![\"x_files-fox\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/x_files-fox.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\nRegular readers know that over last year, I binge-watched the entire X-Files<\/i> series, because I had completely missed the phenomenon the first go-round. I watched a lot of it myself, but then, for fun, I reached out to my friend Keith Uhlich, film critic, TV critic, and the biggest X-Files<\/i> fan I know, to see if he wanted to binge-watch with me. And so began the great Binge-Watch project of 2015. I would go over to his place every other week, practically, and we’d sit in the dark living room and watch sometimes up to 10 episodes a day. He was a great guide – but better than that – he is a great fan. Not uncritical (Keith is a critic, with a GREAT eye), but also interested in what any given episode was trying to DO, outside of what HE wanted from it. <\/p>\n
I seemed to click into the series on the same frequency that Keith did: for me, the series was about emotion and human connection and the Scully\/Mulder relationship, how fragile it is, how important it is. That “feeling” didn’t click in for me until the first episode of Season 2, when Scully and Mulder were separated, and had to sneak around to meet up in parking garages or whatever. That first episode of Season 2 was filled with the sense of LONGING that I think is the true theme\/mood of X-Files<\/i>. It’s not about what HAPPENS, or what the TRUTH actually IS: the truth still remains “out there”. It cannot be grasped and pinned down. It can’t, actually, be known. Or, even if you do know it, it ends up not mattering. All we know is what we long for. I mean, the whole TV series didn’t end with a bang, but a “whimper,” Mulder and Scully curled up in one anothers’ arms in a motel room. As paranoid as Chris Carter is, that fragile intimacy of two people (skeptics and believers) seemed to be what he was after all along. <\/p>\n
If you’re an X-Files fan, you might have seen the Paley Center 2012 interview with David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson (the entirety is on Youtube). My friend Keith was the one who did that great interview. I wrote about it here.<\/a> The “what the fuck is magnetite” moment has become notorious enough to become a “gif”, and so my friend Keith is the only one among my friends (that I am aware of) who is now a GIF. (I actually have been wanting to link to this for a while: Here’s Keith’s review of Michael Mann’s Blackhat<\/i><\/a> – a film I also loved. Keith digs into it deep.)<\/p>\n So anyway, Keith and I had a blast with the binge-watch. You can’t binge-watch with just anyone. It takes a certain KIND of person to do a joint binge-watch. We’ve continued on into a binge-watch of Millennium<\/i> now, and eventually we may get to Supernatural<\/i>, which he hasn’t seen, but there’s a lot of cross-over, at least in terms of cast\/crew\/location, etc. Supernatural<\/i> often looks like an X-Files<\/i> reunion. (And if you want to know just how good an actor Mitch Pileggi really is – watch any given episode of X-Files<\/i>, and then watch any episode from Season 6 of Supernatural<\/i>, in which he appears. Except for the sense of harassed authenticity … it is two totally<\/i> different characters. 100% believable in both.) <\/p>\n I started to binge-watch because I wanted to participate in … what is happening now. The resurrection of The X-Files<\/i> as a 6-episode 2016 mini-series. <\/p>\n Advance word from critics on the 1st episode was that it was “bad.” Keith and I watched it about a month ago (he had already seen it), and I have no idea what these critics were talking about. I suppose, like any good show, The X-Files<\/i> is many different things to different people. (Supernatural<\/i> is like that too. There’s an epic archetypal quality to the events and the style, so it can TAKE lots of different emotional projections and interpretations.) <\/p>\n Keith will be re-capping the whole thing for Vulture, and his first re-cap is up. <\/p>\n He’s one of the best writers I know, his style elegant, thoughtful, rich, but even more than that: watch how he observes things, and then contextualizes what he has observed. In other words, it’s not a book report. This is analysis.<\/i> <\/p>\n The X-Files<\/i> Premiere Recap: Fiction Masquerading as Fact, by Keith Uhlich<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Regular readers know that over last year, I binge-watched the entire X-Files series, because I had completely missed the phenomenon the first go-round. I watched a lot of it myself, but then, for fun, I reached out to my friend … Continue reading