I didn’t watch The X-Files when it first aired. I don’t think I heard about it during its first season, and its second was during my Year of Disaster; I did happen to catch a couple of episodes during the third season, but they rubbed me the wrong way, so I never watched any more. But Grace wanted to re-watch it with me, so I bought her all nine seasons for Christmas of ’23, and it was the last show we got to watch together; today I’d like to share my thoughts and impressions.
As you already know if you’ve read any of my previous TV show reviews, characters are the most important part of a show for me; I may enjoy a show with undeveloped characters, but it’s never going to be one of my favorites. In that respect, The X-Files was very uneven; while the central characters, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, were well-developed, most of the other characters weren’t. The chemistry between the two was, I think, the best thing about the show, and I don’t just mean the slow-burn sexual tension. The way in which fascination became friendship, which developed into loyalty, then love, was believable and engaging, especially in the middle seasons where that love developed into something stronger and deeper than that shared by most married couples, and yet did not turn physical until after David Duchovny (Mulder) left the series at the end of season 7. Individually, both characters were extremely flawed; Mulder’s idealism too often washed over into fanaticism, and all too often Scully confused skepticism with dogmatism. But as dance partners they were phenomenal, and their interaction lit up the screen (counterbalancing the directors’ obsession with filming half of every episode in the dark).
Beside the two principals, however, the other characters in the show looked more like props or scenery than people. Few of the regular characters were other than flat, and what little development was given them was often incomplete, unsupported or unexplained. The chief villain, the infamous Smoking Man, was more complex and interesting than any of the characters who either assisted or obstructed (sometimes both) our heroes at the FBI, and the two agents who became the main characters in the last two seasons were poor replacements indeed for the Dynamic Duo. There were a few episodes with well-developed supporting characters, but for the most part the people the agents interacted with, friend or foe alike, were fairly stock characters with very little to distinguish them from similar characters in other episodes. Of the recurring supporting characters, my favorites were the staff of The Lone Gunman; though their personalities remained fairly static across nine seasons, I saw them more as mythic characters than realistic ones. They were the Three Musketeers to Mulder’s D’Artagnan, the faithful sidekicks without whom he could never have succeeded, who were nonetheless satisfied to remain in the background while he got the credit (or blame). Indeed, though they have individual names, talents, and personalities, they are always depicted as a trio, rarely even being shown physically far from one another; their fates are interlocked, and even the names of the three actors playing the parts are always displayed together as a block in the credits.
Other than most characters remaining undeveloped, the biggest gripe I have about the show’s characterizations is one which is probably inevitable in any show featuring FBI agents: cop glorification. Though a good fraction of the cops in the show are depicted as assholes and a good fraction of the FBI agents as two-faced schemers, there were also lots of Brave Hero cops, and while Mulder seems to have viewed his status as a means to his own ends, Scully definitely comes across like a cop far too often for my liking, and the way she loves yelling “FEDERAL AGENT!” while pointing a gun at people never ceased to be disconcerting.
Look for the conclusion of this review, in which I discuss other aspects of the show, two weeks from Monday.
