Category: TV

My Favorite Episodes of Millennium

2015-09-30, 8:59 am
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, TV

So, as in my previous post of favorite X-Files episodes, this is a list of my favorite Millennium episodes. As of 2019, I've finished the whole series but haven't yet watched the backdoor finale on X-Files, so there's probably one more update in this post's future.

Monster-of-the-Week Episodes

Season 2, Episode 6: The Curse of Frank Black

A pleasingly spooky, wonderfully minimalist haunted house episode where the true ghosts are loss and isolation.

While it's my favorite episode up to this point in the series, I can't recommend it as a good place to start, because it's not quite as standalone as I'd like; it relies on threads from Pilot, Lamentation, and The Beginning and the End. But you should watch those anyway; they're not just important, they're also good. (See below.)

Season 2, Episode 7: 19:19

The show gets back to the Revelation cultist arc, combining a take on the Chowchilla bus kidnapping with -- because it is 1997 -- Twister. (I was also inclined to blame a popular 1997 film for what I'm going to call the My Heart Will Go On remix of the theme song used as background music throughout the episode, but 19:19 aired a month before Titanic or the single came out, so we can chalk that up to coincidence/something in the zeitgeist.)

The ending is a goofy little bit of deus ex machina, and Lara Means is used as more of a third-act plot device than a character, but the pacing is good and the cat-and-mouse between Frank and the villain-of-the-week is engaging.

Season 2, Episode 9: Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense

While it doesn't quite live up to Jose Chung's From Outer Space, Chung's second appearance is a lot of fun, and a great showcase for Charles Nelson Reilly. While it lacks stop-motion kaiju and its unreliable narratives aren't quite so twisty, it reuses a lot of the devices from that first outing and does a great job of maintaining its tone.

Season 2, Episode 13: The Mikado

I love this one as a time capsule of the Internet circa early 1998 -- a time when connections were slow, a search for "naked girls" would produce hundreds of results, and, most crucially, webcam video framerates were on the order of seconds-per-frame, not frames-per-second.

The hacking scenes are...well, pretty dubious, but probably less dubious than most detective shows' hacking scenes. It makes for a fascinating reminder of how TV shows depicted the Internet in the early days, and it uses the aforementioned video framerate limitation as a very interesting storytelling device.

Season 2, Episode 21: Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me

Four celebrated character actors (Bill Macy, Dick Bakalyan, Alex Diakun, and Wally Dalton) play demons sitting around a table telling each other stories (think Almost Got 'Im from Batman: The Animated Series). I knew this was a Darin Morgan episode before the end of the cold open, and the makeup deserves special praise.

Season 3, Episode 5: ...Thirteen Years Later

Someone's murdering people who are making a slasher movie, improbably based on one of Frank's previous cases, and Kiss guest stars for some reason. It's very meta and very silly; its reach far exceeds its grasp, but it's the first fun episode in season 3.

Season 3, Episode 9: Omerta

This one makes the favorites list entirely because the late Jon Polito is a goddamn delight to watch every time he's onscreen. The rest of the episode -- which concerns the mob, Christmas, a pair of feral women with magical healing powers and, one assumes, magical extremely-well-groomed-and-polite-for-feral-women powers, and an overbearing musical score -- is nothing special. But Polito makes the whole thing shine.

Season 3, Episode 20: Nostalgia

This one isn't pleasant to watch but it's well put-together. It's a return to the "Frank tracks a serial killer" format, by way of the "small town with a dark secret" style of murder mystery.

Twenty years later, it also feels shockingly timely, which you can't say about most episodes of the series. It follows a victim whose death went uninvestigated because she was sexually promiscuous, a suspect who we'd describe as an "incel" these days, and a sheriff who opposes the investigation with the justification, "I know that man, and he doesn't deserve to have his reputation ruined."

Mythology Episodes

Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

Introduces the series: Frank Black, his wife and daughter, the Millennium Group, and his police contact Bob Bletcher. Frank having a family immediately sets him apart from Mulder and Scully over on the sister show. We also find out that he's a former FBI agent who had a breakdown and has since moved back to Seattle, and that he's got some kind of minor psychic ability to see what happened at a crime scene. The show also establishes the eponymous Millennium Group and vaguely intimates that it's involved in investigating some kind of Satanic apocalyptic cult, but then the show goes episodic and we get a bunch of forgettable serial killer episodes, and really don't get any development on that idea until episode 13.

Season 1, Episode 13: Force Majeure

I think it's pretty clear, looking at season 1, that Carter and company didn't originally intend for this show to take place in the same universe as X-Files, because they cast a lot of actors who had appeared on that show to appear on this one in completely different roles -- this episode, for example, has Terry O'Quinn, CCH Pounder, Brad Dourif, and Morgan Woodward. All of them are excellent, but it's a little jarring.

Anyhow, this episode finally picks up the Millennium Group/Doomsday Cult thread from the pilot. We get the prediction that the world will end on May 5, 2000, and a sinister old man who's breeding clones to survive the coming apocalypse.

Season 1, Episode 14: The Thin White Line

We get a good hefty chunk of Frank's backstory, and some cat-and-mouse with a serial killer who he put away during his time with the FBI.

Season 1, Episode 15: Sacrament

Introduction of Frank's brother, sister-in-law, and nephew; first signs that Jordan may have inherited Frank's psychic ability.

Season 1, Episode 17: Walkabout

This one gets off to a really strong start, with an in media res opening, the other characters not knowing what's happened to Frank, and Frank himself suffering from amnesia and not remembering what's happened to him the past few days.

The last act doesn't quite live up to the setup, but the beginning is strong enough to make for a pretty solid episode.

Season 1, Episode 18: Lamentation and Episode 19: Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions

Another episode where Frank has a run-in with a killer he's faced previously and a potential copycat, this episode features a threat against his family and the death of a recurring character.

And then the second part, despite centering on Frank's quest to find the killer, appears to be completely disconnected from the first part. He matches wits with someone who may or may not be the Devil, someone claiming to be an angel, and at the end of the whole thing there's no resolution and we're left with way more questions than answers.

To put it another way, 19 episodes in Millennium finally feels like a Chris Carter show.

Season 2, Episode 1: The Beginning and the End

(While this technically picks up from season 1's finale, you can skip that episode; it's basically a middling monster-of-the-week episode with a cliffhanger ending. That cliffhanger ending is re-presented, in its entirety, at the beginning of this episode.)

This is a status-quo-changing episode where a lot happens (even if it relies too much on narrative monologues to establish that a lot is happening): Peter gets fleshed out a little as a character, we finally get a few more hints of just what exactly the Millennium Group is, and the Polaroid Man plot finally gets a resolution.

Season 2, Episode 8: The Hand of St. Sebastian

Peter Watts, Cheryl Andrews, a little more history on the Group and signs of internal struggles.

Season 2, Episode 10: Midnight of the Century

The most thorough look to date at Frank's -- and Jordan's, and Lara's, and, we learn, Frank's mother's -- gift, and the toll it has taken on his family over three generations. It's a low-key, talky one, a Christmas episode structurally and thematically similar to the Halloween episode that had recently preceded it. It's an episode about loss and estrangement and family, and it sells the human element effectively, with spare dialogue delivered impeccably by the cast.

