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Ongoing X-Files Thread of Doom...

Volpone

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Weird. I'm sure I made this thread. I even remember people posting in it. But I cannot find it anywhere. Is this a case for "The X-Files"?

Anyway, evening viewing last night. Story Television has "unexplained phenomena" as the theme for Saturday nights and it's usually garbage, but last night they were doing "The Story of God," tracking the development of the Big 3 monotheistic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--and it was OK. But then that ended and they moved into "The Bible Code," complete with very dated "Matrix" green binary "waterfall" graphics and an ominous narrator managing to say "CODE" at least once every paragraph. I'm gritting my teeth and trying to endure it because I don't want to do the surf through all the channels just for some background noise, but the pseudoscience conspiracy wonks are terrible and when they got to the part where they're like "12th century mystic ascetics didn't look at the Bible as a book, they considered it a living entity..." I changed the channel. Eventually got around to Quest TV. That was a good channel when it came out--basically Discovery reruns. But then I think when Story came in as History Channel reruns it became "Jersy Pawn Shop Swamp Tow Truck Hookers" all the time every time. But surprisingly, they were doing "Survivorman" last night. While I had a friend that preferred it to the Bear Gryhlls show because it was more authentic, I preferred the higher production values and more charismatic host of the latter. But it's not bad. So I'm watching that and suddenly realizing Comet will have "X-Files" on (because at this point I'd somehow forgotten it was Saturday, not Sunday) and they did.

Sweet Mother of Elvis, what a mess. I mean, the show was always flawed, but when they shot in Vancouver in the early 90s and you had Mulder and Scully wandering around in the woods with flashlights, shouting to each other with eerie atmospheric background music, it at least had a charm and a niche. Style over substance, but still engaging. Last night... Last night we had Agent Monica, trying to track down...something...in a hospital while Agent Dogget was in a coma. Apparently Scully and Mulder's love child has been kidnapped by David Khoresh so Scully makes a couple brief cameos while they try to unravel, no that's too strong a word, wade through the mishmash that is supposed to be the case. In the end they arrive at a secret camp in time to watch a flying saucer fly off and they hear Scully's baby crying (but unharmed) in the flaming wreckage.

Next episode, Agent Monica is in the hospital in a coma--brain dead allegedly--while Agent Dogget mopes around. Agent Monica is awake in some alternate reality version of the hospital while a creepy Dr. Death doctor may or may not be killing anyone that threatens his plans to kill anyone he can. There's also a weird dyslexic candy-striper who lives in the basement and built a dollhouse version of the hospital that she's able to talk to Agent Monica at. Scully pops in a couple times to...well, not really do anything. Agent Dogget eventually rescues Agent Monica from her vegetative state and catches Dr. Death, but not before he's killed the candy-striper. Just a god-awful mess. So glad I gave up on the show after the series finale that led into the first movie.

Incidentally, it is criminal that JumpTheShark.com got shuttered. Such a good place to posit on the moment entertaining shows ran out of things to do.
 
The early seasons are so much better than the late ones. I mean, the stories are still full of holes but they're at least not a complete trainwreck and the eerie creepy atmospheric noir feel is entertaining (as are the early '90s outfits and hairstyles). Tonight was one where a serial killer's granddaughter essentially is possessed by his consciousness. Oh, and did I mention she's a local cop? Scully quickly connects some very tenuous dots because it's an hour show so we need to get these points out in the open to move the story and then Mulder hatches a concept of a genetic race consciousness. It's all hokey but an entertaining way to kill an hour on a Saturday night.
 
Fuck tonight's episode. Fuck it. Has teenage Kaylee from Firefly. Saw a 21 Jump Street with Brad Pitt's first(?) role, but that's another story. Kaylee gets kidnapped by a creeper school photographer henchman. Girl he kidnapped years earlier is linked to it. The kidnapped (Kaylee) girl dies but the other linked earlier kidnapped girl decides to die instead to save her. Fuck it. It's fiction. Why can't they both live?

Episode before was a Gulf War basket case (quadruple amputee) who is killing his senior officers and their families through out of body experiences.

The old X-Files episodes are hokey as shit but still surprisingly entertaining, compared to the later (post movie) ones.
 
