There’s a story which is
probably apocryphal and gets attributed to various politicians. I’m going to
use Hubert Humphrey because he was quite loquacious and he’s one my favorite political
figures.
The story goes that Humphrey
had delivered a stump speech that he thought went quite well. Then the next day
a female constituent said she’d heard his speech last night. “In my opinion you
missed several excellent opportunities,” she told him.
Humphrey, who took
political criticisms seriously asked: “To do what?”
“To stop” she said simply.
Anyone who is a fan of TV,
particularly broadcast shows, will know the context of this statement. Most
network series, both before and after the period of Peak TV, far too often go
on past their creative high point because they are still drawing in viewers and
therefore making money for the network. Usually by the time the series comes to
an end, the average viewer is relieved rather than disappointed by this. I’m
certainly no different; I have a laundry list of shows starting with CSI and
ending with The Blacklist & Riverdale that clearly stayed on
the air far too long. There are series on the air right now that have long
since gone past their expiration dates that none of the networks will put to
sleep.
But in the case of The
X-Files it is particularly more painful than almost all the others for a
very clear reason: Chris Carter wrote the perfect series finale for the show,
set it up that way…and then for a reason that is inexplicable, decided to keep
the show going. I’ve written about this before in a few other articles related
to The X-Files but didn’t go into detail, so this time I will.
Let’s start with the official
word, written in a compendium about Season 7 a few months before the eighth
season began.
In all things, producer
Paul Rabwin tells us that the staff thought Season 7 was going to be the last
one. “David (Duchovny’s) contract was up and we felt maybe the show had run its
course. Chris Carter is quoted as saying: “I kept saying I would not do the
show without David. Fox was asking me to commit to doing another season with or
without him.”
Rabwin then says: “As the
season progressed, we found ourselves starting to get energized again. Word
started to get around that this would not be the end…As we got towards the end
of the season, everyone was kind of hopeful.”
I remember reading this when
I bought the book in the summer of 2001.
Even as a devoted fan of the series, this required a suspension of disbelief
that I could not buy, and that last statement by Rabwin doesn’t seem to correlate
with what the viewer was seeing on the screen.
In Wanting to Believe, Robert
Shearman’s episode guide to the series, written in 2009, Shearman paints a more
accurate version of events as well presenting a truer picture of what we were getting
in Season Seven.
“The seventh season feels
as if its no longer certain of its own future….The cast were clearly willing to
admit that they’d be relieved if the show was cancelled, there were increasing
reports that Duchovny and Anderson had fallen out, and Duchovny was suing the
network for lost royalties. The innocence and charm of The X-Files had
gone. And with no guaranteed continuation, with the storylines wrapped up, and
nothing new to say, Season 7 is a schizophrenic beast. Half the time it doesn’t
seem to care anymore. And the other half it rushes around like a bull in a China
shop, as if keen to play around and have as much fun as possible before the
lights go out. Either way its undisciplined, and either way there’s a feeling
that there’s nothing to be developed, no new direction that there’s time to
explore. The X-Files, finally, is creatively bankrupt.”
That pretty much sums up
what the viewer was getting in Season 7. The Syndicate storyline had been
wrapped up in fiery glory in the middle of Season 6 and Carter had not come up
with anything to replace it with. The Smoking Man and many of the other figures
we associate with the mythology are either killed off early in the season or
only making perfunctory appearances. Samantha Mulder’s fate, which has been the
impetus of the series since the Pilot, is handled in the midpoint of Season 7 but
its done in such a ham-handled and perfunctory way that even the people who
love the episode admit that it is polarizing. After six and a half seasons in
which Samantha Mulder has been told that she is central to the conspiracy, that
she has been an alien clone, murdered by a serial killer, or has been raised in
the suburbs by the Smoking Man. As recently as One Son, Smoking Man told Mulder
directly that Samantha was alive. Now in the middle of Season 7, he tells
Scully that she is dead. We’re told to believe that everything Mulder has
thought his entire life about his sister was an invention of his own memories
and that Samantha Mulder actually died when she was thirteen…except not even
that is locked down for sure. In a scene where Mulder sees the ghost of his
sister playing with other children in starlight – something that only Mulder
saw – he decides to dismiss everything
he’s spent his whole life believing with no more concrete evidence than any of
the dozens of other leads he’s followed his whole life. I didn’t buy it a
quarter of a century ago, I still don’t now. This really feels like Carter, who
wrote the episode, is trying to check off a box before either the series ends
or Duchovny leaves The X-Files.
