Initial Thoughts on "The X-Files"

            I have been for a little while working my way thru the “X-Files” on Netflix.  I did this because I remember disliking the series in my youth because of its confusing BS.  I know realize that the BS did not come until much later and was mostly concentrated in the “Mythology” of the series, the long ongoing plot of an alien conspiracy that never gave solid answers and logically should have wrapped up in season 6 but kept trucking a long time after the audience felt that it would ever really deliver.

            But, I digress.  I have been watching the series and overall really enjoy it, and I liked a few of the new episodes that were on Fox this year as part of a revival.  To that end I am going to look over some of the series and point out some of the highs and lows.  Before I dive into that though I would like to point out a broad observation that started to crystallize as I watched.

“The X-Files” Episode Categories.

            Different episodes of a show, especially a show with such a consistent mood tend to use certain standard ideas.  These help to outline and pitch stories to the producers.  Being a horror science fiction show with lots of police procedural aspects and romantic tension “The X-Files” has a lot of bleed in how it handles things.  Things start as a serial killer, but the killer uses telekinesis or is a shape shifter, is a for instance.

Watching the first couple of seasons I have noticed some broad categories.  They are not exclusive, plenty have elements of others but the focus of the story tends to be on one of these particular core elements.

Aliens… What the show is “about” in the broadest sense

            Is the government trying to kill you?  Have you seen strange lights in the sky?  Have you lost time?  Transmitters in your teeth?  Then Mulder and Scully need to talk to you.  This is also where the cyclones of BS start to swallow the show in later seasons.

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Balrog Infestation... the scientists dug too deeply and too greedily

            Are you a scientist or industrialist who wishes to explore the world for knowledge or profit?  Well get ready to be infected, eaten, or encounter that which man was not meant to know because for some damn reason there are horrible monsters living in the shadows and just beneath the skin (often literally).  Retroactively these stories make a lot of sense based on the nature of the shows aliens and how they have interacted with earth in the distant past.

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Brotherhood of Evil Mutants

            Are there a series of murders with a uniting theme and something that seems to be gross going on?  Then you are probably dealing with some horrible branch of the evolutionary tree, or the inevitable outcome of global climate change or the splitting of the atom.  While they are not always evil they are a slave to the dark instincts that exist within all of us.

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Frankenstein’s (Blank)

            Do you or someone you know wish to better the world thru science?  Get ready for that science to murder the shit out of you, me and everyone else because there is often a murderous instinct in the base code.  I don’t know why, but nobody seems to have read, “I, Robot” in this universe and refuses to program their creation with the very basic command of, “Do not harm the creator”.

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I am not saying it was magic.... But it was magic.

Ghosts?  The Afterlife?  Magic?

            Having nightmares of a past life?  Or are you seeing horrible things happen to the folks around you after a friend/loved one’s murder?  Who are you gonna call?  The FBI.  This is when things stop being about science and start going straight into the land of magic.

This is also an area in which the show starts to highlight how insane Mulder would be.  The man believes in everything.  You know, just because you believe in aliens doesn’t mean you believe in voodoo, ghosts, or werewolves right?  Thinking that there is enough evidence to believe in one thing does not mean you have faith that other seemingly equally crazy things also exist.

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How did this get here?

Just Some Asshole

            Rarely there is an instance in which there is no supernatural component.  This really should have happened much more frequently… But for some reason tracking down serial killers, the central conceit of nearly all other FBI procedural dramas is considered too boring.  I feel this is a missed opportunity as having Scully be right about something from time to time would have been good for the show, but here we are.

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This is actually a kid friendly version of the "X-Files" based on a series of books I read when I was a kid.  While it has budget issues the writing and acting are top notch and very funny.  If you want something lite to watch I recommend it.
It is also on Netflix.

Spooksville

            Are you in the middle of nowhere and follow a religion or lifestyle at odds with Midwest American values of the 90’s?  Then you are probably about to be involved in some kind of horrible conspiracy.  I guess Chris Cater grew up near a lot of gated communities that he just grew to dislike them.

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Wacky Comedy

            Numerous episodes play with expectations of the audience and use to differing effect the premise of the show to illicit a laugh at its own expense.  I tend to find these the strongest of all the episodes and they are the highlight of any season.

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"The Simpsons" Missed Opportunities

Apparently “The Simpsons”, one of the most iconic bits of American culture ever produced will finally end (maybe) after its 30^th season.  This will make it one of the longest running shows ever in the same league as “Doctor Who” and “Guiding Light”.  I feel that its end is a good thing.  While the show is iconic it did not evolve nearly as much as it should have, and I feel that one of the best episodes of the series in one that explored how the show could have allowed the characters to grow up, “Lisa’ Wedding”.

Unlike other series this one still had more stories to tell after a wedding episode.

