Better Late Than Never: Plur1bus

 

The moment that Vince Gilligan announced that he was doing a new TV show with Rhea Seehorn I didn't need to know any other details to know that even if this was considered by critics the absolute worst shows in the history of television I was going to watch every episode that aired regardless. When you create one of the greatest shows in the history of television and then create a prequel that is so good there's debate whether its better than one of the greatest shows in the history of television, you've earned a measure of goodwill so big it could fill the Grand Canyon.

 That he was doing so with Rhea Seehorn was even more incredible. I think I speak for everyone  who watched Better Call Saul  that the closer the show got to the present and the longer Kim Wexler was still alive the more openly terrified you were. The thing about a prequel is that characters from the original source material have plot armor but everyone else doesn't. Saul Goodman, Mike Erhmantraut and eventually Gustavo Fring did (albeit so that when they met Walter White he would destroy them either by killing them or just by being in his presence) but almost every other regular did not. And because there was no sign Saul had a girlfriend or wife in Breaking Bad you became more terrified with each passing season and Kim will still in Jimmy's life. By the time we reached the second half of the final season I was certain the only way out for Kim was at the hands of the cartel. (Spoiler: she survived. 'Lived' in a strong word'.

Gilligan went out of his way to make sure the details for his project remained under wraps and Apple TV gave him the same largesse that AMC did. By the time Plur1bus was finally announced in the spring of 2025 they'd given it a renewal for a second season. By the time it came out some details were available, most notably that it seemed to involve an extraterrestrial invasion.

And of course the moment any TV fan worth their salt heard this their minds naturally turned to Gilligan's origin story: his eight years writing for The X-Files. Those of you who've read my previous articles on The X-Files and Gilligan might be somewhat surprised to know that while he wrote thirty scripts for the series, either on his own or in collaboration he never wrote a single script that had anything to do with the mytharc. In my series on Gilligan and The X-Files I'm going to actually explain why that was the right choice for Gilligan and the series but for now I'll just repeat that Gilligan learned quite a few lessons from showrunner Chris Carter. And in the case of a mytharc that was what was not to do.

Carter never had a bible for The X-Files.  Both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul had a lot of planning within each season as to where they were going, if not always knowing how to get there. Carter never had a clear blueprint for any of his character's history. Gilligan had the broad strokes for Breaking Bad and made sure that they fit within the contours of Better Call Saul when the prequel was written.  The X-Files ran past its end date. Breaking Bad and Saul had fixed ones.

The biggest problem with the alien invasion of The X-Files is, of course, it never happened. Carter kept promising with ominous phrases like 'the date is set' but the date kept getting pushed back the bigger hit the series came. The bigger the conspiracy became, the more irrelevant to the action Mulder and Scully increasingly became. The forms the aliens were going to take, what they were going to do, changed the depending on the season and eventually became incoherent. Gilligan would occasionally gently satirize it in his later scripts but it was never his deal.

So I can imagine a conversation between Chris Carter and Gilligan after the series ended joking:

Gilligan: Nine seasons and the aliens never came.

Carter: Well maybe they'll come in the movie.

Gilligan: Chris I gotta tell you if you'd let me help with the mythology I could have made it work and make sense.

Carter: Before or after you sell that crazy idea of a chemistry teacher cooking meth in an RV?

(Both men laugh, knowing full well it'll never happen)

Gilligan: "You're probably right. Still someday I'd like to prove you wrong. 

Carter: "Like Hal from Malcolm in the Middle would work as Walter?"

 

Now imagine Carter in November in 2025 watching the Pilot of Plur1bus. I almost expected the ending of the first episode to have a message saying: "To Chris Carter: I Made This."

It took me way too long to get around to watching the first two episodes of Plur1bus by which point it was clear to the world that Gilligan had made another masterpiece. It has already made multiple top ten lists for 2025 and both the show and Seehorn have been nominated for Best Drama and Best Actress. To date Seehorn has won the Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award in that latter category and barring an alien invasion will finally get the Emmy she should have won for Better Call Saul. (I hope the hive mind came for the Emmy judges who decided that Jennifer Coolidge's work in The White Lotus was a dramatic performance.)

The reason I think Carter would be watching the entire first  two episodes (all that I've seen to this point) shaking his head is because it's clear that Gilligan has finally done something The X-Files would not do in nine seasons, two movies and two revival seasons. And to show just how brilliant Gilligan is let's review how his alien invasion works:

 

1. He shows every detail of how the aliens get here.

We see a satellite transmitted, then a bunch of scientists puzzling over the message they've gotten and its form. We see two scientists trying to figure out how its being delivered in quinary form. They make a realization what it is, even though it's not spelled out, simply showing a lot of testing on animals.

Then we see two people who are there to gas lab animals, something they've been doing for a very long time. They go to the lab where it looks like one of the rats is already dead. One of the scientists takes the rat out of its cage and finds out its alive. Then it bites her.

She runs to the sink while the other exterminator chases the rat. While she's scrubbing she begins to shake violently. The other exterminator grabs her and hauls her into the shower. We cut away where the security guard is trying to get something from a vending machine. He's so distracted pursuing the Fritos he barely notices when she grabs him – and kisses him. We then see her colleague grabbing and kissing a janitor.

Then we see the entire staff licking and swabbing a series of sample dishes and putting them in something. They do so in a mechanical rote fashion. As they do so a group of military police come in and automatically begin doing the same thing. The implications are absolutely terrifying.

 

2. We see the actual invasion albeit in vague terms

Carol Sturka is returning to Albuquerque with her wife Helen from a book tour. They go to a bar for a drink. When they go out for a smoke, the TV cuts to a news story of an airbase being locked down. While the two are outside answering her mail, Carol notices what she thinks are planes flying in a strange pattern. Then the two of them go back to it and see a truck crash into a neighboring car. Carol runs to help and finds that the driver is shaking violently and she can't move him. She yells to Helen, only to see her collapse. She runs into the bar to get help…and sees everybody there frozen in place unable to move. She gets on the phone and finds that emergency services aren't answering. She gets Helen into a truck at great effort and drives down the road. She sees an ambulance hauled over the one side…and then sees the entire town in flames and discord.

What she finds when she gets to the hospital is such a horror show I will leave to those who have yet to see it to discover. What I will say is that this and so much of what follows is another great strength of Plur1bus.

 

3. Show don't tell.

The term 'Carter-speak' is a derogatory term for just how much of the purple, languorous dialogue and monologue's Carter wrote during his tenure on The X-Files: dialogue that sounded portentous but you couldn't imagine a real person saying. It made some of the things George Lucas wrote for Star Wars sound like Shakespeare by comparison.

By contrast all of the horrors I've described and almost everything that follows takes place in near total silence. This is particularly true in the pilot both in the sequence above and the entire period that Carol realizes something horrible is happening but can't grasp it. Gilligan has always been one of the greatest masters of directing and long silence sequence where we follow a character's actions but never directly explaining it. In the pilot he reaches new heights with this in a sci-fi construct that is clearly closer to pure horror than anything he's done in a quarter of a century. As a result when the alien intelligence finally speaks to Carol it has more power than any long expository dialogue could be.

