Misunderstanding the X-Files, and the 201 Day Countdown

The new trailer for the 6 new six-episode X-Files limited event dropped recently and encourages you, in the days leading up to the new material to catch up on all 201 episodes of the iconic Fox series. But, that kind of encouragement totally misses the point. That is the worst way to watch The X-Files.

A statement like that can fly in the face of contemporary binge watching culture. Now, as a general principle I have no objection to binge watching. I binge watch tons of stuff. But the suggestion here is not oriented around you simply watching a lot of The X-Files very quickly, it is aimed at you refreshing your memory for the mythology of the series. You know what I'm talking about: Smoking Man, Black Oil, Faceless Men, Samantha Mulder, a vast and intricate conspiracy, etc etc ad nauseum. Of course you'd need to catch up on all of that stuff, there was so much of it, it was so complicated, how could you possibly go in without it? The reason I said that this is the worst way to watch The X-Files is because this complex structure was also the worst possible way to make The X-Files.

This was a series that was at its best when it was the most episodic. It gave us the cultural vocabulary of "monster of the week" for a good reason. Of course it wasn't always a monster, sometimes it was Bryan Cranston's head threatening to explode if he didn't drive fast and in a generally westerly direction. Sometimes it was the fat catcher from The Sandlot as a vampire pizza boy (that was a good one). Once it was a Navajo skinwalker. Those were the good ones.

When the show was dealing with its serialized it was also its worst chock full of nonsense (narrative nonsense, nothing in the show could be called sensical), and wheezing. By the end it was almost impossible to care. That this stuff is called the mythology of the show is an insult to myth. Because it doesn't matter if Dionysus was twice-born because his mother was fried by Zeus, or if he was twice-born because Hera induced the Titans to tear him to pieces. It just doesn't matter all that much. Just like it doesn't matter if Eros is the son of Aphrodite, or the oldest of the Gods. Myth is not serialized in that way, and the real mythology of The X-Files has to do with the true believer and the skeptic walking side by side at the boundary of the rational world, where magic and shadow have power and sway. If you want to rewatch all 201 episodes, by all means do. it is one of the best and most important shows of (most of) our lifetimes. But don't do it to remind yourself about symbiotes and vaccines. Do it because the world of The X-Files is a world where the emotions of a woman named Sheila Fontaine can control the weather, where an Irish pyrokinetic hunts down English politicians, where a wealthy Southern businessman hunts down those who bear the stigmata. And that's a pretty cool world to visit.