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Topic:
In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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Darth_Manion
Registered:
Feb '07
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Date Posted:
6/25 2:39pm
Subject:
In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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I never really considered myself a big X-Files fan, but I will admit that whenever I saw it was on TV I would check it out. Then I started renting the DVDs from netflix. Somewhere along the line, I got hooked. Just recently I got a copy of the Complete X-Files DVD boxed set for my birthday, as a gift from myself. I've been watching it in chronological order for some time now, a few episodes here or there.
Exactly one month from today, X-Files: I Want to Believe comes out in theatres. If I am to finish watching the series and get caught up in time, according to my calculations, I will have to watch at least 3 and a half episodes every day for the next 31 days. I've just started on season five.
This thread will serve to document my process, making sure I stick with this, and, as an added bonus, will boost my post count.
Current Manion X-Status - Alive. Recently completed watching the opening episodes of season five. It turns out Mulder did not die at the end of season four, but let's face it, if you didn't see that coming, you probably have trouble dressing yourself in the morning. In a Dues ex Machina Scully's cancer is conveniently cured and Cigarette-Smoking Man is assassinated, but it's probably a hoax since Skinner says 'there wasn't a body'. Won't be surprised if he comes back. "Unusual Suspects" starring the Lone Gunman was very entertaining, and is probably one of my favorite episodes thus far. Of course, nothing has yet topped 'Jose Chung's "From Outer Space"'.
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"Life... is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for."
-Smoking Man, 'The X-Files'
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ophelia
Registered:
Jun '02
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Date Posted:
6/25 3:33pm
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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STOP WITH THE SPOILERS OMG STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!!!!!!!!!!!
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Indiana: 9/13/04 - 10/5/08
"Already the world seems a little less bright."
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Darth_Manion
Registered:
Feb '07
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Date Posted:
6/25 3:41pm
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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Oh, and Snape kills Mufassa with Rosebud. Left out that part.
-----signature-----
"Life... is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for."
-Smoking Man, 'The X-Files'
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Kyle Katarn
Registered:
Jul '98
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Date Posted:
6/25 10:07pm
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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Jose Chung's is pretty good, but I enjoy Bad Blood and Dreamland 1&2. Also the episodes where TLG are more than just supporting characters are good ones too.
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magnae clunes mihi placent, nec possum de hac re mentiri.
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Grimby the Hutt
Title:
• JCC Mod with no MSG
• RMFF webmaster
Registered:
Apr '00
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Date Posted:
6/25 10:41pm
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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I am also trying to finish the series by the time the movie comes out. I'm somewhere in season 5, watching only the "mythology" episodes and episodes where anything significant to the storyline happens. I have a master episode list I'm working off of, a Blockbuster queue filled with X-Files DVDs, and a killer recipe for kettle corn. 
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sLaughter is the best medicine http://www.rmff.net -- Home of the greatest FanForce in the world.
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Darth_Manion
Registered:
Feb '07
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Date Posted:
6/26 12:13pm
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
- Date Edited:
6/26 12:15pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Darth_Manion
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Current X-Status - 6/25 - Still alive. Yesterday I managed to get no less than five episodes under my belt. (Not all consecutively, mind you.) Anyway, so Mulder and Scully take a trip to the Florida everglades and encounter killer mini-ents in desperate need of eye drops, giving us a perfect opportunity to hear Gillian Anderson sing 'Jeremiah was a Bullfrog'. At least now we never need to ask why she didn't go off to start a solo singing career after the show was canceled. In any case, after that they go to a rural town and battle hordes of daytime television addicts and Mr. Peterman; In black-in-white, no less! Clever allusions to Frankenstein are made, but the ending was strange - I think I'm missing a key reference there. Next, Scully goes on adventures with a sickly space-alien child who is apparently her kid, while Mulder goes to a retirement home and interrogates sweet old ladies only to fail miserably, yet again, to stop another shape-shifting alien assassin. And surprise, surprise, they brought back that mind-control guy from 'Pusher', from way back in season three, just to kill him. Again. Only instead of getting shot, he dies Kevorkian-style in a hospital. Poor guy. Don't it stink when murdering psychos don't get to die an honorable death?
-----signature-----
"Life... is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for."
-Smoking Man, 'The X-Files'
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Kiki-Gonn
Registered:
Feb '01
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Date Posted:
6/26 12:19pm
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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I envy you but at the same time would not want to relive the slow death that was the decline of the show. Still one of my favorites of all time though.