This is made even clearer in the opening of the second episode where we meet Zosia (Karolina Wydra) in an unidentified but clearly Middle Eastern country. We see an extended sequence watching an unidentified figure moving through where smoke is rising and bodies are everywhere. She helps them to a certain place, gets into a car, drives to an airstrip. We then watching her move efficiently to a prop plane and slowly but surely turn on every engine. After the opening credits we see Carol awaken from an alcoholic stupor and then look at the body of Helen with despair. We then see the plane land in New Mexico and Zosia walk through a deserted airport, then taking off all her clothes and walking naked to a bathroom where other aliens are cleaning up. It is only after nearly thirteen minutes of the episode are over that we hear Zosia utter her first line of dialogue to Carol.

I haven't seen a bravura sequence of this kind of exposition since the opening episode of Season 5 of The Americans where we watched Philip and Elizabeth, along with a colleague, dig up a grave. And it is the complete opposite of nearly every over-expository episode I've seen of The X-Files.

 

4. Make the aliens takeover of this planet seem like a good thing.

It was a given for everything we saw on The X-Files over the mytharc that the aliens were planning to colonize and turn us into a slave race. Now we see the exact same thing happen – but the new alien overlords are actually so nice and pleasant. All of them, especially Zosia, are trying everything they can to be pleasant to Carol and not upset here. They accommodate her every need including the second episode when she has to bury her wife. They agree to have her meet five of the other people who speak English as a second or third language. There are thirteen who are unaffected.

Furthermore the first five we meet all seem perfectly happy with the idea of the alien takeover. One of them, a gentleman from Mauritania, tells her that there is finally no war, no crime or poverty, no one in prison, and all the animals from the zoo have been set free. Perhaps most tellingly Carol is not merely the only American who seemed unaffected but is also a white woman while all the others seem to be people of color. (The fact that 'Carol' is not that far removed from the name Karen can't be a coincidence.) More importantly four for of the people still alive they still have all of their families still alive, albeit as part of this hive. Carol has lost the only person closest to her and it was clear in the pilot that Helen was the only one who ever could tolerate her bad behavior.

What's more Zosia makes it clear that they don't kill, even animals or insects, are perfectly fine being used sexually and are giving those who are still alive free will. They don't want to hurt the feelings of those who are still alive in anyway. And that brings me to…

 

5. Make the alien's one weakness something we haven't seen before.

It's clear in the second episode the real weakness the aliens have is Carol's rage. There's something in their biological makeup that when Carol expresses outrage it hurts them physically to the point it can kill them. When Carol has an outburst we eventually learn 11 million people die as a result. The fact that one of them happens to be the grandfather of one of the sole surviving humans doesn't endear her to them anymore.

This is a reversal of almost every alien invasion story we've seen including The X-Files where every alien we met was an unemotional killing machine, unbothered by human emotions. That the aliens can be killed not with a stiletto or a bizarre metal but with one simply shouting at them has to be an in-joke for Carter as well.

 

6.  Punctuate the horrors with small and occasionally sly details.

When Carol goes home after everything she naturally goes to the TV and changes every channel and gets nothing but static or bars except for the CW, which doesn't broadcast in her area anymore. Eventually she tunes to a channel and sees a man and a suit and thinks the government its work. In fact it's C-SPAN and its clear the cameras never got destroyed because they never use satellites to broadcast.

When the channel broadcasts a message for her it tells her to use the landline because all cell service is down.

 

7. Your lead must be a strong female protagonist who has absolutely no time for the foolishness of other people.

All right that was actually a good lesson to take from  The X-Files considering how Gillian Anderson's Scully is one of the most iconic characters in TV history.  And considering just how many shows have been focused on White Male Antiheroes there's something to be said by making your lead character a Dour Blonde Lesbian.

Even here I can't help but wonder if Carol Sturka's pre-invasion occupation of a paranormal romance author is a private dig at the kind of overwritten prose that Carter used to have on a daily basis. And the way there are so many devoted fans obsessed with the trivia of Carol's books is clearly a parody of the fan culture that surrounded The X-Files at the start. The fact that they're predominantly female housewives doesn't make them any less ridiculous then the fanboys and shippers we had to deal with on The X-Files. And the fact that Carol has to deal with them every time a book comes out and treats them with enormous scorn is a big poke at them too.

What's magnificent about Seehorn's performance in the first two episodes is that Carol is absolutely right about the threat these creatures are. They admit that just by coming here they killed nearly 900 million people and she's just as right about calling the survivors traitors to the human race.  But she's also blinded by the fact that she's so angry she doesn't seem willing to ask the right questions, so blinded by revenge that its not until she's having dinner and getting drunk that everyone else starts asking about certain things involving the aliens. (In keeping with the previous point, they want to know if it's just for food.)

 

As Gilligan knows better than anyone else when you tell a sci-fi narrative you'd better be able to deliver at the end. He saw firsthand how this played out with The X-Files and so much of the 21^st century has seen so many sci-fi fantasy masterpieces have endings which to this day have been polarizing to say the least, from Battlestar Galactica to Lost to Game of Thrones. As we speak many are already wondering if Severance will be able to keep those plates in the air whenever it comes to an end.

It is no doubt far too early to see how this will go: not even Gilligan can tell us when Season 2 will be coming out. However he says at most he intends to end Plur1bus in four. That itself shows me Gilligan learned another less from his time on The X-Files: don't spin your story out until it becomes incoherent. To be fair Gilligan made that decision with Breaking Bad and that played out with Better Call Saul each of which are considering to have the greatest endings of any series in television history.

What I know already is I don't want to believe the hype for Plur1bus. It is everything that the world has already seen. And what I hope is out there is an Emmy for Seehorn and eventually a lot of Emmys for the show and for Gilligan. They may not all come this September but when it comes to this combination, trust Vince Gilligan.

My Score: 5 stars.

 

Jamie Ding Is Now In the Top Five of Jeopardy Greats

 

 

It is now clear to anyone who's watched Jeopardy the past month that few players have ever played Jeopardy as well as Jamie Ding. And even fewer have done so well while making it look more difficult than it should be.

The contradictory nature of Jamie Ding was clear on Tuesday. He tied Mattea Roach for sixth place all time in number of games won with 23 and with $644,000 is also sixth in all-time winnings in a Jeopardy champion's original run. (He's also thirteenth on the all-time winnings list for those including tournament victories having passed Matt Jackson's total on Monday.) Yet despite having won 2 more games then Cris Panullo he has nevertheless won over $100,000 less than him.

I've commented on this discrepancy in my articles on him including last Wednesday's and it doesn't take a genius to see Jamie's Achilles Heel: Final Jeopardy. He started strong getting seven of his first eight Final Jeopardys correct. But in his next fifteen games he's gotten seven correct – and eight incorrect.

This is a track record that is almost unparalleled among so many of the players that James has already caught and passed on the leaderboard of legends. Jeopardy legends such as Austin Rogers and Matt Jackson had a far better track record on Final Jeopardys in much shorter runs than Jamie has in a longer one. And I know quite a few players who've never missed on Final Jeopardy who still ended up not making the grade. (One could make an argument – and many still will – then Ben Chan should have had a much longer run then he did because of that fact.)

