Season 6: Humongous Fungus Among Us

[eleanorofaquitaine]

So Milagro.

I feel very ambivalent about that episode.  On the one hand, I like the meta commentary of writers losing control of their characters (and of writers having to rip their hearts out of their chest as a way of exercising their creativity), and what the episode said about how CC feels about the show and Mulder and Scully. (I also like him metaphorically throwing up his hands and being like, "fine. Mulder and Scully are in love. You deal with it.")

And I think it is interesting that the focus is on losing control of Scully as a character, not Mulder, because it says something about the very real challenges of writing a well-rounded female character, especially at that time in television history.  On the other hand, that's why it is so curious to me that it falls into these tropes about Scully's physical beauty and her fear of being seen as weak - I can't tell if CC is mocking those kinds of stereotypes about the way male writers look at female characters or justifying them.

And that's ultimately my biggest problem with the episode. I mean, the whole notion of Scully being fascinated with that creepy guy is so much out of a male writer's fantasy, that it is difficult for me to get past it.  And I mean, I know, we're not sure if Scully is being controlled by Padgett or not, but good Lord, the idea that she wouldn't have left his apartment before Mulder bursts in just drives me crazy, as a woman. He's a creep, and Scully knows creep.  It just feels icky that she is seemingly fascinated with a guy who is clearly an obsessive stalker.  

Still, it is an interesting episode with interesting ideas, and I always like that.

Edited May 10, 2016 by eleanorofaquitaine

[baileythedog]

On 5/9/2016 at 10:55 AM, eleanorofaquitaine said:

Anyway, give me a memorable failure of an episode than a boring one. Though, Alpha isn't so much boring as it is ENTIRELY nonsensical, and everyone in it awful - including Mulder and Scully.  I mean, DD and GA do their best but both characters are pretty unlikeable in this one, and I rarely say that about them.  Mulder comes off as totally clueless, without the depth of empathy he usually displays, and Scully comes off as rigid and just mean, without the sense of groundedness or discovery that she usually displays. Just no good.

On the whole, I love S6 but "Alpha" is certainly one of the worst episodes, not only of the season but of the series. And no, it makes absolutely zero sense.  I recall reading that it was a Jeffrey Bell script that was hastily thrown together at the very last minute and it definitely shows. 

Aside from the fact that the case makes no sense, you have crazy dog lady the one replacing Mulder's "I Want To Believe" poster. Why, show, why?  Why should this non-sensical and totally insignificant character be the one to partially restore Mulder's natural place in the world and in his office? 

[eleanorofaquitaine]

Finished Season 6. Loved The Unnatural all over again. Love the baseball, love the theme of racial reconciliation, love Jesse L. Martin and M. Emmet Walsh, love the corny sincerity, love the Mulder/Scully scenes, especially the last of it, love all of it.  I love it more than I did in 1999. And Mulder's lines about the last problems being his do not bother me.  In terms of timeline, we know that at some point around this time, Scully was talking to Mulder about having a child, so it doesn't seem that off to me. And as for the global conspiracy line - I mean, I just think it is nitpicking of a high order to say that Mulder can't claim that is his problem. It's not like they are having a serious discussion, he's teasing her, he's calling attention to the fact that he's a crackpot. He knows his limitations, and he is acknowledging the fact that he appreciates her willingness to be with him despite those limitations. To criticize him for that? It seems like finding reasons to be critical of both Mulder and DD.

With regard to Field Trip - I remembered not liking it the first time, and I also distinctly remember it being part of the reason why I was becoming disenchanted.  It was the whole notion of shared hallucinations, which I couldn't get past.  Watching it again, I like it much more now, especially because I realize it wasn't a shared hallucination at all - it is just that Mulder and Scully's lives are so intertwined that when they do hallucinate about their "happy" lives, they are both central characters in it.  In both character's hallucinations, the other melts down (literally, not figuratively) when the hallucinator realizes that there is something wrong with the conversations they are having. So that allows me to like this episode a lot more, and yes, the hand holding at the end - and the indication of how important their partnership is to their survival - is great.

[Taryn74]

^ Agree on all points!  Don't really have much to add except that Mulder whispering about global conspiracies in Scully's ear is swoon-worthy to me.  And I don't care how strange that sounds, heh.

[baileythedog]

15 hours ago, eleanorofaquitaine said:

Finished Season 6. Loved The Unnatural all over again. Love the baseball, love the theme of racial reconciliation, love Jesse L. Martin and M. Emmet Walsh, love the corny sincerity, love the Mulder/Scully scenes, especially the last of it, love all of it. 

I was in NY last fall working on a film in which M. Emmet Walsh appeared.  Obviously, I knew he was cast and had to make an effort to not completely lose my sh#t, being the obnoxious fan that overwhelms talent when they're on set.  As it worked out, though, I became onset buddies with Walsh who is cranky and crusty and a huge delight, in my opinion.  After I'd known him a while, I got a little more brave and felt comfortable letting him know that I absolutely loved him for his roles in one of my favorite movies ("Raising Arizona") and his part in "The X-Files" on "The Unnatural."  

The guy has a super long resume and clearly has worked excessively, even since "The Unnatural" so I wasn't sure how much he'd even remember about a job that probably had him on set for, at best, 3 days.  But he recalled it immediately and said something to the effect of, "Yeah, they really wanted that other guy...." and started snapping his fingers as though he couldn't remember his name.  I filled in "Darren McGavin?"  He said, "Yes, Darren McGavin. I guess he was sick or something."  He then looked at me very seriously and told me if I knew that level of detail I seriously needed to get a life.  Ha!  

