May-19-2002
Associated Press
Strange, wonderful ‘X-Files’ journey ends
Lynn Elber

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — C’mon over here and let us plant a big farewell kiss on dark, droll, gory, sexy, devious, paranoid, sly, subversive, baffling, marvelous you — “The X-Files.”

The Fox drama about extraterrestrials, freakish terrestrial villains and the FBI agents driven to pursue them is ending its nine-year run, secure in its reputation as a television classic.

Chris Carter, its creator, dared to take the most orthodox of genres, the cop show, and transform it into a convention-busting, one-of-a-kind vehicle for thrilling and intelligent storytelling.

“The Truth,” the two-hour finale, airs Sunday from 8-10 p.m. EDT. David Duchovny returns as Fox Mulder, who faces a murder charge and military tribunal. Gillian Anderson co-stars as Dana Scully.

Since its September 10, 1993, premiere, “The X-Files” has thrived on dichotomy. The feds were the good guys (Mulder and Scully and a few fellow FBI travelers) and the bad guys (just about everyone else in power).

It treated the convoluted “mythology” at its heart — Mulder’s quest to determine if his long-lost kid sister was kidnapped as part of an alien-invasion plot — with intense solemnity and, when it felt like it, tongue-in-cheek affection. Other episodes, even those about murder and worse, often evinced a seriocomic tone; “The X-Files” was “The Twilight Zone” with continuity and more wicked wit.

The relationship between Mulder and Scully was sensuous and soulful and yet chaste and intellectual, save for a few kisses, a suggested one-night stand and a resulting baby, William.

(Says a bemused Carter: “It just tickles me that in this day and age, when we have characters jumping into bed with each other at the drop of a hat, that there was so much anticipation and so much attention to what ultimately became a peck on the lips.”)

Cultural reach

The cultural reach and influence of “The X-Files” outstripped its popularity. The series couldn’t equal the numbers of, say, a top-rated ’90s show like “Seinfeld,” which at one point lured nearly 40 million viewers. In 1997-98, at its peak, “The X-Files” drew 20 million viewers and ranked 19th.

But Duchovny and Anderson — and sometimes even Carter — decorated magazine covers and became gossip column material, a testament to their appeal and that of the series.

It earned a prestigious Peabody Award and received 61 Emmy nominations during its run, winning a best dramatic actress trophy for Anderson (but failing to nab a best drama award). The series became a cash cow for the network and 20th Century Fox through TV syndication, DVDs and a movie.

The catch phrases “The truth is out there” and “Trust no one” took on lives of their own as “The X-Files” became a cult phenomenon with mainstream impact. And the use of the letter “X” was enigmatic enough to mean just about anything — especially anything cool, sexy and disturbing to the status quo, the elements in which “The X-Files” trafficked.

The drama’s psyche was steeped in anti-authoritarianism and alienation, with echoes of the Vietnam era in which the 45-year-old Carter came of age. Those themes managed, however, to resonate with younger as well as older viewers.

Resonant themes

Then real-world events conspired to make “The X-Files” feel out of step in its final season.

In insecure, post-September 11 America, citizens needed to have confidence in government. And there were a host of dramas ready to capitalize on the new zeitgeist, including ABC’s “Alias,” in which there’s conspiracy aplenty but the CIA is on the right side.

Carter, for the record, concedes only a brief moment when the show may have seemed out of step with society. The themes of “The X-Files” represent “the heart and soul of this country,” he argues.

“I think there will always need to be and will always be built into the government this need to police itself, and for the public to be distrustful of authority generally and of putting too much faith in it.”

Carter also disagrees with critics who said the series had faded, especially after Duchovny left last year and despite the valiant efforts of cast additions Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish (as agents John Doggett and Monica Reyes) to fill the void.

“I think the numbers make people say that,” said Carter, referring to its 85th-place ranking for the season to date and a weekly audience that’s dwindled to less than 9 million.

A viewership decline is inevitable for most aging series, and Carter admits to pondering the shift: “Your audience over that time changes, the whole demographic changes. People’s lives change. I don’t know what happened to that audience, but only a portion of them came back this year.

“My sense is they felt something had been completed.”

Moving on

Did Carter harbor any grudge toward Duchovny for not sticking it out? The actor who found stardom on “The X-Files” has focused on movies, including director Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming “Full Frontal.”

“No, I understood. He turned 40 years old, he’s got things he wants to do. Eight years is a long time to be on a television show. I wished him the best and still do. It’s just nice to have him back.”