This is rather bizarre contradiction and almost unparalleled among the Jeopardy greats. I'm not just talking about the legends still ahead of him on that board. In this sense Jamie has been playing as well as the five players ahead of him on money won when it comes to number of runaway victories:

 

Cris Panullo: 17

Ken Jennings: 16

James Holzhauer: 19

Matt Amodio: 17

Amy Schneider: 19

Jamie Ding: 18

 

Cris of course only managed to win 21 games before losing. But he managed to only get 7 final Jeopardys incorrect during 22 games. Jamie had already gotten that many incorrect by his 21^st. And that's a better track record compared to the four players who even higher up by the leaderboard of legends.

Furthermore all of the players above him on the list and quite a few others below him have never been as risky when it comes to Final Jeopardy as Jamie has been during their runaways. And the result has been decided mixed for him. And as a result while Jamie has the sixth highest total of money won in Jeopardy history, his average per game is considerably lower then the five players above him even though they won far more games. At this point Jamie is averaging just under $28,000 a win which is impressive- until you considering that the five players ahead of him all average at least $32,000 a win. Even if you set Holzhauer asides Panullo managed to win over $35,000 a win in his 21 victories. This is true of some of the players below him as well: Scott Riccardi managed to average $28,500 a game in his sixteen victories.

One has to admire any Jeopardy player who is so well to go for the big payday as Jamie Ding has been more than willing to do over his incredible run when it comes to Final Jeopardy. And considering the margins he's had in so many of his runaways you can understand the willingness to take the risk. The problem is when he does take the risk, he invariably gets burned and burned badly.

This may sound like I'm trying to throw shade on one of the greatest Jeopardy players in history. My readers know full well I absolutely am not doing that. I'm merely pointing out while Jamie Ding is one of the greatest Jeopardy players in history, certainly the best we've seen since Cris Panullo lost in December of 2022, it has been more difficult for me to tell with him then really any other Jeopardy super-champion since Ryan Long how much more luck has to do with his incredible run then skill. He definitely has the latter in spades – one does not have three games in which you get 43 correct responses or more if you're not one of the greatest Jeopardy players of all time – but more than any super-champion I've seen he seems more willing then most to undercut himself.

This was true in tonight's game where Jamie officially moved into fifth place on the all-time wins list ahead of Mattea Roach. It was yet another runaway victory for Jamie and both on the surface and beneath he was dominant. And yet I still came away with the same impression I have with so many of his victories: that the only person who could beat Jamie Ding was Jamie Ding – and he seemed more than willing to let that happen given the chance.

Playing against Bill Page and Kim Elliott Jamie started off well. He already had $2800 when he found the Daily Double in the Jeopardy round in the category A FINE ROMANCE. He bet everything:

On April 5, 1953 the Atlanta Daily World announced the engagement of this pair who met in Boston.

Jamie paused: "Who are Elizabeth and Philip?" It was actually Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King. Down to zero he went. As is his want he regained the lead by the end of the round with $5800 to Kim's $2200 and Bill's $1400. It was a much smaller margin at the end of the round then he's used to.

In Double Jeopardy he went on a very Jamie like run of 9 consecutive correct answers and has built himself up to $20,200 when he finally found the first Daily Double in LEVELING UP. He bet $4800 hoping for a nice round total of $25.000:

In 1826 this city became a state capital, taking over for Murfreesboro.

I knew almost immediately it was Nashville. Jamie thought it was Little Rock and dropped to $15,400.

Redemption came on the next clue in TOUGH 1-SYLLABLE WORDS. He bet just $2600 this time:

It can refer to an accident or part of a whale tail. This time he knew it was a fluke and went up to $18,000.

He would finish Double Jeopardy with another runaway victory: $22,400 to Bill's $6600 and Kim's $4600. Another impressive one but for Jamie a relatively low total by his standards.

The Final Jeopardy category was NOTABLE AMERICANS: In 1909 she jointed the Socialist Party & later published 'Out of the Dark', her writings 'On Physical & Social Vision." All three players knew the correct answer: "Who is Helen Keller?" Jamie was cautious this time, only betting $600. Or perhaps he was being precise. His total was $23,000 and now his 24 day total was $667,000 – two thirds of a million.

It was an impressive win and yet it brought his average per victory to just under $27,800. All five of the players ahead of him in terms of money won have a considerably higher total then Jamie doe – including Cris Panullo, who averaged over $35,000 per win. He's also significantly behind in this department of quite a few players behind him in games won. Jason Zuffraneri managed  roughly $28,000 per win over 19 games and Ray Lalonde managed just under $30,000 in each of his 13 wins. All of this must be laid at the feet of so many incorrect Final Jeopardys during this period and at this point we do have to look at the four players ahead of him during those 24 games

James Holzhauer 1 wrong in his first 24 games

Amy Schneider 4 wrong out of her first 24 wins

Matt Amodio: 7 wrong out of his first 24 wins

Ken Jennings: 8 wrong out of his first 24 wins.

The big difference with Matt and Ken is that most of their incorrect Final Jeopardy were in the first 15 games or 20 games and then they started to get much better in their runs going forward when it came to Final Jeopardy. Jamie by contrast started incredibly strong and is now starting to falter in that regard..  

This might also be tied to the fact that over the course of their runs other super-champions reach a point where they begin to inevitably get tired and their performance across the board begins to flag in ways that become clear in hindsight. I'm actually going to write on this in a later article when Jamie's streak comes to an end, though at this point I can no longer state with certainty when that will happen.

I have long since given up trying to predict how long Jamie Ding's run will last. I have already erroneously predicted he would not much outlast this season's previous super-champion Harrison Whitaker in terms of wins and he caught and passed him two weeks. At this point all I can say with certainty is that now that's Jamie is in fifth place its only going to get harder to get further up on the leaderboard.

In fourth place in wins is Jeopardy James I, Holzhauer with 32 wins. Just in order to tie him Jamie will have to win another eight games. This is not an impossible number to surpass, as viewers know. In Season 38 Matt Amodio and Amy Schneider did it within four months of each other. But it's still eight games just to get that far.

Getting past Cris Panullo on the all time money list in theory should be easier: Cris has $748,286. In theory Jamie could get that far in three or four victories. But again that would involve three or four victories and as Jeopardy watcher can tell you that's three more chances for something to happen. Jamie will be defeated, it's a given, the only question is when.

The next marker is if Jamie can catch and pass Cris Panullo who with his combined earnings is in 10^th place all time. That is the next marker he has to catch. He might get there; he might not. At this point we can only wait and enjoy the ride.

  

(Mildly) Criticizing Criticism: Quite a Few TV Critics Are Having Second Thoughts About Euphoria. Here’s Why Some May Have Made Mistakes The First Time

 

Any show that involves teenagers in my lifetime always starts to falter when the characters leave high school. It's a universal truth going back to Beverly Hills 90210 and goes through every show that was on the WB or the CW going forwards with only a few exceptions.

There's a reason for that. It makes sense to follow the same group of kids when they're in high school but once they graduate there is no realistic one for them to keep hanging out. They are all going to go to different colleges and start to grow apart. The old romances you had as a youth die out and you have to focus on your future, which isn't as fun as watching New Directions belt out sounds at McKinley.