I generally think that the show had a lot of creative people on staff and created such an expansive cast of characters that there is a host of missed opportunities they could have explored and didn’t.  They even made a whole show joking about how they did not take advantage of that stable of characters, that was “The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase”, and a make-shift could-have-been-a-pilot, “22 Short Films About Springfield” two more episodes I consider among the series’ best work.

The reason I wrote this blog is I wanted to point to what I consider the biggest missed opportunity for a spin off from “The Simpsons”: Hank Scorpio and the Globex Corporation, from “You Only Move Twice”.

My favorite single appearance character in the series, and maybe my favorite character overall.
Voiced by the great actor, Albert Brooks.

It is my favorite episode of "The Simpsons", and the fact that Hank never returned to the series is a crying shame.  A series starring this character, a comedy spy series (a concept that has existed for decades) but told from the position of a villain.

Each season could be another giant scheme in a new base of operations and the logistics and mishaps that comes with running them. Volcano Island, Ice Castle, Undersea lab, Oil Rig, ancient city like El Dorado, and a Moon Base. You could have parodies of the Avengers (the British ones), Get Smart, the Manchurian Candidate, and the Prisoner (something “The Simpsons” did with the episode, “The Computer Wore Menace Shoes”)

If you do not know what this is, relax.  Nobody who watched the show was entirely sure what it was about either.

Hell, you could have parodies of every James Bond, sure we see the classic Sean Connery version get murdered, but what about Roger Moore?  You could also have Scorpio take down rival bad guys, like Rattle Snake (instead of Cobra), Phantom (instead of SPECTRE), Micro (instead of Quantum), and Chimera (instead of Hydra).

Have him golf with 3rd world dictators who are seen as absentminded puppets of the CIA and take stories from their real life eccentricities to develop them. The show could have actually raised people's general awareness of real life evil dictators.  I know who Omar Al-Bashir is, but having him played for comedy would let the various Cletus citizens of our country know too.

Now I feel sad and let down with the world.  Not merely because this show never got to exist, but of how many could have and didn’t, of how “The Simpsons” could have been the starting point of lots of shows like “All in the Family” had been decades prior.  Sure it still had a major impact, but it could have had more, it could have evolved and grown, and the fact that it didn’t is sad, it was kept frozen in time and now 30 years after it debuted it will end and that will be it.

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Why I dislike "The Big Bang Theory" (The TV Show)

            I don't really like the show, "The Big Bang Theory".  While I will admit that the show does on occasion have some heart or development for the most part it is just a dumb farce that seems to have limitless contempt for the characters and the audience.  To illustrate this point I would like to point to an episode that for whatever reason really sticks out in my memory, "The Cornhusker Vortex" (Season 3, Episode 6; Nov 2, 2009).

            In this episode two of the characters, Howard and Raj play a game of kite battling (none of this is shown, that would be interesting and showcase something exotic and neat that their worldly jobs and education have yielded... can't have that, they are to only be the butt of jokes) somehow Howard fucks up because he gets distracted by a pretty woman and so Raj is mad at him.  Since none of the kite flying is shown I have no idea how he ruins things, but that is the "B" plot.

What do you mean we don't get to be characters rather than one-note jokes?  Not for another 3 seasons?  That's lame.

            The "A" plot though has to deal with Leonard (why doesn't he go by Leo?).  Leonard finds out that his girlfriend Penny is having a football party with her friends (friends that are never previously seen, and are never heard from again) and Leonard wants to participate, she just thinks he'll be bored because he doesn't like football (she is completely right and the mature thing to do is for Leonard to just admit that and they should just agree to have fun on their own with other friends from time to time, but he is emotionally retarded).

            For some fucking reason Leonard decides to learn football from textbooks and recites the rules of the game in exacting detail as he watches, and remains completely baffled by the game.  The clever twist of the episode is that the asperger's syndrome test subject, Sheldon knows all about Football having grown up in Texas, and teaches it to Leonard.  Ultimately Penny sees how Leonard is frustrated and does what she did originally and lets him go to spend his Sunday hanging out with Howard and Raj whose friendship is mended.

So the plot of this show is that a man who understands particle physics...
Can't understand the rules of a sport?
You know, lots of people don't care about lots of sports, its not that they can't understand the rules...
It's that they have no interest.  Like people who dislike jogging or broccoli.

            Why in god's name did they have to teach Leonard football at all?  Forget watching it, reading it, cultural osmosis, and Sheldon teaching him... All of that aside, "Madden NFL 2010" was released 6 weeks before this episode premiered.  It is a football video game.  Just buy a used copy of Madden 09' from Gamestop (there will be 10,000 copies there for $5) and have him play that for a few hours, Leo would have mastered the rules in a day.  The guy plays video games all the time there is no reason he couldn't learn to play a game for children... VIA PLAYING THE VIDEO VERSION OF THAT GAME FOR CHILDREN.