I love Emmet, seriously, just love him. Also, on the first day of shooting, he gives everyone on set--cast and crew alike--a crisp $2 bill.  I just love the idea that he goes to the bank to fulfill this quirk of his and makes sure that every bill appears freshly minted.  He's just great. 

[Taryn74]

11 hours ago, baileythedog said:

He then looked at me very seriously and told me if I knew that level of detail I seriously needed to get a life.  Ha!  

 

 

Ha!  That seriously cracked me up.

[moonb]

I don't love the season 6 shipper moments the way I did during the show's first run - maybe because I know how the story ends :) I do, however, enjoy rewatching season 6 mostly for the throwaway moments.  I love Scully's relationship with the Lone Gunmen, for example:  it amuses me in Triangle and Three of a Kind that she treats them almost like annoying younger brothers, and that after 6 years of knowing her, they're still a little bit afraid of her, lol. 

[wanderingstar]

Quote

I do think it is interesting/funny that Scully seems to have no jealous reaction whatsoever to the fact that she catches Kersh's secretary coming out of Mulder's apartment.  I mean, beyond just saying that Mulder must have had traumatic brain injury. 

I love the follow-up scene when Scully rants at Mulder about how they should be investigating the X-File because it's his life's work. And Faux Mulder just shrugs. So funny.

Edited September 29, 2016 by Gillian Rosh

[Bastet]

Ugh, this season.  It's like season four, in that it has episodes I love, but then a whole lot I don't care about.

The Beginning pisses me off because Mulder pretty much reverses his attitude from the movie, which makes it sound like he only said those things in his hallway to manipulate her to stay.  Which would be a dick move even for Mulder, and I think he was 100% genuine in that FTF scene.  So fuck the nonsense in this episode.

I didn't remember Drive at all, but that was a good episode - surprisingly good for something that has them working separately the whole time.  But I loathe the line at the end, when Scully is talking to Kersh, about how Mulder's work led to the DoD disbanding its program.  Um, no.  Mulder's work was to cart Bryan Cranston around; Scully is the one who was out in the field doing all sorts of cool things and who put together what was happening.  So typical of the writing for this show.  My kingdom for some estrogen in the writers room.

Shooting Dreamland so that we see the real person, rather than what everyone else is seeing, gives us the mirror dance scene (something I actually find distractingly hokey, although I love what Mulder does when Morris's wife walks in on him), the lovely scene between Scully and Mulder when she's telling him the infinitesimal odds of putting things back to normal, and the amusement of Mulder navigating Morris's family life.  But it also denies us seeing "Mulder" (Morris in Mulder's body) as Scully sees him, when she doesn't yet know what's going on.  To have seen Mulder (meaning DD rather than Michael McKean) behave so oddly would have been great, and it would have made Scully's confusion so much more profound.  Sitting there watching a different guy lessens the impact of Scully watching her partner act so out of character.

Apparently, the reason Only Happy When It Rains was the sole thing I remembered from Terms of Endearment is that I'd repressed the many things I dislike about it.  Forget Home, ToE is the gross episode for me.  What Wayne does to his wives is gross, the bullshit abortion law they arrest the latest wife under is gross, Mulder leaving Scully to clean up his mess is gross, and "I'm not a psychologist" is such a stupid line, it's gross, too.  Shit episode - that Scully is barely in - but the demon wife driving away with her demon baby in the end is a high point.

Every time I watch Rain King, I'm surprised anew by how much I like it in spite of Victoria Jackson.  I can't stand her, and Sheila is a total drip, so it's not like she's redeemed by the character she plays.  But everything around her is so great, she doesn't ruin it for me.  I love so much about this episode.  "I brought you a leg."  Every single one of Scully's reactions to Kroner and its inhabitants (not to mention her crazy partner); GA is on fire in this one.  "He's my partner, and we prefer separate rooms."  Swaying to the music at the reunion.  "The blind leading the blind."  Sheila and Scully's conversation in the bathroom.  "I do not gaze at Scully."

There's a whiff of nice guy entitlement to it, that Sheila has to return Holman's feelings, but the fact Holman isn't among the people who acts that way salvages things somewhat.

HTGSC is so good I always forget it was written by CC.  I fucking love that episode, and need to watch it more often.  Triangle, on the other hand, fairly screams "written by CC."  Jessica's TWoP recap skewering the hell out of it was gold, Jerry, gold.  CC did a beautiful job directing it, but the writing is just bad.  It's a typical gimmick episode; all hat and no horse.  When you write to a location, and to all the cool shots you can use, rather than writing a story and then matching those things to it, it shows.  I kept falling asleep, and finally gave up trying to rewind and start over, lest I never get past the first disc.  I did wake up for the dimly lit kiss and punch, and heard but was too tired to open my eyes to see the scene in Mulder's hospital room.  "Oh, brother."

Thank goodness for Tithonus on the next disc, because S.R. Whatever and Two Fathers/One Son are not exactly calling my name.

Edited November 16, 2017 by Bastet

[Taryn74]

Agreed about The Beginning.

I remember thinking Drive was a surprisingly strong episode, too.  I remember being really heartbroken for Mulder at the end, when we realize that despite doing everything possible to save him, Crump still died.  It was really smart of them to have us find that out at the same time Scully did rather than see it happen, made it that feel much more helpless and defeating.

