Hey guys, I’m trying to get my friend hooked on The X Files. She said that she enjoyed it when she was a kid but has very little memory of it. She revisited the first season recently and wasn’t impressed (I don’t blame her, with the exception of 3 or 4 good episodes the first season was rough). She agreed to watch 20 of my favourite episodes (and the relevant episodes of the X Files Files podcast as she's a big fan of Kumail Nanjiani).
Here’s my top 20 list so far:
1.Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose
2.Jose Chung’s From Outer Space
3.Humbug
4.Home
5.Beyond the Sea
6.Bad Blood
7.Small Potatoes
8.Postmodern Prometheus
9.Pusher
10.The Unnatural
11.Triangle
12.X Cops
13.Duane Barry
14.Detour
15.Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man
16.Drive
17.Monday
18.Quagmire
19.Ice
20.Folie A Deux
I tried to include a healthy mix of comedy, horror, Sci fi, and experimental episodes to demonstrate the variety and range that X Files is capable of (although there’s probably a disproportionate number of comedy episodes as those tend to be my favorite.).
What do you guys think? Is this a good collection of episodes to convince someone of this show's brilliance? Anything you’d remove? If so, what would you substitute them with?
Any opinions on how I should order the episodes? Should I just order them by air date (starting with Ice and ending with X Cops)? Or should I jumble them up like a mix tape, alternating comedy and drama to keep things interesting? Any suggestions for a specific order?
Thanks in advance for your input!
It was the first episode of X Files I saw while it was on FOX and that shit gave me nightmares for at least a week.
I'm still disturbed by it when I do re watches on Hulu
doeswithoutdna.home.blog/list-of-does/
How can we identify someone if we don't have access to the only thing that can tell us who they are?
I was comparing profiles a few weeks ago and something hit me. Why do so many of them say "Not available" or "Unknown" in the DNA section? And I realized its because many of them passed away in a time where DNA was not even on LE's radar. In the 70s through the 90s, DNA technology was expensive, and most only thought to use it for identifying perpetrators rather than victims So what did they do? They buried them.
Not knowing that a DNA sample could one day give them their name back, they did the only thing that they knew to do: Bury them, through no fault of their own. They didn't know what technology could do one day, no one did. But now, we see what genetic testing can do, and without a sample, a family will remain out there not knowing where their loved one is.
We need to encourage law enforcement, medical examiners, and public officials to pursue securing samples for future testing, as eventually the information may be lost due to age.
I'm not quite certain where to go from here. I have heavily considered turning this into a non-profit advocacy group which will lobby to generate support for this cause, but who knows how far that will go with my limited resources. In the end though, I hope that you all find good usage out of this list. I poured several days of time into going over hundreds of profiles to find them. I wish you all the best.
Special Guest Stars: Felicity Huffman and Jeff Kober.
One of the best episodes of the first season and the scariest imo
I watched it last night, Mulder + Scully's case takes them to Henrico County! It was a great episode (definitely one of the better since they brought them back for these final 2 "comeback" seasons) where they sought out evil doppelgangers responsible for mysterious killings! If you like The X-Files, I highly recommend it!
The only weird anachronisms were the David Duchovny pronounced it "Henry-co" as opposed to "Hen-rye-co," and that they kept saying things like "Strange things are afoot in this town, Scully." TOWN!??! What, do you mean Richmond??? Henrico is hardly a "town" (same goes for Glen Allen, Short Pump, etc.)
I imagine they picked "Henrico" out of a hat labeled "places within driving distance of DC that sound nice" and then had to make Vancouver (?) look as much like a place they had never been to as much as they could.
Just a heads up.
I think it goes without saying that it ended before season 8. I don't have an answer, just curious as to what others think.
A lot of what made Season 1 of True Detective good was the same stuff that made the X Files good (inconsistently, but often, thru 5 long seasons to where it was meant to end but they got greedy):
Mystery. Paranoia. Procedural drama mixed with weird cults and sinister groups making the protagonists perpetual outsiders. Atmosphere, partly from location (Louisiana's bayous in TD, Vancouver's woods in the X files), gifted directors and actors playing wild events and situations straight, more mystery (the less hokey explaining the better), passionate beliefs that resemble insanity, esoteric existential monologues, driving, darkness, flashlights, running, soundtrack (T Bone Burnett's picks in TD, that spooky Mark Frost theme in The X Files and, for example, Nick Cave's Red Right Hand in ‘Duane Barry’), a lot of Americana, nostalgia, small town creepiness, fading ways of life, unseen forces, fear of an uncontrollable future, shifting realities, more mysteries (and the more Morleys the smoking man smokes the more the mysteries multiply...
Protagonists with conflicting worldviews, dark humor, ridiculously good looking charismatic leads with great chemistry, a dark, alienating world where you can trust no one, and at the heart of it, two characters who trust each other and care for each other... It's hella romantic, but I was always put off by 'shippers’ who wanted Scully and Mulder to 'hook up'. I thought it missed the point. And I never got the schematic fandom of trying to explain something that really had no plan to start with. And I hated how Scully always swooned when the aliens flew over. It was originally meant to stay more open ended, where you'd question whose perspective was closer to the truth, which would make a more interesting show and maybe one day someone will make it, but I can see why it would be hard to sustain and sell to network TV, and why it essentially became the Mulder show. Scully's shortchanging as a character and the anti-science mumbo jumbo was weak, but it had a lot of great moments, and tapped into something good that I still find inspiring.
What made these shows/seasons magic came from many factors together in a fragile balance. Actors, writing, direction, geography... I think that's part of the reason the other seasons of True Detective (following Season 1) and the X Files (following season 5) kinda fell apart and even when they tried to recreate what made it work to start with, something was still missing.
Holy shit its just so damn awesome!!! I wouldn't mind if the rest of the episodes were filmed like this.
If you haven't seen it, its basically the camera crew of COPS following police officers around, looking for a monster. They end up meeting with Mulder and Scully.
Whats your favorite episode?
I'm imagining a buddy cop style show, episodic in nature but with overarching character arcs. Each episode would be "beast of the week" style and feature the protagonists dealing with various SCPs and aidi g their containment/research.
Which scps would make the absolute best/most interesting episodes, and why?
So much seems like it inspired parts of the fungus from TLOU. The fungus in the episode comes out in spores and contaminates humans, causing them to go crazy and have a giant growth come out of their neck
I am absolutely thrilled and impressed after watching. So amazing to see the journey from Darin Morgan being a guest on the X Files Files to today, Kumail being a main character in what will undoubtedly go down as a top 10 episode in the series.
Congratulations Kumail. I cant imagine the high you're feeling right now. You had me and my wife in tears of laughter and joy. Very surreal to have been listening to the podcast for so long and to see this episode come to fruition.
Title says it all
