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X-Files Episode Elimination Game

mstaken

By mstaken
in The X-Files [V]

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queequeg

queequeg

Season 4:

Bettie the Talking Tattoo through Ed Jerse (Never Again)

Gerry Schnauz (Unruhe)

John Lee Roche (Paper Hearts)

 

Season 5:

The AI (Kill Switch)

Linda Bowman (Kitsunegari)

The killer Chinga doll (Chinga)

 

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queequeg
queequeg
smrou
smrou

I don't remember if I participated in that particular ++/-- game but what I remember most about those games is that I would get way too emotionally invested, so I stopped playing them pretty quickly.

joelene
joelene

I had a similar reaction to Sanguinarium, queequeg. It's gross and silly! Why doesn't everyone embrace that?! It's the good-bad 80's horror fan in me, probably. I just finished watching Agua Mala lik

mauve

mauve

It's really interesting to see the inequality of the different seasons in terms of monsters. This game really brings it out. Season 4 had some really strong villains, but I couldn't care less about the vast majority of the villains from season 5. The same thing happened for me with season 2 and 3.

 

Season 4

Bettie the Talking Tattoo through Ed Jerse (Never Again)

Gerry Schnauz (Unruhe)

Leonard Betts (Leonard Betts)

 

Season 5

The AI (Kill Switch)

Greg Pincus (Folie a Deux)

Linda Bowman (Kitsunegari)

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queequeg

queequeg

I feel the same way about season five.  There is only one villain I'd classify as interesting, so my top three consists of two forgettable entities who get there by default. 

 

I agree with this that Season 4 has the better villains, and yet I love Season 5.   

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Taryn74

Taryn74

The Peacock family (Home)
Bettie the Talking Tattoo through Ed Jerse (Never Again)
Leonard Betts (Leonard Betts)

Linda Bowman (Kitsunegari) -- such a letdown as a followup to Modell
The killer Chinga doll (Chinga) -- easily the least interesting part of the whole ep
The “Mothman” creature (Detour) -- interesting idea for a monster, but way underdeveloped

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mauve

mauve

Overall, I love season 5 as well, queequeg. It's just that the monsters tend to be underwhelming. It just goes to prove that you can have an excellent episode in spite of a boring villain if the plot, structure and dialogues of the episode are good.

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Bastet

Bastet

Bettie the talking tattoo through Ed Jerse and the Peacock family both got five votes, and even with weighted voting they are tied.  Gerry Schnauz and John Lee Roche both got four votes, but with weighted voting it's Gerry who goes by the tiniest margin.
 
The killer doll and Linda Bowman got six votes each, and with weighted voting they're out in that order.  Following them with four votes is the AI.
 
So here we are with our top three for each season.  Vote for your pick as most-interesting villain of the week.
 
Season Four

John Lee Roche (Paper Hearts)
Leonard Betts (Leonard Betts)
Eddie Van Blundht (Small Potatoes)


Season Five

The “Mothman” creature (Detour)
Ronnie Strickland (Bad Blood)
Greg Pincus (Folie a Deux)

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joelene

joelene

(edited)

Choosing between Leonard and Eddie is really hard. But I'm gonna go with Leonard Betts for the twisted and the heartbreak.

I love Ronnie but for me the edge goes to the Mothman creature and Pinkus for the cool and weird. I'm giving it to Greg Pinkus the big man-bug!

Edited by joelene
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smrou

smrou

(edited)

Choosing between Leonard Betts and Eddie van Blundht feels like when we were doing best episodes and I had to choose between Memento Mori and Small Potatoes.  It's similar in that, like those two episodes, these are two really really excellent villains that are completely different in tone.  Leonard's so tormented and complicated and Eddie's kind of pathetic but endlessly entertaining (while...also being a rapist).  But I think I'm going to go with what I did last time, and let the significance of one push it over the edge.  Leonard's comment to Scully was so significant and so memorable (both in its importance and in the way it was delivered, because you really do believe that he is sorry) that I have to pick him.

