Archived from the Eat The Corn Facebook page.
Dec 21, 2017 9:49
#46DaysOfMythX D-13 7X15: En Ami
Carter & Spotnitz surely rewrote this William B. Davis script to position this episode as the last character study we will have of the Cigarette-Smoking Man, this being the last season and all. On the verge of death and with his plans destroyed, the CSM contemplates his own post-apocalyptic landscape with contempt for mankind. Also, a last opportunity for director Rob Bowman’s talents to shine on #TheXFiles.
Dec 21, 2017 15:25
#46DaysOfMythX D-13 and Happy Solstice to all! 7X22: Requiem
The series finale where the closing of the book on character arcs is most clearly defined: Mulder gets to experience firsthand the “truth” he’s been seeking, Scully gets an unexpected miraculous gift that makes her life more than just work in XF, Skinner becomes a believer, CSM meets his fate at the hands of the next generation Syndicate, Krycek & Marita, the existential threat of alien colonization always looms overhead. If there is some novelistic beauty and coherence to be found in #TheXFiles, it is with ending it with this season — and with an episode, although imperfect, written, shot and delivered for broadcast as if it were the last one.
Dec 22, 2017 16:05
#46DaysOfMythX D-12 8X01: Within / 8X02: Without
…and at the last minute #TheXFiles is renewed! We begin a season that is tightly plotted and serialized, much darker than the previous two L.A. seasons, greatly acted by Anderson & Patrick, leaving behind the human conspiracy for an impersonal alien replicant invasion storyline. The biggest issue with this season is…its mere existence, like a final chapter in a book that is completely different from what came before! In this opening, we feel Scully’s loneliness and isolation, we see Gibson again, but we also have 1 1/2 eps worth of plot extended to 2 episodes, Mulder’s 1-episode brain illness, and an Alien Bounty Hunter morphing clothes and killed by gunshot.
Dec 23, 2017 16:58
#46DaysOfMythX D-11 8X08: Per Manum
As could be expected from #TheXFiles, we wonder whether Scully’s baby is normal! Season 8 continues to fill with happenings the rather empty season 7, after Mulder’s brain disease, here with IVF attempts also resurrecting Scully’s frozen ova story thread from season 4. Season 8 tightly planned plotting: Scully & Doggett’s partnership progresses while we meet Doggett’s Deep Throat character.
Dec 24, 2017 2:53
#TheXFiles season 11: it’s a wrap! Series finale? Anderson’s last? Cliffhanger? Movie lead-in? Open-ended?…
25 years of night shoots, 25 years of frozen lips, 25 years of friendship.
Happy wrap @davidduchovny.
Thanks for taking this ride with me and I’ll see you in January! #TheXFiles pic.twitter.com/3Uu3L8uC6i— Gillian Anderson (@GillianA) December 22, 2017
Dec 24, 2017 22:24
#46DaysOfX D-10 8X14: This Is Not Happening / 8X15: DeadAlive
The best and the worst of season 8 together! An incredibly powerful and sensational first episode – Jeremiah Smith, Reyes introduced, epic search for Mulder – followed by a strong second episode but plagued by very controversial decisions – far-fetched replicant creation procedure, Mulder without autopsy and not dead after 3 months, hardly justifiable healing, obscure Krycek machinations. We do get an alien replicant that changes skin similar to how the clawed alien matures into the grey and a red vaccine – connecting the Black Oil with this replicant invasion.
Dec 25, 2017 18:49
#46DaysOfMythX D-9 8X18: Three Words
We shouldn’t only stick to the positives of individual episodes, we should also mention the general direction of the season: season 8 doesn’t make anything out of Mulder’s alien abduction experience and incredible resurrection; it spends the first half of the season building Scully & Doggett’s partnership but just as Duchovny returns Doggett moves more to the background as #TheXFiles always had trouble with the ensemble show format; Carter seems to enjoy playing the “who’s the daddy” game when at the time this was the last opportunity for Duchovny & Anderson to be on the screen together. Still, this is a great individual episode in the vein of season 4’s Memento Mori!
Dec 26, 2017 18:10
#46DaysOfMythX D-8 8X16: Vienen
Black oil + oil rig = Mulder + Doggett action adventure! Obviously! The return of the season 3 Black Oil with its radioactive flashes – but also a group of Native Americans immune to it, possibly connecting the Tunguska vaccine (weakened oil) with Gibson Praise (of possible Filipino ancestry) with the Navajo (who were in close contact with the aliens) – a shoestring-thin fan theory which makes some sense…
Dec 27, 2017 18:46
#46DaysOfMythX D-7: one week! 8X20: Essence / 8X21: Existence
Another ending. Somehow along the way the mythology became not just the investigations OF but ABOUT Mulder & Scully, which reduced the scope of that world, while also the stakes inevitably grew to saving the world – signs that it’s time to end this! Also: loads of very explicit Biblical symbolism around the birth of William, an inglorious ending for Krycek, and like for the season openers 1 1/2 worth of story stretched to 2 with all these underground parking chase scenes and conspiring. But it’s a good enough ending!
