1. At what point would you say you noticed the first signs of X-Files suckiness?
FIRST PLACE: "The Last Temptation of Mulder."
Opinion was, to some extent, divided on the question of exactly when the rot set in. More delicate or discriminating palates detected a rank smell hovering throughout the past two seasons, with Joan identifying the unfortunate Cassandra Spender as the harbinger of putrescence. Julie and KtAC are united, however, in their belief that it was not until Mulder died for our sins that the stench became overpowering.
It's unanimous (nearly): As soon as that alien spacecraft turned up on the Gold Coast, we were on a slippery slope. All respondents identified either the beginning of this season or the end of last season as the sign that we had climbed aboard the express train to Heintown. If only they had listened to Brannon Braga and learned to steer clear of anything that might tempt one to name an episode "Genesis."
Respondents really took advantage of the freedom offered by the short-essay format here, which made it easier for them to hone their rage and hatred but harder for me to quantify. Some common themes:
Drop the M/S romance. OK, maybe it has potential, but not if Chris Carter is going to write it.
Stop introducing new elements to the conspiracy plot. He should have learned this at his mother's knee: before you take another helping you finish what's on your plate.
Reverse the role reversal, restoring Scully to the skeptic position and Mulder to the believer position.
Kill Mulder, and do not allow him to rise from the dead.
ANSWER: Maybe, but we'd have to kill the producers first.
All respondents agreed that the chances of seeing Chris Carter and his lackeys put any of these sensible suggestions into place are just about zero. Some feel that at this point the damage could not be undone even by wiser and better writers; others would like to put Laura's audacious but visionary "whacking Chris with a mallet whenever he does something stupid" scheme into practice and see if it improved matters.
Take your pick of 4, 5, or 6. Katherine's vote takes us way back to the heady days of "The Red and the Black," when the faceless rebels first appeared and that sewn-up-face stuff left over from "Millennium's" premiere caught the attention of the makeup department. Others were more impressed by the pointless and flaccid "The End," which was supposed to prepare us for the movie and instead merely prepared us for a couple years of hating Diana Fowley. And of course, we can't overlook last season's finale, which paved the way for the biggest, most pungent stinkbomb of them all...
It'll never win an Emmy but it sure as hell ran off with this award: "The Last Temptation of Mulder."
Most season premieres are bad only in that they fail to live up to the hype generated by the previous seasons' finale and the many weeks of promotion during August (or, increasingly, September and October). However, TLTOM would suck no matter where you put it in the lineup, and it would suck hard, loud, long, and lustily. It's bad enough that Mulder is increasingly exhibiting the symptoms of the dreaded Mary Sue disease (which strikes characters when their writers forget the difference between "alter ego" and "vehicle through which I live out my own depraved fantasies"). The fact that Chris Carter had his Mary Sue actually deified just adds on whole googleplexes full of sucking.
Damsel In Distress.
Some declined to get into specifics; others nominated "Scully Gets Victimized Again By Donny Pfaster," "Scully Finds Out She's Mothered An Alien Baby," and "Scully Fails To Act Like A Doctor"--but you can see the theme here. We don't like it when Scully is used as a lab rat, as mutant bait, or as a prop for Mulder's heroics. We especially don't like it when she's endangered by some nimrod that she would be perfectly capable of breaking in half if the writers would only let her.
All together now:
THE LAST TEMPTATION OF MULDER!!!
How do we hate thee? Let me count the ways:
1) Gratuitous glorification of Mulder.
2) Major religious symbol drowned in the fetid puddle of Chris Carter's self-aggrandizement.
3) If imagining Mulder as Christ makes one's brain and stomach hurt, so does imagining Christ as Mulder.
4) Cancer Man as God the Father? OK, does that make Diana Fowley the Virgin Mary? Or are we supposed to assume that his mother's name is Shmi? And what's Scully--Mary Magdalene? Judas? St. Peter? St. Thomas? The guy selling wolf nipple chips in the stands?
5) Mulder and Diana. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww.
In the end, it boils down to the Three Ins: Incoherent, Insufferable, and Inexcusable.
Almost any.
"Don't Look Any Further" was nominated again by Katherine, whose stomach heaved as mightily as mine did the night that thing aired. Others just hate the whole M/S thing, from that almost-kiss in the movie to the millennial smooch. But much as we may hate to see Mulder puttin' the moves on Scully, we hate it even more when Mulder allows Diana Fowley to horn in and eclipse her in his eyes.
