Gaming World Forums
General Category => Entertainment and Media => Topic started by: jamie on May 06, 2010, 11:03:34 am
-
I remember some brief discussion about whether the x-files is a good show or not recently, and I watched 4 episodes of it over the past few days and I think that it isn't a good show.
When it sticks to being about high level government conspiracy theories that are all about exposing the devious plans of the Higher Ups, then it's pretty cool and you can get swept up in it and all the ridiculous jargon. It's cool when it is like that, but the other episodes fucking stink. I'm talking about the monster of the week episodes. They aren't bad because they are stand alone or don't contribute to the overall plot - I mean it's a kind of lame way of telling stories a lot of the time but that isn't what makes me dislike it. I watched 2 episodes and these were the plots:
1: 'Home'
This was about the discovery of a dead newborn baby in a tiny town in the south of the USA. The people under suspicion for it's death are this family of mutants, who became the way they were through centuries of inbreeding. Anyway, from the beginning of this episode the mutants are portrayed as monsters and Total. Friggin. Freaks. They don't talk to anybody or ever leave their farm, and all of the townspeople are scared of them, including the Sheriff who has some patronizing things to say about them (he's a black guy, and he dies within 15 minutes just like every single black person on this show i have ever seen. Bogus.). It's like, right from the beginning of this episode you are being told to be scared of these weird and different freaks and it is such an obvious Boo Radley type situation that you are waiting for it to all turn around and it wasn't THEM who were the monsters...it was us. But nope - the mutants instead go on a murderous rampage and are explicitly referred to as cavemen. The episode just devolves into mulder the dickhead and scully she wrote hunting them down and killing them, while making fascinating anthropological observations every time they get a breath.
It's just so not the story to tell with this kind of set up. This is a show, or should be, about the weirdos and freaks in society. It should be about shedding some light on things and pointing out who the REAL bad guys are - the money!! it's ALWAYS the money!!!
It isn't about that at all though, it goes in the other direction and encourages the stigmatization of weirdos and freaks, which is total bullshit. In this one, we've got a story about a mentally handicapped southern family. and all those stereotypes about these kind of people? All those reasons you were told to be afraid and hate them? All true. Totally valid. They do want to rip your guts out. Feel that fear....feel it.
I hated it.
2: 'Teliko'
This one is about a guy who flies in from africa and he is a predator and he has a weird alien disease. There are african drums and flutes going wild all through this episode. Mulder makes a michael jackson joke about a dead albino black man. He also has this exchange:
Mulder: If he isn't guilty then why did he run?!
Social Worker: Maybe if you had been beaten half to death by the police just for being born, you'd have run, too.
Mulder: Bullshit. This man is hiding something and I intend to find out what it is!!
He blusters off and absolutely does find out what this scumbag is hiding - He's a killer. I'm not saying the x-files is a particularly racist show or anything - but it's guilty of all the common bullshit racism you see in tv all the time. You can say it was the nineties but frigging star trek was doing so much better than this by then.
I'm pretty disappointed in the whole thing. There's more to say but I have had alot of coffee and I have a bad attention span just now.
-
I watched a few episodes of this show when it was still being aired and it was great. Sure, tv has moved on a little from the type of show you just described but for the 90's... it was very entertaining.
Also, I'm positive that you would certainly enjoy a few episodes here and there.
I actually watched an episode a few months back when I couldnt find anything else on tv and found it rather good, if not a little goofy but fun.. It was the one about the group of vampire travellers.
I think if you were to watch this show now, you would have to expect most of the episodes to appear a little over the top and goofy.. but certainly not the worst show out there.
-
I like really obvious uses of ethnic music. The more stereotypical music the better.
-
What season are these episodes from. I remember that more around the middle up until season 7 were pretty good, but I never saw like the first 3 seasons so I cannot really say anything about those. Whatever the last seasons are, they were pretty terrible though because everyone wanted mulder back.
-
It sounds like you're upset with the show because it didn't go where you expected it to. The "they're really just misunderstood, the normal man is really the devil incarnate, and these folks are totally innocent, I mean after all when you see how WE act to them, wouldn't you want to be an inbred isolationist too?" angle is too easy. Maybe the only way they could generate "mystery" was by playing against the typical political correct exit strategy for killers and psychos?