Use a video game to teach someone about a sport?  But how can football if not jock!?

            Even from a story perspective there should be some kind of contrast between the exotic sport of kite battle and football and how Howard and Raj get into a fight during it, and how Leonard forcing his way into the football party should cause a fight with Penny, but there is no real parity, no message beyond, don't watch shows you dislike... a message I had no trouble following as I have watched maybe an episode's worth of clips since then.

            I will admit that once there were more women on the show and they were treated like characters instead of objects the show improved.  And once they had Howard stop acting like a would be sex offender it improved.  And once they stopped with all the hack nerd jokes (there are only so many) the show improved.  But it is still crap.

Hero vs. Protagonist

            People do not understand the terms, "Hero" and "Protagonist".  I keep hearing people describe Walter White of "Breaking Bad" as an Anti-Hero, mostly because he does criminal activity for understandable reasons.  Yeah he is not a "hero" at all.  He is a villain.  He is a villain protagonist.

            To be fair this is a problem created by a cultural norm started with a lot of older movies.  The norm was to portray the good guys in the protagonist role, giving them clear motivations, causing people to think that motivation = heroism, and that main character = hero.

            Truth is, bad guys have motivations, they make decisions just like everyone else in the world and can be motivated by simple or complex needs and desires just like a hero can be.  Luke Skywalker is a hero, he does the right thing for the right reasons (though gains complexity as he does endanger himself and his friends for the sake of trying to bring his father back to the light side), Han Solo starts as an anti villain, does the right thing for the wrong reasons (saving the princess for reward).

            On the other end is Walter White who starts as an anti-hero, doing a bad thing for a good reason (cooking meth to pay for his care and to leave his family something after his death), then moves into full blown villain as he does things out of pride and greed overlooking extreme violence or committing violent acts to continue with his criminal lifestyle even though he doesn't need to.

            Villain protagonists are not common and so people tend to call the main character the "hero" of the story when that is more and more not the case.  TV is a cluttered medium, and in order to gain traction with an audience TV is taking steps toward more and more violent, nefarious, or just evil characters.  This has made things much less heroic.

            Look at the nominations for best series, "Breaking Bad" (show about the complex world of drug dealing), "Homeland" (terrorism), "House of Cards" (political intrigue and dirty dealings), "Mad Men" (ADVERTISEMENTS, is there a greater evil?), "Game of Thrones" (Dark fantasy with mass murder as a series highlight), "Downton Abbey" (Classism and idol rich).  Compared with 2000: "ER" (doctors saving lives), "Law and Order" (cops and lawyers fighting crime), "The Practice" (more complex, lawyers seeking justice and paychecks), "The West Wing" (ultimate romanticized political drama), and "The Sopranos" (the mob).  Things have gotten a lot darker, with only a couple shows analogous to each other and most modern shows taking after the tone of "The Sopranos" more than any of the others.

 

I have cancer, that makes it okay for me to hurt people in the pursuit of massive wealth.

Just for my own amusement to illustrate my position I am going to list a few of each type of character alignment.

Hero (right thing, right reasons, right methods):

Movies: Luke Skywalker "Star Wars", Hercules "Disney's Hercules", Batman "The Dark Knight", Atticus Finch "To Kill a Mockingbird"

TV: President Bartlett and pretty much the whole cast of "The West Wing", Doctor Green and pretty much everyone from "ER", Ned Stark "Game of Thrones", Hank Schrader "Breaking Bad"

Comic Books: Superman "Superman", Captain Marvel "SHAZAM"

Anti Hero (right thing, questionable reasons, questionable methods)

Movies: Batman "Batman", James Bond "Skyfall", General Patton "Patton"

TV: Jack Bauer "24", Walter White "Breaking Bad" (Initially), Tyrion Lannister "Game of Thrones", Stannis Baratheon "Game of Thrones"

Comic Books: Wolverine "Uncanny X-Men", Jesse Custer "Preacher"

Anti Villain (wrong thing, right reasons, questionable methods)

Movies: Tyler Durden "Fight Club", Will Munny "Unforgiven", HAL 9000 "2001: A Space Odyssey"

TV: Saul Goodman "Breaking Bad", Theon Greyjoy "Game of Thrones" (Very Close to Villain)

Comic Books: Black Adam "52", The Authority "The Authority" (Initially Anti-Hero), Magneto "Uncanny X-Men"

Villain (wrong thing, wrong reasons, wrong methods)

Movies: Joker "The Dark Knight", Hannibal Lecter "The Silence of the Lambs",

TV: Tuco Salamanca "Breaking Bad", Walter White "Breaking Bad" (Later Seasons), Ramsay Snow "Game of Thrones", Gregor Clegane "Game of Thrones"

Comic Books: Apocalypse "Uncanny X-Men"