Season 2, Episode 12: Luminary

The show literalizes the metaphor of the season arc, by putting Frank out in the wilderness, alone.

Perhaps surprisingly, separating him from the rest of the cast makes for an excellent opportunity to explore other characters' relationships with him, Catherine and Peter in particular.

We also see more of the Group than we've ever seen before, and they don't come across very well. It makes something of a striking contrast between Frank and Mulder: they're both former FBI profilers, and they're both being manipulated by a shadowy conspiracy, but where Mulder seeks to fight and expose the Syndicate, Frank is trying to join the Millennium Group. Though with this episode, he doesn't seem to be trying very hard.

Season 2, Episode 15: Owls and Episode 16: Roosters

Nazis, Masons, ancient religious artifacts, doomsday cults -- it's Conspiracy Theory Bingo Night on Millennium. (They even work alien abductions and the Kennedy assassination into dialogue, though they don't factor into the plot.)

We're introduced to two rival factions in the Group: the Roosters we already know; they're the ones who think the world is going to end in two years in a biblical prophecy. The Owls, on the other hand, don't believe any of that religious hooey, and instead subscribe to the much more rational and science-based theory that the world is going to end in sixty years when the collision of two neutron stars causes the creation of a new universe. Also, there's another group, and they're Nazis.

Season 2, Episode 17: Siren

A run of strong episodes continues. This one turns on a strong scene between Frank and guest star Vivian Wu, and a glimpse of what Frank's life would have been like if he'd never been recruited by the Group.

Season 2, Episode 20: A Room With No View

A villain from season 1 returns to abduct guest star Christopher Kennedy Masterson and subject him to creepy psychosexual Misery stuff.

If you don't hate Love is Blue before you watch this episode, you will by the end.

Season 2, Episode 22: The Fourth Horseman and Episode 23: The Time is Now

Season finale time! There's a plague that may or may not be the biblical pestilence, Frank's conflict with the Group and Peter comes to a head, Peter gets some flashbacks (where Terry O'Quinn gets to wear a fake bushy mustache over his real pencil mustache, so you can tell that they're flashbacks), and yet another cryptically-named faction is introduced.

And then in part 2 some other stuff happens, but fully ten minutes of the episode is a Patti Smith music video where Lara is tripping balls. Seriously. Ten minutes. It is ridiculous and it is gratuitous and I love it.

Season 3, Episode 1: The Innocents and Episode 2: Exegesis

You might call this a repilot. While last season's plague still hangs heavily over the plot, the show's setting and premise have changed -- and they look a lot more like The X-Files. Frank's back with the FBI and, joined by a female partner, he investigates (against the orders of their superiors, naturally) a CIA conspiracy involving astral projection and clones.

The motivation for the change in direction seems clear: X-Files was at the height of its popularity, and Millennium was on the verge of cancellation. It sure looks like the goal here was to save an unpopular show by imitating a popular one.

Of course it didn't work; this is Millennium's final season. But it still makes for a pretty solid season premier.

Season 3, Episode 6: Skull and Bones

This one's mostly constructed of tropes we've seen before -- Frank arrests a weirdo who turns out not to be the killer but an eccentric who has visions; Emma investigates a creepy empty murder house while an ironically mismatched music cue plays; Peter delivers a couple of purple-prose monologues about how all the shady stuff the Millennium Group is doing is for the public's protection -- but they're well-assembled tropes. We also find out what's happened to Cheryl Andrews since the last time we saw her, and...it doesn't make a whole lot of sense given what happened the last time we saw her, but sure, okay.

Season 3, Episode 11: Collateral Damage

There are some bits in this one that are uncomfortable to watch -- not just the kidnapping and torture, but a show featuring conspiracy theories shared on right-wing talk radio feels a lot different in 2019 than it did in the era the show was made. Much of what made the 2016 X-Files revival uncomfortable is that conspiracy theories that seemed like harmless fictions in the 1990s take on a far more sinister cast in the era of Alex Jones.

That aside? We're back to the Millennium Group/plague plot (and I can't help noticing the symptoms and effects of the plague keep changing). Watts's inner conflict between his loyalty to the Group and his discomfort with their methods continues to be one of the show's richest veins, and it's central in this episode. Here he's pitted against guest star James Marsters, and we see two men on opposite sides struggling with the question of whether the ends justify the means.

Season 3, Episode 12: The Sound of Snow

This one feels like a throwback, in a good way. Frank's back in Seattle tracking an apparent serial killer, much like season 1, except the killer's methods seem more like something out of early X-Files: she kills by sending people tapes of white noise that cause them to hallucinate and panic. The device blurs the lines between paranormal, science fiction, and Cold War government conspiracy theory in a way that wouldn't feel at all out of place on the sister show.

There's solid direction by Paul Shapiro; the hallucination sequences are a highlight. Jessica Tuck puts in a brief but chilling performance as the villain. Plus, a dozen episodes in, we finally get a clearer picture of what happened after the end of season 2.

I like the title, too; it has a triple-meaning: "snow" refers to white noise, the snowfall at the beginning and end of the episode, and also to composer Mark Snow, whose sounds are featured in this and every episode.

Season 3, Episode 16: Saturn Dreaming of Mercury

Another one that feels like a return to the series' roots: demons, visions, weird shit, violence, and ironic music cues.

Remember that subplot about Jordan inheriting Frank's powers? We finally get some development on that front, as she starts seeing demonic faces just like Frank does. It may be the best work Brittany Tiplady does in the entire series.

The episode's not perfect -- the third-act twist is obvious, and the villain's motivations ultimately don't make a whole lot of sense (it seems like a very long game just to fuck with Frank), but by the lowered standards of season 3, it's pretty solid. And the eyeball motif is strong enough to make the cover of the Season 3 DVD set.

Season 3, Episode 21: Via Dolorosa and Episode 22: Goodbye to All That

Actually, Via Dolorosa is not good, but it makes the list because it's necessary as a lead-in to the finale.

And the finale, well, it does stick the landing. It resolves the most compelling arc of the series, Frank's relationship with Peter Watts, and, as loyalties continue to shift, it hints at a new direction the series could have taken. And if you've come this far, you might as well finish the series, right?

As of this writing, I still haven't seen the backdoor finale on The X-Files. I haven't heard good things, but then, I don't always agree with the consensus. I'll see how I feel about it when I get there.

There's also a comic book series from 2015, by Joe Harris and Colin Lorimer. Maybe I'll pick it up one of these days.

My Favorite Episodes of The X-Files

2015-09-29, 9:26 am
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, TV

So awhile back I started re-watching The X-Files. It's available on Hulu, in a very nice HD remaster. (Apparently the entire series, except the pilot, was originally filmed in widescreen, so the remastered episodes aren't cropped, they're actually expanded -- except, again, the pilot. And also seasons 5-9, which aired in widescreen the first time, but now they're also in HD.)