Wait... I think I have to channel ShadowText here for a moment------
"Maybe they were just..." oh, this is painful... here it comes... "...SUBVERTING A TROPE[/b][/i]!?!?!"
Psychic friends network, ghosts of forums past division, signing off.
Anyway.
I remember a friend of mine talking about a soap opera from a few years back, and there was some transgender music star or something who was being accused/suspected of being a serial killer. Without being familiar with the show, I said "Nah, it won't be him. They can't get away with saying something like that." Instead, if I remember it turned out to be somebody's long lost (thought dead) father who was the secret head of a billion dollar corporation or something... That was about the time I suggested my friend do something about whichever peculiar compulsion it was that drove her to update EVERYONE she knew about the lives of fictional characters.
That's the problem, maybe you should watch soap operas instead of X-Files, your lack of faith in humanity will be constantly re-affirmed?
Kidding aside, I still think the first season of Millennium kills every episode (counting the movies as well) of the X-Files ever produced. The one with the father who carved angels out of wood being accused of killing his entire family would have been right up your alley. To me, the only other show of that type that came close to the bar that Millennium set was the re-make of Touching Evil with Jeffery Donovan. (Haven't had a chance to see the original yet, so it might edge in there too.)
-
This is weird, Jamie, me and my buddy decided to watch X-Files starting at Season 1 until we get bored of it. We just polished off Season 2 last night. For the most part, I really like it. Mulder's hair gives Mulder incredible detective powers and Scully is mostly furniture.
But beyond the camp value and general entertainingness of the show, there was one episode in Season 1 that REALLY stood out. Episode 12 ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751083/ ). The "guest star" gives an unbelievable performance as this mass murderer or something, and it's just overall well written and acted. But that guys performance is haunting. At least watch this episode somehow.
-
Yesterday I was actually going to ask if the x-files ever gets better again or if it stinks from seasons 2 to 9. I'm in like the middle of season 2 right now and the past few episodes have been really bad.
It's just so not the story to tell with this kind of set up. This is a show, or should be, about the weirdos and freaks in society. It should be about shedding some light on things and pointing out who the REAL bad guys are - the money!! it's ALWAYS the money!!!
It isn't about that at all though, it goes in the other direction and encourages the stigmatization of weirdos and freaks, which is total bullshit. In this one, we've got a story about a mentally handicapped southern family. and all those stereotypes about these kind of people? All those reasons you were told to be afraid and hate them? All true. Totally valid. They do want to rip your guts out. Feel that fear....feel it.
this was a problem with a couple of them. actually one episode of this season got it totally backwards. in 3, a stupid vampire episode, it turns out vampires ARE real and not people who write fanfics
Irresistible was awful. like the mutant episode you were expecting it turn around, and it really should have. you wanted this guy (they kept calling him a fetishist) to turn out to be a monster or something. I thought he was a doppelganger. but no, he's just what they call something like AN IRREDEMIABLGE EVIL man and a fetishist. mulder made a comment about "those fetishists" and idk I felt it portrayed people with harmless sexual fetishes in a bad light. oh yeah he went from cutting hair off corpses in a funeral home to murdering women and cutting off their heads and fingers. not a harmless fetish but the message is still there, people who are different are freaks and they will kill you
I checked wikipedia to see if I missed anything and it linked me to some real serial killer I ended up reading about. every time I finish reading about a particularly bad serial killer I promise myself next time I'll realize it's drawing me in and I'll avoid it, but I can't help myself. I ended up feeling awful and that's all I got out of this episode
die hand die verletzt was awful too, about witchcraft and satanism. mulder said at one point "its ok....wiccans and satanists are safe" but they turned out to be satanists or cultists who could cast real spells anyway. it was just a really stupid episode and a downer
there were some good to ok monster of the week episodes in season 1 (the one that parker mentined, the first one with tooms) but most of the ones in season 2 have been terrible. idk if I'm gonna keep watching
-
the episode Blood has william sanderson who played the h'amb guy in t&e. a recommended ep. aubrey had locke from lost
!!current list of episodes you must avoid!! in order of appearance
3
irresistible
die hand die verletzt
home
teliko
there have been several other dumb episodes along the way but they weren't awful
-
Gillian Anderson should investigate my crotch. The truth is down there. The sex files.