It's a three-way tie:
1) Chris Carter's abject failure to follow through on the plot threads he starts
2) Use of women, esp. Scully, as lab rats/sacrificial victims
3) And God damn, does that Mulder-as-Christ thing SUCK!
CHARACTER YOU MOST WANTED NOT TO SEE DEVELOPED, THAT WAS
FIRST PLACE: Cancer Man. The man may not have a name, but we've got an awful lot of other TMI, including the BAD kind of TMI.
SECOND PLACE: Tie between the Un-Called-For Twins, Jeffrey Spender and Diana Fowley. We just didn't need to go there.
FIRST PLACE: Krychek.
Who's he working for? What's his motivation? Is he an alien? Is he Russian? How is he adjusting to life as an amputee? Who are his parents? Cancer Man and Princess Amidala? What about Marita? What's he up to when he's not sneaking into Mulder's bedroom when he's gone and sniffing his dirty underwear? We'll never find out, because nobody cares.
Tie for second: Walter "Living With Nanites" Skinner and Diana "Sure She's Heinous, But Shouldn't She Have A Backstory?" Fowley.
FIRST PLACE: The smallpox! What of the smallpox?
Tie for second: Bees in Tunisia and Diana Fowley.
FIRST PLACE: Who are these aliens, anyway?
SECOND PLACE: The whole stinkin' mess.
ASPECT OF MYTHOLOGY WHICH, WHILE NOT BEING A CONTINUITY PROBLEM OR INCONSISTENT, STILL REALLY ANNOYS YOU
FIRST PRIZE: We gotta go with Navajo.
Not only have these writers not done basic research on the Navajo language, but they do not seem to have a single clue in their heads about how any language works. If they get marked down for not knowing that Navajo did not have a written alphabet until one was improvised by the code-talkers during World War II, they get blasted right out of the water--and then set on fire after being drawn and quartered--for their ineffably asinine representation of Scully's "translation" of the writing on the alien ship, in which they appear to be assuming that everyone in the entire universe not only speaks English but knows the English names for the proteins that make up DNA.
SECOND PRIZE: Take your pick--Diana "Whole Lotta Evil" Fowley, Mulder himself, or The Whole Shootin' Match.
WORST PREMISE
Voters were unable to choose from such a tempting panoply. Nominees included: killer pooches, the trash monster from "Arcadia," inbred mutant hillbillies, inbred mutant hillbillies giving birth to Satan's hatchlings, and the never to be rivalled "The Last Temptation of Mulder."
First place: The Return of Donny Pfaster.
As KtAC noted, not only was "Don't Look Any Further" eminently pukeworthy in its own right, but it did a great disservice to "Irresistible," not only failing to capitalize on its complexity but actually misrepresenting the plot (Donny Pfaster was never a cannibal, for instance). One consolation vote for "Demon Babies."
First Place: The Unnatural. David, keep the day job.
Runners-Up: "Don't Look Any Further" (Katherine’s rage is becoming complete), "One Son" ("just the plot synopsis is enough to bring on a nervous tic") and "Fast Times at Podunk High."
First Place: "Lucky Boy." We could have produced a more compelling performance with two action figures, a still photo of Jar Jar, and Shockwave.
Runners-Up: "Fast Times," "Rain King"
Strangely, after all of that ranting about "Last Temptation" it didn't even place. Voters went instead for tried and true favorites:
"Home" (incest, bludgeoning, legless moms on trolleys...you think it can't get nastier and then it does)
"The Host" (sad as KtAC was to pass up an opportunity to excoriate "Don't Look Any Further," nothing is grosser than a human-sized tapeworm)
"F. Emasculata" (what’s grosser than a human-sized tapeworm? Exploding boils!)
and the Editor's Choice: "Bad Dog."
Why "Bad Dog?" Because it has everything: a bad premise (killer pets...never a good idea), a bad script ("I lack your feminine wiles"), bad characterization (Scully acting like a jealous girlfriend), bad production values (it's the taillights of a '62 VW bug...or, it could be the giant glowing red eyes of the killer dog), bad puns, and worst of all, a shameful humiliation of their guest star, Andrew Robinson. All it's missing is blood, guts, and an unexplained connection to the Conspiracy. But more than that, "Bad Dog" is an episode that would never have been produced as it was if anyone on the production staff still gave a shit. And thus, I choose "Bad Dog" as a perfect and shining example of all that has come to suck about a show that once held me in its thrall.
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