Leonard Betts

 

For season five I actually don't think any of those villains are all that great as villains, so I'm picking the most entertaining, if only for the "You are in big trouble," bit.

Screenshot185.jpg

Edited by smrou
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Taryn74

Taryn74

S3:  Roche.  He was terrifying, and cool as a cucumber, and totally believable as a f#cked-in-the-head child molester.

 

S4:  Ronnie Strickland.  Not just because of the awesomeness of Bad Blood, but because he really was a vampire that had just seen one too many Bela Lugosi movies.

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Bastet

Bastet

My number one for each season is easy:

 

Eddie Van Blundht

Ronnie Strickland

 

I watch those episodes over and over, and the fact those characters are so thoroughly entertaining is a significant factor in that. 

 

Leonard is probably my second choice for season four and the Mothman my number two for season five (a loooong way down from Ronnie), but my number threes aren't even on the list.  For season four, it's either Bettie the talking tattoo or Gerry Schnauz.  I don't even remember Greg Pincus, so he's definitely not it for season five; I'd put the AI in that slot.

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janestclair

janestclair

I have to go with Roche, just for the fact that he fucked with Mulder's head.  He was totally believable as a creep/child killer.  Love Eddie, but completely differently.  Somehow, Small Potatoes is such a good episode I kind of forget the whole 'he's a rapist' thing.  That's why I have to pick Roche.  

 

Ronnie Strickland because he was a vampire who was a pizza delivery man for AB pizza.  Perfection.

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mauve

mauve

I'm vacillating between John Lee Roche and Eddie Van Blundht, both extremely entertaining in their own way. I'm going to go with Roche for his intensity, psychopathy and believability. I find those kinds of villains all the more terrifying for their realism.

My personal number three for season 4 would have been The Peacock family. They are just so disturbing and memorable.

 

Ronnie Strickland is my favorite from season 5. My number two is the Mothman, though I find it more interesting in idea than in execution.

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Bastet

Bastet

Season four was close, but John Lee Roche takes it by one vote.  Tied for second place, with two votes each, are Leonard Betts and Eddie Van Blundht.

 

Season five, on the other hand, was a runaway.  With all but one of the votes cast, Ronnie Strickland comes out on top.  The one vote for Greg Pincus puts him in second, and the Mothman is relegated to third.

 

So, here we have the most-interesting villains of the week for seasons four and five:

 

Season Four
 
1. John Lee Roche (Paper Hearts)
2. Leonard Betts (Leonard Betts)
    Eddie Van Blundht (Small Potatoes)
4. Gerry Schnauz (Unruhe)
5. Bettie the Talking Tattoo through Ed Jerse (Never Again)
    The Peacock family (Home)
7. Jason Nichols (Synchrony)
8. Nurse Innes (Elegy)
9. Dr. Charles Goldstein (Demons)
10. Dr. Jack Franklyn (Sanguinarium)
11. Golem (Kaddish)
12. Nathaniel Teager (Unrequited)
13. The Buente brothers/El Chupacabra (El Mundo Gira)
14. Samuel Aboah (Teliko)
15. Vernon Ephesian (The Field Where I Died)
 
Season Five

1. Ronnie Strickland (Bad Blood)
2. Greg Pincus (Folie a Deux)
3. The “Mothman” creature (Detour)

4. The AI (Kill Switch)
5. Linda Bowman (Kitsunegari)
6. The killer Chinga doll (Chinga)
7. Dr. Pollidori (Post-Modern Prometheus)
8. Aaron Starkey (All Souls)
9. Charles Wesley Gotts (Mind’s Eye)
10. The tree monster through Karin Matthews (Schizogeny)

 

As usual, the list for seasons six and seven will be up later today for clarification and revisions before that game commences tomorrow (I had to look up a lot of them, so reliance on other people's summaries may have led to misunderstanding.) 

