So, like, Spoilers, Dude
You know, dude, I’m really loving this re-boot of the X-Files, even if it is only a 6-3pisode mini-series. And, like, dude, when it started last night with two middle-aged stoners in the woods, totally higher than the full moon they were gazing at, calling each other and the dead bodies they found “Dude,” I thought the show had found its sense of humor again.
And for a brief while, it had.
Scully became the believer to Mulder’s burnt-out, discouraged skeptic, and she had to convince him to go with her to the woods to examine the dead bodies — one of which was nude — searching for the killer, whether it be human or “creature” or “monster.” He reluctantly accompanied her.
They interviewed a transgendered prostitute who’d slugged a “horned monster” in the face with her designer purse — destroying the purse. Mulder and Scully interviewed her. It went something like this.
Prostitute (holding up purse with holes in it): It had a horn.
Scully: Like a unicorn?
Prostitute: Like a lizard.
Mulder (showing her the drawing, with 3 eyes, from the stoner witnesses at the forest): Like this?
Prostitute: No, only 2 eyes.
Scully: Was it wearing anything?
Prostitute: Underwear.
Scully: Boxers or briefs?
Prostitute: Tighty whities.
Mulder: Did you tell the police this?
Prostitute: They think I’m on crack.
Mulder: Are you?
Prostitute: Yeah…
Then screams drew the pair around some parked trucks. At the edge of the cornfield, they met the very same Animal Control Officer who’d also been attacked in the forest. He’d been called out about a missing dog. Lots of fun with Mulder’s new smartphone camera app, flashing wildly away as they chased a horned creature who appeared in the distance, and as Mulder also snapped several photos of himself — having the camera turned the wrong way.
Up till then, the show was tight. The dialogue, snappy. The scenes between Mulder and Scully, awesomeness to the max.
And then the show fell right off a cliff.
SPLAT!
They went to a sleazy cheap motel where the owner was looking in the rooms via the eyes of the animal heads mounted in each one. Mulder found the corridor after the owner yelled “Monster” and Mulder investigated.
A lizard guy with an Aussie accent was there, but he escaped before Mulder could catch him.
And here’s where the weirdness in the show happened. Mulder went to Scully and told her what he’d discovered, repeating — after each of his lines — “I know what you’re gonna say, Scully; you’re gonna say…” And then Duchovny did what I suppose were Anderson’s lines while she sat there, in silence, opening and closing her mouth each time, but never saying anything.
Because Duchovny’s Mulder said it all.
If it was supposed to be funny, it didn’t work for me. I kept thinking about the articles that said Gillian Anderson was offered only 1/2 the salary that co-star David Duchovny was offered, and how she had to fight to get equal pay, and wondering if this scene was a joke — because he was doing both their lines — if the scene was an ad-lib joke by the two actors, or if it was just really bad writing that was completely excluding Gillian Anderson from speaking a single word.
It got worse.
Though Scully found the lizard-guy working in a cell-phone store, he tore the place up and disappeared by the time Mulder got there. Mulder found him in a graveyard after talking to the guy’s psychiatrist who said that was his advice to anxious patients: go walk in a graveyard.
So Mulder finds him, the guy admits he’s the creature,
who looks like the drawing, but not with “three eyes!” the guy complains.
Then the lizard-guy tells his story.
And tells his story.
And Mulder asks questions.
And the lizard-guy talks.
Like, forever, Dude.
I kept wondering what had happened to Scully.
Then lizard-guy, or Were-Monster, as I suppose he was technically called, gets mad when he discovers that Mulder is the law, and angrily stomps off, pointing a finger at Mulder and shouting, “J’accuse.”
Later, he goes to the forest, strips off his clothes, and tells Mulder, who’s followed him there, that he’s going back into hibernation, which should last for about 10,000 years.
It was such a long time in the graveyard that I didn’t even care that one of the stones had the name of one of the former directors of X-Files who died before the 2016 revival.
All I could think of was, Where’s Scully? and Is this the David Duchovny Show? and Could this possibly get any more boring or farcical than it is?
Then Mulder and Scully eventually reconnect at the end.
At Animal Control.
Where the Animal Control Officer is just a run-of-the-mill serial killer.
Whom they won’t let confess because, as Mulder says, “Once you’ve heard one serial killer profile, you’ve heard them all.”
Boy, what a silly and ultimately boring story, Story-Dudes.
What bad writing in the extremely extended cemetery-scene, Writer-Dudes.
What a waste of Gillian Anderson’s talent, Director-Dudes.
What a disappointing episode of the X-Files.
J’accuse, Dudes.
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