Patrick, who co-starred in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and was making his first foray into regular series work, was glad to catch even a two-season piece of the “X-Files.”

“The best part about it is that I know this is going to live on. I feel like I got involved in something great. When you think about the history of TV, you’ll think about ‘The X-Files,”‘ he said.

And more cases and conspiracies are ahead. With the success of the 1998 feature film, at least one more movie is planned. Carter is ready to start work on the script and hopes to begin filming as early as next summer.

“X-Philes,” as fans became known, aren’t the only target audience.

“We’re looking at the movies as stand-alones. They’re not necessarily going to have to deal with the mythology,” he said.

Through the years, Carter maintained his goal was to provide audiences with a first-rate thrill ride. He acknowledges “The X-Files” was also thought-provoking and politically minded.

One more thing, he adds: “It was tremendously romantic … romantic in both the literary and more common sense in that it was about two people who were tremendously tender and caring for each other.”

A show like that deserves a hearty goodbye smooch. And that’s the truth.

May-17-2002
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
As ‘The X-Files’ ends, Mulder and Scully get one last chance to discover whether the truth is really out there
Steve Murray

“The Truth” is out there — and over and out after Sunday night on Fox. That’s the name of the final, two-hour episode that brings “The X-Files” to an end after nine years on the air.

Creator Chris Carter says the show’s shoot ended with a bang. “The last scene was fitting. It was a gigantic explosion.” (FYI: The explosion isn’t literally the episode’s ending, it’s just the scene that happened to be the last one shot.) Here’s hoping the series goes out with the same kind of explosive effect. Once a cult hit and pop phenomenon, “X-Files” should have hung up its sensible gray suit two years ago, after Ivy League heartthrob David Duchovny reduced his appearances as paranormal FBI sleuth Fox Mulder to only half the season. He was absent this year but returns for Sunday’s finale, in which Mulder is on trial for murder.

Carter admits that the series hit a rough patch around the time of Duchovny’s departure. “There was the business problems with David during the seventh year of the show,” he says. “It didn’t help the creative energy.” He’s referring to Duchovny’s lawsuit against Fox, accusing the network of devaluing the series’ worth by giving rerun rights to its own cable and local stations, and as a result lowering Duchovny’s share of profits.

At the same time, co-star Gillian Anderson announced in an interview that “The X-Files” would not return for an eighth season. Oops. It continued, she returned, and former Marietta resident Robert Patrick stepped in as new FBI partner John Doggett to fill the gap left by Duchovny. This year, Anderson’s role has been limited, with much of the FBI legwork being done by agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish).

But now, really, truly — the series ends Sunday.

Fans who’ve endured the head-spinning twists might be glad to know that the episode’s setup, a military tribunal, should allow a lot of clarifying facts to come out during testimony. “Hopefully we’re going to make it all make sense,” Carter says. “The piece will bring the series full circle.”

But he stays mum about specifics. Wrapping up nine years of byzantine plot lines promises to be a challenge. “It’s complicated by the quantity of the detail,” Carter says. “But as you’ll see, as you watch the two-hour finale, it makes rather cohesive and clear sense.” (Sorry, but I can’t offer you any hints: Fox didn’t send advance review tapes to TV critics.)

It’ll be interesting to see how the final installment ties up more than 200 episodes of sometimes bewildering narrative arcs. As the series introduced multiple types of aliens, cannibals, miracle pregnancies and cancer remissions, and too many explanations to count concerning the abduction of Mulder’s kid sister, “The X-Files” began to resemble the tattoo Scully chose in one episode: a serpent swallowing its own tail. For a while, the writers seemed geekily more interested in weaving together their “mythology” of governmental corruption than in giving viewers the heebie-jeebies.

What kept us watching were the coolly creepy atmosphere and high production values that gave the show a dark cinematic gleam. But even more important than those was the Mulder-Scully chemistry, the will-they-won’t-they sexual frisson that was yin to the characters’ professional yang. When “The X-Files” movie hit theaters in 1998, the duo’s near-kiss was, for fans, more pulse-raising than the soft-core sex scenes in most Hollywood flicks.

Once the sexual tension broke (complete with the birth of baby William), the show became much less sexy. And with the approach center-screen of Patrick and Gish, it lost its core. The production values remained high, but it was a case of style over substance. The numbers reflect that. This season’s viewership declined to below 9 million, at 85th place in the ratings; at its ratings apex, the 1997-98 season, 20 million watched, and it ranked 19th.

