TV Review: ‘The X-Files’

Warning: This article contains plot spoilers.

Let’s get this out the way: the first episode of the newly rebooted “X-Files” is really, really bad.

It feels like a show trying to do an impression of “The X-Files.” The characters are the same, the plot points sound familiar, but the soul is gone. Without the luxury of familiar names and faces, the first episode, called “My Struggle,” could have substituted for any other generic network cop drama that ends up getting cancelled after five episodes.

And yet, following that debacle of a premiere, it’s safe to say the next two episodes of Season 10 gave longtime fans a reason to believe.

For the uninitiated, “The X-Files” was a series on Fox that ran from 1993 to 2002 and followed the exploits of two FBI agents: Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), a criminal profiler with a stubborn belief in the supernatural and extraterrestrials, and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), a doctor-turned-federal-agent who is assigned as Mulder’s partner to undermine him.

Together, the two embark on solving the so-called “X-Files” – cases that can’t be solved by normal means.

The show was buoyed by the innate, almost cosmic chemistry of Mulder and Scully, whose banter and barely hidden sexual tension inspired an entire generation of fan-fiction writers.

The series was generally divided into two kinds of episodes: “Mythology” episodes that were serialized and depicted the agents’ attempts to uncover a vast government conspiracy to hide extraterrestrial life, and “Monster of the Week” episodes, where they actually investigated paranormal cases – ranging from killer trees to shapeshifters to serial killers who can see the future.

The second episode of the reboot, “Founder’s Mutation,” attempts to reign in the excesses of the first episode and provide the audience with the Monster of the Week format they adored before. The episode finds Mulder and Scully investigating a conspiracy to create super-powered human-alien hybrids, a classic “X-Files” if there ever was one.

The plot is outrageous but captivating, and Duchovny and Anderson seem more comfortable in their characters’ skin than they did in “My Struggle.” Add in some usual “X-Files” eccentricities – super-powered siblings fighting government agents, and a scene where a mother literally cuts open her womb so her alien baby can escape – and ultimately the second episode adds up to an enjoyable hour of television. It’s not memorable, but there are certainly worse episodes that have borne the “X-Files” name.

But despite the positive developments, the reboot still has something missing. Yes, “The X-Files” was about weird monsters and charming leads, but that wasn’t its soul.

In fact, more could be written about what “The X-Files“ didn’t say, than what it did. It wasn’t a coincidence that the monsters from the previous iteration were nearly always in some small, far-off town in Middle America, in places a majority of the country fantasizes as being more “real” or “American” than the coasts and population centers.

Mulder and Scully, carrying FBI badges and nondescript professional wear, brought a sense of foreboding to these towns. The monsters they were hunting didn’t just represent fun stories; they represented the idea that the “small town” morals so mythologized in the American story had demons and an expiration date.

And yet, 20 years after the show’s peak, the country lies at another crossroads. The disaffected small-towners Mulder and Scully helped in the ’90s have become the hope-seeking, angry, insular Trump supporters of 2016. At this moment, the country is restless; it’s a situation the show thrived in before, and it’s one you would expect it to thrive in now.

Luckily, “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster” – the third and most recent episode that aired Monday – makes me believe the show won’t let the moment pass.

The premise, once again, is silly: Mulder and Scully try to hunt down a lizard creature that’s apparently killing people in a small Oregon town. Mulder is having a crisis of faith; after dedicating his life to finding the paranormal in the unexplained, it seems that all of his mysteries have been, well, solved. He explains away the lizard creature as a human or a just an abnormally large reptile, but his assumptions don’t stick.

Eventually, he lands face-to-face with the creature, who looks surprisingly human. We learn the truth at this point: The peaceful, mysterious lizard creature was bitten by a human and now has to spend the daylight hours in human form.

It’s a clever twist on an old story, but the most unnerving parts are the creature’s sudden human epiphanies. He begins to talk about his urgings – how he feels like he needs to get a dead-end job to pay the bills and how he hates his alarm clock, his horniness and how senseless he finds human violence to be.

It’s a cruel dose of reality for an episode that, up to that point, was basically an irreverent satire of the show itself. There are hidden references to old episodes strewn throughout, and the timing plays more like a sitcom than a drama.

And yet, at the end of the episode, here I am, second-guessing my existence because an alcoholic lizard-person is having a conversation about the modern human condition with a man who spent his life chasing aliens.

It’s absurd. It’s surreal. And it’s a testament to where “The X-Files” operates best: as an existential mirror using the paranormal to reflect back how insane the real world really is.

Episode three is a return to a form that’s both encouraging and necessary. While the second episode does a good job of apologizing for the first, it’s the third that makes me want to believe again.

– Ryan Nelson