Ah, season seven. The last good season of them all. Farewell classic X-Files, make way for whatever season eight and nine were. And it's Halloween tomorrow! Spooktastic!
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I don’t like saying this is a
favourite episode of mine. If we forget what happens at the end of this
episode, then I’ll say it’s one of my favourites. I, as many people in the 90s
were, am extremely annoyed with the outcome of the show after season seven. If
it had just ended with the prospect of Scully being pregnant without Mulder
having to be abducted, giving it the ability to move on into a movie franchise
and/or a few special seasons (like season 10), then I would have been happy.
But no. Carter fucks all that up
and does what he’s done here. But whatever. ‘Requiem’ is a solid episode if you
forget what happens afterwards. ‘Requiem’ brings a lot of nostalgia back from
the pilot episode through elements that appeared in that episode, which is
really nice actually. If it were to have ended this way, it would have given
the show a sense of coming full circle; ending where it began.
If only that were the case. WHY
DID YOU HAVE TO LEAVE, DUCHOVNY. LOOK WHAT YOU MADE CHRIS DO.
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Other than ‘Humbug’, I can’t
think of any other X-Files episodes
that purely focused on the idea of magic and illusion. ‘The Amazing Maleeni’
goes at this full throttle, allowing Mulder and Scully to investigate the death
of a small-time magician who goes by the name of The Amazing Maleeni. Once a
performance one of his magic tricks results in his death, our duo arrives to
discover three suspects: an ex-con, a rival and Maleeni’s twin brother; all of
which seem to have a plan to rob a major bank.
To make the episode even more
believable, noted magician Ricky Jay played the portrayed The Amazing Maleeni;
only doing so under the guise that he would do the tricks that he was used to
performing. As Gilligan later noted, “There was no choice other than Ricky Jay
as far as we were concerned. He was not looking forward to the idea of playing
a magician because I think that he felt magicians were never portrayed very
realistically in movies or television shows.”
Another aspect regarding Duchovny
and Anderson’s performances makes the episode even more entertaining. Because
the episode was written in a very tongue-in-cheek style, Anderson and Duchovny
performed their lines in that way, which caused them to keep reminding
themselves that the story revolved around a murder. They both needed to ground
Mulder and Scully to prevent their performances getting too humorous.
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This season of the show contains
some of the best stand-alone episodes of the series, with ‘Je Souhaite’ being
no different. In this instance, Mulder and Scully are led to a genie who seems
exasperated with her job of granting wishes.
Written and directed by Vince
Gilligan – the first episode that Gilligan directed – ‘Je Souhaite’ not only
turns out being another one of the shows comedically layered episodes, but also
produces a different take on interpretations of what a genie thinks of the
whole concept of having to grant three wishes. Gilligan loved Paula Sorge’s
performance of the Genie Jenn, even though she wasn’t his first choice. “In
fact, she was even better than how I had written the character,” Gilligan
recalls. “In Paula’s audition, she came off like a world-weary wise-ass who was
not only tough and smart, but had a heart of gold. She made it a really fun
character.”
‘Je Souhaite’ itself is extremely
bittersweet. With Duchovny’s departure after this season, it lost the heart and
soul that was contained within the glue that holds the show together – Mulder
and Scully. It’s here that we get to see the last remnants of that, because the
show was never able to capture the true essence of The X-Files again.
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Due to Duchovny and Anderson
filming Return to Me and The House of Mirth respectively,
‘Hungry’ is set from the point of view of the monster, rather than the usual
standpoint of Mulder and Scully. Seeing the episode in this light allows us to
see how Mulder and Scully are viewed through the eyes of a monster, making them
the antagonists. Gilligan, who wrote the episode, had the intention “that at
the end, when Mulder and Scully show up and kill the monster, [the] audience
[would] hope that they would not show up.”
Gilligan successfully aligns the
audience with a sense of sympathy towards the ‘monster’ Rob Roberts (Chad
Donella), allowing forgiveness towards Rob whenever he murders someone because
he ‘has’ to.
‘Hungry’ isn’t an episode that I
always remember, but whenever I come to watching it, it always surprises me in
terms of the way in which the narrative is written. And Donella’s performance
as Rob is stellar.
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The narrative of ‘Millennium’ itself is pretty forgettable
to me. I know it’s a crossover of Carter’s other series Millennium to bring closure as it was recently cancelled and that
it involves zombies; but I think we all know why this episode is beloved by
everyone.
Mulder and Scully kiss. FINALLY. FOR REALSIES.
The production team knew it too. The scene in which the deed
is done was set up using specialized camera angles and everything was slowed
down to make the kiss last longer. Like, this was a big deal. It even made
newspaper headlines.
That’s literally all I have to say about this episode. It’s
all I can remember anyway (and the only part of this episode I replay
constantly).
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Another episode directed and
written by Duchovny, ‘Hollywood A.D.’ is an extremely self-referential episode,
due to entrepreneurial Hollywood producer Wayne Federman approaching collage
friend Walter Skinner to produce a film based on The X-Files. However, the
further Mulder and Scully follow Federman in his research phase, they find a
level of realism in what Federman wants to portray in the film in terms of the
mysterious ‘Lazarus Bowl’; an artefact that has the words Jesus Christ spoke
when he raised Lazarus from the dead engraved upon it.
For the inner fictional film of
The X-Files, and subsequently Mulder and Scully, Duchovny cast good friend
Garry Shandling to portray Mulder and his then-wife Téa Leoni to portray
Scully. Duchovny also cast several of the shows technical crew for several
parts of the filming stage of The Lazarus
Bowl, even casting his brother Daniel as assistant director on the set.
