Thank God for Netflix. Specifically, instant streaming. Thanks to this incredible service, I’m finally seeing what a deprived childhood I had. Without Netflix, I wouldn’t know what the Truffle Shuffle is. I can’t really blame my parents for all of it, because much of what I missed was there for the taking and I failed to notice it. What was I doing when all of my friends watched Friends and E.R.? Practicing, I guess, but that really can’t account for the wealth of stuff that passed by me with hardly a glance on my part. I remember sitting in a classroom before math class, listening to my friends talk about Friends and thinking “I should pay attention to that show,” and then going back to my home under a rock and not watching the show.
Among the things I missed were MTV (all of it, music and TV), most non-classical music, concerts that I wasn’t performing in, sports, movies of all sorts, and a ton of television. Not too long ago, thanks to the realization that I no longer have to live in a media vacuum, I set out to acquaint myself with a few of the series I missed, starting with The X-Files. I have two friends who sing the praises of this series regularly. One of them tends to have good taste, the other’s is suspect at best, because she also recommends such fare as True Blood. But, after the first season I can see why they like it. Overall, I’d say it holds up really well. This show started at the time that scripted TV shows were competing against scripted TV shows, not reality shows. Maybe it’s always been this way, but shows I’ve seen recently seem more hastily put together, as if networks are reluctant to put much time and money into a new series when The Bachelor Pad is a guaranteed hit.
The X-Files starts out strongly, if a little on the predictable side. You can’t have a show of this nature without setting up what the FBI hopes will be the somewhat antagonistic partnership between Mulder and Scully, or the mysterious Deep Throat character, so they get these things out of the way tidily in the first two episodes. The third episode is where things started to get better for me. In this episode you get Eugene Tooms, a real live, bile-drooling, hibernating Stretch Armstrong of a guy. This episode has just enough nasty stuff (mucus and vomit) to be gross, but it’s not over the top. When I am faced with these things in real life, I can’t stifle my gag reflex and have to go find a trash can, but somehow, on TV I can deal. Tooms shows up again at the end of the season, with more stretching, bile, and liver eating in another satisfying episode.
Another episode I liked was “Gender Bender,” wherein a guy from an Amish/Oneida-like cult has some crazy sexual magnetism and the ability to change gender, who goes out clubbing, hooking up with people, and killing them with the power of his/her lovin’. This episode gets points for being absurd, for being another that isn’t just Mulder and Scully vs. Big Government-Military Cover-Up, and for showing Scully’s inner sex fiend. You just know that deep down she wanted to nail that guy.
The first season had some great parts, but it was not without some flaws. First of all, what’s with all of the rashes? Sure, exposure to extra terrestrial gases and chemicals is bound to lead to some irritation, by why can’t more of them just glow, or even get miraculously younger looking skin? Does every single person have to have weeping sores? I guess it’s nice to know the make-up department got to have some fun every now and then. Secondly, the eighth episode, “Ice,” is John Carpenter’s The Thing condensed into 45 minutes and moved to Alaska. I had never seen The Thing at the time so I was blissfully unaware of the thievery going on, but come on. When I got around to watching the movie, I was gobsmacked. In the words of a friend of mine, “even the dog!” Finally, the episode about pyrokinesis had some seriously lame dialogue. For a show that I found so clever most of the time, it seemed like the writers got lazy with this one. It’s not all terrible, but it seemed like they had their B-Team doing the writing. There’s a scientist in this episode who is so into his own work he’s like a caricature, complete with goofy faces.
I wonder how the show would do today, and I’m willfully ignoring the fact that they made a movie a few years ago as an answer to this query because a), I heard it was terrible and plagued by problems pre-production so it doesn’t count, and b), unsurprisingly, I haven’t seen it or the other movie they made. If this show premiered this year, they’d have a wellspring of other material to draw from, not just John Carpenter movies, thanks to the internet and the crazy people who publish their opinions and theories on it (hey, wait a second...!). That said, would the writing be as good, or would it be riddled with product placements and shitty jokes? Would it spawn The X-Files, Miami? Would it fall into the trap of needing the two central characters to fall in love in the first season at the expense of their work, only to break up in the second but reconcile in the third? Could it compete with reality shows and have a successful zillion (8? 9?) season run? The answer to all of these questions is “I have no idea,” accompanied by a blank stare on my part. I’m just now getting to the second season. Don’t go ruining it for me; I waited a long damn time for it.
Coming soon: The A-Team. Maybe. It’s hard to talk myself into this one, but it’s been suggested by more than one person and I’m easily persuaded.
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