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I thought the first episode was as big a stinker as advertised. If I had no preexisting affection for the show - and thus an understanding that the original series produced it's share of stinkers, particulary in latter season mythology episodes - I probably wouldn't bother watching another one.

Joel McHale was spectactularly miscast.

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Yeah, when I keep seeing all Duchovny's wooden acting, all I can think is they must have never watched The X-Files. Or Californication. Or anything he's ever been in. Wooden, dull affect is kind of this thing.

 

I thought Duchovny was more wooden than usual, but, yeah, he wasn't much different than usual.  Just moreso.  Considering they made his character a morose shut-in suffering from diagnosed depression, wooden and emotionless may be a deliberate choice.

 

Honestly, whenever Duchovny is on my tv, I think of the line from Futurama that referred to Duchovny as one of the greatest acting robots of our time, lol.

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I really liked the show, but Mulder and Scully are either crazy people or ineffective.  I'd find this more interesting if they've ever accomplished something, but the entire premise of the show is that everything they thought they knew was a lie.  So we are watching two people who spent their entire careers trying to uncover a truth, only to realize after retirement that they didn't really uncover anything.  Oh, and some conservative conspiracy nut was able to uncover more than them without the advantages that come with being a FBI agent.  With that said, I'm going to watch every single episode, mostly because I love the world they built and I want to spend more time there.  I'm probably in the minority, but I think I'd like it more if Mulder and Scully found out that another team of agents were assigned to the X-files and decided to show them the ropes.  Then the new team would go on and try to uncover whatever truth that they're obsessed with.

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Mulder is crazy. That's established. Scully gets sucked into his vortex of crazy. They also were, technically, ineffective due to rarely being able to successfully close out a case with any kind of conclusive evidence. So, that kind of seems in line with the original series.

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I'm a huge fan of the show and was pretty meh when they announced the return as I thought it had more than jumped the shark in the last few seasons.  Regardless of that I'll be watching the whole thing, though I'm not going to expect much.  This episode was just kind of there.  Mulder going from thinking teabagger Alex Jones guy was full of shit to hanging on his every word in the span of a few minutes was too hard to buy.  Retconning the entire mythology to have the illuminati or whomever being behind all the abductions and other conspiracy shit in the original series is also straining credulity, even for a show like this where logic is not all that strictly adhered to.

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The retcon makes sense to me, especially after watching the Jose Chung episode. That's where they discuss humans hoaxing ufo abductions. This way, we have the human faction being the big bad (although their final endgame seems poorly explained at this point) and there is the very real possibility of the actual aliens being in and amongst things as well. 

 

All the original cast looked and acted good to me. Liked the Sveta character, doubt that's the last we see of her, not sure yet on Malley. 

 

Really looking forward to the MOTW episodes now.

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Was it a ruse? I have to rewatch the ep because they had so many monologues filled with backstory that flew by but I recall Mulder mentioning 2012 as when "it all started" - "all" in this case being the Illuminati putting their end game plan into motion. And that end game was, at least potentially, a fake alien invasion designed to cover up their taking over the world.

 

Like I said, Carter bent over backwards to make sure all the confusing mythos stuff from the original series jibed with this new mythology he was setting forth. This episode would've slid in perfectly after Season 2 or 3 since it drew on many of the ideas they established early - before Carter had to pad things out keep the show going and they veered into nonsensical directions like the Black Oil and so forth (which I take is the stuff Carter is trying to explain away by having Mulder say "it was all lies misdirection to keep me occupied while the real conspiracy was moving forward").

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Didn't they already take the show in that direction in season 6?  I recall Mulder getting brought in by a turncoat who revealed the whole shebang was just a government conspiracy faking alien invasions, including Scully's abduction.  Mulder was also able to get an implant chip that put her cancer into remission.

 

Then later on Smoking Man comes along and says, "yeah all that was BS.  The aliens and everything are real."

 

That's just what I recall from when I was watching the show before I started tuning out.  

 

Then how do you explain Brian Thompson who is like an alien hitman?  And the faceless aliens?