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Bastet

Bastet

Okay, her is what I came up with for seasons six and seven.  Please take a careful look, because I had to rely heavily on other people's summaries.  (And even from reading about it, I still don't know what the hell happened in Fight Club and there's no way I'm watching that piece of crap to find out.)

 

Antenna emitting ELF waves (Drive)

Morris Fletcher (Dreamland)

Maurice and Lyda (How the Ghosts Stole Christmas)

Wayne Weinsider (Terms of Endearment)

Holman Hardt (The Rain King)

Alfred Fellig (Tithonus)

Sea monster (Agua Mala)

Bernard Oates (Monday)

Gene Gogolak and his “garbage monster” tulpa (Arcadia)

Dr. Ian Detweiler (Alpha)

Pinker Rawls (Trevor)

Phillip Padgett/Ken Naciamento (Milagro)

Timothy Landau (Three of a Kind)

Underground fungus (Field Trip)

 

 

Rob Roberts (Hungry)

The Millennium Group (Millennium)

Max Harden (Rush)

Henry Weems’ good luck (The Goldberg Variation)

Donnie Pfaster (Orison)

Herman/Albert Pinchbeck and Billy LaBonge (The Amazing Maleeni)

Reverend Mackey (Signs and Wonders)

Full moon fear monster (X-Cops)

Maitreya (First Person Shooter)

Oral Peattie (Theef)

Ellen Adderly (Chimera)

Tobacco executives using super beetles (Brand X)

Doppelgangers (Fight Club)

Jenn (Je Souhaite)

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smrou

smrou

Season six is really a season of light villains, huh?  There's not much in the way of really creepy or scary.  But then it's generally considered a light season, so that makes sense.  In some cases (and in season 7, too) it's almost hard to consider the character a villain at all.  Like Holman?  Yeah, he was making the bad stuff happen, but still...  And same for Jenn in "Je Souhaite".  And Henry Weems (although I guess we're saying it's the luck that's the villain and not actually him, but even so it kind of seems like a villainless episode).

 

Anyway, I'll get to the voting.  Starting with episodes/villains that I hardly remember.  In the next round I'll probably go with things/people I don't really consider villainous enough to rank high.

 

Sea monster (Agua Mala)

Dr. Ian Detweiler (Alpha)

Pinker Rawls (Trevor)

 

 

Doppelgangers (Fight Club)

Ellen Adderly (Chimera)

Tobacco executives using super beetles (Brand X)

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joelene

joelene

(edited)

In some cases (and in season 7, too) it's almost hard to consider the character a villain at all. Like Holman?

And Alfred Fennig, who isn't villainous at all. He didn't cause any deaths or had any malicious intents. He was pretty much just a bystander taking pictures, waiting for Death. And then he made Scully immortal! I'm kind of questioning including him, but I'm not sure who else would be the villain of the episode. Death? Or am I forgetting something he did?

Edited by joelene
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Bastet

Bastet

(edited)

He killed people many moons ago under one of his other names, though, back when that was his strategy.  Plus there is the fact he knows people are going to die and attempts to use that to his own advantage. 

 

The sympathetic villains tend to be more interesting to me, so I'm curious to see how they rank.

Edited by Bastet
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Bastet

Bastet

So, does the list look accurate?  Specifically, is dopplegangers the right description for Fight Club, or was it a specific person (or persons) -- there's that guy who's the father of the two women that trouble followed wherever they went, but I couldn't figure out if any or all of the three of them were instigating (intentionally or not) all the action or if it was just the fact that dopplegangers existed.

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janestclair

janestclair

The villain in Fight Club is whoever cast Kathy Griffin.  Not that the episode would've been any better with someone else, but her presence (twice!) just makes it that much worse.  Which is my way of saying I have no idea who the actual villain is either. 

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Bastet

Bastet

The villain in Fight Club is whoever cast Kathy Griffin.