I'm also working my way through Millennium (which is not available in any format other than DVD and illegal download), and I'll watch Lone Gunmen when I get to that point in the chronology.

And I got to thinking, you know, I should make a list of what episodes are worth watching -- since, let's be honest, there are a hell of a lot of them that aren't.

Now, X-Files episodes are generally broken down into two categories: mythology episodes (the continuity based ones that deal with the overarching plots about aliens and a massive government conspiracy) and monster-of-the-week episodes (the standalone, one-off episodes). Generally speaking, I like the monster-of-the-week episodes better; they have more variety in both content and tone, they're often a lot of fun, and they don't string you along with the idea that they're building toward some kind of grand resolution. (Spoiler alert: there is no grand resolution; the writers are making the mythology up as they go along.) But, on the other hand, there are mythology episodes I really like, and they're fun in their own way despite the continuity being a hodgepodge and a mess.

So I'm going to split this up into two sections: monster-of-the-week episodes and mythology episodes, and in my next post I'll tackle Millennium episodes. (So far every Millennium episode I've liked has been a mythology episode.) And I'll plan on keeping these posts updated as I work through the series, so expect more episodes to be added, and a post added for Lone Gunmen when I get around to it.

Lastly: I'd be remiss if I didn't link to Monster of the Week: The Complete Cartoon X-Files, a webcomic by Shaenon K Garrity which goes through the series one episode at a time and lampoons them. (Most of them. Some are so good that she plays them straight.) Oh, and if you want a really thorough breakdown, you could give Kumail Nanjiani's X-Files Files podcast a listen too.

Anyway, on to the actual recommendations.

Monster-of-the-Week Episodes

I thought of putting mythology first, but the monster-of-the-week episodes are easier to get into for a casual viewer, so I'm going to put those first. These episodes can, generally speaking, be watched in any order and without any knowledge going in besides "Mulder and Scully are FBI investigators who look into paranormal stuff; he's a believer and she's a skeptic."

Season 1, Episode 3: Squeeze

Introduces stretchy bad guy Eugene Tooms, probably the most memorable of the show's many Monsters of the Week, and one of the few to get a second appearance.

Season 1, Episode 8: Ice

An episode in the "People are trapped in a remote location and start turning on each other" mold.

Season 1, Episode 20: Darkness Falls

A good race-against-time episode with killer insects, albeit with kind of a disappointing ending.

Season 1, Episode 21: Tooms

Tooms's second and final appearance; first appearance of Walter Skinner.

Season 2, Episode 2: The Host

Darin Morgan plays a sewer monster called Flukeman, with some of the best monster makeup in the series; first appearance of Mr. X.

Season 2, Episode 20: Humbug

First episode written by Darin Morgan; first episode explicitly written as a comedy; features circus folk. X-Files is always a little uncomfortable when it deals with anybody who's different (be that ethnic minorities or people with disabilities), and I feel a little bit of that here, but I think it also comes across as a celebration of its guest stars.

Season 3, Episode 3: DPO

Giovanni Ribisi plays a slacker teenager with lightning powers who hangs out in an arcade (where the Sonic the Hedgehog music is inexplicably playing even though that is not an arcade game). Jack Black plays his sidekick.

Season 3, Episode 4: Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose

Okay, here we go. If you only watch one episode of X-Files, ever, it should be this one. It's pretty much perfect in every way, and it won two Emmys, one for writer Darin Morgan and the other for guest star Peter Boyle.

Boyle plays a lovable but curmudgeonly old psychic who can see the moment everyone around him dies.

I think I'd give a slight edge to Jose Chung's From Outer Space (also written by Darin Morgan) as my all-time favorite episode. But this one is more accessible.

Seriously, if you haven't seen Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, you can skip the rest of this list until you've seen it. It's not just X-Files at its best, it's TV at its best.

Season 3, Episode 11: Revelations

Gets into Scully's Catholicism a bit; it's the second religious-themed episode where the leads reverse their roles and she plays the believer against Mulder as skeptic. (The first is Beyond the Sea; it's down below in the Mythology section.)

Season 3, Episode 12: War of the Coprophages

Another episode written by Darin Morgan. It has what may very well be the dumbest premise of any episode (people are being killed by swarms of cockroaches, which turn out to be alien robot cockroaches sent to observe us), but Morgan's script is sharp enough to overcome it. This one's got some of the funniest dialogue of the entire series.

Season 3, Episode 13: Syzygy

Mostly fun for Mulder and Scully being really bitchy toward each other. Guest starring Lisa Robin Kelly and (briefly) Ryan Reynolds.

Season 3, Episode 20: Jose Chung's From Outer Space

The final episode written by Darin Morgan (though he did a rewrite on Quagmire; see below). As noted above, I think this one edges out Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose as my favorite. It's got unreliable narratives within unreliable narratives, men in black played by surprise guest stars, stop-motion kaiju, and Charles Nelson Reilly.

Season 3, Episode 21: Avatar

Skinner episode.

Season 3, Episode 22: Quagmire

Lake monster episode. Mostly forgettable, except for a scene where Mulder and Scully get to talking while they're stranded on an island; that scene was written by Darin Morgan.

Season 4, Episode 2: Home

Okay, I'm going to say it: Home is overrated.

It's impeccably directed (by Kim Manners), and it's possibly the most memorable episode of the whole series. But it's memorable entirely because of cheap shock value.

I think it's one of those episodes you've just gotta watch once, and it will stick with you. It blew me away the first time I saw it. But when I came back to it 18 years later, I was a lot less impressed. (So okay, maybe this one shouldn't be on a list of my favorites. But it's definitely a must-watch episode, so I'm putting it here anyway.)

Season 4, Episode 5: The Field Where I Died

This one's got a few plot holes (how can the Cigarette Smoking Man be a reincarnated Nazi prison guard if he was alive during the Holocaust?), but it's got some great character moments for Mulder, and showcases Duchovny's acting range in a way that most of the rest of the series doesn't.

Season 4, Episode 10: Paper Hearts

Mulder matches wits with a child molester who he helped put in prison. Potential retcons to the story of Samantha's abduction, but then no they don't pan out and that's why this isn't under Mythology Episodes.

Season 4, Episode 11: El Mundo Gira

The Chupacabra episode!

Season 4, Episode 12: Leonard Betts

One of those "Nice unassuming man who starts killing people because he has a weird power" episodes. Also, foreshadows Scully's cancer.

Season 4, Episode 13: Never Again

A Scully-centric episode where she gets a tramp stamp of the Millennium logo and almost hooks up with a guy with an evil Bettie Page tattoo.

Season 4, Episode 20: Small Potatoes

An episode written by Vince Gilligan and guest starring Darin Morgan as a shapeshifter. The highlight of the episode, far and away, is a scene in which he shape-shifts into Mulder and then channels De Niro in Taxi Driver. This is probably Duchovny's finest performance in the show's entire run, and shows he's really got some serious comic chops; everything from his delivery to his body language to his facial expressions is brilliant.

Season 5, Episode 5: The Post-Modern Prometheus

So before I go and recommend this one, there's one caveat I need to get out of the way: this is an episode where two women are drugged and impregnated without their consent, and then the ethical implications of this premise are barely acknowledged.