-
i'm not sure what all the commotion is about. i'm certainly no rap fan myself but there doesn't seem to be any DAMN rap artists ruining this pic.
enjoy the pic of some tasty [censored] and forget about the rest Freaks!
-
It should be about shedding some light on things and pointing out who the REAL bad guys are
yeah they do this later on with the mutant fly genome spliced ass face guy that rapes women in a pestecide canvased house or something like that.
Gillian Anderson should investigate my crotch. The truth is down there. The sex files.
ahahahahahahahahahaha
-
wow haha I dunno it sounds bad you sure it's not trying too hard not to be preachy and like SUBVERTING what would make you feel warm and fuzzy inside or is it seriously like 'different people suck'
and is it still better than Fringe can I still say f u j.j. abrams
also is it like totally wank material for alex jones fans or is it not like that really
-
wow haha I dunno it sounds bad you sure it's not trying too hard not to be preachy and like SUBVERTING what would make you feel warm and fuzzy inside or is it seriously like 'different people suck'
i don't think the show is self-aware enough to be doing this, i think it's all played pretty straight. there isn't any sense of WHOOPS got the rug pulled outta under you in these episodes I am complaining about, just a sense of obliviousness to the kind of nasty attitude they are promoting and the lazy exploitation of fear of the other/unknown which isn't even that scary or interesting. also there are these ridiculous scenes at the end of episodes where scully types up her case report and makes a social or psychological comment on the episodes events which isn't forthcoming from the story itself at all!
and is it still better than Fringe can I still say f u j.j. abrams
well F jj abrams forever but i don't know if it is better or worse than fringe because i have never watched it!
also is it like totally wank material for alex jones fans or is it not like that really
i really don't think the show even has any kind of political agenda it's just about spooky monsters as far as i can tell. it's just a fact of conspiracy stories that they seem anti-government elite but i think all that stuff is just incidental to the spook stories the show wants to tell.
actually when the show hits on an actually spooky idea and stays away from anything relating to REAL LIFE then it can suck you in pretty well! like the episode after the ones i was talking about was about a guy who projects his inner thoughts onto photo film and for the first 20 minutes of this episode (until things are revealed), i was pretty freaked out because the things he is projecting onto film really look scary! also it's just a scary idea of there being this realm where these things are possible and it is HERE with us right now and we can't see it but it can see us.
-
well F jj abrams forever but i don't know if it is better or worse than fringe because i have never watched it!
Make sure you don't jamie. It will make you physically sick, it is the worst show.
-
s2e20 Humbug is on subject. it's about carnies and it has the guy who played the man from another place but guess what? he dies. actually tho it's one of those monster of the week episodes that isn't terrible
speaking of michael j. anderson has anyone seen carnival? it's HBO so it's probably total effen garbage but I was considering watching it a few months back.
-
I heard carnival was good but I can't remember who told me that so take it with a grain of salt
its got some guy in it that has tattoos that tell stories or something right?
-
I have no idea. the only character I know is mj anderson's
2x22 emasculata was kind of good too. I guess that's what I should expect from the show, a series of stinkers with some good stuff miixed in. this one was sort of about a coverup of a disease outbreak and featured a young Hank Schrader this time around (breaking bad is good again btw if you need something to watch)
it was unexpectedly much more enjoyable than tonight's lost. not that lost is a good show at all, but this episode (which was supposed to be a BIG EP (several students in my last class were begging the professor to cut short his final presentation so they could go home and see it)) was seriously on the level of shit like Merlin and other fantasy tv only with slightly better acting and directing. and with an x-files title like emasculata
-
breaking bad is good again btw if you need something to watch
I just started watching this earlier this week. I am nearly finished season 1. So it gets a bit crappy in season 2 and then improves in season 3 again? Well I think it's been PRETTY good so far...the last couple of episodes I have seen have been better than the first 3 or 4. I'll talk about it soon.
-
I liked season 1 a lot besides maybe a couple of the middle episodes. there are some good episodes in season 2, but there are also a lot of sort of bad ones with some kind of stupid character interactions and nothing interesting going on
then in the beginning of season three there's some more personal stuff with walt, which gets a little tiring. but it's been good again for the past few episodes
btw s1e7's title is from fargo. maybe s1e4's is from the x-files....