Tag: The X Files

Posted on

Boxwatch: The Return of Fox and Dana

Thexfiles.jpg
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17424488

The original run of The X-Files was not quite the appointment viewing that Law & Order was. When I did watch it, I thrilled to the case-of-the-week but quickly tired of the overall story arc — especially once I realised how that was progressed:

  1. a witness reluctantly testifies to Mulder with potentially earth-shattering information;
  2. Mulder leaps to the conclusion that this witness is The Key to the mystery or conspiracy he is trying to unravel;
  3. the witness disappears or dies;
  4. the witness’s uncorroborated testimony has a sliver of information that leads to another witness;
  5. repeat from 1. above.

The above recipe worked a treat for the show but my viewing began to slip as I tried with less and less success to block out the conspiracy blah-blah and enjoy the case-of-the-week. The last I saw of The X-Files was the feature film Fight the Future which was two hours of conspiracy gibberish, made slightly passable by the gravitas of Martin Landau and Armin Mueller-Stahl and feature-budget SFX.

So… Mulder and Scully are together again, and the truth is still out there. As an audience member, I’m like, Yeah, nah. As a writer, it’s disappointing to see it hasn’t refreshed its find-witness-leap-to-conclusion-lose-witness recipe — I mean, after nine goddamned seasons and two feature films, don’tchathink the heroes would’ve learned to protect their witnesses better by now? And, shockingly, it suffers from say-my-name-ism — following is an exchange verbatim:

EXT. PUBLIC MEETING PLACE -- DAY

FOX MULDER exits a car and joins DANA SCULLY on a busy city street. It’s been years since they last saw each other.

SCULLY

(off Mulder’s mode of transport)

Uber?

MULDER

I hitchhiked.

(off Scully)

Relax, Scully, I’m kidding.

SCULLY

I just worry about you, Mulder.

Really? Haven’t they been reading my blog?

 

Share
Posted on

Kev and Me

I have fond twentieth century memories of an above-average cop show where Ken Wahl and his eyebrow went undercover to fight crime, befriended the bad guys, and becoming increasingly conflicted about his work with each season. It was called Wiseguy. This (and the long-lamented Unsub) plumbed moral ambiguities and twisted the TV-cop-show genre before the likes of X-Files and then CSI made ‘dark’ and ‘gritty’ cool.

Each season of Wiseguy concentrated on one big-cheese villain that had to be taken down. Of all the mobsters and politicians and teamsters who would go into Mr Wahl’s little black book, two villains stood out for me: Tim Curry‘s rogueish music exec who was a hoot to watch; and Kevin Spacey‘s enigmatic and downright creepy criminal mastermind (and his too-intimate-for-comfort relationship with his sister played by Joan Severance).

Now that I think of it, maybe it was the actors’ approaches that were so memorable. At one end of the spectrum was Curry’s big-toothed scene-chewing, and at the other was Spacey with his looks, glances and loaded pauses. I think it was Spacey – and the writing of course – that forced me to think things like what did he mean by that? and I just missed a major clue, didn’t I?

Did Wiseguy really introduce me to my screenwriting friend, Subtext? I don’t know. But something happened when Spacey started running his lines in that show. It’s where an actor elevates the script without drawing attention. People thought that Spacey was the bee’s knees when they saw him in either The Usual Suspects or American Beauty.

I knew that already from his tour of duty on Wiseguy.

(And here’s an entertaining few minutes of Spacey and his imaginary friends. Fedora-tip: Eyes Wired Open.)

Share