Well, that was weird, and out there and still so much better than Chris Carter’s platonic musings or medical rape, because at this point, anything and everything is better than the BS Carter is still trying to feed us twenty five years later, and yes, that includes those trippy episodes that make absolutely no sense and that we didn’t really love all those years ago.
Thank you, Carter, for lowering my expectations.
(Human my ass. Platonic my ass)
(Also, I really, really enjoy David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson just being silly. Putting that out there. Maybe a decent show-runner wants to cast them in something together. Something where they can have sex and you know, laugh.)
Really, when Season 10 was announced, if you’d asked me what I wanted, I would have said I just wanted more Mulder and Scully, together. That goes double for Season 11. In fact, I gave up on “answers” and the mythology so long ago that it’s hard to remember a time I did care. It was certainly before The X-Files: Fight the Future, and that seems like a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
So, did I love episodes like this? Not back in the day, no. Do I love them today? Not really, no. But as I said before, is this better, funnier, more poignant and more romantic than most of what we’ve gotten before (Except Glen Morgan, can you please come back to us and never, never leave us kthanx)? Hell. To. The. Yes. So, let’s lean into the weird and discuss “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat,” written by the other Morgan, Darin. (You can stay too. In fact, anyone not named Chris can stay)
THE MANDELA EFFECT
I have a memory of watching a show – it wasn’t a romantic show by any stretch of the imagination, but it presented a love story. And this love story was not just any regular love story, but one of the greatest love stories in the history of TV. I wasn’t alone in seeing it, I don’t think.
I spent nine seasons watching that story, and then waited years and years for one more season of it. (I had two movies in between, but the movies were never quite enough). And then, this season, there’s a crazy madman trying to tell me that the story I thought I was watching was a lie. I was never watching that story, I was watching another one.
A platonic one.
Wait, isn’t this what the Mandela effect is about? Because it sure feels like it. We all remember one thing, Chris Carter remembers another.
Because this episode just convinced me of one thing: Mulder and Scully are not just two people in love, not just two people who’re probably doing it on the regular, they’re a bona fide old married couple. Period.
(“It’ll be like a date” followed by raised eyebrows and then nothing happens? Only makes sense in a world where they’re already having sex whenever they want. Nothing you say can convince me otherwise.)
MAYBE THERE ARE PARALLEL UNIVERSES
Have I talked about this episode? Do I need to? It was a Darin Morgan episode, weird, out there, sorta fun, with great Mulder/Scully interactions and still more proof that Chris Carter is kinda cuckoo because those two people I watched on screen are not – wait for it – platonic!
Are you obsessed with this word, you ask? Well, yes, I am. I’ve only been hearing it for 25 years. Twenty five. I don’t want to talk about the Mandela Effect or Parallel Universes. I just want to talk about Mulder and Scully’s happily ever after.
Even if that’s only in my head.
“It’s true, Scully. I’ve lost the plot.” Mulder says at one point in the episode and did you laugh? I sorta did and then I almost think there were tears coming out of my eyes. Why, Darin Morgan? Why do you have to be so self-aware? How did this line get past Chris Carter? Does he have so little self-awareness?
So, yeah. This episode happened. I don’t need to recap it for you because it’s not the kind of The X-Files episode where you actually care about the crazy shit that happened. All I need to tell you is that yes, Mulder and Scully are still in love, no, Chris Carter is still not letting them have all the sex they want and that’s just the world we live in.
Parallel universes are starting to look pretty good, am I right?
Other things to note:
- What do aliens look like? You’d think as someone who’s watched these episodes more times than she can count I’d have an actual answer. I do not.
- Squatching, Mulder? Really?
- You’re lucky Scully loves you the way you are.
- “Feels like this past year all I’ve done is watch the news and worry that the country is going insane.” That makes about 65 million of us.
- Bless you Scully, for hanging up on him.
- Mulder, you so cute. You checked your DVDs, then books AND THEN online.
- Dramatic Mulder is my aesthetic, what can I say? He’s sorta adorable in a way only Mulder pulls off.
- At this point it’s not even believable that Mulder would not go to dinner with Scully. You telling me he’d rather hunt crazy things than have sex? This does not compute.
- AND YES, I KNOW IT’S MULDER.
- But it’s not like he’s been sleeping with Scully all this time. HAS HE?
- *cue Twilight Zone music*
- Scully looks sexy in that desk. Just saying.
- The way David Duchovny looks at Gillian Anderson. Or Mulder at Scully, same thing.
- Stealing each other’s lines. HOW MARRIED COUPLE OF YOU.
- Hey, CC, Mulder says at some point you have to explain who “They” are.
- I did appreciate the jab at Trump’s inauguration crowd, I’m not gonna deny it.
- Me at “sugar boobs”:
- OMG YOU GET FAT.
- FIGHT THEM MULDER. FIGHT THEM SCULLY.
- HOW DARE.
- “I’m Fox Freaking Mulder, you punks!”
- The separation from Chris Carter was enough for me to enjoy the conversation about what’s fake and what’s true. Someone save me. It’s like all I need to enjoy this show is to KNOW CC had nothing to do with an episode.
- SCULLY FINALLY DROVE!
- “We are building a wall.” WE ARE BUILDING A WALL. A WAAAAAAAAAAAAALLL.
- “You’re not sending us your best people. You’re bringing drugs, you’re bringing crime. You’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
- THE SHADE. I LIVE.
- “Maybe the point wasn’t to find The X-Files, but to find each other.”
- That’s it. That’s the end. BYE.
- Spotniz Sanatorium.
- “I want to remember how it all was.”
- ATTHS, right? RIGHT?
The X-Files airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on FOX.