Once in awhile I will catch a few eps of this on Comet. Love the earlier MOTW episodes, but knowing how the whole mythology arc turns out kind of turns me off of those to this day. There are some absolute classics throughout the series, but... I dunno, it's just not as engaging as it was to me first run.
 
I was never heavy into it and gave up after the movie, so I can still enjoy it (as long as it isn't the terrible Agent T1000 episodes). It used to be on Sunday nights, so there's also a nostalgic kick to watching it on a weekend--thinking back to classic Sunday night in the Twin Cities: Simpsons, King of the Hill, X-Files, Hercules, Xena, and Highlander: The Series. Also, Story TV does Unexplained Phenomena on Saturday nights and while it will occasionally be something good like "Ancient Mysteries" with Leonard Nimoy, it's usually some garbage pseudoscience marathon. Last week was "Weird or What" with William Shatner and last night was mythological monsters. First bit was on Norse gods and the Thor they had was a half step above the Thor in the old "Incredible Hulk" TV show. Then they had an Odin with two eyes so I jumped over to H&I for "Black Sheep Squadron." The episode was absurd: The Black Sheep are going to sneak attack a Japanese carrier by flying captured Japanese planes. It doesn't work like that. They aren't going to look at the radar and say "It's OK, they're friendlies." They'd have been better off flying the corsairs and speaking in Japanese on the radio. But it's kind of fun to watch a Donald Bellasario series and see them cut together contemporary footage of WWII planes, sets, and modern aircraft carriers with stock period footage. The standard for accuracy was so much lower in the '70s. After that is "Tour of Duty," which I never really got into back in the day so I popped back to Story for a bit about David & Goliath that was (barely) watchable before they moved on to cyclopses. And they went to commercial break showing elephant skulls with a voiceover to the effect of "were these strange creatures cyclopses?" And I go "no, no, they were elephants." And yes, historians do posit that ancient Greeks finding elephant skeletons played a role in the cyclops legend (the eye sockets on the skull are small and on the side while there is a large hole for the trunk smack dab in the middle of the skull so it looks like a giant with one eye) but I resent that they played it up that way going into commercial so I rememberd "X-Files" was probably on Comet.
 
As an aside I sort of enjoyed the 2 season X-Files revival a few years back. By sort of I mean there might have been 4 or 5 enjoyable eps, and it wasn't what it used to be by any stretch but I liked them better than the last movie anyway.
 
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Fuck. Where to even start? Trying to find something to watch, I missed the first 10 minutes or so. Come in to find Mulder, dressed like an SS officer, being chased around an ocean liner by WWII German soldiers. En route he bumps into Nazi Skinner, Nazi Smoking Man, and dancing evening gown Scully. Next the Lone Gunmen just show up at Scully's desk in the FBI headquarters in the present to say a missing ocean liner from 1939 appeared in the Bermuda Triangle, Mulder went to investigate and now he's missing. So Scully runs around trying to get someone to send up an AWACS to get coordinates on the ship and...you know what? The whole thing is a complete shit-show. "X-Files" was always heavy on style and light on plot but early episodes at least HAD a plot.

Falling back on research, this is from the first season after the movie, the first year they shot in LA. And the fact they used the Queen Mary for the lost in the Bermuda Triangle Queen Anne is just painful. They basically mocked up the deck of a boat on the sidewalk next to the Queen Mary at night and shot the scene from a low angle so you couldn't see said sidewalk and the city of Long Beach.

I stand by my decision to stop watching the show after the (disappointing) movie.
 
Phuqing Saturday night. Turn on StoryTV. "Bible Conspiracy Theories" marathon. Off to H&I. "Black Sheep Squadron" is a pretty corny episode I've seen recently but not that recently and not that corny so I decide it's decent dinner background noise. Off to Comet for "X-Files," hoping it's not a Special Agent T-1000 episode. It isn't. Apparently they've decided to show "Sharknado" instead. So now I'm getting ready for bed and it isn't yet 10pm on a Saturday night.
 
Good one tonight. Late in Season 3. "Wetwired." Basically "Videodrome." People are driven to murder by subliminal messages over cable TV. Skinner, Lone Gunmen, Smoking Man, but not before they jumped the shark.
 
OK. Not "X-Files" but at this point I don't want to start a thread just to bitch about broadcast television programming. May sound racist.