And it's a shame that this episode has that ick factor hanging over it, because aside from that it's a delight. Carter handles both the writing and direction on this one, and it's an homage to classic monster movies, beautifully filmed in glorious black-and-white and guest-starring Seinfeld's John O'Hurley as its mad scientist. It delivers what its title promises: both a Frankenstein pastiche and postmodernism. It's weird, it's melancholy, it's funny, it's got Cher on its soundtrack, and there's more than one moment that feels like a Mel Brooks homage. If its morality is a little muddy, I'm inclined to be charitable and chalk it up to the episode's heightened reality. The plot doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but it's not supposed to; it feels like a dream and it prioritizes style over substance. And it is stylish as hell.

And man, that ending is beautiful.

Season 5, Episode 12: Bad Blood

A stone-cold classic. Vince Gilligan does Rashomon with vampires; guest-starring Luke Wilson and Patrick Renna.

Season 6, Episode 2: Drive

The most notable thing about this episode is that it's written by Vince Gilligan and guest-stars Bryan Cranston. It led directly to their later collaboration on Breaking Bad.

The episode itself is a cross between Scanners and Speed, with a side of Outbreak. Cranston plays Patrick Crump, a man afflicted with a condition that requires him to keep traveling west or he'll die. He carjacks Mulder, and a tense race against the clock ensues.

When this episode was made, Cranston was best-known as the dentist from Seinfeld. Now he's a celebrated dramatic actor. Drive is an important step in that evolution.

Season 6, Episode 3: Triangle

1998's love of swing music and doomed ocean liners combines with time travel and the Bermuda Triangle. In 1939, Mulder fights Nazis aboard the Queen Anne, while in 1998, Scully and the Lone Gunmen try to find him. The two stories mirror each other's plot beats in unsubtle Chris Carter fashion, while some splitscreen shots near the end make for some interesting visual work.

Season 6, Episodes 4-5: Dreamland

Introducing Morris Fletcher (Michael McKean), who switches bodies with Mulder. Hilarity ensues, including one of the all-time best sequences in the series, a riff on the mirror bit from Duck Soup.

Season 6, Episode 6: How the Ghosts Stole Christmas

A haunted house episode guest-starring Lily Tomlin and Ed Asner. There's a bit of a Beetlejuice vibe here, with Tomlin and Asner in the Geena Davis/Alec Baldwin roles.

Duchovny and Anderson do great work here too, from the opening scene where he launches into one of his excited-puppy tales of the supernatural and she just smiles because she's grown to find it more charming than annoying, to the third act where she's paranoid and waving a gun around and he's doing his best Jack Torrance.

Season 6, Episode 8: The Rain King

A fun little "weird shit happens in a small town" episode; Clayton Rohner has a particularly enjoyable turn as an oily grifter who holds rain dances in the style of tent revivals. The third act's got a Back to the Future vibe: like Back to the Future, Mulder plays matchmaker to a nerdy guy whose creepy behavior is depicted as lovable; like Back to the Future, the object of the man's affections falls for Mulder instead; and like Back to the Future, the climax takes place in a high school gym. Scully doesn't do much in this episode, but Anderson's put-upon exasperation is at its finest.

Season 6, Episode 10: Tithonus

This Scully-centric episode about a man who can tell when people are going to die runs a real risk of being a retread of Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose. But Vince Gilligan's script, and Geoffrey Lewis's performance as Alfred Fellig, thread the needle to tell a different story (while still, in its own subtle way, acknowledging Bruckman at the end of the episode). Fellig is not like Bruckman: his powers aren't quite the same (Bruckman could see how people were going to die, whereas Fellig can tell when someone is about to die), and, more importantly, their characterizations are much different: where Bruckman was sardonic and wry, Fellig is haunted and creepy.

Season 6, Episode 21: Field Trip

This episode, perhaps more than any since Quagmire, shows how in the right hands, a deeply silly premise can be transformed into a memorable character piece.

The first half's a little weak, but it's all setup for the main attraction, which centers on Mulder and Scully's relationship and, on a meta level, the show's (increasingly implausible) formula. Not only do Mulder and Scully need each other, not only do they need the arguing and the pushback, but they've reached a point where they can't accept a world where they're not arguing and pushing back against each other.

Season 7, Episode 8: The Amazing Maleeni

The late, great Ricky Jay guest stars as a down-and-out magician whose head falls off following a magic trick gone horribly wrong. A twisty mystery follows, involving a rival magician (Jonathan Levit), twins, gambling debts, and a bank robbery. The ending reveal leaves a few things to be desired -- there's a grand scheme that leans a little too heavily on the schemers predicting exactly what Mulder and Scully are going to do and when -- but while it doesn't quite come together in the end, Jay is so much fun to watch that it doesn't really matter.

Season 7, Episode 19: Hollywood AD

Hollywood producer Wayne Federman (himself) makes an X-Files movie starring Garry Shandling (himself) and Téa Leoni (herself). Along the way Abbie Hoffman becomes Jesus, Skinner gets some good yelling in, and our heroes face the Cigarette Smoking Pontiff, bubble bath, and dick jokes.

Season 7, Episode 21: Je Souhaite

Two idiots find a genie. Guest-starring Kevin Weisman and Will Sasso as the idiots and Paula Sorge as the genie.

Some great comic work in this one, particularly by Gillian Anderson as an uncharacteristically gleeful Scully.

Season 8, Episode 3: Patience

Doggett's first Monster of the Week. Where the first two episodes of season 8 still center around Mulder, this is the first one that shows us what The X-Files looks like without him; it's something of a repilot that establishes the show's new status quo. At least until the midseason when it gets shaken up again.

It involves a bat-creature, but it's not really about a bat-creature. In fact the bat-creature seems like kind of an afterthought, really. It's about Scully and Doggett and who they are and what their dynamic is. Scully, stepping into Mulder's role and finding herself not entirely comfortable there. Doggett, the by-the-book cop who's not naturally inclined to believe any of this X-Files bullshit but he's been assigned to this job and by God he's going to do it, and if that means suggesting maybe they're dealing with some kind of bat-creature based on a newspaper clipping from the 1950s, then by God he's going to do that too.

Even as the show settles back into the formula of believer-and-skeptic, it's clear that it's not going to be the same as it was before. The Scully-and-Doggett pairing makes for an exciting new dynamic. Or at least it does in this episode. Unfortunately, the ones that follow don't quite live up to that potential.

Season 9, Episode 18: Sunshine Days

The last Vince Gilligan X-File, and the last monster-of-the-week -- at least, until the revival in 2016 -- and it's basically a perfect episode.

It's about a man who uses his supernatural powers to recreate the Brady Bunch house, but really it's about the relationship between a TV show and its audience, how shows like The Brady Bunch endure because they make memories. TV can be an escape for a kid whose life isn't going so great, and it can be a bonding experience with the people you love.

I'm writing this in 2023, just shy of 21 years after The X-Files ended its initial run. Decades later, it doesn't have the cultural cachet of The Brady Bunch, but it's proven it has some staying power. And Vince Gilligan's proven he does, too.