I adore Dreamland beyond reason.  I understand your point about wanting to see "Mulder" the way Scully saw him so we would be more impacted by his behavior, but by far my favorite part of Dreamland is watching our Mulder try so very hard to be good to JoAnne and the kids.  He could have easily considered them pretty much collateral damage and ignored his "life" with them as he tried to find a way to get back to Scully, but he didn't.  (And frankly, considering what a POS the real Morris was, they probably wouldn't have even noticed that much.  He had an easy out.)  Watching Mulder genuinely try to be a good family man, and yet constantly being rebuffed, was both amusing and sad and I eat it up with a spoon.

I hate ToE with a passion and try to block it out as much as possible.

I love Rain King (even though I agree with you about VJ) and I think that's because I find Holman really endearing.  He may see himself as a bumbling ugly duckling, but kindness and loyalty go a long way with me, and he had both.  I would consider him a catch for sure.

Love HTGSC.  And I'm so tickled to find someone who agrees with me about Triangle!  For some reason I thought I was pretty much the only fan totally underwhelmed by that episode.

Tithonus is amazing.  Easily one of my Top Ten of the entire series.

[Bastet]

23 hours ago, Taryn74 said:

I remember thinking Drive was a surprisingly strong episode, too.  I remember being really heartbroken for Mulder at the end, when we realize that despite doing everything possible to save him, Crump still died.  It was really smart of them to have us find that out at the same time Scully did rather than see it happen, made it that feel much more helpless and defeating.

I like the twist on the usual storytelling that Crump is an asshole, and specifically an anti-Semitic asshole, and Mulder does not hesitate to treat him as one should treat an anti-Semitic asshole, yet Mulder is still upset at not being able to save him.

Scully slapping a piece of paper with her cell phone number on it up against the glass is irrationally pleasing to me.

23 hours ago, Taryn74 said:

I adore Dreamland beyond reason.  I understand your point about wanting to see "Mulder" the way Scully saw him so we would be more impacted by his behavior,

Oh, I don't think that's how they should have shot it, because for the great stuff it would give us, it would take away several great things.  I just lament that in shooting it "the right way," we have to give up on seeing Mulder as Scully sees him, when she's trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with him.

23 hours ago, Taryn74 said:

by far my favorite part of Dreamland is watching our Mulder try so very hard to be good to JoAnne and the kids.  He could have easily considered them pretty much collateral damage and ignored his "life" with them as he tried to find a way to get back to Scully, but he didn't.  (And frankly, considering what a POS the real Morris was, they probably wouldn't have even noticed that much.  He had an easy out.)  Watching Mulder genuinely try to be a good family man, and yet constantly being rebuffed, was both amusing and sad and I eat it up with a spoon.

I so frequently want to strangle Mulder that I really enjoyed that aspect of the episodes, too.  Morris Fletcher is thrilled at the chance to implode Mulder's life, and doesn't give a shit about what's going on back home until he's confronted with it.  Mulder, on the other hand, is trying to do as little damage as possible for however long he has to exist in this identity.  Now, yeah, putting porn on the living room TV when there are kids in the house is not a good idea.  But other than that he really tries to do everything right, and it just doesn't work, because a) he doesn't know what he's doing and b) his family has dealt with Morris's shit for years and is thus not at all inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

23 hours ago, Taryn74 said:

And I'm so tickled to find someone who agrees with me about Triangle!  For some reason I thought I was pretty much the only fan totally underwhelmed by that episode.

I grumble about it every time it comes up, because I'm just that annoyed that such lovely flash is marred by such inferior substance.  The period costumes and hair are so pretty!  Each act is one continuous shot with well-hidden edits!  They're on the Queen Mary!  Yes, those things are all true, and all great.  But scratch that surface and you find a big pile of nothing, so settle down. 

Edited November 17, 2017 by Bastet

[Taryn74]

34 minutes ago, Bastet said:

But scratch that surface and you find a big pile of nothing, so settle down. 

Ha ha ha!  Exactly!

[Bastet]

Oh my.  Complaining about a lack of realism on a sci-fi show can be quite ridiculous, but with S.R. 819 (which should be S. 819), it's not the nanotechnology stuff Shiban made up that bugged me, it was the numerous aspects of the normal stuff he got wrong.  I talked to my TV so much during that episode, basically just repeating, "That's not how it works.  That's not how any of this works."  I'm not actually sure one single thing a nurse or doctor did in either of the two hospitals to which Skinner was admitted was accurate, there were numerous errors in investigative procedure, and it was pretty dumb when Mulder said Skinner getting the second "you're dead" call meant the caller "knows he's here (at the hospital)."  Um, that's kind of a primary feature of the cellular phone, Mulder, that it's with you wherever you are. 

And how the hell did Senator Matheson know where to go to find the doctor?  The greasy-haired dude following Skinner around told Matheson, "I can tell you where he is," and Matheson hung up without either of them saying any more.  Yet, minutes later, there he is.  It's not like "I'll text you the address" was a thing then.  For that matter, how did Mulder know where the doctor was being held?  That one was probably answered and I just zoned out while contemplating the many problems with the episode, although it's Shiban, so maybe not.

The episode is altogether too testosterone-y for my tastes, including the Krycek appearance at the end.  I think I let out a sigh of relief when it was over.  So did my cat, because she was tired of listening to me grumble.

