The X-Files: Season 5 Debrief:”For what purpose?”

The Truth Is Out There

Note: So, I didn’t watch Sailor Moon this week because I decided to watch The X-Files movie instead. So Obviously I couldn’t write up Sailor Moon. Here’s X-Files season 5 instead.

I really like season 5. I mean I don’t know how I’d feel about it if I were watching the show as it were on, but watching it in a big chunk like I have, I happen to think it’s pretty, pretty cool.

The reason I don’t know that I’d have liked it if I were watching the show is that this season has a very different feel from the rest of the series. The mythology episodes are still pretty on point and fit into the rest of the show. The aliens made a clone baby with Scully’s ovaries! The baby died. Her name was Emily and it was very emotional! The Smoking Man possibly raised Samantha Mulder as his own, but also it might not be Samantha, and also he might be her biological father, because he had an affair with Mulder’s mother, I think. Skinner’s not around much. Krychek is teaming up with a bunch of alien rebels who are trying to stop the colonization of Earth, by mass murdering abductees. Not Scully though. She lived. Obviously. There’s a new agent, Jeff Spender, who’s like twelve and his mom was a multiple abductee and he’s sort of uptight about it. “Resist Or Serve” is now a thing.

Oh right, and Mulder might not believe in aliens anymore.

Government conspiracies and supernatural monsters totally. But not really aliens.

Scully believes. Scully believes lots of things. I feel like it needs a post of it’s own, but I’ve never seen a character who’s Catholicism matches mine so perfectly. She’s a believer, but she has her doubts. She’s not lapsed but she’s not super observant either. Her faith is in conversation with herself and that’s not something that we see a lot in relation to Catholicism.

But where the show feels different not in the mythology episodes, but in the one offs, which rather than monster of the week filler, are experiments in storytelling in really cool ways.

My favorite is “Post Modern Prometheus.” The episode is entirely in black and white, shot like a campy old horror movie and is about a scientist who created a man, who has two faces and looks mysteriously like the kid from Mask, which causes him to be obsessed with Cher.

The episode ends with our agents taking him to a Cher concert and dancing to her version of “Walking in Memphis.”

So, that’s a thing. That aired on television, on one of the most popular television shows of all time, that’s best known for producing nightmare fuel.

I mean I guess some people’s nightmare fuel involves Cher covers. I don’t know.

But there’s also a McCarthy era flashback featuring Mulder’s father and the founding of the X-Files, a vampire tale that features Mulder and Scully’s dueling perspectives, a haunted doll that murders a small town in Maine, and a flashback to the founding of The Lone Gunmen. The experiments are fun and a big part of why I was able to book through this season in record time.

I’m gearing up for the movie now. And I’m excited and nervous about it. The visual of Mulder holding Scully in their burn out office, unsure how they’ll ever find the truth now, is a great jumping off point.

See you in a few days with the movie talk!

Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s