X-Files Revival Part 1: What Went Wrong?

SPOILER ALERT: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS

The X-Files Revival
Part 1: What Went Wrong?

By Miss T., Televisionologist

The trouble with the new series is that we've spent too much time trying to convince Mulder that the X-Files he spent a decade on are in fact real, and not enough time on actual X-Files. This is only truly problematic because there are only 6 X-Files starring Mulder & Scully, and three have been spent getting Mulder to believe again.

In the first episode of this new series (My Struggle), we find Scully is now an assistant surgeon in a hospital (which, frankly, seems a little bit of a put-down), and Mulder is...well, it's not made clear what he is, but whatever it is it's easy enough to leave behind. They meet at the request of F.B.I. Assistant Director Skinner with an online webcaster who claims that the government has been misleading Mulder into thinking that aliens are a threat when in reality it is governments using alien technology. The webcaster says he plans on letting the world know on his next broadcast, but he needs Mulder and Scully to back him up. He provides Scully with a blood sample from a girl who says she's been abducted. In the end, the girl claims the whole abduction story was a hoax and the webcaster's site is shut down.

The fact is, the stakes in this episode are so low that it's hard to care. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of webcasters online claiming all kinds of things without proof. Why was it necessary for this one to have Mulder & Scully behind him? He claims that without them he will be in some sort of trouble, but by the end of the episode we learn that having Mulder & Scully in his corner didn't do any good.

We also never find out why Skinner wants Mulder & Scully to meet with this man. The only thing accomplished by this meeting is that it shakes Mulder's beliefs, which seems counter-productive since Skinner plans to bring the team back to the X-Files.

But most importantly, we seem to miss many of the character beats that long-time X-Files fans have come to expect. For instance, when Mulder & Scully first see each other, Scully asks him if he's taken an Uber. Mulder says that he hitchhiked, then tells her he's kidding. The only conclusion, then, is that he did take Uber. 

Newer fans might think this exchange is amusing, but long-time fans know that Mulder would never take an Uber: doing so would involve using a smart phone and allowing someone to document your movements, which the original Mulder would have been far too paranoid to do. Presumably we are expected  to believe that Mulder has grown up, or at least doesn't believe in government conspiracies and Big Brother anymore. But without any explanation as to what he's been doing, where he's coming from, or what has changed in his life in the past decade, it's hard to believe.

Episode 2 (Founder's Mutation) fairs only slightly better: the first 15 minutes of the episode are centered around a suicide which is just a set-up for the actual X-File, in which a scientist is performing human testing on children.

It isn't until episode 3 (Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster) that the show seems to really hit its stride: Mulder & Scully are sent to investigate a series of strange murders which point to a werewolf. But the episode still opens with Mulder's doubts about the X-Files -- he is using his "I Want to Believe" poster as a dartboard. Scully keeps encouraging Mulder to explore the unlikely and unbelievable, until he finally starts to get into it, prompting Scully to comment that this is how she likes her Mulder. And us long-time fans have to agree: this is the Mulder we've been waiting to see.

Up Next, Part 2: What Went Right?