Thank goodness Tithonus was up next, as I think that's a fabulous episode.  Fellig is every bit as sympathetic as he is creepy, and I have no idea why so many Scully fans who think she's immortal are giddy about that notion; they want her sentenced to that heartbreaking existence?  Because she hasn't suffered enough.  Let's have her do it for all eternity, yay!  The episode is a tragically beautiful illustration of why any romantic notion of living forever falls apart as soon as you really start thinking about what it would entail.

Also, "Hi, this is Fox Mulder, we used to sit next to each other at the FBI."  Hee.  And Mulder is so forlorn at them being split up, even for one case.  Maybe remember that next time you have the impulse to ditch her, Mulder.

Edited November 18, 2017 by Bastet

[Bastet]

I love Monday so, so much, and really need to watch that more often; I generally just watch Bad Blood, Small Potatoes, Clyde Bruckman, and Jose Chung's, as they're my best of the best, but I need to start making my second-tier favorites a more-frequent part of my life.

At the time, I had no idea the actor playing Pam was Carol Burnett's daughter, but now when I look at her, I think, "Of course she is."  (And that it's sad she died so young.)

Agua Mala is just plain dumb, and Holy stereotypes, Batman - those are caricatures, not characters.  But Scully is fucking fantastic through the whole thing.  When she's in that bandana, glasses, and yellow gloves, I find myself ridiculously delighted by the image.  The way she shows the deputy her badge is made of win, as is the "We're driving down [whatever road, with zero visibility, due to raging hurricane] ... No, that isn't very smart, is it?" phone call, and pretty much every single reaction shot she has.

Arcadia is also dumb with fun moments, so I have never understood why so many fans squeal over it, and was thus quite amused to learn from Frank Spotnitz that the script required many changes, then they still deleted scenes they'd shot, and ultimately found the finished product subpar -- causing quite the confusion when it wound up being popular.  I guess people will overlook a lot when Mulder and Scully play house.

I truly cannot with the mytharc at this virus-spreading aliens planning to colonize/Syndicate pretending to align with them while trying to create a vaccine and, oops, accidentally making an actual alien-human hybrid/Faceless Rebel Aliens point, but I suspect if I could suspend disbelief and go with such a story, I'd think Two Fathers/One Son was a pretty good pair of episodes.  I definitely liked it more than I did originally; I guess watching it now, having long accepted that the mytharc makes no damn sense (how many different "here's what's happening" stories/keys to everything did we hear about over the course of the series?) and I just flat-out do not care about it past season four, there's no disappointment in watching it, just an "It's not my thing" acknowledgment and enjoying what is there for me.

But, my goodness, CSM and Krycek are suddenly Chatty Cathys in these, expositioning all over the place to Diana and Spender, respectively.  And since when is Krycek so high up in the Syndicate?  And why the hell isn't the green blood toxic to Spender?  Krycek has been exposed to the black oil, and the vaccine, so fine that he doesn't react.  But why doesn't Spender? 

Poor Spender, though; he finally acts like something other than the FBI's Chief Tattletale in this one, so of course he closes the arc getting shot by his own father.

How Scully didn't just shoot Mulder in the fucking gonads and go take the X-Files back by herself, I will never know.  I frequently want to strangle that punk, and perhaps never more so than in One Son.  Everything Scully hurls at Diana in the decontamination facility is exactly what Mulder what accuse literally anyone else in the world, other than Scully, of under the same circumstances.  The evidence of Diana's duplicity could not be any clearer if it had him by the balls the way Fowley does.  Yet he just sits there and repeatedly admonishes Scully for daring to question his little chickadee.  And then that scene at the Gunmen's?  That's when she should have shot him and gone on with her life.  I love the look the Gunmen give each other when Mulder is so obstinate and rude, but that does nothing to lower my blood pressure during that scene. 

[Taryn74]

9 hours ago, Bastet said:

I love Monday so, so much

Yes.  Me, too.  I think it's one of those rare episodes where I love every-freaking-thing about it.

 

Quote

 

BERNARD: Why are you always in a mood?

PAM: Because nothing ever changes.

 

The depth of that line just kills me.  Also kills me -

Quote

PAM: This never happened before.

 

 

9 hours ago, Bastet said:

I guess people will overlook a lot when Mulder and Scully play house.

HA!  Guilty!

I've learned to appreciate TF/OS a lot more than I did at first.  I think it's because I've come to just really feel sorry for Jeffrey Spender, the more I watch the show.  He just wanted to be the good little agent and have people leave his mother alone.  He didn't ask for his entire life to be a freak show.

[Bastet]

Holy crap, Alpha.  I knew the reason I never watched it again is I found the characterization of women offensive, but, wow.  At first, it's just plugging along as a potentially dumb episode, the canid version of Teso Dos Bichos, but with some funny lines.  Then comes Karin Burquist, and Scully's reaction to her.  Just, no.  There are the usual problems that come from men writing women, and then there is shit like this.  That there are men who have a fantasy of women behaving this way is bad enough, but that there are men who believe women are this way, and that so many of them get hired to write scripts, is disgusting.  If it wasn't for First-Person Shooter, this would be the most sexist episode the show ever produced.

