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Nine Days of X-Files
Posted by Billy on Jan 15th 2016 at 2:10 pm
20th Television
Nine days: that’s all that separates us from the first new episodes of The X-Files in nearly fourteen years, the first complete batch of episodes to feature Fox Mulder in nearly fifteen years. If you’re just discovering the series, nine days is technically enough time to catch up and binge-watch all two-hundred-some episodes, if you skip every commercial and get very, very little sleep.
Let’s assume, however, that you don’t want to put your life on pause for the next week and that instead you just want to take a peek inside the confidential dossiers before Mulder and Scully make their triumphal return. Let’s say that you want to watch a single episode each day for the next nine days.
We’ve got you covered.
Day 1: “Little Green Menâ€
The second-season premiere was the first X-Files episode to portray an extraterrestrial, and it also features a number of allusions to American culture: the Watergate Hotel, NASA’s Voyager program, and Twilight Zone scribe Richard Matheson. “Little Green Men†is an outstanding early entry in the overarching X-Files mythology.
Day 2: “Small Potatoesâ€
If you pay attention to the writing credits on these episodes, you will start to notice a pattern: a lot of the best X-Files are brought to you by Vince Gilligan, who would later go on to create Breaking Bad. In “Small Potatoes,†Christine Cavanaugh (the voice of Chuckie on Rugrats and Gosalyn on Darkwing Duck) plays one of several mothers surprised to find that their babies have been born with tails, and it all has something to do with Luke Skywalker and a local janitor, the latter played by Darin Morgan, who won an Emmy for the episode you’ll be watching on the third day.
Day 3: “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Reposeâ€
“Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose,†the winner of two Emmys in 1996, Darin Morgan for Outstanding Writing and the late Peter Boyle (of Everybody Loves Raymond fame) for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series, has only gotten more popular since it first aired, IGN calling it “the best standalone X-Files episode of the entire series.†This episode showcases X-Files as it is most effective, balancing laugh-out-loud humor with pitilessly morbid imagery.
Day 4: “Jose Chung’s From Outer Spaceâ€
Another Darin Morgan-penned gem, “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space†is less dark and more humorous than “Final Repose†but just as intelligently crafted. Taking to heart the adage that “there is almost nothing less reliable than what an eyewitness thinks he saw,†Mr Morgan in this episode portrays the same events from multiple points of view, something that we will see again on the seventh day. If “Clyde Bruckman†wasn’t all the convincing you needed to sit back and trust this Darin Morgan guy, Alex Trebek and Jesse Ventura have cameos as a pair of men in black in this episode.
Day 5: “How the Ghosts Stole Christmasâ€
Equally appropriate for two holidays, Christmas and Halloween, “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas†features Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin as a couple of ghouls hell-bent on terrorizing the special agents. Written and directed by series creator Chris Carter, this one-off story, at once funny, creepy, and spectacularly heartwarming, is a worthy mid-series exploration of Scully and Mulder’s relationship, which was often fodder for speculation during the original series run.
Day 6: “The Unnaturalâ€
David Duchovny is best known as an actor, but before he was doing movies and TV shows, he was a college student, earning first a B.A. from Princeton and then an M.A. from Yale, majoring in English Literature both times. One of several episodes that Mr Duchovny wrote and the first that he directed, “The Unnatural†is a poignant story about baseball, race relations, and little green men, featuring memorable turns by both Jesse L Martin and M Emmet Walsh. This isn’t simply good X-Files: it’s good film.
Day 7: “Bad Bloodâ€
In “Bad Blood,†Luke Wilson plays Sheriff Hartwell, who’s either a buck-toothed yokel or a bona-fide charmer, depending on who you ask. Both a vampire tale and a warning about unreliable narrators, this episode is raucous fun. According to Gillian Anderson, “[I]t’s one of our best ever. I think it really showed how well David and I can work together.â€
Day 8: “Pusherâ€
In “Pusher,†Robert Wisden, who would years later portray Richard Nixon in the movie adaptation of Watchmen, is Robert Patrick Modell, a psychokinetic serial killer who has something akin to a Napoleon complex. Featuring the first-ever game of Russian roulette on a network series, this episode is as exciting as they come, and the cameo by Dave Grohl is just a bonus.
Day 9: “X-Copsâ€
February 2000: the reality TV boom was on the horizon, Survivor’s first season just weeks away. Cops, meanwhile, had been airing on Fox for more than a decade, and in a move that has since been described by critic M Keith Booker as “postmodernist,†Vince Gilligan went for the crossover. The result is “X-Cops,†perhaps the zaniest of all X-Files. Chris Carter vetoed Mr Gilligan’s “X-Cops†idea several times, first during the fourth season, three years before the episode finally aired. The reason Mr Carter changed his mind? He thought X-Files was coming to an end.
Wasn’t true in February 2000, and now, it isn’t true in 2016 either. The X-Files is back, January 24 on Fox.
How long does it take to watch every episode of The X-Files?
How long does it take to watch every episode of Breaking Bad?
How long does it take to watch every episode of Rugrats?
How long does it take to watch every episode of Darkwing Duck?
How long does it take to watch every episode of The Twilight Zone (1959)?
How long does it take to watch every episode of Everybody Loves Raymond?
How long does it take to watch every episode of Millennium?
How long does it take to watch every episode of The Lone Gunmen?
http://www.fox.com/the-x-files