Anybody else watching the new season? I'm a big X-Files fan, but virtually nobody is a fan of
all of the X-Files. Like most people I trailed off in the later seasons, and personally I never really cared for the "mythos" episodes, preferring the standalone ones.
I just finished watching the third episode. The first two were closely tied into the story arc, and frankly they didn't do much for me. Parts of them are really well-done. They spend a lot of time addressing how a 2016 X-Files is different from a 90s X-Files and a lot of that is very interesting. Technologically, politically, and culturally the old show doesn't make sense in modern day, and the new show knows that. In large part that's addressed by a flip-flopping of Mulder and Scully's characters, and that's kind of interesting. But ultimately nothing in those episodes felt important enough to justify why the show was back. Even if a lot of stuff technically happened it was just same old X-Files stuff. And the effects were surprisingly not up-to-date, as small of a problem as that is. Or do most TV shows have effects this bad?
The third episode though really did it for me. Just as I was about to write the show of as mediocre and a little pointless along comes a Darin Morgan episode to make everything super fun.
The cast, which is the main thing anyone watches this show for, is as great as always. And Kumail Nanjiani's small role is a lot of fun. I've been listening to his X-Files podcast since it launched, and it's nice to see such a huge fan get to participate in his favorite show. That's rare and cool. So I'm still not totally sold on how necessary this all is, but it's certainly not a horribly botched affair like that second fucking movie was.
