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Second
Look: The X-Files Sixth Season
Written By James Koonce
It seemed like such a
good idea at the time.
The show had spent five
years in the cold weather of Vancouver, had given itself a toehold
in the top 20 during its fifth season, and was certainly one of
FOX's biggest successes ever. What would be the harm, then, in
letting everyone come a little closer to home, moving production
right here to good ol' L.A.?
Unfortunately, more than
anyone might have guessed, at least in this viewer's eyes.
Let me preface this. First
of all, I've been a fan of The X-Files for a long time. I got
hooked on it after my wife began watching it early in its first
season (and, as she will quickly tell you, after making fun of
her for watching it), and have been fairly taken with the events
that have propelled it along since, even through its unevenness,
its direct contradictions in lore, and its occasional flat-out
misses in terms of stories.
Part of the experience
for me was visiting the creepy, dark places (both locations and
metaphorical spaces) the show would take me to. There's nothing
eerier than being deep in the woods anyway, especially when there
are supernatural phenomena afoot. So this was one particular objection
I voiced when I first heard that production would be moving here,
where the creepiest it gets is weirdo Woody Harrelson's oxygen
bar, or whatever the hell he calls it.
Reasons for relocating
were plentiful enough, of course - David Duchovny's wife was pregnant,
Gillian Anderson already had a daughter, and both had the collective
clout to nix the idea of another season in the dreary, dark cold
wilderness of Canada. But what nobody foresaw, beyond the omnipresent
cheerful sunshine the Southland has to offer, was that the show
would go through a subtle yet perceptible L.A.-ification which
would change its fabric forever.
Season six got off to
a capable, albeit late, start, with a whiz-bang episode titled
Drive, which nicely showcased the new landscape the cinematographers
could play with. (Which was good, because I dreaded the fact that
the show might take on the look of reruns of Charlie's Angels
or The Rockford Files, with their exhausted L.A. locations.) But
the story was tight, the dialogue crisp, and everything seemed
to be fine. My fears at the time were abated, because I believed
I'd overreacted, worrying as I had about one of my favorite shows
taking a dive.
Turns out I hadn't. As
the season settled into its groove, a few new things began to
manifest themselves. First, we began to see a whole new side to
Mulder. He'd always been a study in contrasts, the driven federal
agent with a unslakeable thirst for the truth, and the sardonic
smartass who could dryly quip with the bet of them. But now the
guy was neither of those; he was almost… giddy. Gone was the restless,
analytical Mulder, whom I will call "Fox", and in his place was
this strange new Mulder, a Mulder who smiled, who cracked out-of-character
one-liners constantly, and whom I will just call "Shecky".
Scully unfortunately fared
no better. The chemistry Anderson had so adroitly created with
Duchovny was gone also, and it seemed that both began to do little
but revisit their past performances. Granted, this is a pitfall
in any show of this age, but I still maintain that the differences
all began with the great polar shift.
Another disconcerting
trend which developed during season six was the increasing amount
of familiar faces guest-starring in pivotal roles. This had been
one of the saving graces when the show had lensed in Canada -
it was a bit of a schlep for an actor, and thus the producers
tended to cast performers who were a little less obvious. But
only a few episodes in I found myself looking at Michael McKean
- Lenny from Laverne & Shirley, for Christ's sake! Now I don't
say for one moment that he wasn't up to the task, but his very
presence, coupled with the odd new dynamic between Mulder and
Scully, yanked me right out of the moment while I was watching,
screaming to me, "THIS IS A TV SHOW!" Worst part of all was, it
was an episode in which the agents found themselves in that holiest
of lands for paranormal buffs - Nevada's Area 51. How sad that
the show blew its shot there.
Perhaps the worst example
of this so-called "stunt casting" came during the show's Christmas
episode (which I was against anyway, simply on general principles).
Our intrepid heroes investigated a house haunted by two lovable
ghosts, played by no less than Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin. Again,
fine performers both, but I don't want to see Lou Grant and Ernestine
when I'm watching The X-Files. Color me reactionary.
Beyond this, the season
had a couple of other high-profile misfires. One was Triangle,
written and directed by series creator Chris Carter, which featured
a doppelganger Mulder and Scully sharing a kiss on an ocean liner
in the 1930's. A clever concept, to be sure, but the episode never
seemed to lift off the way it should have, and even the episode's
signature shot, a split screen tour-de-force wherein Scully nearly
meets her double, was no big deal after we'd seen it a hundred
damn times on MTV in the annoying "Closing Time" video.
The other miss was written
and directed by David Duchovny himself, in a move I lauded at
first. Over the course of the series he'd certainly distinguished
himself as a storyteller, contributing to several episodes as
a writer, and it seemed only natural that he would take triple
duty at some point. But the result, an episode about a Negro League
baseball team in the 1940's populated by aliens, was a letdown,
unfocused in the story it tried to tell. Yet every piece of press
I read about it praised it highly - I seriously wondered if perhaps
the local FOX affiliate here in L.A. aired a counterfeit version
of the episode.
I know this all sounds
like simple griping, but I hate to see things I love get spoiled.
Of course, nothing remains the same forever - things have to grow
and change, or else they die. But is the X-Files experiencing
growing pains, or just growing old?
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