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^^^^^^^^^ If I wasn't so tired, I would have said something really clever
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Darth_Manion
Registered:
Feb '07
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Date Posted:
6/27 11:23am
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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X-Status - 6/26 - Still alive. Traveling to another rural setting, trees and a creepy lady with a deep voice menace everyone's favorite federal agents until stopped by an even creepier guy wielding an axe. Which is unusual, 'cause typically it's the axe-wielding guy that's the problem. Afterward, Scully goes on vacation to New England, where Mulder prank calls her in his underwear and she tosses the Chuckie doll in a microwave. Mmmm, extra crispy. (Wait a minute, that episode was co-written by Stephen King? Whaaa?!) Then Mulder goes for a stint in The Matrix almost ten years before the Wachowski brothers invented it, where he gets his arms chopped off. CG Scully goes all Keanu Reeves on some killer nurses, and in the end both just manage to avoid being blown up by space lasers. Thank you, Ronald Reagan - Your legacy is intact. To finish it off, I viewed 'Bad Blood', which may have now usurped 'Jose Chung's "From Outer Space"' as my favorite episode. I really liked the twist ending - it turns out that Luke Wilson, does not, in fact, have buck teeth and an overbite.
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"Life... is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for."
-Smoking Man, 'The X-Files'
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Darth_Glymmer
Registered:
Jan '02
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Date Posted:
6/27 12:05pm
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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Patrick is so not a Duchovny.
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Question! What do bears eat?
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Darth_Manion
Registered:
Feb '07
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Date Posted:
6/28 6:48pm
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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X-Status - 6/28 - Still alive. Next on the que was a two-parter where Krycek returns with all his limbs, which is weird 'cause last time we saw him I distinctly recall him getting his arm chopped off - did I miss something? Anyway, so it turns out that alien abductees are gathering en masse to get fried by faceless dudes wielding flamethrowers. So, naturally, Scully gets involved in this brouhaha, Mulder yells "NOOOOO!!!" and shoots his gun, and we're introduced to this Agent Spender, who I kept thinking looked weirdly familiar. Then I realized that he looked like Young Smoking man from the episode 'Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man'. Taking that to it's logical conclusion wasn't hard; And surprise, surprise, who's alive! Who called it (see post 1)? (Answer: Me)
Following that, we're given a tantalizing tale, a flashback to the fab fifties, everyone's favorite era of McCarthyism and above-ground nuclear tests - Just ask Indiana Jones. Anyhow, we learn the origins of the X-Files (thank the secretary that they weren't called 'the U-Files'), some stuff about Mulder's father, and about this guy that has a giant spider lodged in his larynx. At the end, in a touching scene, good 'ol Billy Mulder lets the abomination of nature free so it can suck the organs out of a few more people before being shot by a jittery cop forty years later.
-----signature-----
"Life... is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for."
-Smoking Man, 'The X-Files'
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Rogue_Ten
Registered:
Aug '02
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Date Posted:
6/28 7:20pm
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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Who is Manion?
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Carpe deez nuts. --------- TERRUN UP A LAAANNNE!!  --------- If dance-fighting American Godzilla isn't tasteful, I don't want to taste.
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Darth_Manion
Registered:
Feb '07
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Date Posted:
6/29 1:22pm
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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^Ouch, my ego. It is evident that no one actually reads these posts, thus meaning I am free to post pretty much whatever I want without fear of retribution. Ah, well.
X-Status - 6/29 - Not dead. When I viewed the episode "Mind's Eye", I recognized that it was late at night while I watched it, spilling into the wee hours of the morning. So for the sake of accurate record-keeping, I'm including it in today's retrospective report of yesterday rather than yesterday's, which is of the day before yesterday. Got it? Good. This is all on the final, so pay attention. In any case, this episode showcases a blind chick who is convicted of murder, we go through the regular spiel, she's found innocent, but at the end she goes off to shoot a guy and goes to prison anyway! What was the whole point of finding her innocent in the first place? There was also some stuff about her father and a sixth sense, yadda, yadda... although I will admit I may have fallen asleep at one point. After some well-earned sleep (i.e. falling into a veritable coma), I began the new day invigorated and ready to rot whatever brain cells I have left by watching TV.
So now I've reached the begining of the end as it pertains to season five, starting with the episode 'All Souls', mostly consisting of Scully freaking out when she has visions of her dead daughter. Also, Satan himself makes a special guest appearance! Following that, a flesh-eating bacteria and domestic terrorists show up when Mulder goes deep undercover to do... something. His ultimate goal was never revealed. The next episode was titled 'Foile a Deux', a phrase that I am actually familiar with since I read an article about it in, of all places, 'Fortean Times'. That being the case, I wasn't expecting a man-sized bug disguised as a telemarketing manager to be the centerpiece of the episode, but I always had a sneaking suspicion that neither telemarketers or managers were completely human - and when you combine the two, that's just asking for trouble
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"Life... is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for."