Sunshine Days is a victory lap, a look back at the series and what it all meant. It should have been the finale.

Season 10, Episode 3: Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster

Darin Morgan's still got it. A roaringly funny monster mystery guest-starring Rhys Darby, Kumail Nanjiani, and Tyler Labine, featuring Morgan's usual narratives-within-narratives and Mulder's midlife crisis. X-Files at its absolute goddamn finest -- and a pleasingly standalone episode, though longtime fans will enjoy a couple of callbacks to Clyde Bruckman and a nice tribute to the late, great Kim Manners.

Mythology Episodes

These aren't necessarily the most "important" mythology episodes, the ones with plot details that play out through the rest of the series (though some of them are); they're just the ones I like. And anyway, even if you do watch all the mythology episodes expecting them to eventually make sense, you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.

There are some spoilers down here, including character departures.

Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

Season 1 is a little rough but I love it despite (or because of) its flaws. There's a lot of stuff the show gets right right from the beginning, and the chemistry between Duchovny and Anderson is at the top of the list.

Season 1, Episode 2: Deep Throat

A fun guest appearance by Seth Green and lots of Area 51 stuff.

Season 1, Episode 10: Fallen Angel

Mulder's got fanboys! Introduces abductee Max Fenig, who's something of a template for the Lone Gunmen.

(Max also shows back up in a two-parter in season 4, but it's not on this list because it's boring.)

Season 1, Episode 13: Beyond the Sea

Guest appearance by Brad Dourif; death of Scully's father; first time Mulder is the skeptic and Scully is the believer.

(You could argue that this one's not a mythology episode because it doesn't deal with the aliens/conspiracy arcs, but I'm putting it here because it establishes a lot of Scully's background that is referred to throughout the rest of the series.)

Season 1, Episode 17: EBE

First appearance of the Lone Gunmen.

Season 1, Episode 24: The Erlenmeyer Flask

This is one of those episodes where everything changes, except that it doesn't; everything snaps right back to status quo in season 2: the X-Files get reopened, Scully goes back to being a skeptic even though she's seen an alien fetus in a jar, and while Deep Throat's departure is made out to be a big deal, Mr. X takes over and fills the exact same role in seasons 2 and 3 (after which he's replaced by Marita Covarrubias, who still pretty much fills the same role). Regardless, this one's exciting, and a lot of stuff happens; we've got human/alien hybrids, the Crew Cut Man assassinating people, and the departure of Deep Throat.

Season 2, Episode 5: Duane Barry and Episode 6: Ascension

Scully's abduction and Krycek's betrayal, two plot points that continue to come back up for the rest of the series. It's also got a guest appearance by CCH Pounder.

Season 2, Episode 8: One Breath

Scully's return. She spends most of it in a coma dreaming she's in a boat, but the rest of the cast really gets a chance to shine. There are some great scenes between the Smoking Man and Skinner, Mulder and Skinner, and Mulder and the Smoking Man, and some excellent moments from Mr. X and Frohike too.

Season 2, Episode 16: Colony and Episode 17: End Game

More hybrids; Bounty Hunters; clone colony; first return of Samantha; first appearance of Mulder's father and revelation that he was part of the Syndicate.

Season 2, Episode 25: Anasazi, Season 3: Episode 1: The Blessing Way and Episode 2: Paper Clip

Some really cringe-inducing stuff with Native Americans, but aside from that it's the first appearance of Teena Mulder, and more on Bill Mulder's history with the Syndicate. And there's some Lone Gunmen stuff and a Nazi scientist.

Season 3, Episode 9: Nise and Episode 10: 731

Mulder investigates an alien autopsy video; Scully finds an alien abductee support group (and the first hint that she may have cancer).

Season 3, Episode 15: Piper Maru and Episode 16: Apocrypha

First appearance of black oil; return of Krycek; some more stuff about CSM and Bill Mulder.

Season 3, Episode 24: Talitha Cumi and Season 4, Episode 1: Herrenvolk

More hybrids; more Bounty Hunters; more clone colonies; first hints that the Cigarette Smoking Man may be Mulder's biological father; departure of Mr. X and his immediate replacement by Marita Covarrubias.

Season 4, Episode 7: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man

A lot of fans hate this one, and I guess I can understand the perspective that it demystifies the CSM in a way that makes him less interesting.

But I don't agree, and I love it, because it's so deliciously over-the-top. And the reason it's over-the-top is that it's all unreliable-narrator stuff; this is CSM's backstory filtered through his own fiction, published in a porno magazine (whose staff changed some of the details), and then related to Mulder by Frohike.

Basically, it's a tall tale, which ties the Cancer Man to the Kennedy and King assassinations and every other alleged government conspiracy of the twentieth century -- and all because he couldn't get his short stories published.

Season 4, Episode 8: Tunguska and Episode 9: Terma

Return of Krycek and the Black Oil; Mulder and Krycek go to Russia.

Season 4, Episode 14: Memento Mori

This is the "Scully Has Cancer" episode. It's loaded up with Chris Carter purple prose monologues. It's also got the Lone Gunmen, clones, and a callback to that episode where she met the other abductees.

Season 4, Episode 22: Gethsemane

The script is generic cliffhanger-finale fare (though the first act has some nice bits with Mulder, briefly, expressing skepticism), but it's got some truly gorgeous mountain shots that make a great argument for the widescreen HD remaster, some of the coolest creature effects of the series, and some great dramatic work from Anderson. But don't get too excited when you see "John Oliver" in the credits; it's not the John Oliver you're (probably) thinking of.

While this episode is the first of a three-parter, I don't recommend the other two parts; they are boring as fuck. All you really need to know is that Mulder isn't dead and Scully doesn't have cancer anymore.

Season 5, Episode 3: Unusual Suspects

The first episode to focus on the Lone Gunmen as its main characters (with Mulder in a minor role and Scully not present at all) tells their origin story and would eventually lead to their own spinoff. Written by Vince Gilligan, directed by Kim Manners, and for some reason guest starring Richard Belzer as Detective John Munch. (Which I guess puts X-Files, Lone Gunmen, and, by extension, Millennium in the Tommy Westphall Universe.)

Season 5, Episode 13: Patient X and Episode 14: The Red and the Black

This is more or less the midpoint between the season 4 finale and the movie, both chronologically and narratively. Krycek, black oil, Tunguska, the Syndicate, Scully's abduction, the Assassins -- it all plays a bit like a Greatest Hits collection. But perhaps most importantly, Mulder's still smarting from the revelations of last season's finale and this season's premier, and doesn't believe in aliens anymore. And I'm always a sucker for the role-reversal Mulder-as-skeptic, Scully-as-believer episodes.

Also introduces Agent Spender. I remember when these episodes first aired, there were rumors in the fandom that Duchovny was planning to leave the show and Spender was going to replace him. Those rumors turned out to be pretty close to true; we wound up with Doggett, not Spender, but Mulder did leave and get replaced with a new agent. Scully even has a similar "she's the believer now and has a skeptic of her own to deal with" dynamic with Spender here that she eventually has with Doggett.

