NO! Me and my partner started watching X-Files, in a mostly random order. Seriously in like season fucking 7 she's like "I don't buy this mumbo jumbo super natural crap Mulder, even though we encountered something very similar to this like a week ago!"
Like Jesus girl you're not a skeptic, you're just contrarian.
Every episode:
Mulder: Scully it was aliens
Scully: No Mulder it wasn't aliens
Mulder: Look, an alien!
Scully: No Mulder aliens aren't real
Mulder: Scully there is literally one standing next to you and waving
Scully: Hmm, maybe but I'm not fully convinced
That's it, that's every episode. And I love it
Mulder and Scully are the only FBI agents I will never cancel.
"Scully the alien is literally implanting eggs into your ass as we speak!"
"Look Mulder, I'll admit it's possible eggs are being implanted in my ass, but I need more evidence than this."
Mulder and Scully are the only FBI agents I will never cancel.
What about Dale Cooper?
Ok he gets a pass too.
I hate how efffective the 90s was at making FBI agents loveable.
That's where the media has been going wrong with making feds all serious Jack Reacher types these days. To win non-chuds they need to go back to quirky shinanigans (without resorting to Marvel slop)
Wait. That's what's replaced it for libs, Marvel slop. That how feds and cops are marketed to libs now.
Shit I just went on an ADHD induced rant didn't I?
I think there was just a high volume of police shows that they managed to make a handful of great "quirky" ones. Now, literally every show/movie is like that
, and the police show genre is just chud crap lol.It's actually a trope of the time. FBI good guys vs CIA bad guys. Isn't it the same in Sicario?
Diane, I was browsing Hexbear and encountered some major disrespect from one "Dirt_Owl".
i have to imagine that scully and mulder are going through a million x files offscreen that aren't supernatural and the ones that are supernatural become the episodes we see. its never said in the show, but thats my own justification for it
There are episodes that start with Mulder coming home from some case or interview with someone who claims they experienced something supernatural off screen, so they do
It's funny when it's a religion thing, then it's Scully who isn't skeptical at all. Angels? Oh yeah, absolutely. Gotta be angels. And Mulder is the consummate skeptic if it's ANYTHING spiritual
"Clearly this is a message from God!"
"Scully, it's alien eggs in your ass, God had nothing..."
"I AM CHOSEN!"
I think Scully is a good example for people who are curious about materialism and religion. She believes in God and the bible and miracles and all that, but she also lives in our shared reality on this earth. Her religion guides who she is morally and philosophically, but she’s not praying to god while analyzing DNA structures and or cursing satan during shootouts with deep state agents.
And aliens and monsters and super powers do exist in her reality, but she isn’t quick to just assume it’s real because her current understanding of material reality and religion haven’t caught up with the new reality. She never performs studies, so if we consider the scientific method the golden standard, then she’s simply being a good scientist.
It definitely gets a little more absurd the longer the series goes on, but I still love it.
And in Scully's defense she does have a tendency to get conveniently knocked unconscious or frozen in ice, or locked in a random room, or detained by security at a perimeter fence a lot when the actual spooky shit reveals itself.
There's definitely some Monster of the Week episodes that feel out of step with her skepticism vs experiences, but I think the mythology episodes (and mythology adjacent episodes) do a pretty good job of having both Scully and Mulder's respective faiths and skepticisms evolve and change. They even kind of cross over when Mulder has his "this is a conspiracy of men" crisis of faith before the arrival of the alien rebels.
I've always kind of read Scully's seemingly contrary religiosity and hard anti-alien skepticism as a reflection of or exploration of Chris Carter's own seemingly conflicted religious beliefs. He was brought up in a religious household but his older brother rejected it for science and introduced him to sci-fi before eventually becoming a professor at MIT. You can tell Chris Carter feels trapped between his fascination with both and I always read Scully, especially in the earlier seasons, as his attempt to square that circle.
It does get a little funkier later on, by the late 90s and that may be because it's heavily (and seemingly reliably) rumoured that Carter got into Scientology. While the religious themes and iconography in his writing only seems to increase, it feels like there's a lot more frustration with 'mainstream' religion not fitting a broader, more esoteric spiritual and paranormal tone. Scully's skeptic/religious balance feels less like an earnest attempt at squaring a circle and more like an example that the two rigid ways of looking at her life cannot hold. I think you can read that as Carter's frustration with both traditional religious communities and the scientific/skeptic community as he embraces Scientology.
But also, Chris Carter is kind of a weirdo misogynist whose own sexism and poor character writing pretty much destroyed Scully's character and pretty much cancelled and then doomed the show more than once. So fuck him.
Also, I probably watch and think about the X Files too much.
Uzumaki is the same lmfao every issue has the bf being like "I think there is something really weird going on with spirals in this town, we should gtfo" and main character is like "noooooooo what are you talking about haha" as though her aunt didn't just turn into a spiral and try to kill her yesterday
I've been posting about it as my partner and I are watching the whole series in order. I have a working theory that every modern conspiracy theory that a boomer thinks of is just a misremembered episode of the X-Files distorted by their growing dementia.
A fun game to play is watching the difference in trigger discipline between Mulder and Scully.
I like tallying up how many times they all get knocked unconscious or hospitalized. If anyone sustained as many injuries as they do they'd have the bodies of 90 year olds lol!
It started with the 3rd season episode Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, and continues with the 6th season episode Monday.
Scully asks Clyde, a psychic who knows how people will die, how she will die. He says, "You don't."
In "Monday", Scully is doing a groundhog-day loop where she and Mulder die in a bombing. The fan theory is that the day will repeat itself indefinitely until circumstances allow for her survival because the universe will not let her die.
Well, yeah. That’s why she was brought onto the team. The higher ups wanted a “logical” explanation for Mulder’s antics. She can’t exactly say “You’re right Mulder. I do believe in aliens. But I will keep telling Skinner that maybe it was Chinese swamp gas.” The deep state actually don’t care, or need her to deboonk everything or else the deep state is exposed.
I remember there was a supercut of her "are you trying to tell me...," "would you have me believe...," etc. as part of a behind-the-scenes type thing or a tv special... amazingly, it doesn't appear to be on YouTube
