The X-Files Review

Although there’s not much new to discover about the duo this far down their respective paths, there’s a too-old-for-this humor at play in the revival that’s easy to remind you why Mulder and Scully have become so iconic within the genre. Their romantic life is only hinted at sporadically so anyone worried about a will-they-or-won’t-they rehash can rest easy, especially once the show begins dropping references to a new possible love interest for Scully halfway into the premiere.

A restrained number of mostly useless new players around them never distracts from the miniseries’ main thrust. As Sveta, Mahendru essentially gets to the be revival’s first case-of-the-week and watch on in wide-eyed fascination as the main leads discuss the intricacies of the show’s mythology around her. McHale is the centerpiece of the new cast, and although he gets a couple of big speeches that are appropriately Jeff Winger-y in their hoo-rah attitude, he feels largely adrift and disconnected from the seriousness of not only The X-Files itself but of the very content and stances his talking head character stands by.

Maybe the most immediate disappointment to the show’s return is its overall glossy, crime procedural aesthetic modernization. I had a weird, snake-eating-the-tail moment of vertigo when, almost immediately, some Fringe vibes were sent my way from a few shots in the premiere. That’s not a diss, far from it, but the new X-Files diffuses some of the classic run’s inherent, scrappy creepiness due to the simple fact that the show itself is no longer an underdog (as well as the fact that one of its priorities is catching the audience up without freaking them out).  It’s also hard to judge how long-time fans will react to what is said and done with relation to that aforementioned alien conspiracy within this hour; I found it the biggest, boldest hook yet in the new run, but some will probably (definitely) vehemently disagree.

Since The X-Files helped pioneer the byzantine-mythology-on-TV trend, it feels frustrating when the most interesting tidbits are relegated to whiplash-inducing info dumps. The best moments are saved for a rudimentary yet effective series of flashbacks to some ongoings in the desert in 1947, but otherwise the reboot doesn’t do much beyond saying “aliens exist and the government is bad, man!” to catch up newcomers. It’ll probably be enough, especially when recent contemporary headlines are wrangled into the series’ pre-existing backstory in an effort that has the double-duty benefit of feeling beneficial to the plot and still managing to accentuate The X-Files‘ classic sense of an omnipresent menace.

Upcoming focuses on monsters-of-the-week have me slightly concerned as well, considering the world-ending stakes set up here, but maybe that’s the beauty of Carter’s new envisioning of the series. He’s brought back and distilled the show into six hours of pure X-Files, good and bad. Duchovny and Anderson are entertaining and reliably classic (if unsurprising), conspiracies are discussed in clandestine secrecy (if confusingly), flashbacks reveal exciting truths (that feel more important to the characters than maybe to you), and Mulder’s extraterrestrial friends feel tantalizingly closer than ever (and then they aren’t, again).

“You’re nearly there. You’re close.” You are, Mr. Carter, so close that I’m willing to forgive the revival’s more clumsily executed moments for the sheer effusive energy of the whole thing.