I have Season 6 on DVD. What season should I get next? Season 5 has "Bad Blood", "Post-Modern Prometheus", and "Unusual Suspects", but Season 4 has "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man", and Season 3 has "Jose Chung's From Outer Space".
For that matter, what's your favorite episode? (Mine's "The Unnatural".)
(If this posts twice, my apologies)
ReplyDeleteNone of the above. IMO X-Files hurled itself over a cliff qualitywise around the end of the third season. Its first season, however, had as high a percentage of hits as any SF series I've ever watched. The pilot, "E.B.E.," "Eve," and the season finale "The Erlenmeyer Flask" are all good. "Beyond the Sea" is superbly creepy, easily one of the series' top three episodes. "Ice" is as fine a job as I've ever seen a TV series do at adapting a classic SF story. "Darkness Falls" is fun for several reasons. And the magnificent doubleheader "Squeeze/Tooms" is beyond description -- it has to be seen to be properly appreciated.
I'm votin' 3. JCFOS is a classic.
ReplyDelete(Captcha: "ticted." As in, "You 'ticted t'that-there X-Files, Tam?")
It may not have been the best episode but I really liked the humor and irony in Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' (1996).
ReplyDeleteI mean, the MIB were none other than Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek. "Your scientists have yet to discover how neural networks create self-consciousness, let alone how the human brain processes two-dimensional retinal images into the three-dimensional phenomenon known as perception. Yet you somehow brazenly declare that seeing is believing."
WV: spatedi (a teddy you wear to the spa?)
Jose Chung's is where its at.
ReplyDeleteBest.
Episode.
Evar. !!11!eleventeen!
Wolfwalker,
ReplyDeleteI'll agree that it got a lot more hit-or-miss after Season 3, but some of the hits in the later seasons were among the best things I've seen on TeeWee. I mean, "The Ghosts That Stole Christmas"?
YOU'RE WATCHING THEM OUT OF ORDER!???
ReplyDelete(::grin::)
I guess it's my OCD showing, but I'd go season 1, 2, 3, etc.
But that's just me.
M
Standard advice for a series - watch it in order starting from the beginning. Easy.
ReplyDelete"Jose Chung's From Outer Space", no question!
ReplyDeletegoliess A female goalie?
It's a toss up between "Jose Chung's", "Tooms/Squeeze" and "The field where I died". Too many good ones to pick from.
ReplyDeleteHave you watched Fringe yet?
"YOU'RE WATCHING THEM OUT OF ORDER!???"
ReplyDeleteOh, I've seen them all back when they were on TeeWee (except Seasons 8 and 9, which I flat refuse to accept as canon); I just decided to get some more on DVD...
Tam,
ReplyDeletesome of the hits in the later seasons
I wouldn't know about those -- I got really disgusted with the series sometime during early season 5, and stopped watching completely not long after. I don't even recognize the episode title "The Ghosts That Stole Christmas".
I love Episode 3 from season 1 entitled "squeeze" where the mutant guy eats livers like Dr. Lector.
ReplyDeleteActually, I love all of season 1 the best.
I loved "The Unnatural." Great episode.
ReplyDeleteI'd go with Season 5, just for "Bad Blood." Luke Wilson's bucktoothed scene in Mulder's version just slays me.
Season 3. JCFOS is magnificent!
ReplyDeleteAll those years of playing D&D taught me something about courage
My other favorite is "Home." *shudder*
For the full Jose Chung effect, watch JCFOS and then try to lay holt of a Millennium DVD and watch "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense."
ReplyDelete"Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" is awfully good, too.
Also, permit me to recommend "Jump the Shark" from the final season.
"Home"
ReplyDeleteBecause every five minutes, something WRONG so very very WRONG happens.
Oh yeah, "Home" is one of the best hours of horror EVER aired on TV. I'd go for season 4 first just for it... though given that every episode that Darrin Morgan was involved in was pure gold (he wrote Jose Chung, for starters), I'd be tempted to just go for the season that had the most of his work. He also wrote my favorite episode- or at least, the one that's my favorite when "Home" isn't- "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose". Just because it had the best single line ever uttered on the show.
ReplyDeleteI stopped watching consistently somewhere in season 5, but I caught "The Ghosts That Stole Christmas" in a rerun during a bored moment and it indeed was one of the best of the show.
All things being equal, I'd say go for pre-season 4 because that was when the writers were still assuming we liked Scully because she was strong and level-headed and that we wouldn't like her better as a chew toy.
I had a real problem with Darkness Falls - something about the suspense of one little bulb, the generator sputtering, all while knowing the little green critters would come out in darkness...
ReplyDelete.
.
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All in a cabin with a fireplace and 8 zillion cords of wood at hand. Didn't anybody have a match?
Season 3 "War of the Coprophages"
ReplyDeleteI hate roaches. AND it has Bobbi Phillips!!
R
wv: powedges- the edge of pow???
anon- I decided at the last minute to be nice and not mention that. As soon as Stingray pointed it out to me, what had been a deliciously creepy episode turned into forty-five minutes of me going "Okay, so they're out in the woods with a radical survivalist environmentalist and a FOREST RANGER, and NOBODY thinks to light a fucking fire?!"
ReplyDeleteMmmmmm Bobbi Phillips mmmmmm. Dr. Bambi!
ReplyDeleteThat episode both was sexy and gross at the same time.
I think it was even proceeded/preceded by Detective White in all of her glory.
labrat: I get that reaction when I read Louis L'amour's book* and the pioneers are trapped at a water hole, but the Apaches have killed the horses and there's nothing to eat . . . .
ReplyDeleteAnd horse meat ain't that bad, either.
* he really only wrote one, but dang it was good.
I'm not a huge X-Files guy, but I did like the episode where they explained the Smoking Man's history. Turns out he gave the Soviet goalie a friendly slap on the back with a poisoned needle right before the 1980 gold medal Olympic hockey game.
ReplyDeleteTough choice - but maybe "Santa" will bring you the other one for Christmas (if she can borrow it later).
ReplyDeleteLots of great episodes have been mentioned.
ReplyDeleteLet me point out "Closure" as proof that X-Files still hit an occasional home run as late as season 7.