1400TH Post: X-Files Retrospective, Part 2: Darin Morgan The Greatest TV Writer of All Time (Who Never Created A Series of His Own)

 

If you were ask a hundred X-Files fans why they loved the series, you wouldn’t get a hundred different reasons, but it would be close. Many would say its because they loved all things Mulder and Scully, whether or not they were shippers. (Though all of them would agree that the way the writers handled the relationship was horrible, even when it finally turned romantic.) Some would say that they loved David Duchovny, some would say it was because of Gillian Anderson.  Some would say it was because they created their own genre, the monster of the week. Some might say it was because it was the first show to try a mythology. (If those people tried to convince you: ‘It really did make sense!’, walk away from them as fast as you can.) Some will say it was because of our introduction to many iconic characters – Skinner, Krycek and yes, the most famous chain smoker in history. Trying to get X-Files fans to give a unified reason as to why they loved the show is like asking them when the mythology stopped making sense. (And like I said, some deluded ones will try to persuade it you it did in the end.)

But if you were ask those same a hundred fans who their favorite writer for their show is, I’m pretty sure ninety percent of them would say the same person. And even the ten percent who didn’t, would still acknowledge that there was something really special about him.

That writer is Darin Morgan. He’s who I was referring to as the greatest writer for television you’ve never heard of. There’s a good reason for that. Unlike Chris Carter, Howard Gordon, Frank Spotnitz and almost every one else who had a significant role on the X-Files, Darin Morgan never became a showrunner. His stint with the X-Files was little more than a season and a half in which he only wrote four episodes, had a story credit on a fifth and possibly ghost wrote a sixth. His entire output for television is entirely limited to working for Ten-Thirteen (Chris Carter’s production company) and it barely covers much more ground. He wrote two episodes for Carter’s follow-up series Millennium during its second season, both of which he directed. When the X-Files was revived in 2016 and again in 2018, he wrote and directed one episode for each new season. That’s his entire body of work.

But it says a lot about how deeply an X-phile feels about Darin Morgan’s ability that no matter how much we might have loathed the revival of the series, no one will ever fully dismiss it because we got those two new episodes. Because no matter what superlatives you try to use to describe the writing of Morgan – genius, masterpiece, extraordinary – it doesn’t seem to do it justice.

 There are no doubt people who are convinced that J.D. Salinger was a better novelist than Hemingway or Faulkner even though the latter two have a larger body of work. I have a feeling there’s a similar reasoning for those who consider Darin Morgan a better writer than, say, David Milch or Matthew Weiner, even though they wrote far more for even more iconic series. Because Morgan, in just four scripts for The X-Files, seemed to do things more revolutionary than even the writers who worked for the show.

Howard Gordon, who as I mentioned in the first article in this series, is one of the great writers in television history and wrote several fine scripts for the X-Files. He worked for the series on the first four seasons with Morgan and Vince Gilligan (who trust me, we’ll get to his work on this series in due time). Interviewed by Alan Sepinwall, he said there was a clear demarcation between the work of writers like himself and Gilligan and Morgan, who he referred to as ‘resident geniuses.” He said that there were other writers on the staff who he admired and that he thought that he could ‘reverse engineer and do a passable imitation.’ Vince and Darin had voices that ‘blew your mind’.  (Gordon was mainly being mentioned in regards to Gilligan, but as we shall see  there’s a very direct link between the two which X-Files fans regard just as fondly as anything Morgan himself wrote.) And if the man who was behind the creation of such iconic series as 24 and Homeland said that he couldn’t match the work of Morgan, that says a lot about the level he was writing at.