I looked up Jeffrey Bell, and he also wrote The Rain King, which hovered around the Nice Guy Entitlement Syndrome without fully embracing it, and The Goldberg Variation, which I don't remember having anything sexist.  Also two later episodes I've never seen.  And then went on to be executive producer of several shows I've never watched.  So, who knows.  But based on Alpha, I would give him a wide berth if we crossed paths.

[Bastet]

Very blah disc last night - Trevor, Milagro, and The Unnatural.

I couldn't have told you one thing about Trevor coming in, so as it went along I kept saying thinks like, "Oh, this is the one with the 'Dear Diary' line," and "Oh, this is the one with Tuesday Knight."  It's a highly forgettable episode; Pinker Rawls is just a generic all-around jackass before and after the tornado, so the villain is not remotely intriguing, and the fact he can now walk through stuff is pretty bland for this show, so there's no interesting paranormal event to draw my interest.  Then there's this weird final scene where Mulder says maybe Rawls was looking for a second chance, like I was supposed to have been somewhat sympathetic to the guy all this time.  Why?  He continued to be a violent ass, and didn't hesitate to terrorize Trevor because he felt entitled to him.

So soon after watching Alpha, I just couldn't deal with Milagro.  I made it through about 20 minutes and bailed.  When writers create a character who is also writer and do a story about the creative process, it's usually unbearable, and this one is very much of that overwrought mold.  The purple prose I could maybe have slogged through, but the characterization of Scully is just too awful to subject myself to.  The whole thing is one big ode to the male gaze, so I just gave up and skipped to the next episode.

Which, unfortunately, was The Unnatural, but after falling asleep and starting over with it several times, I did finally watch the whole thing again after all these years.  It's an okay story, and if not for the awful "ticking of your biological clock" and "those last two problems are mine, not yours," the baseball scene would be a thing of pure delight.  I'd still roll my eyes at Scully having never hit a baseball before, but I would love the hell out of that scene, because its happy energy is infectious.

[Bastet]

The mytharc they're starting in Biogenesis makes me miss the mytharc I had just been happy to wave good-bye to in One Son.

I remembered Three of a Kind being one of the ho-hum episodes this season is littered with for me, but hoped I'd discover I actually quite enjoy it (like how I'd been mis-remembering Drive) since many fans speak positively of it.  But no.  Gillian Anderson is absolutely hilarious with drugged Scully's reactions to Suzanne Modeski explaining what's going on (those faces! and tickling her!), I enjoy Frohike knowing Scully is going to kick their asses, and the "I can't decide who lights my fire" scene is smoking hot (yet feels like it was written specifically to fulfill a fanboy fantasy), but surrounding all that is a bunch of Suzanne Modeski, whom I can't stand, and the Lone Gunmen, whom I prefer in smaller doses -- plus, Byers's mooning over Suzanne is as unbearable as she is.  I think if the Gunmen had stumbled into something not involving Suzanne, and called Scully in to help, I'd have enjoyed it a lot more, because I did like this more than Unusual Suspects.

Field Trip I loved every bit as much as I ever did, though.  It's interesting that their discussion in the office - her wanting to know why he can't, just once, look to the most-logical explanation rather than jumping to UFOs or Bigfoot and him wanting to know why he can't be given the benefit of the doubt after all this time rather than needing to do this song and dance at the beginning of every case - leads to his hallucination being a fantasy (that he's vindicated) and hers being a nightmare (that it is the logical, scientific explanation for the Shipleys' deaths, but Mulder is killed). 

And I love what what makes each of them realize they're hallucinating is being believed -- Mulder is giddily going along with having abducted an alien, causing Scully to finally say, "Gee, Mulder, you've been right all along," and then he realizes, "Wait, this isn't right."  And she's happily solving the case, establishing that it's biology, not aliens, at work, but then Mulder dies in a way that doesn't line up with what she'd established about how the Shipleys died, and everyone - including the Gunmen - latches onto her original ritualistic killing theory and closes the book on Mulder's death, and now it's her turn for "Wait, this isn't right."

Then I love that what makes each of them reason out what is happening is to hallucinate the other as working through the line of reasoning they themselves would normally be contributing - Mulder's mind comes up with the theory the way it always would, but it hallucinates Scully being the one to say it.  Same with Scully - what she comes up with is the hole-poking and tweaking of the theory she'd have done to reach the conclusion, but she hallucinates Mulder saying it.

And then, of course, the reaching for each other's hands in the ambulance, making physical the mental connection they've just experienced so intensely.

Such interesting psychology in this episode!  Plus, it's just a really fun trip. 

For the many "it's fine, but I don't ever need to see it again" episodes this season, and a few I hate, the ones I love, I love immensely.

Edited November 21, 2017 by Bastet

[eleanorofaquitaine]

I super, super, super hate Alpha a lot.  Like, it is my least liked episode of the entire show.  I love The Unnatural.  I find Milagro problematic, if interesting in terms of ideas about writers and creators.  My rewatch turned me around on Field Trip, which I didn't like originally but like a lot now. 

I happen to really love Triangle because, as I said above, I think it pretty much encapsulates the entire show in one episode, but I get that if you don't like Carter, it is hard to like the episode. 

[wanderingstar]

I just watched Monday and Field Trip in BBC America's marathon. Still love both of those episodes. The conclusion of Monday makes me want to cry. And Field Trip isn't just fun, it's also thoughtful in the way it portrays the Scully/Mulder connection.

Quote

The mytharc they're starting in Biogenesis makes me miss the mytharc

My memory is not great on seasons 6 and 7 mythology episodes, but I remember Biogensis being the last mytharc episode I enjoyed.