And we get that in so many
of the episodes throughout Season 7, which have the real feeling of the show
crossing off items from its bucket list before the series ends. Wrapping up Millennium
which was cancelled in 1999? Check. Handling the fate of Donnie Pfaster,
the death fetishist who nearly killed Scully back in Season 2? Check? Inviting
back William Gibson and Tom Maddox to write another cyberpunk episode? Check. You
wouldn’t mind if any of these episode were imaginative or at least fun, but they’re
all among the ultimate nadirs of the series.
Similarly Carter seems
willing to let all of his regulars indulge their creative impulses. David
Duchovny gets to write and direct another episode, but while he stuck to something
resembling the mythology, this time it’s a piece of self-indulgence to invite
his then wife Tea Leoni and Garry Shandling on to the series to play themselves
playing Mulder and Scully. Gillian Anderson gets to write and direct her own
episode which plays, frankly, like a pretentious student film. William B. Davis
gets to write his own episode where the Smoking Man takes center stage and
plays a somewhat sympathetic character. The latter is by far the best one of
the three, but even that has been permanently stained by the fact that when the
series returned for its eleventh season, the show retconned in it to something
so fundamentally disgusting that I won’t write it here.
And in many cases, it looks
like Carter is going to come almost to the point of having Mulder and
Scully give into their sexual tension but won’t quite. In ‘Millennium’, they
kiss on New Year’s Eve 1999 and say ‘the world didn’t end’ to each other. In the
penultimate episode, Mulder and Scully drink a beer and watch Caddyshack
together, the first time we’ve seen them hang out after work in almost the
entire series. In ‘all things’, the episode opens with Scully getting
dressed in Mulder’s apartment, and a bare-chested Mulder is on a bed, still
asleep. None of these are referred to again until the series is almost over.
The only writer who still
seems to have his head on his shoulders is Vince Gilligan and the three
episodes he writes are the creative highpoints not only of the season but are
among the best of the series. In ‘Hungry’, we get to see a Monster of the Week
episode entirely from the perspective of the monster and we come away with
sympathy for him and something resembling antagonism towards Mulder. In ‘X-Cops’,
the crew of Cops tags
along on a full moon and runs into Mulder and Scully in the midst of an
investigation. The episode is filmed in the style of Cops - shaky camerawork, obscenities blocked
out, faces blurred – and is one of the series comedic highpoints. And in the
penultimate episode ‘Je Souhaite’ Gilligan directs his very first episode of
television and in a simple story about a genie makes the argument that the
series was never really about a conspiracy and saving the world but the bond between Mulder and Scully. “After
seven years of chases and struggles and quests,
the tender truth is the best thing to seek is the comfort of watching Caddyshack
with someone you love.” It seems counterintuitive to the very nature of The
X-Files, but its honestly I think it’s
the right idea for a series and there’s an argument it should have been the
final standalone…particularly of what the season finale was like.
The Season 7 finale is titled
Requiem, which truly sounds like the appropriate title for a series finale. The
title is a symbol for the music we play after a life ends…in this case the show
we’ve been watching for seven years. And so much of Requiem truly plays like
Carter is planning to end his creation by going full circle, which in this case
means going back to the start.
This was a note that many
network series had already done and would do in the year’s following The
X-Files. Homicide: Life on the Street had ended the previous May with Tim
Bayliss, the cop who we had first met when the series began, leaving the unit
with a flashback replaying segments from every episode and his last line. The
episode ends with Meldrick walking through an alley with a flashlight with his
new partner, uttering many of the same lines of dialogue that were said in the
opening scene of the series, some by him, some not.
Later on other series would
carry on this tradition. ER ended with a series finale that had many
callbacks to the pilot 15 years ago, including Mark Greene’s daughter, now a
med student, now appearing in Cook County. Alias would end its run in
2006 by reflecting on many of the critical moments in Sydney Bristow’s life
that brought back many previous cast members and flashed with the present to
see where she was now. And Buffy The Vampire Slayer ended with several
callbacks to the series premier, including Giles walking away from the three teenagers
he met in the pilot and saying, ‘The world is doomed.”
So when ‘Requiem’ begins in
Bellefleur, Oregon with the sheriff we met back in the Pilot, it seems very
much like The X-Files is about to do the same thing. The case involves
Billy Miles, the young man who was at the center of the action of the Pilot,
calling Mulder and Scully and telling them that abductions are happening “but
not to him.” Mulder and Scully go out and they are reminded not only of their
first case and how much has changed for everyone else – but not them.
Billy Miles is now a
deputy, who in seven years has gotten married and divorced. Teresa, a classmate
of his, who had also been abducted, has also gotten married and has a new baby
at home. But Mulder and Scully are still in the exact same place they were
seven years ago. They still have no respect from their peers, friends and loved
ones have died, and the conspiracy they’ve spent the series trying to stop has
been resolved, but there’s no closure.
