When the X-Files came on it was about time. In the mid to late 1970's there was the X files true father THE NIGHT STALKER, it didn't last, but there was also IN SEARCH OF--which did, for a while. And of course there was the whole CHARIOTS OF THE GODS and BERMUDA triangle interest. Then of course the was CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND--before it was changed what is it three times now since. Then came Jack Webb's PROJECT UFO where we all learned that everything being and elaborate hoax wasn't really as interesting as the shows opening narration that told us that Ezekial saw the wheel. This is the wheel he said he saw..."
I suppose the cycle of interest in the interesting but un-provable or improbable died out like the dinosaurs. But wait a minute. Isn't there something strange about how they died out?
Right before the X- FILES came on, a screenwriter friend of mine, whose name must remain unmentioned, was researching UFO's and wrote a script which was later optioned but never made. But, others were about to option, sell, and produce their related scripts. My friend had some very strange experiences with men in black type people which were frightening and before such frights became an excuse to redo a rap song with different lyrics and make a lot of money.
But I digress just as the X- Files did recently as it went the way of the dinosaurs except with far less mystery.
The last X-Files seemed like it was mostly a collection of "you can't handle the truth!" courtroom moments featuring those, "Don't you remember and love this character or that character from this or that episode?" Well here they are sitting in a chair and talking, and isn't that what you always wanted to see this character do?
The X-Files tired of its monster of the week format and develops it's own subplot conspiracy mythos. But then, over the course of a couple of years worth of shows, the subplot became the main plot and the years passed and the mythos got too confused to ever explain it all, and unfortunately that's exactly what they tried to do in that last episode.
Why does everything that ever happened, actually all perfectly fit into one giant unconvincing and boringly laid out talk fest? Oh, so the super soldiers are also all part of it, and on yeah by the way, there's actually an alien sitting right there on the super secret panel of judges, though we do nothing about it. If Mulder was trying to prove there were aliens, and there is one sitting in the same room with him, isn't that an easy thing to prove once and for all in front of everybody?
Mulder and Scully were suddenly too cuddly. All she had to do was weep and protest how much she'd missed him--kind of demeaning to her character, almost a "Let's make sure we know how this entire show was really all about Mulder, so we can get David back for the last episode."
Oh yeah, and those super soldiers they fit right in too, really they do...and those black eye things, yeah you bet, and those things in the feature we were wondering about, yeah we'll show you some of that footage too. Thought we'd rather not try to bring a bunch of bees into the story again cause that really didn't fly.
For a TV show that told its stories with so much of a film-type style to then turn into one of these pretty standard "Caine Mutiny" TV rip off deals was sad. Of course they are careful not to kill off the new characters in case they can " spin- off" them in their own series for Sci Fi channel in two years when nothing else pans out.
The purpose for a television series above all else is for it to perpetuate. It must go on and on, that is its ultimate goal. The best way to remember the X files is to think of it as the musical Camelot asks us to remember King Arthur's ideals and glory. You must remember that if for one brief shining moment there was a place called Camelot. And there were a number of such moments to the X Files which actually grew outside of it's Sci Fi Squid hardcore audience to become a mass cultural show, which now that it's abated, has created a new if smaller collection of hard core Sci Fi squids of all ages.
But ultimately TV is a whore and she finally collected on her rather substantial tab in that last episode.
So, if I apply this look for the bright side of life mentality to the last episode, I should mention that I liked that they blew up the politically corrected named Smoking Man. But then that makes me angry too, he's the Cancer Man Damnit!
And, it was okay by me that they tied in the Mayan calendar thing--but if the Mayans knew so much wouldn't they have stopped their calendar back when their own culture evaporated, or a least by the time the Spanish showed up to really redecorate.
Okay take a deep breath if you're going to read the next part out loud. The whole idea of the show originally was; here's Mulder and Scully, Mulder actually believes all this crap and no one else will ever listen to him, and Scully is kind of a Watson and Tonto character only this time they might actually bump uglies eventually once she's won over by Mulder's beliefs and stops being a spy to help out the shadowy powers that be, but are probably using Mulder to figure out what's really going on in a way they can deny.
Unfortunately, those shadowy powers proved to be only shadows when the light and series became all about them they disappeared into cliché and the melodrama of introducing characters, brothers, etc., just to kill them off in ways that, oh yeah, all tie into this government thing too by the way. And the longer the show went on, Mulder would find evidence that was far to concrete, far too many times for it to be "disappeared" with ease. And, Sculley stayed too skeptical in the face of reason, despite some surprising Christianity affirmation moments she had--though weren't these timed rather suspiciously near "The Christmas Season, or should I say "The Holidays"
Of course now that it's, at least until the next movie, over, I can Monday morning quarter back with assurance. I will faintly argue that I've had the following ideas since about half way into the series. You probably won't believe me, unless you know that the truth is out there.
I always felt the last show should be Mulder finally having his personal proof and proof to convince the world, but realizing that the government had used him as a patsy and would use this proof to no good ends. So now that he's found the aliens once and for all, Mulder destroys the proof once and for all. The aliens are, after all, perhaps no match for what they will be used for on earth, or they are rival alien factions whatever... So Mulder knows the government must give up on their vague and certainly nefarious plans.
The government can think him a crackpot, the X-Files can be closed it doesn't matter to him or us, his own quest is over. And that's drama not melodrama. Then maybe he and Scully bump uglies in Canada while the American film industry is destroyed by everyone going to shoot in Canada like the X-Files did with such success until it came home to LA to curl up and die.
And they never did come across Carl Kolchak who is still out there somewhere talking into a tape recorder waiting for them to vindicate him once and for all.