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I'm just going by what they gave us in the first ep, could be misdirection.

 

The narrative seemed to be, "aliens came, the government killed them and appropriated their technology and biology".

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Like I said, evidently the alien hitman, Black Oil, alien bees, faceless aliens... All that latter day mythos stuff was evidently explained away by Mulder last night when he said "They [the conspiracy] gave me a bunch of fake alien shit to chase after in order to distract me from the real conspiracy."

 

It's a giant retcon in order to streamline the mythos. Like I said, it seems like Carter is going back to the story he wanted to tell S1-3 but had to keep padding with extra layers in the post movie seasons in order to keep the show going without answering anything.

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Like I said, evidently the alien hitman, Black Oil, alien bees, faceless aliens... All that latter day mythos stuff was evidently explained away by Mulder last night when he said "They [the conspiracy] gave me a bunch of fake alien shit to chase after in order to distract me from the real conspiracy."

 

It's a giant retcon in order to streamline the mythos. Like I said, it seems like Carter is going back to the story he wanted to tell S1-3 but had to keep padding with extra layers in the post movie seasons in order to keep the show going without answering anything.

 

I get what they're trying to do by going that route, but there was just sooo much shit going over so many years that I can't buy that it was -all- just a smokescreen by the super secret government group.  It's like the villain from Spectre's plot to an nth degree.

 

Tonight's episode was considerably better, a callback to the MOTW episodes from earlier seasons and a little of the mythology added in without it going overboard.

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Didn't they already take the show in that direction in season 6?  I recall Mulder getting brought in by a turncoat who revealed the whole shebang was just a government conspiracy faking alien invasions, including Scully's abduction.  Mulder was also able to get an implant chip that put her cancer into remission.

 

Then later on Smoking Man comes along and says, "yeah all that was BS.  The aliens and everything are real."

 

That's just what I recall from when I was watching the show before I started tuning out.  

 

Then how do you explain Brian Thompson who is like an alien hitman?  And the faceless aliens?

Yes. I believe that happened twice, where the entire mythology was revealed to be a lie, then not a lie, then a different lie, but maybe all true. It's impossible to figure it all out. I'm sure Chris Carter is just as confused by it, which is why he basically just reset it. 

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Didn't they already take the show in that direction in season 6?  I recall Mulder getting brought in by a turncoat who revealed the whole shebang was just a government conspiracy faking alien invasions, including Scully's abduction.  Mulder was also able to get an implant chip that put her cancer into remission.

 

Then later on Smoking Man comes along and says, "yeah all that was BS.  The aliens and everything are real."

 

That's just what I recall from when I was watching the show before I started tuning out.  

 

Then how do you explain Brian Thompson who is like an alien hitman?  And the faceless aliens?

Yes. I believe that happened twice, where the entire mythology was revealed to be a lie, then not a lie, then a different lie, but maybe all true. It's impossible to figure it all out. I'm sure Chris Carter is just as confused by it, which is why he basically just reset it. 

 

 

...and bring it into the modern day where a number of things he mentioned came true.  By retconning everything he can give it a real world feel and hit his target audience of people who actually believe everything, the MOTW group, and those who want a mystery.

 

The black goo and others could get explained away by the super secret group actually doing different tests on humans like last night.  Then you have Mulder mention Tunguskee and Snowden which puts a nice bow on everything.

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I gave in and downloaded the pilot last night as I've not heard if anywhere in the UK is showing it. Bloody hell, talk about a frantic pace, the whole episode was a mile a minute and I wish they'd just done an extended opening episode so it had had time to breathe. Totally rolled my eyes at Mulder going balls deep on the new conspiracy after one woman speaking out, if I was him I'd think that that was a distraction from the real conspiracy. But yeah, the retcon of conspiracy away from super soldiers and faceless aliens setting everyone on fire is definitely a good thing and rewinds to the way the mythos seemed to be going in season 4/5

 

It was okay I guess, but yeah talk about cramming. Is an episode a night on this week? I thought it'd be weekly

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