The X-Files.

For those of you living in caves, let me mention that the show ended a nine-year run last month. Amidst a certain amount of lackluster hoop-la from the media, fear and trepidation from the remaining fans, and complete indifference from the millions upon millions of viewers who quit watching the show around Season 6, the last episode was aired on May 19 as a two-hour "special" titled, amusingly enough, "The Truth."

Let no one tell you that the guys at 1013 don't have a sense of humor.

I've been resisting the temptation to talk about this episode for weeks. (Well, okay, I haven't been resisting. I've been talking about it constantly to anyone who will listen. But in my mind I'm mature, restrained, and above complaining about trivialities.) And that includes me being too kind to diss the people bitching about this episode. Me, I got everything I could have wanted or expected out of it.

I wanted:
Proof that 1013 is run by clueless morons,
Documentation of the fact that no one but the fans ever really knew what this show was about,
New support for my theory that The X-Files actually ended after Season 5 and that everything that's happened since was just Bobby in the shower. (Or, you know, that Field Trip never really ended, Mulder and Scully are still trapped in Magic Mushroomland, and everything that has happened since is their personal worst-case hallucinations of how the future might pan out.)

I expected:
The mytharc being reduced to even more mindless hash,
1013 continuing to try and play both ends against the middle on the whole romance question,
All of the appearances by my favorite characters being pointless and stupid.

I got it all and more besides! I got terminal boredom as a bonus! Two solid hours of my life I'll never see again.

Who where those people and why were they impersonating Mulder and Scully? Damn, I got sick of watching Scully bawling. When did she turn from a kick-ass, take-charge kind of person into a whiney dishmop? I'm giving thanks that I haven't been inflicting this show on myself regularly for the last two and a half years.

Random recollections of this disaster of a finale....

Was that not the easiest jailbreak you've ever seen? I may be mistaken, but hasn't the military been the Big Bad for the last nine years? Are we to understand that they were holding Mulder on a No Security Base and that they'd left the key to his cell in the lock or something?

And why did they leak the news to Skinner and Scully that Mulder was under detention anyhow? Presumably it would have been a lot easier for them to just slip some cyanide in Mulder's soup one day than to go through that farce of a hearing.

Monica had the most thankless job of all in the episode. As the newly designated Believer and Impossible Exposition Babe, it fell to her to deliver that improbably stupid speech at the trial where she tried to make a group of strangers coming by to watch the Miracle!Birth both significant and proof of a government conspiracy.

"We came to understand.... the importance of this quasi-virginal birth and of all the SuperSoldiers coming to witness it was Highly Significant! and Proof! of...of...of things. Mysterious and sinister things. So there!

The actress should have demanded extra pay for that. Okay, maybe Skinner had the most thankless job in the actual episode, that of trying to put together some kind of defense for the FBI's flakiest employee, but I give Monica full marks for having delivered the most embarassing speech in the show's nine-year history with a straight face. Even with passion and conviction.

Pretty much any court in the land would have found Mulder guilty as hell with the kind of witnesses and the complete lack of proof of anything that came out in that trial.

Of course a real court would have had massive confusion over the lack of a body and eventually the case would probably have been thrown out because who's going to put up with depositions from 30 witnesses, not one of whom cares enough to actually show up in court and by the way, the DNA proves that that body you entered as Exhibit 42 isn't actually the corpse in question, so cough it up guys or I'm shutting this fiasco down and going to watch repeats of Gilligan's Island, okay?

But. The case against Mulder wouldn't have failed for anything having anything to do with Mulder's witnesses or the case Darlin' Skinner presented. In fact, every witness that showed up just made not only Mulder but the entire FBI just look like a bigger bowl of Froot Loops.

The CrapArc That Was A Myth

I can't stand it...I have to say it....what about those hostages, hmmmm? Remember? Long time ago? The human conspirators gave up loved ones as hostages to fortune and said hostages were tortured endlessly for years? Someone explain to me again just why the human conspirators thought this was a good deal?

Except...no...we were told that the hostages were actually used by the Sekrit Government Conspiracy as subjects for experimentation to create a human/alien hybrid to help fight against...no, the hybrids were what the aliens wanted, The Sekrit Government Conspirators were experimenting on...other abductees or street people or something and it was the SuperSoldiers who appeared much later who were to help us fight against...no, wait, they were part of the alien plan as well.