 

Testify! 

 

Okay, we'll stick with a general "dopplegangers" unless someone with a great memory - or a great affection for the episode - comes along with a correction.  I'll keep checking to see if there are any suggested revisions to list, and will open up voting in the morning.

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Bastet

Bastet

(edited)

And we're off, with the most-interesting villains of the week for seasons six and seven.

 

Season Six

 

Antenna emitting ELF waves (Drive)
Morris Fletcher (Dreamland)
Maurice and Lyda (How the Ghosts Stole Christmas)
Wayne Weinsider (Terms of Endearment)
Holman Hardt (The Rain King)
Alfred Fellig (Tithonus)
Sea monster (Agua Mala)
Bernard Oates (Monday)
Gene Gogolak and his “garbage monster” tulpa (Arcadia)
Dr. Ian Detweiler (Alpha)
Pinker Rawls (Trevor)
Phillip Padgett/Ken Naciamento (Milagro)
Timothy Landau (Three of a Kind)
Underground fungus (Field Trip)

 

Season Seven

 

Rob Roberts (Hungry)
The Millennium Group (Millennium)
Max Harden (Rush)

Henry Weems’ good luck (The Goldberg Variation)
Donnie Pfaster (Orison)
Herman/Albert Pinchbeck and Billy LaBonge (The Amazing Maleeni)
Reverend Mackey (Signs and Wonders)
Full moon fear monster (X-Cops)
Maitreya (First Person Shooter)
Oral Peattie (Theef)
Ellen Adderly (Chimera)
Tobacco executives using super beetles (Brand X)
Doppelgangers (Fight Club)
Jenn (Je Souhaite)

 

Since there are fourteen for each season, we'll vote for two this round in order to get down to 12 and easily vote off in groups of three from then on.

Edited by Bastet
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Bastet

Bastet

(edited)

I'll start with the characters who were so uninteresting I forgot them.

 

Dr. Ian Detweiler

Pinker Rawls

 

Maitreya (her, I wish I could forget)

Oral Peattie

Edited by Bastet
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Bastet

Bastet

(edited)

With five votes, Dr. Ian Detweiler is out first.  Pinker Rawls and the sea monster got two votes each, but one of those for the sea monster was a first place vote so it's out second.

 

With four votes, Maitreya is sent into the ether.  Sexist stereotypes = not interesting.  With three votes, the dopplegangers follow her.

 

Season Six
 

Antenna emitting ELF waves (Drive)
Morris Fletcher (Dreamland)
Maurice and Lyda (How the Ghosts Stole Christmas)
Wayne Weinsider (Terms of Endearment)
Holman Hardt (The Rain King)
Alfred Fellig (Tithonus)
Bernard Oates (Monday)
Gene Gogolak and his “garbage monster” tulpa (Arcadia)
Pinker Rawls (Trevor)
Phillip Padgett/Ken Naciamento (Milagro)
Timothy Landau (Three of a Kind)
Underground fungus (Field Trip)

 

Season Seven

 

Rob Roberts (Hungry)
The Millennium Group (Millennium)
Max Harden (Rush)
Henry Weems’ good luck (The Goldberg Variation)
Donnie Pfaster (Orison)
Herman/Albert Pinchbeck and Billy LaBonge (The Amazing Maleeni)
Reverend Mackey (Signs and Wonders)
Full moon fear monster (X-Cops)
Oral Peattie (Theef)
Ellen Adderly (Chimera)
Tobacco executives using super beetles (Brand X)
Jenn (Je Souhaite)

 

Vote for three, in order.

Edited by Bastet
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Taryn74

Taryn74

Timothy Landau (Three of a Kind)

Wayne Weinsider (Terms of Endearment)

Phillip Padgett/Ken Naciamento (Milagro)

 

Herman/Albert Pinchbeck and Billy LaBonge (The Amazing Maleeni)
Reverend Mackey (Signs and Wonders)

Tobacco executives using super beetles (Brand X)

 

poppin corn.  Anyone else say that when they make microwave popcorn? Just me?