The original premise of having
Mulder and Scully portrayed by different actors within the show came from an
ongoing joke on set. “We used to always have a joke on set that when they do
the movie it’s going to be Richard Gere and Jodie Foster [playing Mulder and
Scully],” Duchovny said. “So I originally wrote the teaser for Richard Gere and
Jodie Foster and I started to think about it and you know, it’s so much funnier
with Garry and Téa.”
‘Hollywood A.D.’ itself is an
extremely layered episode, which is what makes it so successful. It’s extremely
ambitious on Duchovny’s part, and is something that is extremely true to his
personality when it comes to writing; especially now he’s begun writing novels.
You can see the ideas that he produced in ‘The Unnatural’ and ‘Hollywood A.D.’
come to fruition more in written form, but that shouldn’t stop him from writing
and directing more films – and even television episodes.
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‘Chimera’ is really special to
me. I can remember it as though I watched it yesterday; that ending was just
something else for me. Out of all The
X-Files episodes, this was the one time a conclusion to a narrative completely
floored me. I don’t know why it was this episode, but it’s making me want to
watch it again just thinking about it.
In a David Lynchian style,
‘Chimera’ situates itself in a – what seems to be – perfect suburb, with that
juicy seedy underbelly that we’ve all come to know and love from Lynch. Written
by David Amann and directed by Cliff Bole, it had a premise to examine the evil
that lies beneath suburban life.
As both Duchovny and Anderson had
their own episodes to write, direct and shoot (‘Hollywood A.D.’ and ‘all
things’), the writers planned ‘Chimera’ to be written so that Duchovny and
Anderson only had to be together in limited scenes, to give them both times to
get their episodes in shape. Duchovny has more of a role to play in ‘Chimera’ than
Scully; Anderson was only needed for one day of filming due to her sub-plot of
being left on a stake-out by Mulder whilst he investigates the goings on in
suburbia.
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God, this episode is panned so
much. I think a lot of reviewers took this episode too seriously. Maybe it’s
just me, I’m all for this episode. Like ‘Kill Switch’, William Gibson and Tom
Maddox are extremely innovative in terms of what they achieved in this episode,
especially again for when it was released.
It may have been 2000 and the CGI is…well,
questionable (we’d already had The Matrix
by this point), the set pieces, outfits and ideas that the episode presents
fit the timeframe of both the gaming and film industry, especially with the
release of Cronenberg’s Existenz a
year prior.
And I wholeheartedly agree with
Anderson’s take on the episode. Anderson said, “despite its reliance on big
guns and raging testosterone” that she enjoyed the opportunity “to show Scully
wearing heavy metal and firing over sized weapons.”
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As much as I love these episodes,
‘Sein und Zeit’ and ‘Closure’ should have been the finale of The X-Files. They could have somehow
wrapped it up in the same location as ‘Requiem’ to give nod backs to the pilot
for that ‘full-circle’ feeling that I was talking about. But, alas, Carter
decided to conclude the Samantha story-arc mid-season. “The expectation was
that if this were going to be the final season, that the finale would be about
Mulder’s sister,” Carter explains. “We wanted to deal with that sooner rather
than later. We wanted to wrap up Mulder’s emotion story with his sister and do
it in such a way that would emphasize with David’s dramatic abilities.”
In a similar stylistic approach
to ‘Paper Hearts’ the two episodes answer the never-ending question of
Samantha’s disappearance with a sense of ambiguity. It’s not outright an alien
abduction, but they did share involvement in her disappearance. Frank Spotnitz
noted this, and later explained that “it’s similar […] in the sense that what
you always thought happened to Samantha may not have actually happened. ‘Paper
Hearts’ never ultimately answers the question. We’ve had people come up to us
and say, ‘Okay, so we know she’s really dead, so what happened?’ So we decided
to answer that question.”
Both ‘Sein und Zeit’ and
‘Closure’ are so beautifully filmed and acted, they never fail to make me cry.
Duchovny connects with Mulder so much throughout the series, but it’s here that
he gives the true payoff of a mixture of relief and utter despair to find out
what really happened to his sister. Relief that she is no longer being hurt,
but despair to finally find out what was actually done to her and what she had
to go through without her big brother there to keep her from harm.
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Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna
do when they come for you?
This. Episode. Gilligan, you
utter genius. For all the shows that The
X-Files could crossover with, this choice seems so left-field but so, so
perfect. Not only for the gold that is Mulder fully embracing being on Cops and Scully utterly despising it
(lending to hilarious scenes of Scully hiding from the camera), but the legacy
that it has produced in the realm of television studies.
In an aim to show as little of
the monster as possible, Gilligan and the writing staff used methods adapted
from the 1999 film The Blair Witch
Project which had successfully done the same and still remained terrifying.
The director of the episode, Michael Watkins, had a good rapport with the Los
Angeles Police Department, so he was able to use real Sheriff’s deputies as
extras, as believability was the needed aspect of this episode if they were to
pull of making an X-Files episode
look like an episode of Cops.
And so they did. Several critics
and academics have linked X-Cops to
Postmodernism through merging the show with another popular reality television
series. It has also been praised at how embraces real-time aspects which
heighten its realism as an episode of Cops
through its self-reflexive and humorous tone.
The sad thing with this episode
is that Mulder finally has the platform to show that he isn’t crazy. He has the
ability to show the public that monsters are among us, which is what he tries
to do throughout the episode. He ultimately fails not only through not finding
what he’s looking for, but does so in front of Scully and a live audience.
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