Video Ferox

I was reading the ol’ A.V. Club today, and one thing I’ve consistently liked about their new format is the AVQ&A feature, in which they pose questions to their writers. It’s got the short attention span appeal of lists, but also makes it easy for you to get to know your bloggers without digging through their analysis (which is, like, hard and stuff).

This week’s AVQ&A is “What movie/TV show/album/whatever would you like to be able to see/hear again for the first time?” There’s the usual smattering of the slightly pretentious and the heart-warmingly sweet, but no one gave my answer. So I’m going to rectify that.

The X-Files. Stay with me now.

It’s the mid-90s and I’m 14 or 15 years old. I’ve got really long, scraggly hair, big ‘ol round glasses, and the requisite acne. I’m also one of the good kids, who reads a lot, avoids all mentions of sex and sin, is really into science, and implicitly trusts all authority figures. My sister and I are two years apart (she’s the younger one) and we’ve never really gotten along. Until.

Until one weekend my sister stayed with our grandparents because our folks were out of town (I think I was with them, and thus missed out on this experience) and came home talking about this new show she’d seen. We didn’t have cable growing up – my dad still doesn’t. Hi, Dad! – but our grandparents did. So she saw the episode “Excelsis Dei” of some FOX show called The X-Files and was hooked. And she hooked me. She hooked me good.

Our grandmother would tape the episodes for us as they aired and we’d be chomping at the bit to go visit grandma and pick up our tapes every few weeks. But in the meantime, there was the internet to keep us entertained. This was back in the heady days of the 90s personal website extravaganza, when everyone had a Geocities or Anglefire page, joke sites were abundant, and I got caught by my English teacher with a printed copy of that “Pooh Goes Apeshit” story. And so we made a website. It’s still there. Well, bits of it are. [Ok, here --- check out the “Signs You’re In X-Files Withdrawal” list that we made. “Three words: Eat. More. Chicken.” Ha ha! Remember that one, guys? Guys?]

So it isn’t just the experience of being new to the show that I would love to go through all over again, but also the sensory overload that came with being new to the internet. I didn’t just stumble onto a new and fascinating television show, I was suddenly a member of a community that wasn’t based on geographical location but instead on a shared experience. There were lots of people watching this show! Men, women, teenagers, and grown-ups. And we could communicate with them! It’s a sense of camaraderie that is taken for granted now – this kinship with people you’ve never met over an issue, event, or subject that is (in your group’s opinion) outside of the mainstream. It’s so Web 2.0. We weren’t weirdos for squealing when Mulder and Scully danced at the end of “Post-Modern Prometheus” – lots of other people did the same thing! And then some of them wrote hair-curlingly bad fan fiction about it.

That isn’t to say that the internet community experience trumps the value of the show in my mind. I most definitely do not want to write terrible PG-rated fan fiction again; but I would like to go back to the show and encounter it with an open, adolescent mind that is wholeheartedly in love with everything it sees. These days, I am — as most of us are — a tough audience to please. I expect not only good writing, but good acting, camera movement that isn’t disorienting, and sets and clothing that aren’t totally distracting. The X-Files only gets these right some of the time. The writing? Sometimes not so good, especially in the last few seasons. The whole thing with baby (super-soldier-hybrid-alien-love-child) William was pretty ridiculous. I wasn’t overly fond of Agent Reyes as a character. Mulder really was kind of a dick, wasn’t he? The Lone Gunmen spin-off was superfluous and just not very good. Scully had some really unfortunate pants suits and hair in the early seasons (tapered legs look good on no one). And the mythology is so convoluted that there’s really nothing left to do but laugh at it.

That said, there is still a lot to love. I find the Gunmen to still be likable and admirable characters even after that spin-off nonsense. Mulder’s porn habit was somehow endearing and not creepy. Baby William was pretty adorable as far as babies go. Skinner was the best boss anyone could hope for (except when he wasn’t). That basement office was pretty damn cool. The storyline with Scully’s cancer was heartbreaking and felt very real. The weekly bit-parts were consistently well-acted and well-cast. “Small Potatoes,” “Bad Blood,” and “Triangle” all had excellent writing. And the relationship between Moose and Squirrel? Someday I will stop hoping for a relationship like that one, but that day has yet to come.

This show helped me through high school in the way that D&D, Jesus, and alcohol helped other kids. The X-Files gave me a smart and independent female scientist to idolize – one of the first female television characters I can think of who was intelligent, opinionated, and methodical without being cold and bitchy (although that was the rumor ’round the FBI). It was built on science, pseudo-science, and the things we have yet to learn about our world, which I find to be endearingly optimistic. It questioned, teased, commiserated with, and respected its viewers – at least, until the last season or so. It injected teenage me with a healthy dose of cynicism, for which I will always be grateful. And to top it off, it was really fucking weird. I could write so many reviews for so many episodes just because they are really, very odd. Remember the humanoid tapeworm who lived in sewage? Or the inbred, incestuous family with the dismembered, toothless mother? Good times, all of them.

So here’s to oddity, cynicism, and paranoia. Trust no one. Deny everything. Deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate. The truth is out there, guys.

(Fight the Future screen cap from http://www.inadream-moviecaps.com/)

Tags: 90s, Television, x-files

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 5:49 pm and is filed under Sci-Fi, Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.