But Carter’s series goes out honorably. It may have stayed on past its prime, and if it “jumped the shark,” the splash wasn’t a tsunami. And remaining fans needn’t mope. “The X-Files” isn’t gone for good; plans are in the works for at least one more feature film.

“Everyone wants to do it,” says Carter, who says that at the show’s wrap party, “my cheeks got very tired from smiling. It was a very happy party. The sadness came before then, when we were doing everything for the last time.”

And he still won’t leak any specifics about Sunday’s finale. Except by indirection. Asked whether the show might have a big surprise or two, all he offers is a low chuckle and a single word:

“Yeah.”

May-17-2002
Sacramento Bee
Rick Kushman

In a way, “The X-Files” is a victim of its own success.

Everywhere you look these days, some TV series or feature film is running a dark-conspiracy story with deceptive, shadowy characters, executive treachery and, probably, aliens.

So if “The X-Files” has lost some of its glimmer as it concludes its nine-year TV run, or if it has lost some mystique or resolute spookiness, remember that in 1993 there was nothing like it in entertainment.

The two-hour finale Sunday night on Fox just ties the knots on a rare, special series that was decidedly unique and a standard-bearer for a golden age of TV drama.

When it first appeared, we had never seen the likes of its winding, whimsical, terrifying premise. We’d never followed so many odd twists, such huge paranoia or duplicity of global proportions, and we’d never been drawn to so potentially horrific an apocalypse of mutations and alien slavery.

“The X-Files” helped mold pop culture, presenting a beautifully shot, irresistibly produced view of our own worst nightmares, from mutants, aliens and poltergeists to sewer flukes, circus freaks and flying cows.

It was also toweringly clever, presciently connected to pop culture’s zeitgeist, and a festival of irony. Plus it was an ode to repressed emotion, delayed gratification and TV’s hottest, longest case of sexual tension. “The X-Files” was a cult show that was simply too extraordinary to stay small. It was for years one of television’s best, most popular dramas and one of Hollywood’s coolest franchises. Its fanatic following spread worldwide, encouraged by the show’s creators and nurtured by a little thing called the Internet.

It was actually the first big thing for Internet TV fans. And it was the first show to tie its principles together via cell phone, both a vision of what American society _ or at least a day at the mall _ would become while supplying a metaphor for our heroes’ disconnection. “The X-Files” became a driving force on the culture, both catching and feeding a sensibility that was stated in one of the series’ lasting themes: Trust No One.

But for all that, “The X-Files” would have been just another small show if it were not always, simply, unambiguous fun. Much of the credit goes to David Duchovny, whose Agent Mulder could deliver lines ranging from “Oooh, I just got a chill down my spine” to “One more anal-probing, gyro-pyro-levitating, ectoplasm alien anti-matter story and I’m gonna take out my gun and shoot someone.”

So for nine seasons now, despite all the imitators, despite the ratings drop, the new agents, the baby, the changes of focus, and the layer upon layer of high-grade confusion, “The X-Files” has remained among television’s royalty and has supplied us with one of TV’s longest-running mysteries.

And on Sunday night we will finally learn some answers. In theory, all the answers, series creator and executive producer Chris Carter says. “We’re going to wrap up the TV series,” Carter said in a phone interview last week. “Are we going to know the fate of the planet? Yeah. I don’t presume to know it all, but I’m going to suggest there’s an answer.”

OK, there we go already, off on another “X-Fileian” loop, winding around enigmas, half-answers and quarter-truths.

No, no, Carter says. All this confusion, all the cryptic insinuations, they’re all going to lead someplace with solid answers. Agent Mulder will be back, Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson) will learn the truth about her baby, and the world will be safe for an “X-Files” movie that’s entirely separate from this mythology.

By the way, Carter says all signs are that the franchise will continue in feature films. “The movie would be a stand-alone story,” he said. “David and Gillian want to do it. The studio wants to do it. The wheels are turning already. I think the first opportunity we’ll have to shoot it is summer 2003, so you probably won’t see it until sometime in 2004.”

As for the finale, all we know, since Carter and the Fox network are telling us, is that Mulder is on trial for his life and must justify (and, hopefully, explain) pretty much everything we’ve been watching for nine seasons.

Will “X-Files” fans feel some sense of closure and fulfillment?

Maybe. And maybe it just boils down to the truths in this exchange between Mulder and Scully. Mulder: “Do you believe in the afterlife?” Scully: “I’d settle for a life in this one.”