Well, it seems as though I am back to watching television long after it comes out. (Have you all heard about Breaking Bad? I hear it’s pretty good, and I swear I’ll get to it eventually).
I just recently finished watching X-Files, season 10, which was the first season that came out after the long hiatus/cancellation. As someone who has watched every single episode of the original series, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t both excited and filled with trepidation as I approached the new series.
Unfortunately, I’d have to say that I wasn’t terribly impressed, and that made me unhappy. I was excited, and I wanted more.
I will start with some positive thoughts: it was fun to be back in the world of X-files once again. Even though I wasn’t that impressed, I’ll still go on to season 11, just because I enjoy the series as a whole. I even liked the “funny” episode, as probably more than any other, it threw me back into the “funny” episodes of the past.
Beyond that, though, I wasn’t terribly excited.
Perhaps my greatest disappointment was how the X-Files went from being filled with mystery and skepticism to more of a thriller tone. From the very first episode, there’s really no question of what’s happening. There’s no real mystery to solve, no questions that keep pulling you forward. Instead, you’re told almost straight-up what the new conspiracy is, and the only question is how to stop it.
One aspect of the show I was thinking about was how a long-running character or series can run into problems. While I still found some joy in Mulder and Scully’s interactions, the same dynamic wasn’t quite there. Of course, one can also blame a long hiatus, or even the actors themselves, but I think that a significant part of the problem is that Scully, reasonably, can’t be the skeptic she once was. Over the years, she’s seen too much. I found myself enjoying the Mulder-Einstein scenes (as bizarre as they sometimes were), not because they were great, but because they captured some of that old back and forth that defined the Mulder-Scully relationship.
While I can’t recommend the show, I am intrigued to watch the next (and arguably the last) season.
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