You know what? The only people actually working against the aliens were the Russians. The only good guys in the whole show were the Cold War Era Commies. What does that say about...things?

I'll tell you what it says. Ratboy, in his role as the one who tried to spread the word that the Ruskies had developed a vaccine against the aliens, was the only really good guy in the entire show. He went and found the solution for the world's problem, and tried to get the word out to the world.

Yay, Ratboy!

Ahem. Sorry. Where was I?

Someone explain to me why CSM went to watch the entire Syndicate (besides himself, of course) getting torched by the aliens. Why did the aliens torch them? Why didn't they want to burn CSM? Why did he go watch it happen? Who forgot the marshmallows? Is that where he got the idea for how to marshmallow his son later? Was he trying to duplicate the Amazing Firetorch O'Death?

Or, maybe we have the answer to what happened to Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice after that history-making wife-swapping scene in the movie.

If CrispySpender was actually Bill Mulder's son out of Mrs. Here-I-Go-Again, Frequently Abducted Spender then Spender Pater might have crisped Bill Mulder's offspring in retaliation for the shitty job Bill had done of raising Pater's son out of Mrs. I've Got A Secret Mulder?

I thought I was onto something until I remembered that Alice wound up posing as a spinster on the Brady Bunch.

But! What did we see as the pentultimate X-Files episode? The Brady Bunch house, obviously possessed of an alien spirit and having nurtured the first real human/alien hybrid, lurking around on a sidestreet in Middle America and brooding over the annoying red tape that meant a simple invasion had to take ten frigging millenium any more.

I have no idea where I was going with all of that, but I'm scared that it actually tied back into the show. (N.B. Return bong to Mr. CC with "thanks, but I don't think I'm up to it" note.)

How did Gibson Praise get out of that damned reactor and what happened to the alien trapped in there with him? What actual purpose did he wind up serving in the entire mytharc? Any at all?

Starlight? We waited years to find out what happened to Samantha, just to find out she was wandering around among the constellations, singing new age songs of joy? She was kidnapped, released, raised by Mulder's biggest enemy, periodically returned to the aliens for more demented torture, died at the age of 24 but was killed as a small child by a psychotic mass child-murderer, and was returned in spirit at the age of 13 as fricking starlight?

I hope everyone at 1013 gets boils. Big ones.

And what kind of race of incredibly advanced and powerful aliens comes up with such a stupid, slow-moving plan to conquer a bunch of semi-civilized monkeys? Who needs tens of thousands of years to squash a bunch of primitives? Were they just waiting until the highway infrastructure was suitable to their needs or what?

And what was with the crashed spaceships covered with writings in various languages proving that pretty much the entire religious and spiritual history of our species was some huge joke perpetrated by sadistic and really bored alien conquerors?

Could we learn to get along with a race that proves itself to have such a juvenile sense of humor? I think we could. We could easily have provided buckets for every gallon of oilen that wanted to come and visit our lovely planet. Or glass jars and then we could have taken them on road trips to see the interesting sights.

And, you know, the fines for accidentally leaving the jars in the back window of the car and boiling our alien guests in the summer heat could have been substantial. I think people would have cooperated.

Most folks were pretty tolerant of those stick-on Garfield dolls, after all.

The more I think about the mytharc, the more I'm pretty sure I understand what it feels like to go mad.

Anyhow, for a bunch of all-conquering aliens, they sure seemed to have a lot of trouble keeping their ships in the air, didn't they? What was with that? They couldn't maybe hand out maps that show where the various Evil Metal Magnetite deposits were located on the planet so that commuters didn't wind up crashing into the nearest hillside?

What do the Mayans have to do with anything? Wasn't it the Navajo who were set up to be the Mysterious And Primitive But Powerful ones? I object.

What about the alien rebels? What was their deal and where did they go? What's Krycek's connection to them?

What about the little, skittery aliens in the underground document facility where Mulder discovered that he and not Samantha was originally to be abducted?

Who is the Bounty Hunter and what is his connection to the black oil? And why does he look human when he wants to and if the aliens can shape-shift, why do they need a hybrid?

