We’ve seen three episodes.
One is a masterpiece.
One is the opposite.
Credit: Frank Ockenfels/Fox
My Struggle is a chain-gun barrage of catchphrase paranoia and midlife-crisis crypto-Randian anti-philosophy.
Its like creator Chris Carter took 13 years of pent-up ideas and printed them on Froot Loops.
Meet, again: Dana Scully and Fox Mulder.
David Duchovnys believer is in a depressive funk.
Theyre called back into alien-hunting by Tad OMalley (Joel McHale), an alarmist, Glenn Beckian newsbag.
OMalley is a 9/11 Truther, a Roswell Truther, and probably a Beyonce Truther.
He may also be right.
There is technobabble, shouted exposition, looney-pulp non-dialogue.
Logic question: Who has ever hung an ass with anything?
The characters all watch OMalleys show on a fake version of YouTube called mindQUAD.
Sometimes, they use a fake Google called Finder Spyder.
Early on, Scully asks Mulder if hes been watching Tad OMalley on the Net?
I havent heard anyone say The Net sinceThe Netbecame a TV show nobody watched.END OF ASIDE.)
As a longform saga, the originalX-Fileswas influential and disappointing.
The shows central conspiracy arc dead-ended into one blind alley after another.
Now that every show is serialized, the stand-aloneX-Filesepisodes actually look better, and stranger.
Cards on the table: I thinkThe X-Fileswas the best TV drama of the 1990s.
It was always a mixed bag all television was, with 24 episodes per season!
butX-Filesuses the standard operating Mixed Bag-ness of television as a laboratory for ideas and narrative concepts.
And there was a blunt-force transgressive paranoid thrill even in the shows worst episodes.
It could only get better.
Still, nothing could have prepared me for episode 3.
Written and directed by the famously gonzo Morgan, Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster actual title!
is a wild, playful, brain-twisting, heart-pulling, and above alladventurousepisode of television.
In one respect, its a vintage Monster-of-the-Week episode.
The agents head to a corner of woodland America that looks like Vancouver.
There are reports of a lizard-man killing people; confusingly, said lizard-man is wearing tighty-whities.
But in another respect, Were-Monster isaboutmonster-of-the-week episodes, a lighthearted but very smart self-dissection.
(X-Fileswas doing meta-farce before it was cool; ifLostwas descended fromX-Files, then so wasCommunity.)
To say much more wouldactuallyspoil a daffy plot everyone should enjoy.
Suffice it to say that Were-MonsterfeelslikeThe X-Filesyou remember.
Duchovny and Anderson both seem more relaxed, finally rediscovering their old zip-zap chemistry.
Guest stars Kumail Nanjiani and Rhys Darby are delightful.
Its scary, then funny, then existential, then shockingly moving.
(Theres even a 9/11 joke and its funny!)
I forgot how much fun these cases could be, says Scully.
