Ah, X-Files, I Loved You So
Mulder and Scully. Oh, how I loved you.
A rare moment of resolved sexual tension (RST).
Was anyone else out there super-pumped about this new X-Files miniseries? For me it brought up very fond memories, not only of the characters, but of actual real life. Back when I was in my twenties and all my friends were single and there was no DVR-ing, and these things came together with weekly Sunday night suppers and X-Files watching at my house. (Okay, my roommate’s house.) We’d all sit around the TV and squeal every time Mulder put his hand on Scully’s back or leaned in close or took her hand–every time Mulder showed his bare arms or wore a gray T-shirt. Ah, Mulder in a gray T-shirt. (Did I say I was in my twenties? Could I convince you that instead I was in middle school?) We would scream at terrible lines and techno-babble mumbo jumbo and we would poke holes in the show’s ridiculous mythology, and we would in general get far too invested in make-believe people. And then there would be the after-episode rehash, where we sometimes replayed scenes we liked or where we complained about the ways Chris Carter was torturing us or theorized about what might happen next week.
I am not embarrassed to say I was utterly obsessed–this was the first show where I discovered the existence of fan fiction, which had very relevant terms like “shippers” (pro-relationshippers, of course, which was not in the common lexicon back then and had definitely not become a verb) and “UST” (unresolved sexual tension.) But as I look back on the show, I miss those Sunday nights more than the show itself. I can’t think of the last time I watched a show with a half dozen people around, listening to every line and then sitting around for a post-show analysis. (Okay, family, there were those Buffy episodes at Christmas time, but I mean a show airing in real time. Where waiting a whole week until the next episode was part of the pleasure and the fury.)
These new X-Files episodes have brought that back that sense a bit–thanks, all you friends from those Sundays nights who have texted and e-mailed with me in all of our shared frustrations and bitterness over what we watched this past Sunday and Monday night. At least we’re frustrated together.
Inserting length diatribe about miniseries….I mean, come one–we wait for over a decade for these people to get together, which happens in one truly terrible movie where Scully learns to perform brain surgery from the Internet, and the ONLY good thing about that movie was Scully and Mulder in bed together and then–AND THEN–we wait years longer and when we see them again, you’ve broken them up?! And also, as always, the mythology is nonsensical. So now there are no bad aliens or warring factions, and in fact a group of elites is controlling everything from fast food to global warming to wars, assisted by stolen alien technology? And everyone talks about this with a straight face? Where is the playfulness and sheer weirdness? Where is the whimsy? I want whimsy. If you’re going to string together this stupid theory of elites using McDonalds in the name of world domination, give me some friggin’ whimsy with it!
That’s all. But it would be more fun to rant in my roommate’s old basement, everyone talking over each other, curled up on the sofas, drowning our sorrows in bread pudding, hoping the next episode will treat us more kindly next week.