[Sharna Pax]

I have such mixed feelings about Season 6. I guess I think it's a great collection of episodes, but not a very good season? It has some of my very favorite episodes, including Monday and Field Trip, but there's such an uncomfortable dynamic between Mulder and Scully in all the mytharc episodes, and to me that doesn't pair well with the over-the-top romantic comedy vibe of the rest of the season. I think the reason the Mulder and Scully relationship feels so different from all the other boy-girl detective pairings on TV is that in the early seasons it really doesn't feel like the show is pushing them together. It feels like this is just something that's happening naturally between the characters. But in Season 6, all of a sudden the show is actively writing this relationship as a romance, and it's using all the cliches that shows use to manufacture sexual tension between characters who don't naturally have it - pushing them into one pseudo-date situation after another, having everyone around them tell them they should be together, writing whole episodes that are about Love with a capital L. And despite all that they don't seem to be getting together, and when I watch too many of those episodes back-to-back it all feels strange and unhappy and wrong to me.

And yet I wouldn't want to skip Season 6, because it has a lot of the episodes that would go on my favorites list. Monday. Field Trip. Tithonus. The Unnatural. How the Ghosts Stole Christmas. I like Drive, too, and while the Mulder section of Triangle is a bit too cheesy for me, I adore the part where Scully is flying around the FBI like an avenging angel, threatening people's lives and kissing Skinner and generally being a badass.

And Field Trip is a reminder that anything can be a catchphrase if you repeat it often enough. The line, "I think his body was stripped and then skeletonized, possibly by boiling, or the use of an acid solution," is a perfectly standard, unremarkable X-Files line, but it is now permanently embedded in my memory.

[eleanorofaquitaine]

I think that season 6 is what happens when you write a romantic comedy and/or thriller show where two people are in a relationship, only they never actually talk about their relationship, to themselves or anyone else.  As a shipper, there are so many episodes in season 6 that I love, but I also have to admit that season 6 is where I began to stop losing interest (I did watch both seasons 6 and 7 in the original run, but was more sporadic on S7 than I had been in my obsessive phase and I bailed on 8 and 9 all together). 

My major problem with both of those seasons was not that we were seeing M&S in a relationship, it was that we were seeing them in a relationship that the show wasn't acknowledging and that they were dancing around. It was all a little too coy for my taste.  That being said, knowing now what I do, I actually can watch those episodes and very much enjoy them. I actually really love Triangle and season 6 also has The Unnatural, which I just love. 

[Taryn74]

2 hours ago, eleanorofaquitaine said:

That being said, knowing now what I do, I actually can watch those episodes and very much enjoy them.

I wondered if going back after S10 and S11 would change the way I view them in the earlier seasons.  I just haven't really had time to do a serious rewatch to see.

[Sharna Pax]

On 6/16/2018 at 4:03 PM, eleanorofaquitaine said:

My major problem with both of those seasons was not that we were seeing M&S in a relationship, it was that we were seeing them in a relationship that the show wasn't acknowledging and that they were dancing around. It was all a little too coy for my taste.  That being said, knowing now what I do, I actually can watch those episodes and very much enjoy them.

I don't mind Season 7 - in fact, I quite like it. Yes, it bugs me that Mulder and Scully's relationship is unacknowledged, as I think the season fundamentally ended up being about the relationship and the way it was changing Mulder and Scully's lives and priorities. And it doesn't really make any sense to have a season about a relationship that doesn't acknowledge that relationship's existence. But at least the dynamic we're shown in Season 7 feels consistent. Mulder and Scully seem to be together, in some sense, and to be happy about it, so even if we never know the details of their relationship, I still trust that they have it worked out.

What bothers me about Season 6 is that Mulder and Scully aren't together, as far as I can tell, and yet there's no good reason why not. If you leave out Season 6, the arc of the Mulder-Scully relationship makes sense to me. Yes, it takes them forever to get together, but there are reasons for that. They're partners, so they're not supposed to think of each other romantically. They've been through Scully's abduction and her cancer, and Mulder's response to both of those experiences has been to try to reset their partnership to where it was before the trauma, as if there's some kind of safety and stability in keeping things exactly the same. And of course their friendship is so important to them that they don't want to jeopardize it. So it makes sense to me that they would get to the end of Season 5 before declaring their feelings for each other. But once they do that - as they do in the movie - there's no reasonable way for them to go back. If we had gone straight from the movie to the kind of dynamic we see in Rush, I think I would have loved it. For Mulder and Scully to slooowly inch their way toward a relationship, but then commit to it and enjoy it once they get there? That would have been a lovely depiction of a functional relationship between two adults who know what they want.

But instead, we get an entire season of stalling. By now, Mulder and Scully know how they feel about each other, and yet they're not together, and there's no good way to explain that except by having them both act like irrational children all the time. So we get the awful Fowley love triangle, we get Mulder taking back everything he said in the movie, we get episode after episode where Mulder and Scully make some kind of connection in a dream sequence or an alternate reality or where their memories get erased. We have endless secondary characters yelling "YOU TWO LOVE EACH OTHER NOW MAKE OUT!" at Mulder and Scully to no effect. (And though I love The Unnatural with a passion, it is absolutely ridiculous to think Mulder and Scully didn't have sex after that baseball lesson. No two people who are attracted to each other AT ALL can stand like that for any length of time without at least making out. It is a scientific impossibility. Also, that's clearly why Mulder set the lesson up the way he did. A man does not teach a woman to play baseball in that particular fashion unless he's trying to get in her pants.) So to me, the problem with Season 6 is not the individual episodes - it's that the overall arc of the season asks me to believe things about the Mulder/Scully relationship that just don't make sense. I think most of the romantic-comedy episodes work just fine as stand-alones, especially if you assume that Mulder and Scully hooked up right after the credits rolled. What doesn't work is the way their relationship gets rolled right back to zero for the start of the next romantic-comedy episode, so that the episode can once again end with them just on the verge of hooking up for the first time.