Season 5, Episode 15: Travelers

'50s X-File! Arthur Dales (Kolchak himself, Darren McGavin!) recounts the story of how he and Bill Mulder investigated Nazi alien experiments and fought the most fiendish villains of all: Roy Cohn and J Edgar Hoover.

Season 5, Episode 20: The End

The plot of this one is dumb. The sniper is dumb; the FBI is dumb. The love triangle with Mulder's ex is forced (Diana Fowley? Seriously? Her name is Diana Fowley?); the King of the Hill cross-promotion is forced.

But there are enough great character moments in this one -- CSM and Krycek! CSM and the Syndicate! Mulder and Skinner! Mulder and Spender! CSM and Spender! Scully and the Lone Gunmen! -- to recommend it. And the final scene...even though it turns out to be maddeningly unimportant in the show's future direction, the cast and the photography really sell it as a big moment. Plus it sets up the movie.

X-Files: Fight the Future: The Movie

The movie is, ultimately, pretty inconsequential, partly because it's stripped down to be accessible to moviegoers who've never seen the TV show. It's a lot of stuff we've seen before; aliens and conspiracies and domes and cornfields and bees and black oil and Scully having to testify before a panel and seriously, how many different roles does Terry O'Quinn play in this series, anyway? But it's got some very pretty photography, and Martin Landau is in it, and it's perfectly decent as a big-budget, extra-long episode. And there's a Rifftrax!

Season 6, Episode 1: The Beginning

Picks up the threads from The End (Gibson, Spender, Fowley) and Fight the Future (alien chest-bursters and the virus spread by bees).

But it's more interesting as an inflection point for the series. This is the episode where shooting moved from Vancouver to LA (doing a convincing impression of Phoenix). It also has Spender and Fowley replacing Mulder and Scully as the official X-Files team, and while this change turned out to be temporary, it paved the way for Doggett and Reyes in the later seasons.

Season 6, Episode 11: Two Fathers and Episode 12: One Son

We finally get a resolution to the "Mulder and Scully are off the X-Files" arc, after half a season of flopping around pointlessly. We also see a slew of other threads picked up: the Spender family! The Mulder family! The Syndicate! The Lone Gunmen! Krycek! Marita! Fowley! Alien fetuses and human hybrids! The rebels! At this point the series mythology has devolved into self-parody, but at least it's entertainingly delivered, with the Smoking Man delivering smug, sinister monologues and Mulder and Scully shooting a train.

And then AD Kersh delivers his best line, as he responds to one of Mulder's purple-prose monologues with, "What the hell does that mean?"

What the hell does that mean? indeed, Assistant Director Kersh. What the hell does that mean? indeed.

Season 6, Episode 19: The Unnatural

Duchovny writes and directs the story of an alien who played in the minor leagues in the 1940s, and how he met Arthur Dales.

But what pushes this from merely a fun '40s Baseball vs. the Klan, with Aliens fairy tale into something even weirder is the framing device. Darren McGavin had a stroke and was unable to complete filming the present-day Arthur Dales scenes -- but they'd already begun shooting the 1940s-era scenes with Fredric Lane as young Arthur Dales. And so, one hasty rewrite later, this episode marks the first and only appearance of Arthur Dales's brother (M Emmet Walsh/Fredric Lane), who is also named Arthur and looked exactly the same in the '40s.

Season 7, Episode 10: Sein und Zeit and Episode 11: Closure

At this point we're three or four, or maybe even five, seasons past the point where it became clear none of the big storylines were ever going to pay off, that, for example, the story of Samantha's abduction would never see any kind of satisfying resolution. So I was pleasantly surprised, halfway through the famously bad season 7, to see Samantha's abduction come back into play in a way that's actually effective -- as a character piece for Mulder.

The two-parter starts out looking like a monster-of-the-week story, with a supernatural take on the JonBenét Ramsey murder, but then bam! mythology episode as Mulder's mother dies and, because Mulder is Mulder, he becomes convinced that she was murdered because she was about to tell him the truth about what happened to his sister.

What we end up with is one of the series' best examinations of Mulder as a character, his motivating tragedy, how it continues to drive him, and how he filters the world through that singular prism. And for a minute there, it even looks like he's achieved the closure that the title of the episode alludes to -- though of course it doesn't last, because it's not that kind of show.

Season 7, Episode 22: Requiem; Season 8, Episode 1: Within and Episode 2: Without

Requiem is frankly kind of a mess, but it's as clean an ending as X-Files was ever going to get. Returning to the pilot to bring the series full circle is a good move, and we get various other nods to the show's history, with varying degrees of success -- the Lone Gunmen are fun as always, and Skinner gets a good solid role, but other bits of continuity, like Krycek, Villarubias, the Cigarette Smoking Man, and the Alien Bounty Hunter don't really add anything and feel more like ticking off boxes.

The story continues in Within/Without, which is largely an exercise in actors rising above the material. I really think the ongoing "Where's Mulder?" plot is a mistake that holds the series back; Carter et al have a golden opportunity to free themselves from the show's increasingly ramshackle and unsatisfying continuity, but as always they just double down on it.

But all those concerns wind up being secondary, because everybody is so fucking great in these episodes. Robert Patrick, in his debut as Agent Doggett, is the highlight, but Mitch Pileggi does some of his best work of the series too, and Gillian Anderson, fresh into the dramatic irony of her new role as the believer to Doggett's skeptic, shows us how even as a believer Scully is a very different person from Mulder. Hell, I even like that they brought Kersh back; the series could use more villains who are just ordinary government bureaucrats. Did I mention how much I loved the scene in Requiem with the auditor complaining about Mulder and Scully's travel expenses?

Season 8, Episode 18: Vienen

The only Mulder/Doggett episode (or at least the only one that isn't bogged down by being part of some major story arc), and, like several episodes in a season that just can't settle into a status quo, it's a fascinating roadmap for what could have been. The show actually works perfectly well with a full house, with Mulder and Doggett off on an X-File and Scully and Skinner handling the drama back in Washington. But then Mulder gets written out of the show but not really for like the fourth time, leaving us with an interesting one-off rather than a new direction.

Black oil on an oil rig makes for a solid hook, and while a Thing-style "heroes trapped in a remote place trying to figure out who's been infected by aliens" plot doesn't work quite as well as it did back in season 1, it remains a solid hook.

Season 9, Episodes 19-20: The Truth

Look, I'm as surprised as you are, but I'm convinced the finale is a masterpiece of self-parody. Every single line combines the self-seriousness of a Chris Carter script with the simple, early-readers declarative statements of Dick and Jane; it's a sustained 90-minute "I Forced a Bot" joke mashed up with the Seinfeld finale. It is a work of postmodernist genius and I laughed myself into an asthma attack.

Cheap DVD's: The Real Ghostbusters, vol 1

2014-09-30, 8:17 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Movies, Stream of Consciousness, TV

So I happened to notice, the other day, that The Real Ghostbusters, vol 1 (affiliate link) was on sale at Amazon for $10.49.

