Things Are Getting Strange

A wrap up now we're done with The X-Files for now. A whole franchise overview, out top comedy, top serious, worst episodes and best villains!

Next time: Something Quite Different.

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Or at least, there are a surprising number of British people and accents in this series continuation! We discuss the implications and... probable influences on the direction of travel the book is taking. We're quite taken with the writing and how Scully is depicted.

(and realised after the fact - while we note that the timeline feels off in this book and comment that it has to occur within about 4 months of My Struggle 4 as per human biology, there are some references that are suspect...

What we mean is, typically the assumption is a series of The X-Files has to happen more or less concurrently with broadcast - something more or less borne out by Season 11, Seasons 10 and 11 have to happen in at least 2016 or charitably 2016 to 2018 at best. Its not impossible to take place after that, but its unlikely to be the intent. What we're getting at is that the references to WandaVision and Andor feel out of place given neither series would exist at that point in time unless My Struggle 4 occurs late 2022. Which, yes, is very pedantic, but surely that implies a hugely divergent timeline given Covid 19 ought to have a major bearing on the plotlines, so I don't think so?)

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Somehow, Nick forgot the gore-fest of Nothing Lasts Forever existed at all, but is now painfully aware of the strange choice of penultimate episode. Not least that the original intent was much more meaningful, touching and appropriate at this late stage. And not involve nailing back-street doctors to the floor with fence posts for reasons the episode never bothers to even try to justify.

And My Struggle 4 suffers greatly thanks to My Struggle 2. We struggle to talk about the finale and how much is left unresolved, how many answers unanswered and how only now do we know its not the end but Perihelion is not starting from a position of strength per se.

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It's man vs machine in Rm9sbG93ZXJz, though the robot wait-staff are also determined to make Scully pay. One way or another. We discuss the motive of the antagonist and how Scully could be plausibly tracked through her personal massager...

Familiar feels very old-school The X-Files but we get hung up on plot weirdness and suspect character design. Also why Mulder and Scully got involved in the first place.

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We get really hung up on the implications of Jackson Van De Kampf's life in Ghouli and how people just ignore the less than great series of events that would have lead to this episode's events. Not really helpful that Jackson clearly used to have a quite different and significant name. We get heavily into how what was clearly a monster of the week episode morphed into something else...

Kitten feels a bit Wetwire, a bit Blood and a lot another Skinner episode about his time in Vietnam. Despite an interesting reason for the episode existing, it feels a real strange thing to throw into what everyone anticipated The X-Files' final season being...

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*if you want to end the series in the best possible way...

Plus One is a fun episode, possibly a little overshadowed by the sterling guest-star turn and the efforts of the make-up department. Also suspect the entire point of the episode was less doppleganger hangman game and more getting Mulder and Scully into bed together...

The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat is not actually the final episode of the series, but like Sunshine Days, the perfect note to go out on. An episode that at last uncovers the true villain of the series, that rocks everything you thought you knew about every previous episode... and makes a surprisingly good argument against Season 10 and 11 existing at all...

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We reach Season 11 and find that the chosen way to resolve the massive, massive cliffhanger season 10 left on is.... lacking.

My Struggle III spends a lot of time undoing some of Season 10 but not all of it and as a result leaves some weird debris behind. We talk retcons and wave goodbye to the nominal replacement Mulder and Scully...

This is one of Kim's most hated episodes, and its hard to ignore that being written and directed, the thoroughly nihilistic episode is being inflicted on Langely as seemingly creator really out to hurt his own creation.

And for those confused by our episode title, we will explain quite what that means too...

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Don't promise us the Lone Gunmen being back and then do... that.

Babylon was quite notorious on first broadcast and the intervening years have done little to aid the fact it feels the wrong fit for The X-Files in general and specific for Mulder and Scully. We also get into what the whole point of Einstein and Miller probably was...

My Struggle II uses the phrase "alien DNA" way too many times (we counted) and made Kim quite angry with its rather flippant - if typical - attitude to how medicines work and what certain terms actually mean in real life.

But what a cliffhanger! Oh, how can they possible resolve it....?

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We struggle to say much about Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster, broadly because the episode is an absolute delight and revisiting it has not diminished how starkly it contrasts with the rest of season 10. It is still a fantastic episode.

Home, Again on the other hand is part fantastically acted Scully drama, part serious Arcadia remake and part mystifying Candyman-a-like. One of these things feels distinctly out of place and we struggle to make sense of why the episode is formed like this...

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Welcome to season 10! And plots we could swear we saw in Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'. And Gethesmane...

Still! The X-Files is back. Skinner is back! Cancer man... is somehow back! And now we're trying to retcon seemingly 9 seasons of plot out of the backstory. We discuss how strange the apparent project to discredit Mulder is and how odd some of the choices with the revival are.

Founder's Mutation is at least a better episode. Though all these mentions of William are concerning. They're not going to do anything with him, right?

...right?

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