TV shows have been struggling to escape this trap even in the era of Peak TV and they still have trouble with it. So basically they've decided to have fewer seasons or move on to college based shows. It helps that in the last two decades TV has more or less been centering on teenagers in relationships to their parents', which is more interesting even if it can become repetitive. It may become tiresome to keep seeing teenage daughters as symbols for White Male Antiheroes (I was fine with them on The Americans & Mad Men; less so with Ray Donovan) but at least we don't have to keep dealing with the drama of your boyfriend cheating on you with your best friend.

Most TV critics in my lifetime have had an odd relationship with teen dramas. The ones that are more traditional or sensationalized, from the ones I've listed above all the way to Pretty Little Liars and almost everything Disney has done over the past two decades, they've essentially dismissed as 'fluff' or 'eye candy'. They're not entirely wrong on that, but much of it has to do with the problems adults have trying to understand what appeals to teens which is a gap that has always been present and certainly has only expanded in the 21^st century. The ones that have significant crossover appeal – My So-Called Life, Freaks & Geeks, Joan Of Arcadia  -  are almost invariably cancelled so that they remain forever young – and never get a chance to fail. The few that are both usually don't have the normal teenage travails front and center (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) or have a significant adult presence that is just as powerful as the teenage actors (Friday Night Lights).

 This brings me, as you'd expect, to the recent season of Euphoria.

This is a series that everyone knows I hate with a passion and I was curious to see what critics would think once it return for its third and (God willing) final season. The early reviews are in and they are decidedly mixed, particularly for a series that was so deified in its first and second season.

The reviews for the sophomore season were more diminished then the first but there was still a fair amount of (unjustified) praise. Now the third season has debuted five full years after the second and the critics are not overjoyed its back. In fact with the sole exception of positive reviews for Zendaya as Rue, they are mediocre at best. It's currently hit a record low for the series with 56 percent approval from Critics on Rotten Tomatoes. What strikes me as  somewhat amusing is why so many are appalled.

Because of the more than four years between seasons largely because the entire cast, particularly Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi have becomes fixtures in film during this period, by necessity there was a  time jump. Now every character is 22 and out of college. This was a necessity and they all knew it was coming.

But the thing is now that every character is out of high school and officially Gen Z almost every single critic now sees them as a bunch of whiners engaging petty things around each other. Rue is now just another drug addict, Sweeney just another twenty-something who posts her nudes on social media, Elordi just another nepo baby following in his father's footsteps, Maude Apatow another young writer realizing her artistic dreams have little to do with reality, Hunter Schafer's character a model whose flailing. They are no different in personality then they were in Seasons 1 and 2 but now they're just twenty-somethings trying to adjust to adulthood. And that's boring.

Much of this makes me wonder why critics like this show in the first place if that's their reaction. To be clear, you were fine with all of this immature, driveling behavior with no real substance and utter nihilism when all of these kids were in the same high school. Now they're in their twenties and they haven't changed one bit – and now you find it dull and uninteresting?

If that doesn't tell you that the praise for Euphoria was all about the critics' view of the world  and nothing to do with what was actually happening, I don't know what is. You're fine loving all of the hedonistic, nihilistic, social media, unrealistic behavior when high school children (or to be accurate, young adults playing high school children) were doing it. They become 22 and they haven't changed, been there, done that. We're fine seeing Sydney Sweeney posing naked on social media when she was in high school, now she's aged out of it.

What confirms this in my opinion is that Sam Levenson has apparently become more experimental in the final season, shooting much of the show on 35 MM and 65 MM lenses, giving its most cinematic look to date. This is the kind of thing that most critics will celebrate in any other tendency. The reviewers who loved Levenson for similar tricks two years ago now either think its showing off or a waste. Which again makes me thing the only reason they liked 'the cinematic tendencies' was because it showed so many young people in states of undress so much of the time.

To be fair there have been some critics who never thought that much of Euphoria from the start. A recent opinion piece by Nina Starner actually says the show jumped the shark in its second episode because of Nate's actions with Maddy and a random guy and how its never followed up on. It acknowledges just how many absurd twists were throughout the second season that undercut whatever fascinating and grounded stuff there was in it. They actually use the phrase: 'Season 2 of Euphoria actually rachets up the insanity considerably" and argues the major disbelief of the school play having a budget of, I'm guessing  one million dollars "and you've got so much disbelief to suspend that it becomes borderline impossible to do so." I can do that if the series is insane from the start but Euphoria makes it clear that it wants to take all of this insanity seriously.

Indeed in regard to Season 3 Starner basically restores my faith in criticism:

When we, as a TV watching society, look back on Euphoria, we're not going to see it as grounded or realistic. We also probably won't look back on it as particularly good. Part of the problem is creator Sam Levinson, who reportedly doesn't use a writer's room and makes life on set wildly difficult.

This doesn't shock me as a recent New York Times article basically points out Levinson being some of an enfant terrible, someone who can say that he is very much proud of The Idol which is one of the worst shows in HBO's history, and who a female director who was fired from that series has made it very clear what a contemptible person he is without saying it directly.

Starner continues:

As someone who's watched Euphoria from the beginning I feel uniquely qualified to say that I think Levinson is a man who imagination for interesting or surprising storylines is so limited that he leans really hard on shock value, which is how we got here.

As someone who reviewed Levinson's body of work in a previous article and has argued that he's basically pulling storylines from his even more bizarre film Assassination Nation for Euphoria, I'd say that's a solid guess. I'm willing to bet Starner is like the rest of the world and never saw that film and if she had seen it before she'd seen Euphoria she'd have recognized Levenson for the hack he clearly is.

I am impressed, I should be clear, with Starner's candor in admitting that she clearly misjudged Euphoria overall.  Most critics, like many of us, don't want to admit we've made a mistake with something and stay pot-committed to it even when it gets worse overtime. This is as close as any critic has ever said to this point that there really was no there 'there' in Euphoria.

I'm willing to concede that there are serious ideas at the center of Euphoria: addiction to drugs, the oversexualizing of today's world particularly on social media and the nihilism facing so many of this generation. And they deserve to be discussed maturely and seriously. But as I've written and Starner seems to concur Levenson doesn't seem to have any real insight or knowledge into this and only wants to shock the audience more than discuss it. And if that's the case, there's an argument he should have tried to do so at all.

As a forty plus man I was always uncomfortable with the graphic nudity on Euphoria and I'd gotten used to a lot from HBO alone. And frankly the cynical and brutal dialogue that Levenson gave his characters and all of the behavior was at its core, not really much different from any previous HBO drama – or for that matter what I'd seen on Shameless for the past decade. The difference was that these were wealthy (mostly) white kids as opposed to working class minorities in HBO dramas or lower class white people on Shameless. (The Gallaghers also dealt with addiction and mental health issues and engaged in self-destructive behavior but its easier to feel sympathy when you consider that each sibling has to work multiple jobs in order to keep the lights on.) The teenagers in Euphoria may not have lived in the world that the Roys did but that sense of entitlement was just as present in Rue and so many other characters.

A large part of me has always believed that so much of the critical approval. for Euphoria was because it was an HBO production. Even now HBO is still the gold standard for great television and it's mostly deserved. But that doesn't mean it isn't capable of producing flops or mediocrities, particularly in the era between The Wire ending and the arrival of Game of Thrones.  They had some clunkers, whether it was John From Cincinnati or Tell Me That You Love Me and that made some mistakes: Luck was canceled after one season: the really weird comedy Hung lasted three.

