loonyblog.: The truth is...somewhere.

September 10, 2003

The truth is...somewhere.

It seems to have arrived with little, if any fanfare, but today marks the 10th anniversary of the premiere of The X-Files. While I've seen a little more than half of the full run of the series, when I'm not watching the latest Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine box set, I've been renting The X-Files on DVD from NetFlix, starting over at the very beginning. Now that the show has run its course, I've been enjoying watching it all from the start, and it won't be long before I hit episodes I've never seen before (I just finished season three, so i've got about 1 1/2 more to go before that happens).

The X-Files is a conflicted series. On the one hand, it has a great premise, and a lot of really likable characters, many of whom have a real charm to them. But then there's the fact that this was clearly a series where the creators involved hadn't a clue what the long-term storyline was going to be when the show started airing. The X-Files method of storytelling was to raise a whole lot of questions, answer one, and then raise a whole lot more. And then when those questions are answered, to raise a ton more on top of that. This led to some seriously insane leaps of logic, which occasionally reached the level of Metal Gear Solid 2 silliness.

Watching it now, I find myself laughing occasionally when the show takes itself too seriously. Fortunately this doesn't happen too often, but some of those scenes with Cancer Man are really cornball. And Krycek's forced snarl doesn't wash with me either. But the show is still great (especially when it deals with standalone stories, and not the silly long-term one), and for a far-out sci-fi show it earned a place in mainstream culture, which was pretty incredible.

So happy birthday to The X-Files. The Sci-fi Channel is showing an anniversary marathon today, although I'll be skipping it since it has a number of episodes I've never seen and don't want to watch them out of context.