For the uninitiated who might think that I am speaking in hyperbole, the ranking of Morgan among the greatest writers is not a verdict held only by X-philes but by both contemporary critics and that of history.  His most famous work ‘Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose’ won him the Emmy for Best Teleplay in 1996; it made TV Guide’s list of the 100 Greatest Episodes of all time in 1997 and again in 2009. ‘Humbug’ , his debut episode earned him a nomination for an Edgar Award for Best Television episode. In 1996. ‘Jose Chung’s From Outer Space’, the last episode he is credited for writing The X-Files in its original run is regularly ranked as one of the greatest episodes not only of the entire series of the X-Files, but some would go far as to call it one of the greatest episodes in television history. As for his work for Millennium, a series that was well regarded but far more erratic, the two scripts he wrote for the series in its second season are regarded as among the highpoints of the series and received some of its greatest recognition. Charles Nelson Reilly, who created the role of Jose Chung for The X-Files, replayed him in the episode ‘Jose Chung’s Doomsday Defense’ and deservedly received a Best Guest Actor nomination from the Emmys in 1998. That same year ‘Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me’, earned him a nomination for Best Screenplay by the Bram Stoker Awards (the primary organization that gives award in horror). That’s an enormous amount of recognition from a lot of groups for a writer with that small an output; Morgan got more nominations and awards in a little more than three years than showrunners like David Simon and Tom Fontana have earned in their entire careers.

And all of this praise and prestige was given and I still have told you why Morgan was such a brilliant writer. It’s not because he was a master of science fiction or horror or mystery even though he’s been nominated for awards in all of these categories. No, Darin Morgan is regarded as one of the greatest geniuses in the history of television because he is one of the great comedic and satiric geniuses in the history of the medium…perhaps of all time.

The reasons fan love Darin Morgan is because before he came along the X-Files was a great show but it was a dark and dreary place. When Morgan showed up, the X-Files realized its potential because he realized that there was a possibility to take the milieu and dread of the series and turn it into hysterical comedy and parody. The term ‘meta’ did not exist in 1995 when Morgan wrote his first script, but its hard not to look at an episode like ‘Jose Chung’s From Outer Space’ without thinking of it.

But even that would be a misnomer. So many series of the 21^st century are satiric and self-aware of the genre therein but do not take it seriously – in many, you get the feeling the writers are insinuating the show’s beneath their time and the viewers. Morgan was a deconstructionist. He never felt the X-Files was beneath him. He just thought that so many of the elements of the series were ridiculous. This was particularly clear in how he viewed both Mulder and David Duchovny. In every episode he wrote, he poked fun of almost everything about both of them. When it came to Duchovny, he made a lot of fun about what a sex symbol he was: “Can you imagine spending your entire life looking like that?” a circus freak says, pointing to Mulder as he poses heroically. A nerd considers the possible that Mulder is a Man in Black because ‘his face is so blank and expressionless.’ When Clyde Bruckman asked to see Mulder and Scully’s idea badges, he looks at Fox Mulder’s and scoffs: ‘I’m supposed to believe that’s  a real name?” he says disdainfully. You don’t want to know what he thought of Mulder’s sexual fetishes, though I may end up telling you anyway. And he had even less use of how the series regarded its mythology. This was made clear in quite a few episodes, but rarely more humorously in War of the Coprophages. In this extraordinary episode, Mulder is pursue what appear to be cockroaches who seem to be attacking people…and might even be from outer space. In a conversation with a scientist who believes alien life is real, that scientist tells Mulder: “Anyone who believes that aliens will come will have big eyes and gray skin have been brainwashed by too much science fiction.” Mulder just nods patiently.

All of Darin Morgan’s episodes are hysterically funny and imminently quotable, the same way an Oscar Wilde play or a Billy Wilder film is. But as much time as we spend laughing at the dialogue within a Morgan episode, it’s hard not to notice on rewatch (and you rewatch Morgan’s episodes as many times as possible because it makes you laugh so much) the grim view he has of humanity in so many ways. There have been writers who argue, convincingly, that Morgan makes it very clear in so many of his episode that at the end of the day, we all die alone. There are others who argue just as much that Morgan’s scripts have a very dim view of humanity’s ability to reason when faced with the unknown or indeed to perceive what we see or here. (As one of the iconic characters he created, Jose Chung, famously says: “Truth is as subjective as reality.”)  And in what is considered by fans of the series as the show’s finest hour: “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose’, Morgan may actually consider that the fundamental question behind the series – the search for the truth – is in itself a bad joke. I’ve recapped in a few columns over the years the high-points of the episode, and there’s a decent chance that many of you who are reading this column already know it by heart. But because, like all fans of The X-Files and Morgan, we never get tired of talking about it, I’m going to do so again.