In the opening of the
episode an FBI auditor tells them all of this and they have no ready answers to
the questions. Scully’s best explanation is “We open doors that lead to other
doors” But all those open doors have led to rooms that have nothing in them. And
by this point, we know that nothing Mulder and Scully find on The X-Files will
ever change the opinions of the powers that be. At one point Skinner tells
Mulder as much: “You could have an UFO fly by the White House and an alien
shake hands with the President. What it comes down to is…they just don’t like
you.” And Mulder knows it.
In a scene that reflects
this, Scully comes to Mulder’s motel room late at night, feeling ill. In the
Pilot we saw this happen and Mulder comforted her and confided in her: the
friendship was formed out of this. In Requiem, Mulder puts Scully into his bed
(swoon) and cradles her in his arms (squee) and makes her the center of it. “Maybe
they’re right about this…but for all the wrong reasons. It's the personal costs
that are too high.” It’s as close as Mulder has come in seven years to admitting
that maybe everything he’s done just isn’t worth it.
We also see the three remaining
members of the Syndicate: Krycek, who is rotting in a Tunisian prison, Marita
Covarrubias (Laurie Holden) who very reluctantly comes to bail him out and the
Smoking Man. At this point the Smoking Man looks truly pathetic. He’s in a
wheelchair, speaking through a tube in his neck. He knows that there is a UFO
in Oregon and pathetically describes it as “Our chance to rebuild the project.”
William B. Davis has been
brilliant in his limited abilities in seven seasons, but he’s mesmerizing as a
man who has lost everything to this cause and now seems hopelessly left behind.
That he believes he can trust Krycek, a man who has betrayed him half a dozen
times before, to do his bidding shows that he has truly run out of allies in
his battle. And indeed, in the final act, Krycek and Covarrubias to betray him
to Mulder.
By this point the Bounty
Hunter has been taking former abductees and Mulder is convinced that they will
not return. In the final act, Mulder and Scully have returned to DC when
Skinner brings Krycek and Covarrubias to him. The two of them tell him
everything the Smoking Man has told him. Krycek says: “He wants to damn the
soul of that Cigarette-Smoking son of a bitch.”
In what might be called the
Last Supper of The X-Files, Mulder, Scully, Covarrubias, Krycek, Skinner
and The Lone Gunmen look over footage and plot out where the UFO is over Chinese
food. Scully walks out and Mulder tells her that regardless of this being true
she’s not coming with him to Oregon. “There has to be a time and that time is
now. They’re taking abductees, Scully. You’re an abductee. I’m not going to
risk…losing you.” It’s as close to a declaration of love as our heroes have
made in seven years. But Scully tells Mulder: “I won’t let you go alone.”
In Oregon, Skinner and
Mulder go out to the site. But in DC, Scully investigates the medical records
of the abductees and notes that they all suffered from anomalous brain activity
– what Mulder suffered earlier this year. Scully now knows that Mulder is the
one in danger of being taken, and then after feeling ill all episode, faints
into the arms of the Gunmen.
That night, Mulder walks up
to where a group of laser pointers are reflecting off something. He puts his
hand into it, it begins to shake wildly. Skinner looks up and Mulder is gone.
Skinner shouts out Mulder’s name.
The scene that follows is
one of the great moments in The X-Files. Duchovny’s expression is a mix
of disbelief and ecstasy. As Skinner shouts out in a voice that is scattered,
he looks ahead…to see all of the abductees standing in a bean of light with a dazed
look on their face.
Without a word Duchovny
expresses so much as he willingly, almost joyfully walks into the field of
abductees. He looks up to see a spaceship, enormous beyond reckoning. As the
light grows brighter, we wonder to ourselves: Has this been Mulder’s lifelong
dream? To become one of the people he has spent his life searching for?
And then Mulder’s
expression changes. The Bounty Hunter silently walks into the field. We never
can read the expression on Brian Thompson’s face but Mulder’s expression
becomes that of terror as the light becomes brighter and brighter…
…and we cut to Skinner
looking up as a ship bigger than you can imagine takes off to the soaring sound
of Mark Snow’s music and disappears. In a voice filled with shock and awe,
Skinner says: “Mulder.”
That night Krycek and
Covarrubias come to the Smoking Man’s apartment. He seems to know what has
happened and what is coming as he says: “We’ve failed. Perhaps you never meant
to succeed. Anyway, the hour is at hand, I presume.”