Edited June 18, 2018 by Sharna Pax

[Sharna Pax]

On 5/10/2016 at 6:41 AM, eleanorofaquitaine said:

So Milagro.

I feel very ambivalent about that episode.  On the one hand, I like the meta commentary of writers losing control of their characters (and of writers having to rip their hearts out of their chest as a way of exercising their creativity), and what the episode said about how CC feels about the show and Mulder and Scully. (I also like him metaphorically throwing up his hands and being like, "fine. Mulder and Scully are in love. You deal with it.")

And I think it is interesting that the focus is on losing control of Scully as a character, not Mulder, because it says something about the very real challenges of writing a well-rounded female character, especially at that time in television history.  On the other hand, that's why it is so curious to me that it falls into these tropes about Scully's physical beauty and her fear of being seen as weak - I can't tell if CC is mocking those kinds of stereotypes about the way male writers look at female characters or justifying them.

And that's ultimately my biggest problem with the episode. I mean, the whole notion of Scully being fascinated with that creepy guy is so much out of a male writer's fantasy, that it is difficult for me to get past it.  And I mean, I know, we're not sure if Scully is being controlled by Padgett or not, but good Lord, the idea that she wouldn't have left his apartment before Mulder bursts in just drives me crazy, as a woman. He's a creep, and Scully knows creep.  It just feels icky that she is seemingly fascinated with a guy who is clearly an obsessive stalker.  

Still, it is an interesting episode with interesting ideas, and I always like that.

Here I am, spamming the thread again. Milagro is one that I rewatched fairly recently, though I'm not sure why, because I never liked it. I think in the past I always focused on the relentless purple prose voiceovers and "Agent Scully is already in love," a line which annoys me in a multitude of ways. This time through what jumped out at me is that neither Mulder nor Scully uses the word "stalker." I can't remember exactly how Scully words it, when she first tells Mulder about Padgett, but it's weirdly flowery and circuitous, even for the X-Files. And Mulder doesn't seem nearly as concerned as he should be at the idea that his next-door neighbor is stalking Scully, and I'm concerned that this show doesn't know what stalking is, any more than it knows what medical rape is. It actually seems like Mulder's response to Scully being stalked is to get suspicious of her, and I would be mad at him for that but it's all of a piece with this episode's weird, weird sexual politics.

Anyway, I was thinking about the whole meta aspect of the episode, and it made me think of an episode of Classic Doctor Who called The Mind Robber, where the characters find themselves in the Land of Fiction. The great danger, in that episode, is a constantly running ticker tape that narrates the characters' adventures a moment before they happen. If the characters do exactly what is written for them - if they grab the sword and slay the dragon, or what have you - they become fictionalized and are trapped forever in the land of fiction. So it's partly about the idea that characters - real characters, like the Doctor and his companions - act in a way that their creators didn't anticipate. But it's also about the risk of letting another person's vision of you guide your actions.

Now, I think Milagro is also supposed to be about both those things - it's about Mulder and Scully and their growing independence as characters, but it's also about the danger of being trapped by another person's image of you. But it's so very muddled in the way it tries to explore these ideas that it totally undercuts them both. If this is an episode about Mulder and Scully's independence from their creator, why does Scully spend the whole episode drifting around like she has no agency at all? If Scully is able to resist Padgett's hold on her because she's in love with Mulder, why do we never see her resisting it? Why does she drift into his bedroom, when she obviously doesn't feel comfortable being there? Does Scully, in fact, resist being fictionalized? Who even is she? What does she want? What draws her to Padgett, if indeed she is at all drawn to him? I can't tell. And it seems like a terrible mistake for this episode that should celebrate Scully's personality and independence to instead turn her into a zombie with nice legs.

On another note, Padgett's book sounds really terrible. On top of the awful, awful prose, it sounds like the plot is just a series of identical murders intercut with sex scenes. Why would a writer that bad have any power over anyone, let alone Scully?

[eleanorofaquitaine]

13 hours ago, Sharna Pax said:

I don't mind Season 7 - in fact, I quite like it. Yes, it bugs me that Mulder and Scully's relationship is unacknowledged, as I think the season fundamentally ended up being about the relationship and the way it was changing Mulder and Scully's lives and priorities. And it doesn't really make any sense to have a season about a relationship that doesn't acknowledge that relationship's existence. But at least the dynamic we're shown in Season 7 feels consistent. Mulder and Scully seem to be together, in some sense, and to be happy about it, so even if we never know the details of their relationship, I still trust that they have it worked out.

