorporated vaccinations into season 10 as part of the government conspiracy, even though that was always something that the show traditionally did.)
I’m not sure how much some of the references in this episode are going to date it in the future mind you, but lmao you gotta love the commentary on ~fake news~ with the little evil Dr. They in the red MAGA cap among the ‘hundreds of millions of people at the inauguration’, and well I think the hilarity of the following moment speaks for itself 🤣
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And I noticed that Agents Einstein and Miller got *very* short shift in this one compared to all of the time spend on them at the end of last season, I wonder if CC really was originally thinking of setting them up for a younger spin-off, and then changed his mind after audience feedback proved to be so negative?
On a more positive note, I remember an interview with CC talking about one complaint they took onboard with season 10 was the lack of Mulder/Scully interaction disappointing fans, and I think it really comes across that they’re making an effort to correct that in This. They’re having Mulder/Scully work together in nearly every scene, as well as throwing in some cute asides for the fans like Mulder’s joke about handcuffs, or telling Scully how adorbs she looks when she’s sleeping. Shipper me lapped it all up naturally lol, and of course I loved seeing them sleeping on the sofa together <3 The scene by Deep Throat’s grave was a nice touch too.
In fact this was actually an episode that I overall found a lot better than I remembered once I started getting into it. I wasn’t always a fan of their virtual reality episodes tbh, but this one turned out to be pretty fun in the end. It felt a bit like a Black Mirror episode even. Aww poor Skinner though, Scully and Mulder were super rude to him in this one!
Plus One was a mixture for me. I wasn’t a big fan of the main plot, it felt like it was mostly there as an acting showcase for the actress playing the twins. CC seems to love episodes with doubles, but it didn’t quite work for me, it all seemed so random and didn’t come together as a proper case at all. However I loved the Mulder/Scully scenes naturally, so they pretty much made the episode for me :D Admittedly I was kind of frustrated that they didn’t get even one onscreen kiss this season, but I actually really liked how Plus One handles them sleeping together. I mean it probably would have felt a bit weird and out of the blue if we had actually seen Mulder and Scully rolling around in bed together lol, instead their scenes here were very sexy in a more understated way which is perfect for them really
One thing that stood out to me this time around though was that, not only did Judy guess Scully’s age as 40’s, but also Mulder asked Scully what was stopping her from having another kid, so it almost feels like CC wanted the audience to forget Scully’s real age in order to set up the pregnancy reveal in the finale? At the time I thought that Mulder was just being kind after Scully brings up that he could meet someone younger and have kids, but now I’m wondering if CC actually meant for Mulder to be throwing it back to her as a serious option? It’s well-known by now though that Gillian has always played older than her real age on The X-Files, Scully should be well into her 50’s by now, and in the context of the series (William being 16, Scully already being a qualified Doctor when we first met her) it just doesn’t work to try and retcon that...
And The Lost Art Of Forehead Sweat is an all-time classic for me! It felt a bit like Darin Morgan’s attempt of a sequel for Jose Chung’s From Outer Space when it comes to looking at how objective truth can be, and really it had too many hilarious moments to count (Mulder in his Bigfoot outfit, ‘I’m Fox freaking Mulder you punks!’, the butterfly net and the straightjacket, ‘bing bing bong bong bing’, Scully tuning out Mulder’s Bigfoot ramblings, the Twilight Zone opening parody, Mulder falling on the floor in a tantrum and kicking his legs, and well I could go on and on really lol). I especially loved the flashbacks incorporating Reggie in all of the classic episode clips, and taking a shot at themselves with the comment on this one had better not be about killercats 😂
It was nicely self-aware too with Scully drawing attention to Mulder maybe losing his taste for conspiracy after all the birther theories from this century, this was basically The X-Files wanting to make it clear that they don’t want the classic conspiracies of their show to be associated with the current far right. (I remember there were a few angry murmurs at the time when season 10 incorporated vaccinations into season 10 as part of the government conspiracy, even though that was always something that the show traditionally did.)
I’m not sure how much some of the references in this episode are going to date it in the future mind you, but lmao you gotta love the commentary on ~fake news~ with the little evil Dr. They in the red MAGA cap among the ‘hundreds of millions of people at the inauguration’, and well I think the hilarity of the following moment speaks for itself 🤣
( Read more... )
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shivver13
