Erlenmeyer Flask | the m0vie blog

The X-Files – Season 1 (Review)

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Darren

Trying to appraise the first season of any show is quite different from judging any other season. While all subsequent seasons have some measure of continuity to build off, some experience to guide the cast and crew, some familiarity to play into or away from, the first season literally starts with nothing. Even when there’s a sizeable gap between the production of the pilot and the start of work on the series proper (with over a year between the filming of The Pilot and Deep Throat), there’s still a sense we’re watching the production team settle into their roles.

All of this is a round-about way of saying that the first season of The X-Files is not a great season of television, judged on its own merits. It’s certainly not the strongest season of the show, which would go from strength-to-strength over the next three years, while also having an ambitious (if not entirely successful) fifth season. The first season of The X-Files is probably the weakest of the first five years of the show, but to express it in those terms is to miss the point.

The first season does a pretty great job laying the ground rules for the franchise, and offers a pretty solid indication of the talent involved in the show, if they can figure out what they want to do. (With quite a few episodes serving as examples of what the show doesn’t want to do.)

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: chris carter, Dana Scully, Deep Throat, Erlenmeyer Flask, Fallen Angel, mulder, star trek: the next generation, The Smoking Man, Tooms, United States, X-File | 6 Comments »

The X-Files – The Erlenmeyer Flask (Review)

Posted on October 31, 2013 by Darren

When you think about it, The X-Files conspiracy mythology is just a fancy way of dressing up generational “daddy issues.” Both Mulder and Scully have problems with their fathers, and it plays into the show’s wider themes. The X-Files is, appropriately enough, a show that helps define what is known as “Generation X”, the generation born following the post war baby boom, as the afterglow from America’s ascent to global superpower began to wear off. Existing in the wake of the Cold War, in a unipolar world, The X-Files was a vehicle for introspection.

One of the recurring themes of the show, and one that has come up quite a bit in the first season, is the weight of history bearing down on the current generation. Living in the shadow of Watergate, dealing with the revelation of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments, coping the Vietnam and other skeletons, it’s little wonder that Generation X seemed completely disillusioned with their elders. Jamie Notter argued that “unlike their parents who challenged leaders with an intent to replace them, Generation Xers tend to ignore leaders.”

Christine Henseler would go further, suggesting that there’s something close to righteous anger in the attitude that Generation X holds to its parents, holding “a world view” that “is based on change, on the need to combat corruption, dictatorships, abuse, AIDS.” The Erlenmeyer Flask seems the perfect place to end this season then, pushing all this uncertainty to the fore and killing the series’ much-loved father figure.

Bodies of proof…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: Carter, chris carter, Dana Scully, Deep Throat, Erlenmeyer Flask, Lego, Lego minifigure, literature, mulder, Mulder & Scully, Tuskegee syphilis experiment, United States, Urban legend, X-File | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Born Again (Review)

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Darren

Born Again is a very bland episode of The X-Files that really suffers from being broadcast this late in the season. Indeed, the first season of The X-Files seems almost obsessed with life after death and reincarnation – we’ve already had episodes like Shadows, Lazarus and even Young at Heart. We’re three episodes from the end of the season, and we’ll still find room for one more “vengeance from beyond the grave!” story before we close up shop. Born Again isn’t bad so much as it’s just bland.

I don’t hate Born Again. In fact, it’s the episode that I remember least from this first season – the only evidence I had that I had seen the episode before came from a vague creeping feeling of familiarity while I was watching it. Even now, as I sit down with my notes to type a review, I’m not sure I can tell you that much about it.

It’s only a paper giraffe…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: american, arts, born again, Brian Markinson, chris carter, Erlenmeyer Flask, Ghost in the machine, Howard Gordon, Maggie Wheeler, Screenwriting, Truth is Out There, Works, World Literature, Writers Resources, X-File | 3 Comments »

The X-Files – Tooms (Review)

Posted on October 29, 2013 by Darren

Tooms offers us the show’s first returning monster, not counting the recurring alien menace that has appeared in episodes like Deep Throat or Fallen Angel or E.B.E. In fact, it arguably offers us two recurring monsters, with Eugene Victor Tooms putting in his second appearance, but also featuring the second official (but third possible) appearance of the Cigarette-Smoking Man.

Appropriately enough, Tooms doesn’t just bring back the eponymous serial killer, it begins to tie various loose ends together, and to fashion a sense of continuity and development from the various character moments and implications of the first season, suggesting that forces are moving in the background, behind the scenes of everything we’ve watched unfold.

They’ve got him boxed in…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: Dana Scully, David, David Nutter, Deep Throat, Erlenmeyer Flask, Fox Mulder, List of Monster-of-the-Week characters in The X-Files, Mitch Pileggi, Morgan, Skinner, The Smoking Man, Tooms, Walter Skinner, William B. Davies, William B. Davis, X-File | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Lazarus (Review)

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Darren

And, with Lazarus, we enter a long mediocre stretch in the second half of the first season of The X-Files. To be fair, none of the episodes in this run are anywhere near as bad as Space, but – with the exception of E.B.E., Tombs and The Erlenmeyer Flask – they all feel a little flat. It’s as if the first half of the season was more experimental, as The X-Files tried to figure out what it wanted to be, with the second half dedicated to settling into its particular groove.

Lazarus isn’t terrible. It just feels a little rote, a little paint-by-numbers, a littler average and safe. It’s a conventional enough supernatural (or psychological) thriller, but it lacks that extra “umph” to make it something particularly worthy of a viewer’s time.

The mask is slipping…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: Dana Scully, Erlenmeyer Flask, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Fox Mulder, gillian anderson, Lazarus, mulder, mulder and scully, Paper Hearts, scully, The Smoking Man, Tom Noonan, Truth is Out There, WILLIS, X-File | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Deep Throat (Review)

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Darren

Deep Throat was filmed in August 1993, more than a year after the production of The Pilot in March 1993. In a way, Deep Throat feels like the first proper episode of the show’s first season, even carrying the production number 1×01. It cements a lot of the themes and ideas suggested in The Pilot, more firmly establishing arcs and characters. Indeed, The Pilot ended with a glimpse at the massive government conspiracy surrounding encounters with alien life forms, but Deep Throat serves to demonstrate just how deep that conspiracy goes.

The episode builds on countless ideas and conspiracy theories, delving into the popular suggestion that the United States military has been reverse-engineering alien technology for its own purposes. This suggests that Mulder isn’t just dealing with modern interactions between aliens and humanity, he’s digging into something that is rooted far deeper. As the eponymous informant teases him at the end of the episode, “Mr. Mulder, they’ve been here for a very long time.”