And the same was just as true in the last years of the 2010s: I remember watching quite a few disasters even from former steady hands. Whether it was Alan Ball's misfire Here & Now or Jenni Conner's morbidly unfunny Camping HBO has made it share of mediocrities if not flat out disasters. (Remember Time Traveler's Wife? Exactly.)

The main reason there was so much initial interest in Euphoria was because this was the first time in its more than quarter of a century, it was taking a swing at the teen drama format. But it was always going to be a bad fit for teen dramas because all of its shows are designed primarily for an audience that shouldn't see them.  There are issues of merit in every single great drama at the start of the Golden Age but as someone who was in his late teens when he first saw shows like Oz and The Sopranos I was not prepared to deal with them. HBO never flinched from dealing with societal issues in mature ways; that's what makes such great TV. But if I were a parent I would not want my fourteen or fifteen year old to watch a show such as Deadwood or Big Love even if I was watching with them. And I'd be uncomfortable if I knew my teenage child was watching shows like Game of Thrones and is watching House of the Dragon now.  (I know many of them did but that doesn't make them the intended audience and there's a difference.) I think there was a lot of critical latitude given to Euphoria because it was an HBO series. Had it debuted on a streaming service or even one of HBO's rivals on pay cable such as Starz or Showtime the critics would have ignored it the way they have ignored so many of the frequently higher caliber shows on both these networks over the years.  Branding is a big deal in Peak TV even now.

And the idea that Euphoria had to be taken seriously because it was a cultural phenomenon that resonated with so many of today's teenagers…well, so did Dylan McKay and the Walsh twins. So did the gang at Dawson's Creek. So did the students in Glee. So did the ones in Gossip Girl. Teenagers relating to a show only makes it popular; it doesn't per se mean it’s a classic. All of these shows had young, attractive adult actors playing teenagers at a high school and teenage audiences found something in common with them. That's not revolutionary; it's how cultural phenomena take place and it alone is not enough to make it a great show.

The fact that it launched so many of these actors to cinematic superstardom isn't enough of a reason to call it a great series either. I have no doubt their exposure on Euphoria helped get them started but that's true of basically every major cable show I've watched over the years.  HBO started quite a few brilliant young actors on the road to superstardom who were not in programs that were geared towards young adults. Michael B. Jordan was brilliant in the first season of The Wire as Wallace. Amanda Seyfried absolutely dominated some of the best actors in television on Big Love and in fact became so prominent that she left the show before it ended. And no one will say that Game of Thrones was aimed for teens but quite a few brilliant young talents started there to.

If you are given great material you can break as quickly as if you're on a smash hit. That was just as true for Claire Danes and Seth Rogen as it is for Zendaya and Jacob Elordi. Hell,  Timothee Chalamet's first big break came in a one season role on Homeland. When Damien Lewis joked at the SAG Awards "We made you, Chalamet!" he wasn't entirely wrong.

So I think its fair to say Starner's final assessment of Euphoria is the correct one. Its' not very grounded, realistic or even very good and it didn't have interesting or surprising storylines and it relied heavily on shock value. Because shock value is part and parcel with so much of HBO's programming and because it did make such a cultural impact the critics made the assumption that it was a brilliant show rather than just another snapshot of its era, no more different then how 90210 did so for the 1990s or so much of the WB and CW's programs did for the 2000s. And like so many of those teen dramas before it, when the main characters got out of high school everything the critics and fans loved about had disappeared.

I should be upfront that my initial article was a much harsher and judgmental reception of these particular critics and indeed some of that may well be present here. But I've taken out some of my earlier, harsher judgments in part because I've repeated them before and also because Starner's insight into Euphoria is enough to make me believe that there were other factors involved then some of the ones I suggested in the first draft.

I think Euphoria's legacy will be that of so many teen dramas before: it was a snapshot of young people in an era, of decent but unremarkable quality, that launched many prominent young actors to superstardom in film and television. And it is just as likely that when it is gone (almost everyone save Levenson seems sure this will be the last season) it won't have the same impact as so much of the other great television of its era. Some shows just don't age well, and that can be just as true for any show that's set in a high school.

 

 

Coalition of the Sane: Why I Want 'Readers' And Not Followers

 

 

This particular article requires I share some of my personal history with the reader.

Those of you who are members of this coalition might be aware that I'm 'on the spectrum'. I wasn't officially diagnosed with what was then referred to as Asperger's until the mid-1990s. By that point I had been seeing multiple therapists for much of my childhood and was well into my teens. It was clear that one major problem I have was depression.

How much of this was feeding on being on the spectrum I don't think I'll ever know for sure. What I do know is that for my formative years and well into my twenties it was an ordeal, particularly as the vast array of antidepressants that are now available today were still being tested and figured out during this period. I've lost track of how many different medications I was on as my therapists and psychiatrist kept trying to find a combination that would work.

The absolute nadir of this period has to have been when I was in college.  I suffered from every variation of symptoms imaginable: lack of sleep, oversleeping, lashing out in anger at those closest to me, being paralyzed at the idea of reaching out to people, being irrationally mad or depressed when things didn't go my way. In hindsight I'm astonished that I not only managed to graduate college but did so with honors given how much of that period I was in such a dark place. At one point – I forget exactly when – I was in such a bleak place that I finally agreed to engage in a series of ECT treatments, something I'd been resisted for years. I had somewhere between half a dozen and ten sessions before it was agreed to end them because it was clear to everyone it wasn't helping my mood.

Now this took place between 1998 and 2002 when teachers were far less equipped then they are today to pick up on the signs of mental instability in their students. I suspect the reason none of my teachers picked up on it was because for their purposes I was very good at masking it. I wasn't a problem student. Indeed I never missed a single assignment when I was in college, never had an outburst in class that caused me to be called to the attention of a teacher, always participated in discussion and despite the fact that I was commuting rather than living on campus had a superb attendance record.

This was, in fact, no doubt part of how being on the spectrum may have helped masked my emotional problems even to those few people (and outside my parents, there really weren't that many people) who were close to me growing up. Like the majority of people on the spectrum I was a slave to the routine and school absolutely provided me with one. It helps matters that I've always loved learning and education and my curriculum had subjects that I was interested in. I knew I was lonely but I'm not sure at the time even I knew just how unhappy I was.

I didn't start to climb out of it until my mid-twenties and even then depression is one of those things where the cliches are true: you have good days and bad days. The reason I have more good days then bad days is because of a combination of finally getting the right kind of medication, finding the right therapist and psychopharmacologist and most of all, time. It took years, maybe even decades, to get to a point where I'm happy most of the time – even given how horrible the world is.

I think if there is a secret to mental health it's that tried but true standard known as the serenity prayer and I'll quote that's most relevant:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

This advice is given to those who suffer from addiction but it's just as viable to those who have mental illnesses. And even though it sounds simple in theory, in practice it's incredibly difficult and it is something that I forget far more often then I remember it. But that's true of everything.

Now as we all know one of the major issues that so many people, particularly those who are young think is pressing, is mental health. As someone who spent his entire life struggling with it, I concur. And its worth remembering that much of my worst struggles came in a pre- 9/11 world as well as one where the internet was barely part of our daily lives much less social media.