Krycek walks past the
Smoking Man’s nurse. “What are you doing?” she demands. “Sending the devil back
to hell,” he says as he grabs the wheelchair. Covarrubias stops the nurse from
interfering.
Krycek pushes the wheelchair
to a flight of stairs. The Smoking Man says simply: “As you do to Mulder and to
me, you do to all of mankind, Alex.” Krycek hesitates…and then pushes the
wheelchair down the stairs. To the final boss of the series, it’s a pathetic
ending and the one he deserves. (Yes, I know it wasn’t the one he got. Let me
finish.)
The next day Skinner visits
Scully at a hospital bed and tries to put on a brave face. Scully begins to
cry: “I already heard.” Skinner, who has been a man of steel resolve, finally
breaks down: “I lost him. I don’t know what else to say.” His tone is shaking
but firm. “They’ll ask me what I saw. And what I saw I can’t deny. I won’t.”
This is Mitch Pileggi’s
finest hour on the series. For seven seasons he has stoically listened to every
detail of the bizarre reports Mulder and Scully have given him, never taking a
position, never committing, never even admitting he believes them. Now his
world view has changed forever and he can’t pretend otherwise.
Scully says tearfully: “We will
find him. I have to.” Skinner is about to leave. But Scully isn’t done. “There’s
something else I have to tell you, sir. Something I’m going to ask you keep to
yourself.” Then a smile appears on her face.
“I’m having a hard time
explaining it – or believing it – but…I’m pregnant.”
Fade to credits.
It’s very hard not to watch
Requiem and not think this would have been the perfect note to end the series.
Yes it remains utterly ambiguous to the fates of our two heroes, but as
Shearman puts it:
“…the genius of it would
have been that it stayed true to the show. That it never tried to come up with
some nebulous truth, but right to the very last moment kept us guessing. There’d
have been a poetic righteousness in that.”
I have little doubt the
fanbase would have been pissed at this ending to an extent – ambiguous endings
were not something TV did in 2000, and they still don’t go over very well today
(The Sopranos is the most obvious example but I’m sure we can all think
of two or three more without trying.) But it would have been different in this
case because The X-Files had never been about wrapping things up definitively.
The receipts prove this. Depending
on how you choose to look at it, The X-Files actually ended no less than
four times, the first time in 2002 (I’ll get back to that) the second
with the second film (when no one thought it had a future) and with the revival
seasons in 2016 and 2018. Each have an ambiguous ending but the difference is, all
of them seem to end with the possibility of continuation, a movie, another
revival around the corner. Whereas Requiem really seems like it is willing to
close up shop with this. Mulder has been taken with no clear idea if he’ll ever
come back. The Smoking Man seems dead in a way we haven’t seen before (I
remember being certain this was the case up to 2002.) And somehow, despite
everything, Scully is pregnant.
You can see how this could
have worked best for the show. This could have been the final point for the
series and then Carter could have realized his dream of continuing the series
in movies. It’s not like we wouldn’t have a really great jumping-off point:
Scully frantically scouring the country for Mulder, trying to understand the
child inside her, and at the climax of the film finally finding Mulder. We all
saw how this played out in the last two seasons; it’s really hard to argue this
not playing out better in a single movie. Even if the Smoking Man had survived,
you could see this revelation playing out better in a feature film then the
series carried on with it.
But instead, for reasons
unclear even twenty four years later, Carter kept the series going. And as a
result, all of the goodwill he brought up with the finale was worn away. Maybe
given the reactions and the high quality of Requiem (it’s still one of the best
episodes of the series), Carter thought that they had made an argument for
more. But just because you’ve made an argument for it doesn’t mean you should
follow through.
And as a result in the next
two seasons, the circle that Carter had closed with Requiem had to be reopened.
And in every respect it did so badly. The fate for Mulder looked final in Requiem,
now it just seemed no more really than all the other Mulder in jeopardy finales
we’d gotten over the years. Billy Miles and everyone from Oregon worked as
subjects for becoming full circle; in Season 8, they had to become part of
another conspiracy that the show completely bungled. And worst of all by making
Scully pregnant they gave both the character and the series baggage that it bungled
every possible way and some you wouldn’t think possible. Then somehow, when the
series picked up again in the revivals they had to deal with the baggage all
over again, and only sometimes did they make anything out of it.
The X-Files might return in some form
in a while – Ryan Coogler has been signed to handle a new version with new
characters taking place in the same universe. Whether it actually happens is
another story but Chris Carter has said he’s done with the series one way or
the other. That can only be a plus. Carter has been guilty of countless sins in
his tenure of The X-Files but one of his biggest was that he never
figured out when the best time was to end his dream. Someone else needs to take
over who understands that there has to be an end.
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