 

 

HA!  Don't always say it out loud, but I do always at least think it.  Every time.  It's right up there with "What's 'taters', Precious?" for me.

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queequeg

queequeg

Season 6:

Pinker Rawls (Trevor) -  zzzzzz.....

Timothy Landau (Three of a Kind) - Sorry, if the only thing I can remember about this episode is how cute drugged Scully is, you're gone

Wayne Weinsider (Terms of Endearment)  - I just can't with this guy, ew.  Th

 

Season 7:

Ellen Adderly (Chimera) - I don't remember much about this story, butremember Scully's "Mulder when you find me dead, my dessicated corpse propped up staring lifelessly through the telescope at drunken frat boys peeing and vomiting into the gutter, just know that my last thoughts were of you... and how I'd like to kill you." and xfiles-chimera-mulder-widely-understood.

Tobacco executives using super beetles (Brand X) - zzzzzzzz

Reverend Mackey (Signs and Wonders)

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Bastet

Bastet

With five votes, Timothy Landau (masquerading as "Timmy the Geek") is out first.  Pinker Rawls is out next with four votes, and Phillip Padgett/Ken Naciamento follow with three.
 
With five votes, Reverend Mackey bites the dust first, followed by the tobacco executives with four votes.  But there are two villains with equal votes (two) and equal weight, so we have a tie: Oral Peattie and Ellen Adderly.
 
Season Six
 
Antenna emitting ELF waves (Drive)
Morris Fletcher (Dreamland)
Maurice and Lyda (How the Ghosts Stole Christmas)
Wayne Weinsider (Terms of Endearment)
Holman Hardt (The Rain King)
Alfred Fellig (Tithonus)
Bernard Oates (Monday)
Gene Gogolak and his “garbage monster” tulpa (Arcadia)
Underground fungus (Field Trip)
 
 
Season Seven
 
 
Rob Roberts (Hungry)
The Millennium Group (Millennium)
Max Harden (Rush)
Henry Weems’ good luck (The Goldberg Variation)
Donnie Pfaster (Orison)
Herman/Albert Pinchbeck and Billy LaBonge (The Amazing Maleeni)
Full moon fear monster (X-Cops)
Jenn (Je Souhaite)
 
Vote for three from season six, but only two from season seven.

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queequeg

queequeg

Season 6:

Wayne Weinsider (Terms of Endearment)

Gene Gogolak and his “garbage monster” tulpa (Arcadia) - my only interest in this episode is watching Mulder and Scully play house  :)

Antenna emitting ELF waves (Drive)

 

Season 7:

Herman/Albert Pinchbeck and Billy LaBonge (The Amazing Maleeni)

The Millennium Group (Millennium)

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Bastet

Bastet

I am as bored by the season seven villains as I am by their season five counterparts.  Even Donnie Pfaster is mundane this time around.

 

Antenna emitting ELF waves

Wayne Weinsider

Gogolak/garbage monster

 

The Millennium Group

Rob Roberts

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mauve

mauve

(edited)

Wayne Weinsider (Terms of Endearment)

Antenna emitting ELF waves (Drive)

Underground fungus (Field Trip)

 

Rob Roberts (Hungry)

The Millennium Group (Millennium)

Edited by mauve
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Taryn74

Taryn74

Season 6:

Wayne Weinsider (Terms of Endearment)

Gene Gogolak and his “garbage monster” tulpa (Arcadia) - my only interest in this episode is watching Mulder and Scully play house  :)

Antenna emitting ELF waves (Drive)

 

 

Ditto!

 

Herman/Albert Pinchbeck and Billy LaBonge (The Amazing Maleeni)

Donnie Pfaster (Orison) -- because I hated that Orison was such a letdown compared to Irresistible

 

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