And I've made no secret in previous articles about how the election of 2016 threw me off kilter emotionally. I spent November of 2016 until Biden's inauguration with this sense of vertigo that was omnipresent. It didn't have to do with what was on the news or the internet; just the fact of Trump as President did much to give these constant feeling in my stomach that the world as I knew it didn't make sense anymore.

I will get in a future article – perhaps not one related to this series – how I managed to adjust my life so that by the time of the 2024 election I was in a much better place emotionally and am functioning far better then I did during the first Trump Presidency. For the purposes of this article I will only say around this time I started writing for medium, exclusively in regard to television and not even in those reviews of shows that were on point to current events being incredibly vague about referring to it.

That didn't mean I wasn't aware of the majority of the political writers on this site at the time and who very likely still are writing for it. Because I was, like so many people, in a bleak spot I was drawn to their writing out of sympathy for their feelings if not always their views. I got it. But I assumed that once Biden had been elected, and in my somewhat naïve opinion at the time, order had been restored to the world I knew they would begin to modify their tone or they would change the subject. As I've written they never did.

Which brings to the reason why I prefer the term 'readers' to 'followers'. I've joked more than once that the latter term makes me feel like I'm the head of a cult. But there's a more serious underpinning and it has to do with what the majority of the political writers on this center-left site write: a term that many of them actually refer to as 'doomporn'.

I've noticed that it is the most prolific and darkest writers in that site that by far had the biggest following and many still do: I've seen some of the most depressing writers on any subject have anywhere from 50 to 100 thousand followers. And historically when the word 'doom' is used in conjunction with the word 'followers' it rarely has a happy ending for anybody, not the leader, not the followers, not society.

I'm being facetious again. I've also been facetious when I read so many articles and near worshipping comments in these same articles. I don't necessarily see the same writers over and over in each (I'm not the kind of person who keeps track) but it does seem like that. On more than one occasion I've referred to the echo chamber around so many of them as 'the largest, most depressing and ineffective group therapy session I've ever attended.' I was actually being more serious than my tone reflects.

I understand and sympathize with how so many people are upset with how the world is today, how it seems to have always been that way and how we seem to be heading to an inevitable apocalypse. Where I draw the line – and have a visceral contempt for those who work in this field – is the way so many of these writers seemed determined to write this exact same article which offers no hope for any of its readers and then basically asks you to either give a tip or agree to follow their work.

Many of the people who I've expressed hostility towards about this subject have said I've been too sensitive. In truth much of the time I've been keeping the gloves on. Because as someone who struggles with mental health on a regular basis I think there should be a special place in Hell for those who are actively contributed to making that of those around you on a daily basis. And I say that for anyone who does this regardless of what side of the political aisle they're a part of.

I need to be clear I'm more than aware about how much the right is contributing and how much work they've done to make a profit from it and trust me; they are on my shit list just as much. But the thing is, well before 2016, I expected this kind of horrible behavior from them as a matter of course. Well before the so-called 'manosphere' came along I knew just how good the right was at preying on those who were struggling and luring them in and exploiting them for financial and political gain. It's disgusting and its horrible.

I'm also aware that, by comparison, the left's efforts to do so are much smaller. But I'm also aware that there's a difference between 'fewer' and 'none'.  The people on this site or other social media sites are not I will concede as big a problem as those in the world of podcasters or cable news or other websites: I've seen firsthand how horrendous they are online. You'll get no dispute from me that they are by far the biggest problem.

I would argue that it is therefore imperative for all those who consider themselves on the side of the angels – and the left will be the first to tell you they are even if you don't ask – to do everything in their power not to contribute to this cesspool of despair that has seized so many people, particularly the young and those lost by society. I realize that this is difficult given the way the world is and how the right is, I agree, actively making things worse. And  I do understand why so many of those people feel the need for some kind of way to express their feelings on the subject. None of these in themselves are bad things or if they are done, necessarily, being done for the wrong reason.

But the difference between the right's echo chamber of despair and the left's is that the right's gives its followers something they can do to be proactive. You'll get no argument from me its horrible, bigoted and represents the worst aspect of our society but its far more than anyone I've ever seen who writes articles of the same tone ever suggest.

If the right's approach is to sell snake oil, the left won't even bother to do that. They have the same appearance of community but they offer nothing else. They'll tell you the right is selling a fake cure and then not bother to do the next step and offer a fake cure of their own.  It's the same sense of despair and hopelessness but you have nowhere to go with it. The right sells a lie disguised as a truth, the left tells you that they are selling you a lie – and that lie is that no one or nobody can solve the problems.

This understandably has never been a big seller in our society and I suspect its one of the reasons the far left has never been able to manage to take much of a hold in the political eco-system the same way the far right has.  The right, for all its very real lies and contempt, will tell its listeners who the enemy is and what they can do to stop it. The left, by contrast, argues the entire system itself is the enemy and it is so under the control of powerful people the individual or even the collective is hopeless against it. It doesn't matter whether the writer is African-American, LatinX, female or part of the LGBTQ+ community: the tone of futile despair penetrates all of them and rejects any effort to even try to change the system as a waste of time. And by the way read my next article when I tell you the same thing in different words.

Now if one takes all of this to its natural progression, the only thing you can take away from this is that there's nothing anybody can do to help us and we're all doomed. Essentially all these articles are a suicide note for mankind. But very few people on this blog or anywhere will take it to its natural progression. I don't think its because they care about the emotional well-being of others; I think they see their values entirely in their social media presence and the idea of losing even a single follower or being banned from a site because they stop dancing around what they've been implying is too much for them to bear. Oh and I suspect they're making enough money off them to not want to lose any of these readers. And as someone who struggles with his own personal issues with depression and darkness, I can't help but take what these people are saying and implying very personally.

I agree the world has problems. Big ones. But I'm pretty sure the people who write so many of these columns have no more interesting in solving them then the counterparts on the right who've done so much to cause them. Aaron Sorkin in a fictional piece basically said those on the right are interesting in two things: "Making you afraid of it. And telling you who's to blame for it. That is how you win elections."

Well the left is only interested in the second part of that statement. And according to they're writing everyone who isn't them or their readers is to blame for it. That may build a sense of social community but in a way that will solve the problems of today it's completely ineffective.

That is another reason why I eventually had to stop reading so many of the articles, posts and other comments by the left. Because at the end of the day, it's no more good for my mental health then if I were to watch Fox News or listen to Alex Jones. I have the same problems with the world that the left will point out and I have sympathy for those who feel that they are lost in it. But as someone who wants to actually solve the problems in these articles I can assure you that the 5000^th article on how capitalism is evil or how Newt Gingrich destroyed Congress or anything Trump breathed about will not do anything to make it better, nor will expressing comments saying how smart and wise the writer is for pointing out something they no doubt saw on TikTok or YouTube five minutes ago and that the rest of the world knew years ago. Yes the right is putting so much noise into the world it is hard to talk to each other. But your articles are just a different kind of noise to a different set of listeners. Noise is noise, no matter which person is shouting it. I'm not going to drink your Kool-Aid any more then theirs and its not just because I never liked Kool-Aid at all.

 

 

 

X-Files 30th Anniversary Celebration Landmark Episodes: Jose Chung's From Outer Space

 

Truth is as subjective as reality.

 

This line is uttered by the title character (Charles Nelson Reilly) before this episode truly begins. Scully then says Chung wants to hear her version of reality.