The show, at its core, is about two men who see the future and believe it is utterly unchangeable. One, who is simply referred to in the script as ‘Puppet’, believes that he has gotten a glimpse of his own future and as a result is killing fortune tellers and cutting out their eyeballs and entrails, all in the name of trying to find out why he is doing just that. The other is Bruckman, played by Peter Boyle in what I fundamentally consider the high point of his entire career in television. (It is the role for which he won his only Emmy, so don’t curse me Everybody Loves Raymond fans.) Bruckman spend the entire episode no doubt like he spent his entire life, engulfed in an aura of melancholy – for a very good reason. He’s psychic, but the only thing it tells him is how everybody he meets is going to die. When Mulder calls it a gift, Bruckman says: “the only problem it’s non-returnable.” And honestly, its hard to blame him. His gift never does him any good – it doesn’t help him at the lotto and it sure as hell doesn’t help him an insurance salesman. (When his sales pitch ends up telling a potential client exactly when and how he’ll die, the horrified man says: “Mister, you really have to work on your closing.”)

 Mulder essentially begs Bruckman to help them find the killer, mainly because Bruckman is utterly indifferent. Mulder tells him that four people are dead. Bruckman says he’ll kill more people whether I help you or not. And it is the next exchange that Bruckman’s point of view becomes very clear and its very bleak:

Mulder: “But if the future’s already written, why bother doing anything?”

Bruckman: “Now you’re catching on.”

This is one of the saddest statements said by anyone in the history of the series.  Morgan is putting forth a question the show will end up dealing with more than a few times over its run: determinism versus free will. In a sense, the show has two very different views on the subject – the ones that Bruckman and the killer have and the one that the show is taking. It is critical that Bruckman ends up never knowing about the latter.

In the final act of the episode Bruckman, who has been taken into protective custody by the FBI, has opened the hotel door, despite instructions from his bodyguard not too. The bellman walks in, leaves off his food, and Bruckman tips him. At that point, he looks up – and we recognize him as the killer. The killer knows who Bruckman is (he sent him a letter telling him as much and that he was going to kill him) and the who have a very amiable chat about how this happens. The killer than asks Bruckman the same question he’s been asking everybody. And Bruckman answers: “Don’t you get it? You do the things you do because you’re a homicidal maniac.” The relief on the bellman’s face is immeasurable. “That explains everything,” he says simply. So naturally he looks towards Bruckman menacingly. “You don’t kill me yet,” Bruckman tells him. “Why not?” “How the hell should I know?” Of course Bruckman does know why – the FBI agents exits the bathroom at that moment, and the killer goes after him immediately.

We don’t know it until later, but Bruckman leaves the hotel, returns to his apartment, and commits suicide. He leaves a note for Mulder and Scully, but no explanation. And he doesn’t have to because he’s told us this was going to happen. Earlier in the episode, he told Scully about ‘our end’ – that they would end up in bed together, that tears would be running down his cheeks, and she would be looking on him tenderly. Scully dismissed this as a joke, but that’s exactly what does happen – Bruckman just left out the fact that there would be a plastic bag over his head at the time. Bruckman killed himself for the same reason he told Mulder he would – the future was already written. What he died without knowing was the fact that in fact it could be changed.

