Mulder's Big Adventure, aka Chris Carter presents: The Pointing-At-Each-Other Files, aka OMG ITS ALIENS

May 14, 2008 12:14 PM

Mulder's Big Adventure is an exercise in awesomeness by Metafilter members Secretariat and Cortex. Join them as they endeavor to riff on all 202 episodes of The X-Files. To refresh your memory of the series, you can watch the original episodes here. [via mefi projects]
posted by cog_nate (61 comments total)

Beware of a popup on the "original episodes" page. Small price to pay, IMHO.
posted by cog_nate at 12:17 PM on May 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Saw this last night. As I commented on the project, it's like TV Without Pity-- 90's Classics Edition. Filling an excellent niche. Also, they're funny. Which is good. If they weren't, this would be substantially less entertaining.

I thought about posting it to metafilter, but I figured I'd wait 'til there were more than two recaps. Missed my chance, I guess.

To refresh your memory of the series, you can watch the original episodes here.

That can't be legal.
posted by dersins at 12:19 PM on May 14, 2008

Fuck yeah! Thank you Secretariat and Cortex! And uh, to you cog_nate for letting me know. The X-Files is certainly ripe for riffing, what was so mysterious and terrifying when I was 13 barely holds up today. Looking forward to reliving all the guts and glory to come.
posted by yellowbinder at 12:24 PM on May 14, 2008

The truth is out there. And being riffed on.

Seriously, this is cool! Probably even better than watching the show again.
posted by never used baby shoes at 12:27 PM on May 14, 2008

X-Files goodness is so...good.

The site keeps me giggling and snickering and outright laughing in my cube, which puzzles my co-workers. A good thing!
posted by rtha at 12:29 PM on May 14, 2008

He asks her for help with a strange case.

Scully: Suicides?

Colton: Each victim was found with their liver ripped out. No cutting tools used.

Cortex: Definitely suicides.

Ribald!
posted by shmegegge at 12:29 PM on May 14, 2008

They need black silhouettes of themselves of themselves at the bottom of the stills; then it would be extra-cool!
posted by TedW at 12:32 PM on May 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Ceiling Tooms is watching you investigate!

*snort*
posted by djgh at 12:33 PM on May 14, 2008 [2 favorites]

Stronger souls than I. I'm not sure even the attendant fame and fortune of blogging could compel me to ever again watch any of the episodes post, say, about 1998.* Which is, of course, just another way of saying: Awesome!

(I know, I know: YMMV. One of my favorite episodes is "Three," which EVERYONE hates, and in which Mulder hooks up with some vampiric chica who is inexplicably a vampire even though there is no intelligible explanation for how she got that way, or how her friends who are also vampires got that way, and which -- as noted above -- everyone in the world who likes this show totally hates, but I think it's awesome and groovy and atmospheric and I don't even care that the script is held together with scotch tape and cliches. Love. It. So. You know.)
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:36 PM on May 14, 2008

So, I never actually watched the X-Files and this is kind of tempting me, now. Hunh.
posted by bettafish at 12:40 PM on May 14, 2008

Bettafish: When they were good, they were very, very good. But then in season 9, they were horrid.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:52 PM on May 14, 2008

The Websense category "sex" is filtered. Huh.
posted by emelenjr at 12:54 PM on May 14, 2008

Oh hi!

Ceiling Tooms is watching you investigate!

Credit due to Secretariat for that line. Putting these together has been a pretty good time so far.

The Websense category "sex" is filtered. Huh.

Yeah, I have no idea. We did use the word "pornography" in one writeup, but I have a hard time believing that'd do it.
posted by cortex at 1:09 PM on May 14, 2008

there are a handful of x files episodes I absolutely adore, all written by the same dude. One is the mulder body switching with the dude from Spinal Tap (or the two. I think it was a two parter), another is the one with the dad from Everybody loves Raymond asking mulder what he thinks of auto-erotic asphyxiation, the other one is the one about the robot bugs where mulder hangs up on scully cause he's trying to mack it with a hot scientist. there's another one with one of the wilson brothers where everyone tells this story about OCD vampires from their perspective and mulder keeps insisting the sherriff had buck teeth because scully thought he was cute. the last is ANOTHER episode where everyone keeps telling their own version of the same story and it involves alex trebeck being a man in black with jesse the body ventura.

every episode that is not one of those is terrible.
posted by shmegegge at 1:13 PM on May 14, 2008 [3 favorites]

I had never seen an X-files episode before, and a friend kept on going on and on about how good the show was, so I finally gave in and watched an episode with him. That episode was "Home". I was all, "Holy crap! Is he buttoning up his fly? Did he-- They didn't-- Did he just have sex with his quadruple amputee mother in the trunk of a car? Am I hallucinating right now?" And then I was hooked!