So before we begin discussion  of the episode itself, I think it's worth bringing up my guiding stars when it comes to the critical perception of The X-Files Robert Sherman and Monster of the Week's Emily St. James' (who reviewed the episode) because, just like those in the episode itself, they absolutely do not align. And to confuse you further (as is the case with this episode) I'll tell you my perception of their perceptions.

First as I mentioned in my essay on Clyde Bruckman Shearman may be the only person, not just among X-Files fans but in the known universe, who doesn't think Darin Morgan is one of the greatest writers of all time. It's not his biggest flaw in Wanting to Believe but it is his oddest and that's particularly true with Jose Chung. This is what he says in the second paragraph:

It is, as I say, very clever. It's also pretentious, overwritten, and desperately self-indulgent. Jose Chung is the kind of thing you get when you find an incredibly talented writer and tell him that he's a genius once too often.

His biggest problem seems to be that he finds this episode heartless. He says that he finds Charles Nelson Reilly 'not as good as Peter Boyle' in Clyde Bruckman. (I should now tell you he loves Reilly when he plays this same character again in Millennium even though there's really no difference between the portrayals in each version.) And the thing is even at the end of the day; he can't really tell you why he doesn't like it:

This manifestly isn't  a case of the Emperor's New Clothes; the fanbase is right – this is dazzling and brilliant; the episode is as clever as everyone thinks it is. I just don't care very much.

Now lest fans of The X-Files read this and argue that Shearman is 'a ticking time-bomb of insanity (where) events have so warped his psyche one shudders to think how he gets any enjoyment out of life", Shearman is basically spot on with every other writer, especially Vince Gilligan. Is it bizarre that he things 'Hell Money' long considered not only one of the worst but also among the  most racially tone deaf episodes in the entire history of the series is twice as good as Jose Chung? (That's his own ranking: Jose Chung gets two stars; Hell Money, four.) Yes but it's not a dealbreaker for me to dismiss the entire body of work.  It is the only review in 277 pages I can't even glance without wincing at so I don't read it. It's not enough for me to dismiss the other 275 pages. Why Shearman gets basically so much right and gets Morgan wrong is nearly as inexplicable to me as the mytharc but since Shearman and I agree it doesn't really make sense, I'm inclined to let that go.

St. James feels the other way and her review gets to the heart of why it is a masterpiece. That said, I do disagree with her about one of her final judgments – and might also explain why Shearman has a problem with it:

And although its probably one of the very finest episodes of television I've ever seen, I'm not sure it’s a terrific episode of The X-Files. If The X-Files were a Lord of the Rings-length novel, then 'Jose Chung' would be its first appendix, a source that is both in love with the main text and critical of it, a place where real human concerns creep around the edges of the show's chilly implausibility's."

That may explain why Shearman has such a problem with this episode: he's reviewing it as an episode of The X-Files and by that standard it's lacking. However my perception is the inverse of St. James: I think it’s a brilliant episode of The X-Files but I'm less convinced its one of the greatest episodes of all time, the same way I'd argue for Clyde Bruckman or, in a different context, Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster. (I once put that episode on a list of the 50 greatest TV episodes of the 21^st century in 2019.)

The reason that Jose Chung works so spectacularly for me is for the reasons I've argued as to why Morgan is a genius. During his tenure with Ten-Thirteen he essentially invented the term 'meta' when it came to television.  Jose Chung is in that sense the clearest example of meta in his first tenure with Ten-Thirteen, something he'd revisit again in his second tenure and demonstrated he still could do it better than so many shows had done in the interim.  The major flaw with 'meta' I've come to realize is when it tips over into fan service and when it does that, you really do risk the show becoming what Shearman things Jose Chung is.

 I feel this very strongly about episodes like Lost's Expose or when comedies like South Park and Community basically trend in that direction as they increasingly did. It's also why I love episodes that do it well like Homicide's The Documentary and Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Superstar which are among the earliest examples of the genre and still the best. And it's why Jose Chung works as well as it does: it takes what we the viewer have come to observe over three seasons and basically twists it to its ultimate finish. This is particularly true with the line I quoted above: it basically is mocking the show's catchphrase: "The Truth is Out There".  The X-Files would hint in many of its serious episodes that maybe it wasn't a great idea to try and find the truth in the first place; Morgan's essentially saying that its impossible to ever find it – and with a comic subversion that makes you realize its probably the real reason Mulder doesn't agree to be interviewed in the first place.

You might wonder why I didn't give a spoiler warning. And that's the best part of this episode: I could tell you everything that happens in it but when you were asked what happened you say to your friends: "How the hell should I know?" St. James will argue that she has the basic story behind what happens in Klass County is very simple -  and I really want to agree with her- but after multiple rewatches since reading the book, I just still can't commit to it. So I'm going to give my answers to the two biggest questions that St. James poses.

The first is how much of the episode really happened and how much is fictional? I'm of the opinion that the only thing he can we truly trust is what we see in the teaser because it's the only thing that isn't subjected to reinterpretation later on. To review that extraordinary piece of work (for which super-director Rob Bowman rarely gets enough credit for when it comes to Jose Chung): Harold Lamb and Chrissy Giorgio are on their first date when their car is intercepted by two U.S. government officials disguised as aliens. While that was going on a second craft appeared and a third alien emerged. Whether that was a bounty hunter, a Russian spy plane or Lord Kimbote is irrelevant.  The government found out what happened and did what they did and covered it up, whether through hypnosis on the part of the teenagers or killing off the pilots and destroying the evidence.  That's what I think happened. It's only slightly in conflict with St. James version but that's kind of the point.

The second question is how much of the episode is meant as a slam against the X-Files fan base, mainly through such people as Roky and Blaine  both of whom clearly emphasize the fans who even by 1996 were so excessively obsessed with The X-Files  as well as well as the way it treats Mulder. I agree with St. James that this is just a case of Morgan poking the fan base gently in the ribs. However I'm  now convinced Morgan is slamming someone associated with The X-Files, and I'm inclined to think its Carter and the mytharc he's creating.

Here's some background. When Darin Morgan was asked to submit a writing sample to get his job with The X-Files he came up with the opening teaser for this episode. Apparently he then put it in a drawer, as all writers do at times, and set to work on Humbug.  During Season 3 he was more productive and created Clyde Bruckman and War of The Coprophages.

Two things happened by this point: Morgan was beginning to find the process of working for TV exhausting and the mytharc was starting to spiral. As Carter admitted he never had a bible for the series and he kept changing the mythology with each season. In the first half of Season 3 he'd essentially argued that alien abductions were a front for experiments on humans and by 731 he and Spotnitz had made that their conclusion. When they took up the mythology again in Piper Maru/Apocrypha, they seemed to have leaned on the side that aliens were de facto the cause of everything.

Morgan had hinted at how absurd the conspiracy was becoming in War of the Coprophages when he had one of his characters argue that killer bees were part of the alien invasion. By the time Morgan left the series Carter had essentially decided that this was a good idea and made it integral to the mythology basically for the next two and a half seasons by which point any idea that the mytharc was going to make sense was something not even the deluded Roky and Blaine would believe.