Earlier in the episode, Bruckman foresaw the killer stalking Mulder through a hotel kitchen with a bloody knife, walking up on him and then cutting his throat. (Of course, because this is a Darin Morgan episode, Bruckman was far more fixated on the kind of pie that Mulder had stepped on when he walked into the kitchen.) After Mulder and Scully return to the hotel, this scene starts playing out, even after Mulder thinks he caught on when he steps on the pie. But just before the killer finishes, an elevator door opens and is Scully on it. She shoots the killer dead. The last words the killer has are those of amazement: “Hey, that’s not how it’s supposed to happen.” When Mulder asks him how she knew he was here, she tells him she didn’t – she got on the service elevator by mistake.

That is why, as depressing as the episode is in its melancholy and its ending, its hard not to walk away from feeling happy and with a sense of optimism. At the end of the day, free will triumphs over determinism and there’s always something happening that can change fate. The future is never written in stone, and I can’t help but think Bruckman might have found a reason to live if he’d just stayed in the hotel room.

Morgan may have a grim view of humanity and how the world really is. (Interestingly enough, when he wrote his two episodes for Millennium a series that was ultimately much grimmer than X-Files ever was, in both his episodes he spent as much time arguing about the portents of the future as well as the right to mock those same ideas.) But every time I watch one of his episodes, I get the feeling that part of this view is the reason that they are so funny. Of course, much of life may be a cruel joke, but it’s always funny to somebody. And I think that may be the most clear in what is one of the most iconic lines from ‘Clyde Bruckman’.

The last time Scully speaks to Clyde, she asks: “How do I die?” And Bruckman says simply. “You don’t.” For more than a quarter of a century fans have been trying to figure out WTF Morgan meant when Bruckman said that. Was it to tell her the cancer that was in her bloodstream (though not diagnosed until Season Four) wouldn’t kill her? Was it portending that when she would encounter the immortal Alfred Fellig in Season Six’s ‘Tithonus’ (a classic written by an author we’ll discuss later) he would take her death from her? Did it have to do with the alien experiments? I can’t tell you much speculative fanfiction (much of it Highlander based) I read on this over the years. I always thought Bruckman was kidding. I was both right and wrong. Morgan was kidding.

As I already said, Morgan’s scripts were meta before there was a term. And as a writer of a series that was already on its way to becoming a classic series, Morgan knew what all fans know: as long as a TV show has a fan base, the character and stories will live on forever for somebody somewhere. That is true about any great work of art: Sherlock Holmes and Hamlet and, hell, Mr. Spock have lived on infinitely longer then the lives of the creators of their works.  In some cases of art, this transcend the medium: people who may have never even watched an episode of The X-Files (I know they’re still out there) know who Scully is.

And in a way, this was confirmed when the X-Files was revived more than twenty years after the fact. In the episode that justified the entire revival of ‘Season 10’, Darin wrote  and directed ‘Mulder and Scully Meet The Were-Monster’. The idea of meta had caught up with the rest of television by this point, but it didn’t mean Morgan was any less capable of being ahead of the curve. Much of the episode was spent filled with Easter eggs for the fans, Mulder kvetching about getting too old for this shit, and Mulder finally having a conversation with a real-life Monster who faced the worst fate any supernatural being can turning into a human being.

Near the end of the episode, Mulder realizes that Scully has been trapped with the real killer – a serial killer with no more justification for his actions than anyone else. (When he starts confessing after he’s caught, neither agent has the patience to hear his excuses.) Mulder runs in, and finds that Scully is perfectly fine, and in fact is standing over the killer who is now handcuffed.  When Mulder tries to express his concerns, Scully brushes them off simply: “Anyway, I’m immortal.”

And this isn’t merely another call-back. In his typical fashion, Morgan is poking fun at Scully, the show, and the fact its being revived in the first place. Of course Scully’s immortal. It’s been fourteen years since her show’s been cancelled, and here she is, investigating cases as if no time has passed. And how to acknowledge that best?  Fan-service, of course. Morgan spent his entire career in Ten-Thirteen biting every hand than fed him, including the viewers. How better than to demonstrate he’s still capable of it by doing so here? It’s why we think fans worship him, and like everything else, he can’t take this seriously either.