-Smoking Man, 'The X-Files'
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Rogue_Ten
Registered:
Aug '02
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Date Posted:
6/29 1:26pm
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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I read them. 
Sorta...
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Carpe deez nuts. --------- TERRUN UP A LAAANNNE!! --------- If dance-fighting American Godzilla isn't tasteful, I don't want to taste.
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Darth_Manion
Registered:
Feb '07
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Date Posted:
6/30 10:20am
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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Thanks. Granted, this probably isn't as interesting as Scummy reading the Bible.
X-Status - 6/30 - Not dead. "The End", the fifth season's final episode, was... interesting, to say the least. So we're introduced to a slew of fresh characters, notably Gibson Praise, this mind-reading kid who, apparently, "could be the key to everything in the X-Files", which begs to question exactly what he can tell us about the flukeman. Agent Spender is proving to be just as troublesome as his old man, and this Diana Fowly turns out to have helped Muler discover the X-Files - although I think it's supposed to be implied that their relationship was more than professional. Which makes it all the more funny when Scully sees them holding hands and gets all flustered. I'll admit I laughed out loud at that part. Oh, and Smoking Man torches the X-Files. Now that's just not sporting of him.
Next, I watched the movie, which, overall, I found disappointing. It just felt like a typical 90's sci-fi flick. The ending was way too grandiose in terms of the atmosphere of the X-Files; And it's just Mulder saving the world with Scully passed out over his shoulder? How many times has Scully been captured with no hope of escape/infected with something by now? Although there were some redeeming aspects, but they were overshadowed at the point Mulder climbed aboard the spaceship that looked like it was taken directly from the Alien movies. Not only that, but the aliens burst out of people's chests like in Aliens, too! Give me a break here. But at least in the end, the X-Files are reopened, thus resuming the status quo. However, I imagine that there'd be a problem with opening files that have been reduced to little more than ash. It's going to take more than a whole lotta scotch tape to fix that.
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"Life... is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for."
-Smoking Man, 'The X-Files'
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Darth_Manion
Registered:
Feb '07
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Date Posted:
7/1 6:21pm
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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X-Status - 7/1 - Still alive. Season six opens with a bang - a guy working for this 'Roush' company comes home one afternoon to have his innards chewed out by a space alien. Yummy. So now Mulder and Scully are back, although I thought Scully mentioned she was being transferred to Utah or something in the movie. Also, it turns out I over-estimated the damage to the X-Files in the fire, and Mulder is putting them back together with ease, with scotch tape a-plenty, no doubt. But uh-oh - that spoil-sport Spender is out to ruin Fox's fun by taking over the X-Files! Not only that, but he's teamed up with Fowly, thus increasing the potential angst-factor. To wrap things up, the Praise kid gets sealed in a nuclear reactor with a killer space alien. I wonder if they'll explain how he got out of there in the inevitable situation that he turns up again, because they did a smash-up job of explaining how Krycek got out of that silo in season three (i.e. they didn't). Maybe in the X-Files world people have the ability to turn up whenever they're needed thanks to convenient holes in space-time; either the worm- or plot- variety will do.
The episode 'Drive' had basically the same premise as 'Speed' - A sign that the good folks at the X-Files were starting to run out of ideas? Possibly. In the end, a racist guy's head explodes and the two agents return to Washington with broken spirits and lots of travel expenses. But then things turn weirder than usual when Mulder takes a swim in the Bermuda Triangle, cropping up in 1939, but still running into some familiar faces. After swapping punches with Spender of the SS and spit with Scully of the Secret Service in the past, he gets his butt saved in the present by a coalition of Scully and the Lone Gunmen. It turns out the thing was all just a dream, except for Scully kissing Skinner.
-----signature-----
"Life... is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for."
-Smoking Man, 'The X-Files'
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JANGOANTILLES
Registered:
Apr '05
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Date Posted:
7/1 7:20pm
Subject:
RE: In This Thread, Manion watches the X-Files
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It's all down hill from there. The show was never the same after leaving gloomy Canada for too-sunny L.A.
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Last Knight of the Acolytes of Revan
"You don't eat a barve like that all at once!"
"I'm just a simple man trying to make my way in the universe."
Only a Jedi deals in absolutes.
Mac is back!
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