What the hell did bees ever to do Chris Carter, anyhow?

I'm losing hope here....

Scully. And, you know, that Mulder guy.

When I originally turned this show on, the first thing I fell in love with was Scully's character. And I weep, weep I tell you! for what they did to her over the years.

She gave up any hope of a normal life or career, or even something interesting to add to the family's holiday newsletter in order to help Mulder in his obsessive quest for some mysterious "truth." In return, she was kidnapped, experimented on, diseased, sterilized, and dissed.

Dissed mosly by Mulder I might add. As the years passed, he kept leaving her out of things, taking action without discussing it with her and denying that she, as his partner, had any right to either make her own decisions about how far she wanted to go or to be kept informed about how far he was going himself.

He never really accepted her fully, as an equal partner in his search. She was always an ally until things got, in his Wise Masculine Opinion, too dangerous for her. Or, you know. Until he forgot about her for a while or something. Then, there she was, running along after him, screaming, "Mulder! Tell me what's going on!"

Look at the ending. However Mulder discovered whatever he discovered that led him to what he considered the "key" to the whole mystery and his big TRUTH happened completely off-screen and when he was alone. Which, in the end, also emphasized Scully's irrelevance to his quest. The boy got a sniff of a hint of a piece of information and just sort of left her on her own for a couple of years.

It was All About Mulder for Mulder.

And some people have the nerve to pretend they think these two were in love?

What was that "he was hiding from people who want to kill him" thing all about anyhow? Since when was it news to him that someone wanted hm dead? Let's see. Mulder was worried for his safety, so he left his partner who could presumed to be in almost equal danger behind while he went and lived in a trailer with an underage boy for a year? I knew the guy was kind of offbeat, but that's just perverse.

And...what? It's okay for her to stay in plain sight and make like a target for another abduction or something, but his precious butt couldn't be risked? When did Mulder become such a coward? When did he decide that discovering and publicing everything he could about the government conspiracy was no longer a good idea?

One thing I hold firmly to is that Scully was the first regular character to be slowly dissolved in the bland acid of cliche on this show. It happened to all of them, but none of them started showing the effects of it as soon as Scully. I don't think 1013 ever forgave the actress for getting pregnant.

I mean, sure, the character was given a chance to make brave speeches about how she'd continue her work regardless of her personal problems (of which there was an extensive list over the years), but so what?

What was wrong with having a strong, capable female character who did not develop a tragic illness? Is this General Hospital or The X-Files? Is this a weepy move-of-the-week or is it a show about monsters and aliens and evil government conspiracies?

In some respects, Mulder's character was emasculated over the years, but I also think that at least going psycho and having holes drilled into his head was a personal. thing for the character. It's something Mulder would do, but not many other characters you see on television.

You're not going to see Josh Lyman getting holes drilled in his head, no matter how badly his life is falling apart. Punching his fist through a window, yeah. That's kind of a guy thing. But taking animal tranquilizers and letting psychos explore your forebrain with a Black and Decker? Pure Mulder.

On the other hand, almost any female character on television can sit around brooding over her reproductive organs. Scully's disintegration was sad. It was the opposite of creative and proceeded along predictable and boring lines until the devil (personified by CSM) arranged for her to get pregnant. (That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.)

The neXt-Files
It's a pity, a crying shame, that Doggett and Monica were saddled with the reeking remains of what had gone before, okay? Doggett and Monica could have saved this show, given the chance.

But 1013 chickened out on their plans to "reinvent" the show from the ground up and that destroyed any possibility that the new characters would be given a chance to build their own fanbases. Every time the new version of the show started building up steam, it was abruptly mired down in the soggy residue of the past.

Doggett was good. I'll go farther...Doggett brought a level of energy and enthusiasm to the show that it hadn't been displaying for several years. Monica, originally irritating and stagey when we met her, displayed an increasing ability to carry her half of the burden.

I offer my sincere sympathy to those two actors.

The Truth

Again...Krycek is the lucky stud given the rights to the One, the Only, Truth.

"Truth? There is no truth. These men make it up as they go along."

Oh, Ratboy, if only we'd listened to you!