You can also get the complete series for $123.99, which is a screamin' deal if you actually want the full run. But I remember that even at the age of 6 I wasn't too impressed by the season 3 rejiggering of the show, and there's not much sense paying extra for 43 episodes I don't want.

I've watched the first few episodes, and man, it mostly still holds up, but Slimer sure is annoying. To the point where I am beginning to understand why people actually hate this show.

I wouldn't go that far -- I quite like it in fact -- but I can understand it. Slimer is one of those obnoxious comic-relief mascot characters who constantly fucks everything up and yet you're supposed to like him anyway. (He makes me think of Red Foreman's line on That 70's Show: "Gilligan screwed it up. Why don't they just kill him?")

On the other hand, Frank Welker does a great voice for him (which he'd later reuse as Nibbler on Futurama).

Also: The first episode features a group of imposter Ghostbusters. Wonder if that's another deliberate knock against Filmation's Ghostbusters cartoon series, like the show's title, The Real Ghostbusters.

Some other initial thoughts:

  • Good: If you can get over the characters looking nothing like the live-action versions, the designs are pretty great; each one clearly distinct in shape and color. I noticed Dan Riba's name in the credits; he went on to be a prominent artist in DC's animated shows.
  • Good: Great cast, including Frank Welker as Slimer and Ray, Mo LaMarche doing an uncanny Harold Ramis, Arsenio Hall inexplicably getting the part of Winston despite Ernie Hudson auditioning for it, and Lorenzo Music as Garfield.
  • Good: The animation is better than the vast majority of the show's contemporaries...
  • Bad: ...most of the time, but it can get pretty inconsistent.
  • Bad: Slimer. Mostly.
  • Good: But not always. Sometimes Slimer is good, and again, Welker's voice is a delight.
  • Good: The writing. I haven't liked everything J Michael Straczynski has ever written, but this show is solid. It does a good job of expanding the universe from the movie and creating a satisfying world of supernatural weirdness.
  • Good: Thirty episodes for under eleven bucks!

Kirbys and Marvel Settle

2014-09-26, 4:49 pm
Categories: Comics, Movies, Stream of Consciousness, TV

Today, Marvel and the Kirby Estate released a short joint statement:

Marvel and the family of Jack Kirby have amicably resolved their legal disputes, and are looking forward to advancing their shared goal of honoring Mr. Kirby’s significant role in Marvel’s history.

It's finally over.

I've revised my 2010 form post, The King's Ransom, for what I hope will be the last time.

A bit of context, since I wasn't updating the blog back in June (though I did tweak the aforementioned form post): the Kirby heirs were appealing the case to the Supreme Court, and a number of amicus briefs were filed in the case by prominent groups including the Artists' Rights Society and the International Intellectual Property Institute. Among others, Bruce Lehman, former director of the USPTO, argued that the instance and expense test that the previous judgement against the Kirby heirs hinged on violated Supreme Court precedent.

The Supreme Court was set to decide whether or not to take the case in just a few days.

Kurt Busiek says, in the comments section at The Beat:

Considering that the Kirby Estate didn’t seem to have anything to lose by going to the Supreme Court, but Marvel/Disney had a lot on the line, I’m thinking (or hoping, at least) that this was a decent settlement for the Estate. Given the timing — if the Supreme Court had chosen to hear the case, no settlement would then be possible — it virtually has to be a deal spurred on by the side that doesn’t want the case to go to the Court.

However unlikely onlookers think it might be that the Court would take up the case, and however corporate-friendly the Court may seem to be, the stakes are very high, and a settlement may have seemed a better plan than rolling the dice.

Busiek, of course, doesn't have any inside knowledge of the case, but I find he's been extremely knowledgeable about the facts and issues involved.

Mark Evanier -- who does have inside knowledge of the case -- started off this morning by joking that he can finally finish his Kirby biography, and then added, in a second blog post:

If you're coming to this page in search of details and commentary, you've come to the wrong place. I will be saying nothing about it other that I am real, real happy. And I'm sure Jack and his wife Roz, if they're watching this from wherever they are, are real, real, real happy.

I noted, back in a 2013 post about Archie v Penders, that the thing about settlements is that their terms are typically confidential. It's likely that we'll never know the precise details of the Kirby settlement. (If I were a betting man, I'd say Marvel probably agreed to give them the same profit-sharing deal that it gives current creators -- but that's just a guess, and it's worth what you paid for it.)

One thing we will know is whether the settlement involves more prominent creator credits for Kirby. Marvel's creator credits have been inconsistent up to this point -- the original 2002 Spider-Man movie has a "Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko" credit right upfront, and Agents of SHIELD credits Lee and Kirby at the top of each episode, but other movies have buried creators' names at the bottom of the end credits under a nebulous "special thanks" section. I expect from here on in we'll be seeing much more prominent "Created by Jack Kirby" credits in comics, movies, and TV shows. Guess we'll know soon enough.

And speaking for myself -- I guess my boycott's finally over.

Which is good, because that Mike Allred Silver Surfer sure looks great.

Marketplace on NPR

2014-09-25, 8:39 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, Tech, TV

So, since May I've been working a job that goes from 10 AM to 6 PM.

I like it. It gives me time to walk the dog in the morning, and getting off at 6 means I miss both the worst heat and the worst traffic of the day.

The biggest problem with getting off at 6 is that Marketplace is on NPR, and so that's what I end up listening to on my way home, because it's that or play Preset Lottery and try to find a song I like amid all the obnoxious pop and worse commercials on all the other stations.

I've been trying, for months, to figure out why I don't like Marketplace. Is it my innate disdain for the finance industry? The constant handholding on basic economics and technology?

No. I have come to realize that it's because the questions Kai Ryssdal asks are actually stupid.

Here's a bit from yesterday's interview with Amazon Studios' Roy Price:

Ryssdal: At this point, you might reasonably stop and ask, How did an online retailer end up making television shows, and, y'know, why? Roy Price is the guy with the answers; he runs Amazon Studios. Roy, it's good to have you on.

Price: Thank you, Kai; it's great to be here.

Ryssdal: So when you go to a dinner party, or your kid's soccer game, or you're hangin' out at the beach, and people say, "What do you do?" what do you tell them?

Price: I run Amazon Studios, and we develop TV shows for amazon.com. That's usually what I tell them, unless I'm in a kidding mood.

Emphasis added, because seriously, what the fuck is that? The dude says what Price's job is, and then asks him what he tells people his job is. This is, like, Tim Meadows as Lionel Osbourne-caliber interviewing.

And then he just keeps rambling on about how crazy it is that Amazon is making original TV shows.

This is not 1999. He is not asking why bookseller Amazon has started selling CD's, VHS tapes, and DVD's.

This is not 2003. He is not asking why media seller Amazon has started selling clothing, and advertising it with baffling recommendations beginning with "People who wear clothes also shop for:"

This is not 2007. He is not asking why physical media/clothing seller Amazon has started selling consumer electronics, household goods, and MP3's.

This is not 2011. He is not asking why physical goods/ebook/MP3 seller Amazon has started its own Android app store and video streaming service.

