kim manners | the m0vie blog

The X-Files – Humbug (Review)

Posted on August 28, 2014 by Darren

This August (and a little of September), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the second season of The X-Files. In November, we’ll be looking at the third season. And maybe more.

The world is a weird place, but it seems to get a little less weird all the time.

One of the great recurring themes of The X-Files is that globilisation and rapid development have cast light on the deepest nooks and crannies, having a homogenising effect. There’s little room in the world for the eccentric and the strange, as Starbucks opens an average of two stores every day and access to the internet in the United States doubling between 2000 and 2014. In 2009, the furthest a person could be from a McDonalds in the United States was 107 miles. The world is getting smaller.

Funhouse mirror…

Paradoxically, this only winds up pushing people further apart. This happens on both a community and an individual level. Small towns find themselves struggling to survive in the current economic climate, despite the increased accessibility. Despite the growth of social media to make interpersonal communication easier than ever, the number of people feeling socially isolated has doubled since 1985.

Humbug is the show’s first script from writer Darin Morgan. While not as polished as his later work, it perfectly captures that mournful sense that a certain kind of weirdness is passing.

Something fishy is going on…

Continue reading →

Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: Circus, circus folk, Darin Morgan, Florida, freak, freaks, gibsonton, humbug, jim rose, kim manners, pt barnam, side show, sideshow, sideshows, the x-files, x-files | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Die Hand Die Verletzt (Review)

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Darren

This August (and a little of September), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the second season of The X-Files. In November, we’ll be looking at the third season. And maybe more.

Die Hand Die Verletzt is a fascinating piece of work, for a number of reasons. The most striking reason, however, is that it is essentially a comedy episode. While The X-Files has always had a wry sense of humour – Mulder’s viewing habits are a recurring joke, after all – this is the first time the series has tried to produce a full-length comedy episode. Die Hand Die Verletzt is still a horror story, and the comedy is pretty black, but it does seem to prove that the show can do an entire episode that is funny.

The implications of this are far-reaching. At its height, the beauty of The X-Files was its versatility. The show could tell just about any sort of story imaginable, flitting between prestige drama, out-and-out horror, pastiche, broad comedy, political thriller, satire or even romance. While you could always bet on at least a hint of the supernatural and a dash of horror, The X-Files could really be anything that Chris Carter and his writers wanted it to be. It was even a show that could collide with other shows, as in The Springfield Files or X-Cops.

She’s the devil in disguise…

To be fair, the second season is already reaching towards that approach to The X-Files. Although he has yet to produce a script for the series, the show has hired Darin Morgan to work on the writing team; his sensibilities would be proven truly and brilliantly gonzo. Irresistible proved that you could produce an episode of The X-Files without an overt supernatural horror, focusing on a more grounded horror. Red Museum provided an “almost crossover” with another television series.

However, Die Hand Die Verletzt is the point at which the show does something that looks truly weird in the context of what has come before, yet feeling strangely comfortable in light of what has followed. The script may mark the departure of Glen Morgan and James Wong from the show – the duo leaving to produce Space: Above & Beyond – but it isn’t the end of an era so much as the start of a new one.