Dec 28, 2017 00:15
The first minutes of 11X01: My Struggle III ! CGB named after Chris Carter’s grandfather, if I recall a Two Fathers-era interview well.
Dec 28, 2017 17:58
#46DaysOfMythX D-6 9X01/02: Nothing Important Happened Today
The sad thing with this season 9 renewal was not the renewal itself but, like with season 8 to a lesser extent, #TheXFiles doesn’t want to let go of the past. Each time we return to the mythology, Doggett & Reyes become minor characters in their own show; Scully becomes more and more unlike her self; again we focus on whether William is normal or not. If there were accusations back in Redux the show was becoming too soap operatic, here with an awfully transformed Reyes, and Follmer, and Kersh, it is certainly it! First mention of the awkward word Supersoldiers to describe the alien replicants.
Dec 29, 2017 12:42
11X01: My Struggle III tagline: “Accuse Your Enemies Of That Which You are Guilty” (?) C.G.B. inspired by propaganda-master Goebbels?
Dec 29, 2017 16:45
#46DaysOfMythX D-5 9X08: Trust No 1
Sappy Mulder-Scully shippiness, a cheesy explosive kryptonite, and always the sceptre of the absent Mulder that weighs down the series. What to save from this #TheXFiles episode? Perhaps just a couple of months after 9/11 a premonition of the surveillance state that was going to flood daily life and change the world and the zeitgeist!
Dec 29, 2017 20:37
#46DaysOfMythX D-5 9X10: Provenance / 9X11: Providence
Certainly the low point of #TheXFiles mythology. A welcome return of the Ships of Origins from Biogenesis — but painful melodrama again around the absent Mulder, more boring FBI shenanigans, the uncharacteristically strong and explicit presence of the divine…and the unsubtly introduced “prophecy” around William, which might be indication of his role in season 11! The series cancellation is decided shortly before these episodes.
Dec 30, 2017 20:02
#46DaysOfMythX D-4 9X17: William
Possibly the series’ most controversial episode! William given up for adoption after Scully’s motherhood is presented as a major aspect of her character since about season 4 is something difficult to fathom, and really feels more like a forced writers’ intervention than a natural character decision. Getting rid of loose ends to clear the way for the movies, or setting up far-future plot developments with teenage William? We will know with season 11. We do get indisputable evidence that the CSM is Mulder’s father, and that William was indeed part of the Supersoldier program (probably via the chloramine program).
Dec 30, 2017 21:25
#TheXFiles S11: best we can hope for is an open-ended ending.
Duchovny: “Unless Chris came to Gillian and me with an idea for an actual end to the show — which would preclude doing any more movies or any more television (versions) — and the three of us decided, ‘That’s fantastic, that’s really the way to end it,’ everything we do (with the franchise) naturally is going to be somewhat open-ended.”
Daily Herald: ‘The X-Files’ and Duchovny: Still seeking the truth after 25 years
Dec 31, 2017 15:27
#46DaysOfMythX D-3 9X19/20: The Truth
A third ending. With a name like that, “The Truth”, how to take the big twist in season 10 seriously? The trial that occupies most of the finale is essentially the trial of Carter & Spotnitz before their critics, the display of proof that the mythology makes sense and is a coherent whole. Carter couldn’t envision the end of the series without the presence of the CSM, already quite ridiculous here, but with what was very obviously supposed to be his final death. The status quo at the end is essentially similar to that at Requiem — Syndicate destroyed, alien colonization threat still hanging overhead — with the difference that Mulder & Scully are together + a promise for a 3rd film in the form of a date: Dec-22-2012. Not a very exciting finale for #TheXFiles, a series that deeply changed television, but a finale nevertheless.
Dec 31, 2017 19:04
#46DaysOfMythX D-3 Non-mythology bonus! Movie 2: I Want To Believe
A first long-awaited return. All in all, a good horror film with supernatural elements and a dark atmosphere, but not much more. A kind of kitchen sink stand-alone investigation that lacks some punch, and a heavy atmosphere with very explicit religious themes more characteristic of Millennium than #TheXFiles. In retrospect, we see here a growing distance between Mulder & Scully that will have deepened in season 10.
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