This is goddamn yesterday, and he is seemingly baffled that an online retailer that has been constantly branching out into new markets for the past 15 years has branched out into a new market.

Jesus Christ. I'd rather listen to Car Talk.

Cheap DVD's: Earthworm Jim

2014-09-24, 8:18 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Games, Stream of Consciousness, TV

I was perusing Amazon the other day and, under my recommendations, I noticed that it listed Earthworm Jim: The Complete Series (affiliate link). As EWJ is easily one of my two favorite 1990's animated video game adaptations to feature Kath Soucie as a redheaded princess and Jim Cummings as the bad guy, I went ahead and ordered it.

Initial Impressions

The Good:

  • Good animation
  • Great cast
  • Still funny
  • All 23 episodes for only eleven bucks
  • Way better quality than that torrent you grabbed a few years ago that somebody made from old VHS tapes

The Bad:

  • Totally barebones; no special features or even scene selection.
  • If you buy this, part of that money probably goes to Doug TenNapel.

Edna

2013-10-27, 3:00 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Stream of Consciousness, TV

There's no new Simpsons tonight, so, in honor of the late, great Marcia Wallace, might I recommend breaking out your DVD collection and watching one of these classic Edna Krabappel episodes:

Bart the Lover, Season 3

If there's a better Mrs. K episode, I can't think of one. This shows Edna at her most complex and human -- and Bart too, for that matter. Wallace won an Emmy for this one.

Bart Gets an F, Season 2

And speaking of emotions we don't often see from Bart, the climax of this one -- where he breaks down in tears on finding that he failed his test despite really trying his hardest this time -- shows us a seldom-seen side of both characters, without giving in too much to sentimentality. I love Mrs. K's attempt to comfort Bart -- "I would have thought you'd be used to it by now!" could so easily have come across as sarcastic, but Wallace chooses to read it as a gentle, tender statement. Now that's comedy.

The PTA Disbands, Season 6

So many classic moments in this episode purple monkey dishwasher. It's Simpsons at its satirical finest, highlighting the conflict between teachers and administration, the public's simultaneous desire for better schools and lower taxes, and the terrifying reality that if you pick up some random person off the street, they'll be a worse teacher than Miss Hoover or Mrs. Krabappel. And the resolution is so ludicrous that it can only serve to hang a lampshade on how intractable these issues really are.

Grade School Confidential, Season 8

Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies and the baby looked at me.

The Ned-Liest Catch, Season 22

Say what you will about modern-era Simpsons, pairing off Ned with Edna was a rare and legitimately pleasant surprise. It's not the sort of thing I would ever have seen coming, but it makes its own unexpected kind of sense -- two characters who have seemingly nothing in common but their loneliness, but who complement each other so thoroughly and who can each stand to learn so much from the other. This episode highlights how difficult those differences can be, and they almost don't make it as a couple -- but, thanks to an Internet vote, they stay together.

Important Comics

2013-08-28, 8:39 pm
Categories: Comics, Politics, Stream of Consciousness, TV

Today's the anniversary of a couple of things.

It would have been Jack Kirby's 96th birthday.

And, more importantly -- as the King himself would surely have acknowledged --, it's the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington.

I was at a loss for precisely how I was going to tie these two events together in the same post -- and then I remembered Congressman John Lewis has a comic book out.

Stephen Colbert interviewed him a couple of weeks back:

Lewis discusses not only his new comic trilogy, March, but a comic that inspired him in 1957: Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story. An excellent summary by Andrew Aydin at Creative Loafing Atlanta says:

Richard Deats, [the Fellowship of Reconciliation]'s Director of Communications in the 1990s, laid out FOR's motivation and purpose behind the comic in a 1997 letter, saying, "The comic book was originally intended to convey to semiliterate persons the story of nonviolence and its effectiveness as seen in the Montgomery movement. The medium of the highly popular comic book was believed to be the best way to reach masses of exploited African-Americans."

And that's what comic books were: they were a way of reaching the masses. They were literature for the illiterate.

And as with all mass-media means of distributing information to the poor, this upset the elites.

When comics first appeared in American newspapers around the turn of the twentieth century, they were seen as gutter trash. In the decades that followed, they were scapegoated for society's ills, culminating in Senate hearings, the Comics Code Authority, and the devastation of an entire American art form.

In a way, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story was exactly what the elites feared: it upset the social structure. It gave teenagers like John Lewis ideas.

It's ironic that the comics medium's greatest foe, Fredric Wertham, was also an ardent progressive in the Civil Rights Movement -- if he had never written Seduction of the Innocent, he would instead be best remembered for the doll study used in Brown v Board. Wertham was right, in a way, about comics' potential as a disruptive force, as a powerful tool for influencing young people -- but he chose to fear the imagined impact of fictional crime and horror stories, rather than see the true potential of comics as a force for good, for education, for organization, for social justice.

Kirby, of course, saw boundless potential in comics, in a way few people ever have. He used comics to advocate for social change, too, though he preferred fiction and metaphor, and is best remembered as a superhero artist (though his work crossed all genres and invented some). He saw superheroes as modern mythological figures -- as New Gods -- as aspirational avatars.

In the 1940's, Kirby co-created Captain America, advocating for US intervention in WWII when that was still a controversial position. In the 1970's, his Forever People were technologically-advanced, alien hippies. In the 1960's, The Fantastic Four gave us The Hate-Monger, a supervillain in a Klan hood who turned out to be Adolf Hitler himself. It also gave us this guy:

The Black Panther

That image is courtesy of Brian Cronin's Comic Book Legends Revealed, which notes that the Black Panther didn't look like that in the final published comic -- his half-mask was replaced with a full mask, making it less immediately obvious that the Black Panther was, in fact, a black man -- indeed, possibly the first black superhero. (Inevitably when you refer to a comic book character as "the first" of anything, that's going to lead to debate -- sometimes that debate can miss the point entirely and turn into mere nitpicking over comic book trivia, though other times, as in Who Was the First Black Superhero? by JV Halliburton II, it can explore the richness of comic history and highlight all the important characters who have helped to build and shape it and make it more diverse.)

Today Mark Evanier wrote a lovely remembrance of his friend and mentor, and among many other things he had this to say:

Jack was all about something new, something exciting and something that took whatever he was doing to the next level. [...] Jack was first and foremost interested in producing something that would take comics to some new plateau, creating new opportunities and new possibilities.

Kirby believed in comics. So did Martin Luther King and Alfred Hassler. So does John Lewis.

And so does Jillian Kirby. I've written before about her Kirby4Heroes fundraiser for the Hero Initiative, a charity that helps struggling comic creators. As we celebrate her grandfather's birthday, don't forget about the less fortunate who have helped shape the comics medium over the years and decades.

Still Headachin'

2013-08-23, 11:51 pm
Categories: Announcements, Games, Tech, TV, Work

Left work early yesterday, and didn't make it in at all today. Rough week. Starting to feel better; hope that holds.

Not much else to add, I guess. Puttering around the house a bit, continuing to take inventory. Got my broken Wii to work with my broken CRT TV. It would appear that we literally can't have nice things.