Saturday, June 25, 2011
The X-Files: Season 1, Episode 1
Pilot
It was a simpler time, people. It was the 90's.
The FOX executives had no idea what they were doing, and for the Fall of '93 they green-lit two new shows for Friday nights: a trippy Western with Bruce Campbell, and a science-fiction mystery show about aliens with the guy from Red Shoe Diaries. I'm pretty sure that the rationale here was that no one watches TV on Friday nights anyway, so they really had nothing to lose. And, "What the hell, maybe the Twin Peaks weirdos will watch one of our shows for once."
The weirdos pulled through on this one. Later on, even the normal people caught on, but that's for a different blog post.
SYNOPSIS: FBI Agent Dana Scully, a ultra-rational skeptic, is assigned by mysterious forces within the Bureau to work with Agent Fox Mulder on the FBI's garbage dump for paranormal phenomenon, The X-Files. The timing isn't so hot for the [SPOILER] black-oil-vaccine-alien/human hybrid-colonizing-worldwide conspiracy though, as Mulder is just starting his biggest case ever: a group of unexplained deaths through the Pacific Northwest that may or may not be connected to aliens and coma patients. Sexual tension ensues.
The things to remember about about pilot episodes from any time before very recently are:
1. They're cheap.
2. They suck.
Which is why it's almost a miracle that this one is fantastic. The leads are pretty much fully formed from the door, and the first scene between the two is wonderful. Sure, Scully is a brunette and is a bit too cheerful, and Duchovny hadn't quite honed his mutant ability to underplay every scene in exact inverse proportion to however freaked out a normal human would be, but the chemistry is totally there. Check out this exchange:
Scully: Do you have a theory?
Mulder: I have lots of theories...Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?
Scully: Logically, I would have to say no...
Mulder: When convention and science offer us no answers, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility?
Scully: ...What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science. The answers are there. You just have to know where to look.
Mulder: That's why they put the I in FBI.
I mean, minus a dude smoking (more on him later) and a damn good opening title sequence, that's the entire hook of the show, right there. I feel the need to point out how incredibly uncommon the personal dynamics are on this show: I cannot recall a show before this where two young, extremely attractive, lead actors of compatible gender who showed as much chemistry as these two were placed into a business casual relationship. The show was still finding it's way through this season, but the one constant was how watchable the two leads are. As we will (soon) see, there were times where it was the only thing holding an episode together.
There's a scene in the third act that sort of crystallizes everything that's cool about these two: Scully arrives at Mulder's hotel-room door in a bathrobe during a power outage and strips down to her underwear. She's felt bumps on her back and thinks they might be the same marks the dead kids turned up with. Mulder bends down to check them and then tells her they're mosquito bites. She quickly covers back up, and collapses gratefully into a hug. Mulder isn't sure how he feels about it. We cut to Scully in Mulder's bed, while Mulder sits on the floor and tells her (and us) about his sister; the X Files; and what he knows about the Conspiracy. It's the first time either character is vulnerable, and you don't recognize how powerfully it works until you've seen it a couple times. It's the moment they know they can trust one another.
The mystery itself is like a hot-air balloon ride atmospheric, but a bit dull: Kids from the same graduating class are being abducted and killed, and the aliens are using a kid in a coma to do it. At the end, Mulder interrupts the kid and the aliens run off. That said, even here there are some wonderful little creepy bits: an exhumed coffin contains what looks like a mummified ape; a girl develops a spontaneous nosebleed while talking to Mulder and Scully; the only remaining piece of physical evidence from the case is filed away in a secret Pentagon warehouse by an ominous smoking man.
Since I mentioned the Smoking Man, I'd better talk a bit about the conspiracy here. The producers didn't really have a vision for where the series was going at this point, but what they are sure about is pretty good. Apart from a couple of cameos by the Smoking Man, and vague intimations from Mulder we don't ever hear them named directly or see them work, and in a lot of ways that's scarier: bodies are dug up from graves in the middle of the night; hotel rooms are burned to the ground; and paperwork is conveniently misplaced and all we're left with is a silent smoking guy in the Pentagon.
As I finish this review, I feel the same way I did when I first saw the show: It'll be fun to see where it goes from here.
What do I know?
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