Drish
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Post by Drish on Dec 28, 2018 6:11:27 GMT
And is it necessary to watch it chronologically? There are way too many seasons and so little time😓. If not, best season to start with? I am a sucker for such mystery/thriller kind of stuff, so looking forward to it.  |
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Post by stephen on Dec 28, 2018 6:35:02 GMT
It is absolutely essential to watch it chronologically. Start with Season 1 and just bask in it!
I adore the series, I grew up with it from Season 1 on (I was five when it aired in 1993, and I watched it religiously while it was on). This was in the era before show bibles, so the show is notorious for its mythology being more or less made up as they went along, but it's almost entirely worth watching. There are really only a few episodes throughout the series I would argue aren't worth watching (maybe five or six out of the 202 episodes of Seasons 1-9), because Duchovny and Anderson have the greatest chemistry of any duo in TV history (and Anderson is my all-time Lead Actress performance in TV history). You're gonna see a lot of future great actors and writers on this series; among them, Vince Gilligan cut his teeth on this series and you can see the level of storytelling that would later be used on Breaking Bad.
As for the show's quality, Seasons 1-5 are pretty damn impeccable (with Season 3 being my all-time favorite season of TV, with the exception of The Wire's second season). It takes a very slight dip at Season 6 (after the first movie), and Season 7 is in my opinion the weakest because you can tell Duchovny and Anderson aren't really in it. It actually gets rejuvenated in Season 8 and things start to get onto an even keel on Season 9, but then they hastily wrapped the series.
Don't bother with the second movie or the revival. They're godawful and completely insulting to any fan of the franchise.
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Drish
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Post by Drish on Dec 28, 2018 6:44:00 GMT
Yaas Stephen, thank you for your detailed thoughts on this. I watched the first episode and it was very good. Exactly what I expected it to be. Atmospheric and somewhat reminded me of Twin Peaks. Looking forward to seeing it more |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2018 6:54:41 GMT
I haven't seen all of it (and have heard nothing but bad things about the new episodes - my Dad is a huge fan of the original series and thought the revival was some of the worst TV he'd ever seen), and it's been a few years since I started watching, but to me it's pretty inconsistent. I remember absolutely loving some of the episodes, finding some of them lame, and being kind of indifferent to the rest. The show is much, much stronger for me when it's focusing on the overarching narrative. The standalone episodes usually aren't really my thing. I felt the same way about Buffy, so I think I generally just don't care much for "monster of the week" type storytelling in TV. But if you're into that, I bet you'd dig the show.
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Post by jakesully on Dec 28, 2018 15:34:27 GMT
Its such a great entertaining show (one of favs actually) . the chemistry between the two leads ( Mulder & Scully) is off the charts good . You'll definitely want to binge watch it from the start . Enjoy!
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Post by DeepArcher on Dec 28, 2018 17:53:25 GMT
Fantastic show that tragically overstayed its welcome as so many do. It was one of the first things I binge-watched on Netflix maybe five or six years ago, and I was in love with it. The first five seasons are damn near unimpeachable with only a handful of weak episodes here and there. I also think I'm a bigger fan of the sixth season than most; it has a very different atmosphere to it and you can tell it's lost a bit of its edge, but the individual episodes have a lot of great concepts that I just adored. The last three seasons are where it truly starts to decline, with only the occasional bright spot here and there. If you're attached by that point it's probably worth seeing through to the end, but if not, seasons seven through nine are the ones I'd say you don't have to bother with. And the revival...well, I only got through a few episodes of it  The show at its best, though, is one of the best of its kind. Duchovny and Anderson truly do have some of the best on-screen chemistry you'll see in television, and Mulder and Scully are an all-time great duo really only rivaled by Walter White and Jesse Pinkman as far as I'm concerned. I do echo redhawk's feelings towards "monster of the week" storytelling, but with this it never felt like a problem. I know the overarching mythology episodes are often praised the most, but as far as I'm concerned, it's pretty damn worthwhile outside of that. A lot of these episodes have such fantastic genre concepts, and honestly I think most of my favorite episodes would be these one-off episodes, simply because they're so unique that they've become incredibly memorable for me. You're in for a real treat. Just talking about it has made me want to watch it again. |
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Dec 28, 2018 17:59:47 GMT
Be forewarned that there are a lot of clunker episodes.
But at the same time, I still remember Tooms as being an all-time great creeper villain and he was from season 1. And that was just the start.
I still hope that one day someone will take my idea of doing season long cases set in the X-Files universe (altered, of course) in True Detective fashion. I'd be super fucking down for that.
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Post by stephen on Dec 28, 2018 18:08:08 GMT
Be forewarned that there are a lot of clunker episodes. But at the same time, I still remember Tooms as being an all-time great creeper villain and he was from season 1. And that was just the start. I still hope that one day someone will take my idea of doing season long cases set in the X-Files universe (altered, of course) in True Detective fashion. I'd be super fucking down for that. Goddamn, I love the sound of that. |
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Dec 28, 2018 18:36:21 GMT
Be forewarned that there are a lot of clunker episodes. But at the same time, I still remember Tooms as being an all-time great creeper villain and he was from season 1. And that was just the start. I still hope that one day someone will take my idea of doing season long cases set in the X-Files universe (altered, of course) in True Detective fashion. I'd be super fucking down for that. Goddamn, I love the sound of that. I think I told you this already but I had it all planned out in my head... S1- Would be the Manchurian Candidate season where a bunch of sleeper cells in NYC are getting activated (beyond their own control) and it's a sort of a who's who and it becomes the series long story with the lead male being constantly regarded as a "marked one". S2- Would be the plague cult... basically the reason I never actually wrote any of this is because that fucking third Da Vinci Code movie had this same thing... but anyway I had a great visual of this cult just worshiping this horribly unfortunate soul that they strapped to a post and injected with a disease. I envisioned at the end of the first episode would be one of the cult gently stroking one of the strapped man's wounds and then later shown walking into an airport. S3- Would be the monster of the week season. It would be a "werewolf" near the Canadian border, but in reality it's just a woman with supernatural powers who is capable of shredding her victims... hence why she was labeled a werewolf, despite not being so. S4- Would be the tie everything together season. The male lead would be sidelined with injury from the werewolf and disillusionment, it would be revealed that a sect of the US government (with an agent of which being the smoking man of this series constantly harassing the X-Files and mostly the male lead because he thinks he's a marked one) was responsible for the "marked ones", and the female lead who was the better investigator would become the heavy. And that would be it. It would end with the male lead being killed by the gov-sect agent, the female lead exposing the gov-sect for all their wrongdoings (of which the X-files could do nothing about, leaving the whole series for naught in a way), and of course Daggett (who is now the head of the X-Files) hunting down and killing the agent who killed the male lead. Then it would end with the female lead in her car filled with documents (to maybe put to the press) and then her burner phone gets a text saying "it's done" from, presumably, Daggett... while this plays: |
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Post by Martin Stett on Dec 28, 2018 21:31:16 GMT
Is that the show about self-loathing bisexuals that search out Marlon Brando related conspiracies?
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Post by cheesecake on Jan 4, 2019 4:14:09 GMT
When it's on, it is on. As others have said there are some clunkers, but I'd say it's worth the journey. The leads are dynamite with Anderson being my favorite of the two. Some great monster of the week episodes and I've always loved the more comedic ones ( Bad Blood being my all-time favorite). Curious to see your thoughts as you go through the series! Definitely pass on the second movie and the most recent two seasons. Barf. |
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