- I'm not going to weep
for the death of the X-Files. Yet. Though I do feel a bit like Romeo in
the morgue, ear bent over the motionless Juliet laid out on the cold slab,
hoping for some movement to dispel the overwhelming evidence of a beloved
spirit lost to the ages. The spirit still resides within, of course, but
it has become obscured by other things, familiar in their own right, but
hard on the heart of a fan. What's become of that dark, quirky little show
about aliens and ghosts and two impossibly attractive FBI agents whose
constant bickering about science versus faith gave us our only clues as
to what was going on?
Like anything well-written and well-produced, it got popular, and it is that very popularity that we, as fans, helped nurture that now threatens the object of our affection. I'm speaking of the true fans here, those who fell in to the Sunday night ritual during the first and second seasons. At first we were thrilled to discover others sharing our passion, patiently filling the newcomers in on things they'd missed, enjoying the new ideas and theories they brought, but as time passed it became clear that many of these new fans didn't quite get the point of the show. They wanted easy answers. They wanted Scully and Mulder in bed. They wanted merchandise. Fox responded in typical Hollywood fashion, with the predictable assortment of coffee mugs, calendars, and action figures (and as an aside, was anyone truly surprised to see Todd McFarlane wrapped up in all this after having diluted his own brilliant comic book to a joke?).
All of this would have been fine if they hadn't changed the show. And it wasn't even done with subtlety. They made a movie out of it, reducing Mulder and Scully to talking heads spouting meaningless witticisms and rushing from one life-or-death situation to another, not as investigators, not as truth seekers dragging secrets into the light, but as pawns of a larger conspiracy they were powerless to fight.
Worse still, Chris Carter, now transformed into feed-the-masses mode, started spelling things out. Showing us things. Here's an alien. Look at it. It's an alien. Scully doesn't believe it, but Fox does. Why do we even need Scully anymore? Her credibility has been destroyed now that we, as the audience, know that Fox is right. She's been reduced to a whining skeptic whose primary role seems to be to get Fox in bed. Much as I love Gillian Andersen, I'm hoping some tragedy befalls Dana Scully before she's forced to go much further with this.
The other problem with Carter's newfound enthusiasm for exposition is its destruction of what made X-Files so special to us in the first place. Nothing ever ended neatly. We never got clear answers, only Mulder and Scully's theories about what something could have been. That let these stories burrow into our imaginations, forcing us to fill in our own details, draw our own conclusions, something far richer and more engaging than having it all spelled out as the lights flash and the music swells.
It simply isn't the
same show anymore. The knowledge that the mysteries will be revealed hangs
over every fading final shot. And when we get those answers, when
the true nature of the conspiracy has been revealed, will we be satisfied?
Newer fans might be, but true fans won't. There's no twist compelling enough
to hold sway over our minds after six years of speculation. Carter has
backed himself and the show into a corner from which there is no easy escape,
and the ultimate end of this path is disappointment for those of us who've
enjoyed this ride. The basic elements still remain, however, enough of
the potential to keep us tuned in. But the hour is growing later, and Juliet
has lost much of her loveliness in her motionless, deathlike state. A single
question gathers form as the show lists toward its new direction: Do you
really want someone else to give you the answers, or would you rather imagine
your own?