Themed programming. Token TV. February, of course, is Black History Month. Good. Fine. Except some organizations will shamelessly key on this in an effort to make a buck or virtue signal or whatever. Story TV has become All Black All The Time for February. Since RetroTV's "Dr. Who" rotation is missing so many stories (and I've been watching the ones they have fairly consistently since around 2015) I really don't want to jump into the middle of the Meddling Monk story. It's a fine serial, but just watching 2 episodes out of context--and then having a big jump in the continuity after it ends is kind of old, so lately I find myself watching "Fast & Loud" on the Tow Truck Pawn Shop Swamp Hookers Channel. It's less terrible than most of their programming and it is on every night after "Jeopardy!" ends. And, unlike "Antique's Roadshow" or other PBS shows, it has commercials where I can practice my ukulele.

But I digress. The point is Story is fucking unwatchable this month. Monday, instead of "Modern Marvels," they did about 3 back-to-back episodes about the Buffalo Soldiers. Now nothing against the Buffalo Soldiers, it's an interesting story that I wouldn't mind learning more about, but not really enough for a Buffalo Soldiers day of programming. And from the looks of it, the interesting program was on while I was watching the news and "Jeopardy!" Tuesday, instead of "American Restoration," it was Tuskeegee Airmen night--or something. Again, interesting subject, but interesting in the context of, say, a WWII night, like Buffalo Soldiers would fit in more with an Old West night or a military night (since, apparently some of the segregated black military units in WWII paid tribute to the Buffalo Soldiers).

So yes, marketers, it is fine and honorable to celebrate Black History Month--or whatever event you've decided to springboard off--just don't completely chuck your entire programming for a month for the sake of it.

PS: I will say Sunday is always "Biography" and that was the one night that actually worked. Because there are enough interesting, noteworthy black people that you can have black people the whole night--and they come from enough different backgrounds and eras that it doesn't get tedious. I can watch a biography on Dave Chapelle and then one on George Washington Carver and, say, one on MLK Jr., and not feel like they're just pandering.
 
This may wind up becoming the Ongoing Black Sheep Squadron Thread of Doom. My CometTV channel hasn't come in for shit the past 3 weeks--and they're in late series episodes right now (tonight was the "Rosemary's Baby" one that looked barely watchable even if the picture didn't break up half the time) and the week before that they ran the "Coneheads" movie. But H&I comes in fine so I watch "Black Sheep Squadron." And it's fucking terrible. I mean, I'm entertained by the episodes, but they're so fucking corny. It's funny because Gregory Boyington is actually credited as the technical advisor on the show but he was on record that the stories have basically nothing to do with what really happened for the war. I was going to say something about tonight's episode but I forget what. I have a theory that Internet social media is destroying our brains and encouraging ADHD. But that's another story. I also had something I wanted to say in the BSG thread but again, it's slipped my mind.
 
That said, "Black Sheep Squadron" is a...so many future TV stars came from there. Particularly in the Donald Bellisario/Stephen Cannell genre. John Laroquette from "Night Court." Rick from "Magnum, P.I.", the mechanic from "Tales of the Gold Monkey." And of course, MacGyver's boss.
 
Really enjoyable one tonight. Scully's Dad, General Hammond from Stargate: SG-1, croaking the day after Christmas dinner. Silence of the Lambs, Green Mile, the Zodiac Killer, and Mulder being the skeptic and Scully believing.

After having her folks over for Christmas, Scully dozes off watching TV and wakes to her father sitting in a chair facing her, trying to say something but there's no sound. She gets a call from Mom that he died an hour ago from a heart attack. "Somewhere, Beyond the Sea" plays at his funeral because it was important to him and a couple making out in their car get attacked by someone posing as a cop. Turns out they're abducted, paralleling a case from a year earlier and a man Mulder put on death row claims to psychically know about the case.

The story goes forward with plenty of evidence that the guy really is psychic but Mulder continues to believe he's staging it all while Scully tends to believe.

Many X-Files episodes have big holes in the plot but you let them go because the style and the story are entertaining. This one really doesn't have holes in the plot because the only thing is if the death row inmate is really psychic or is in cahoots with the suspect they're after. The director makes it pretty obvious that he's for real but leaves a bit of ambiguity about what Mulder and Scully believe by the end. All told a very enjoyable episode.
 
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