What bothers me about Season 6 is that Mulder and Scully aren't together, as far as I can tell, and yet there's no good reason why not. If you leave out Season 6, the arc of the Mulder-Scully relationship makes sense to me. Yes, it takes them forever to get together, but there are reasons for that. They're partners, so they're not supposed to think of each other romantically. They've been through Scully's abduction and her cancer, and Mulder's response to both of those experiences has been to try to reset their partnership to where it was before the trauma, as if there's some kind of safety and stability in keeping things exactly the same. And of course their friendship is so important to them that they don't want to jeopardize it. So it makes sense to me that they would get to the end of Season 5 before declaring their feelings for each other. But once they do that - as they do in the movie - there's no reasonable way for them to go back. If we had gone straight from the movie to the kind of dynamic we see in Rush, I think I would have loved it. For Mulder and Scully to slooowly inch their way toward a relationship, but then commit to it and enjoy it once they get there? That would have been a lovely depiction of a functional relationship between two adults who know what they want.

But instead, we get an entire season of stalling. By now, Mulder and Scully know how they feel about each other, and yet they're not together, and there's no good way to explain that except by having them both act like irrational children all the time. So we get the awful Fowley love triangle, we get Mulder taking back everything he said in the movie, we get episode after episode where Mulder and Scully make some kind of connection in a dream sequence or an alternate reality or where their memories get erased. We have endless secondary characters yelling "YOU TWO LOVE EACH OTHER NOW MAKE OUT!" at Mulder and Scully to no effect. (And though I love The Unnatural with a passion, it is absolutely ridiculous to think Mulder and Scully didn't have sex after that baseball lesson. No two people who are attracted to each other AT ALL can stand like that for any length of time without at least making out. It is a scientific impossibility. Also, that's clearly why Mulder set the lesson up the way he did. A man does not teach a woman to play baseball in that particular fashion unless he's trying to get in her pants.) So to me, the problem with Season 6 is not the individual episodes - it's that the overall arc of the season asks me to believe things about the Mulder/Scully relationship that just don't make sense. I think most of the romantic-comedy episodes work just fine as stand-alones, especially if you assume that Mulder and Scully hooked up right after the credits rolled. What doesn't work is the way their relationship gets rolled right back to zero for the start of the next romantic-comedy episode, so that the episode can once again end with them just on the verge of hooking up for the first time.

I am ambivalent - for the most part, I think that the weirdness in season 6 has mostly to do with the writers' desire to not make a decision one way or the other about the M&S relationship and to try to keep everything in stasis. That's actually pretty hard to do! As Milagro and Triangle show, characters (like real life human beings) resist standing in place for too long. It's so fascinating to me that, for all of his mixed messages re the ship, it's the Carter written episodes that mention the wird "love."

All of that being said, I also can't say that the one-step-forward-one-step-back dynamic isn't true to life for people who are transitioning from a strictly platonic relationship to a romantic one. In that way, the progression we see in S6 makes a lot of sense - they are both kind of freaked out by the events in FTF and by what they revealed to each other. So they take a step back and yet, there is still this thing between them, so they keep playing around with the idea of it until you get to the back end of the season and things like The Unnatural (personally, I agree with that it seems way unlikely that they didn't have sex then - that scene seems a lot like DD forcing the show to move forward).

Of course, we also have to figure that somewhere in the course of all of this, Scully starts talking to Mulder about the IV treatments and everything.  In any case, I can see the logic of their uncertain dynamic in s6, though that isn't the direction I would have gone in.

[Sharna Pax]

I just tried to watch Dreamland and had to give up almost immediately because I found it too painful. Is that weird, that I find it so hard to watch? The second half, when Scully knows what's going on, is easier to handle, but all the deception and confusion and miscommunication in the first half just upsets me on some visceral level. There's something about body-swap episodes that almost inevitably does that to me. (God, the look on Mulder's face as Scully leaves with Morris the first time. It's exactly the look I see in my dog's eyes whenever I leave the house and don't take him with me.)

There are some moments in Dreamland that I just love, though. I am always here for a Marx Brothers homage, and one day I will sit down and watch the original mirror dance, Mulder's mirror dance, and the one from Magic Mike XXL all in a row. Mulder giving Scully a handful of sunflower seeds is such a lovely, poignant, perfectly in-character way to say goodbye. And Scully's opening monologue in the car always gets me humming "Two of Us:"

Two of us riding nowhere
Spending someone's
Hard earned pay
Two of us Sunday driving
Not arriving

On our way back home

(Maybe that should go in the Songs thread. But really, isn't "You and me burning matches, lifting latches" perfect for two people who have made a career out of opening doors with flashlights in their hands?) I love that Mulder's response is just, "This is a normal life." It's an interesting slant on the character; this version of Mulder at least isn't spinning his wheels, waiting for his life to start. This is his life, and he's okay with that. 

So I guess my feelings about Dreamland are a lot like my feelings about Season 6 as a whole: sometimes cringe-inducing, sometimes painful, hard to watch in its entirety, but shot through with these moments and ideas that I absolutely love.

[MissL]

On 5/12/2016 at 9:27 AM, Taryn74 said:

^ Agree on all points!  Don't really have much to add except that Mulder whispering about global conspiracies in Scully's ear is swoon-worthy to me.  And I don't care how strange that sounds, heh.

So I'm going to comment on this 2 years after you post it but Im in the middle of a rewatch and that WHOLE scene is swoon-worthy and it doesn't sound strange to me.  When Mulder looks over his shoulder and says "Get over here Scully."  Gah. Every time it gets me. I honest to god don't know how she doesn't just jump his bones right then.