So in what he expected to be his farewell to The X-Files Morgan returned to what got him his job and made it very clear just how absurd he thought the mythology of the episode was by centering on an alien abduction and throwing in basically every part of the mythology that Carter had done, treating it with such brilliant jokes and humor that I'm relatively certain Carter had no idea he was being roasted. Or if he did, he clearly never took it personally: he kept trying to bring Morgan back to The X-Files to write scripts in Seasons 4 and 5, eventually convinced him to write two scripts for Millennium (when he was reunited with his brother Glen) and got him to write two equally brilliant scripts for the revival more than twenty years after they first met. (By that point Carter had embraced his own inner comic angels to new heights as we'll see going forward.)

The clearest demonstration of Morgan's satire towards the mythology is, as always, through Mulder. One of the great gifts of Morgan is just how much fun he pokes at Duchovny's work as Mulder, both through his ridiculous good looks and how he appears like a buffoon to every outside observer. But he's rarely made Mulder look more horrible then in Jose Chung. It's telling that no matter what version of events we get Mulder looks like an idiot.  Most of this is seen through Scully's retelling of this to Chung and we can tell she's doing everything in her power to make her partner (who has refused to be interviewed) not look like the raving lunatic he appears to be, well, basically in every episode of The X-Files.  If she's censoring any part of her version its how she must have reacted with increasing incongruity with everything Mulder did during this episode.  The only time we see it look through is after Chung tells her about Roky's manuscript and asks how could he have believed this.

Scully: "Well, Mulder's had his share of peculiar notions."

(Flashback)

"Mulder, you're nuts!"

Scully is clearly doing everything in her power to filter out all the disputes they must have had in Klass County to make Mulder sound rational. Everyone else, whether its Detective 'Bleeping' Manners' to Blaine Faulkner to the cook at the diner clearly thinks Mulder's out of his gourd. I'm honestly amazed Chung is as polite as he is when Mulder confronts him in his office: this is clearly 'reality' and Mulder sounds even more delusional then in any of the versions we've seen.

The episode also does everything to make clear that when Mulder investigates cases that even satirical, he can be incredibly cruel.  He has no more use for Chrissy and Harold then the government or the aliens do. To him, they are just a means to an end: a way to discover the evils that either aliens or the government is doing. The show makes this clear in a subtle fashion  by basically dismissing both of them completely by the end of the second act and only coming to back to them by the time Chung deals with them. (More on that later.) When Chung asks Mulder the same question he asked everybody and Mulder replies: "How the hell should I know?" it cuts to the core of Mulder and the show completely.  

The fact that Mulder only comes to see Chung to tell him not to write this book makes it clear the only thing he cares about is how the world sees him even if Chung changes his name. He may claim not to care how the FBI sees him as 'foolish, if not downright psychotic' but you'd think the chance to show his theories to the world would overcome that. (We'll actually see that play out in X-Cops in four years' time.) But I suspect this is Morgan showing just how little Mulder cares for the collateral damage he causes in the gentlest way possible. At this point in The X-Files with the exception of his family and Scully and those closest to her, Mulder has cared very little for the collateral damage he causes in his quest for the truth. (This will no longer be true by the time Morgan leaves the series.) In fact Chung's description of 'Reynard Muldrake' in the final monologue is far closer to accurate then Mulder – and perhaps the viewer – wants to admit.

To be clear I also agree with St. James in her footnote "this episode is for sure a big ol' love letter to Scully." Oh is it ever. In every scene she's in you can tell that Gillian Anderson is absolutely having the time of her life. To be fair this has to be true of every single member of the cast and crew when they were filming this episode. But you can tell Anderson said: "Finally!" when she got this one.

Morgan has always treated Scully with far more respect in his episodes then he does Mulder. It's not that she doesn't make a fool out of herself more than once ("Her name is Bambi?!," anyone?) but Scully is far more often the heroine of these scripts then she has been to this point in any individual writer has treated her even though by this point everyone thinks Anderson is the real start of this show. But all of the episodes Mulder is the driving force and Scully is usually there to explain his actions which get him into trouble. Now Scully gets to tell her story (to her literary idol, no less!) certain that Mulder's version of events will never see the light of day.

So much of Anderson's comedy is based in just how embarrassed she clearly his by her partner and what's she being forced to endure but never expresses it. So for once she gets to remain stone-faced during the flashbacks and explain – in the most straight-faced way possible – how insane she finds her partners theories and behavior. Because this is a Morgan script she also gets to show her emotions more than Mulder does: she practically holds her head in her hands during the 'alien autopsy' and she's practically blushing when Jose Chung calls her a 'brainy beauty who also had good taste." (The outtakes for this episode must be hysterically: both Anderson and Reilly admit she kept cracking up while it was being shot.) And it must have been so much fun for her to be seen as 'a man in black', getting to deliver the lines with the same vehement authority to Blaine in his version and then cutting to "He said I said what?" in the present.

Reilly's work is indeed one of the best guest performances in the show's entire history. For those of us who remember Reilly from his days as a game show consultant it might be shocked to know that in this performance (and again on Millennium) he actually turns his trademark zaniness down to maybe five or six. There are occasions the antic side of Reilly shows up (when he describes the difference between 'experience' and abduction to Scully)  but he was clearly intelligent enough to know that this in this episode he's more or less the straight man and the humor comes from the fact he can't believe what he's hearing is being considered serious by so many people (cough, Mulder).  Chung is clearly modeled on Truman Capote, both in attire and why he's writing 'From Outer Space'. (In Cold Blood was described by Capote as a 'non-fiction novel and this is a 'non-fiction science fiction'.) Reilly was a contemporary of Capote and could have put his trademark mannerisms as interpreted by him. Instead he plays him as any other writer so when he has to deliver arguably one of the best monologues any writer (for The X-Files or otherwise) ever wrote for television, it has tremendous power and gives this episode a genuine soul at the core of all the comedy.

I know that I've described this episode in a way that makes it sound bleak and I won't deny there are certain dark underpinnings. There's the fact that this is the first in a line of brilliant comic episodes in which the possibility of rape is essentially played for comic effect more than the problematic implications. (To be clear the show does deal with it in a serious fashion and you really wonder if Manners is more upset at Mulder and Scully the comic side of his 'colorful phraseology' would let on given his interrogation of Harold and his initial reaction before the 'bleeping' aliens show up.) And even if you can overlook there is a deeper implication of the episode and what it means to have your memories taken from you. Morgan himself acknowledges that concept in interviews.

But despite that the only memories I've ever had of Jose Chung are those of fondness mixed with great humor. I can't explain why exactly. Maybe it's because every time I watch it, I keep discovering details I've missed that add to the overall humor of the story. Maybe it's because the non sequiturs and jokes are among the best that Morgan's ever written even by his impressively high standards. Maybe its because one of the Men in Black is Alex Trebek and the reader knows my obsession with Jeopardy. How the hell should I know?

To be sure it has a lot to say about the human condition more than so many other episodes of The X-Files and television. But I think I love Jose Chung never forgets that it is a TV episode first and foremost, there to entertain and to make us laugh, cry and think at the same time.  The episode begins with a shot that makes us think we're looking at something from Star Wars and turns out to be an undercarriage of a crane and ends with a thoughtful monologue on the darkest parts of our soul and then punctures it with the theme music of The X-Files for the first (and except for the original series finale, the only) time in the series.  Unless you're Robert Shearman, how can you not love that?