(Not really. I never watched an episode of that show again.)
posted by amarynth at 1:17 PM on May 14, 2008

there are a handful of x files episodes I absolutely adore, all written by the same dude.

That would be this guy.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:18 PM on May 14, 2008

Not that I judge anyone who enjoyed the show. That episode was just too much for me. The way the mother rolled herself under the bed like she was an auto mechanic using one of those things that auto mechanics use to roll herself under cars freaked me right the fuck out.
posted by amarynth at 1:20 PM on May 14, 2008

What is a canklebandit?
posted by ND¢ at 1:27 PM on May 14, 2008

there are a handful of x files episodes I absolutely adore, all written by the same dude. One is the mulder body switching with the dude from Spinal Tap (or the two. I think it was a two parter)

Michael McKean, yeah. And Mulder ends up (in one of the rare instances of continuity following from a crazy one-off episode) keeping the waterbed the guy installs during the two-parter. McKean also shows up near the end of the series (and apparently in the Lone Gunman spinoff) as the same character; he's got a tiny cameo in the mean time in the "defense con" episode where he flirts with "drunk" Scully, though it's not made crystal clear in the episode if he's the same guy. (Might be in the credits? Dunno.)

Anyway, he's great.

another is the one with the dad from Everybody loves Raymond asking mulder what he thinks of auto-erotic asphyxiation

Oh god yes. Peter Boyle. That was I think the first episode we watched where I said, "okay, this was a great episode. They've figured out what they're doing." It's early in season three and it's just fantastic.

the other one is the one about the robot bugs where mulder hangs up on scully cause he's trying to mack it with a hot scientist.

The hot scientest named Bambi. And the roach that crawls across the screen at one point, causing ten million viewers to crap their pants. Heh.

there's another one with one of the wilson brothers where everyone tells this story about OCD vampires from their perspective and mulder keeps insisting the sherriff had buck teeth because scully thought he was cute.

Yeah, Luke Wilson. The whole Rashomon thing in that episode was great.

the last is ANOTHER episode where everyone keeps telling their own version of the same story and it involves alex trebeck being a man in black with jesse the body ventura.

The Jose Chung episode! I can't tell you how many times in college I heard someone toss off a variation of "I didn't play all those years of Dungeons and Dragons without learning a little something about courage."

every episode that is not one of those is terrible.

Aw, not true. Some of them are, but not all of 'em.
posted by cortex at 1:28 PM on May 14, 2008

To refresh your memory of the series, you can watch the original episodes here.

That can't be legal.

As someone who once got an admin nastynote for explaining how to access an old TV show, I'm kinda curious why this is okay.
posted by hjo3 at 1:32 PM on May 14, 2008

I just want you all to know I've been trying really hard to hate this, and failing.
posted by loquacious at 1:34 PM on May 14, 2008

Needs a "supplemental butt" tag.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:35 PM on May 14, 2008

My comment on every X-Files episode:

TURN THE FUCKING LIGHTS ON.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 1:40 PM on May 14, 2008 [2 favorites]

But they have flashlights! Flashlights!
posted by cortex at 1:40 PM on May 14, 2008

ANOTHER episode where everyone keeps telling their own version of the same story and it involves alex trebeck being a man in black with jesse the body ventura.

Oh man and Charles Nelson Reilly was in it and the coffee shop is the Ovaltine Cafe in Vancouver and six of us had gone to Vancouver that weekend just for fun where we all stayed the night in one fancy hotel room six of us in two beds drinking beer and watching some Bollywood awards show on Canadian public access and then Sunday morning we drove around and stopped for breakfast at the Ovaltine Cafe because it had a funny name and instead of asking if we wanted "white or wheat" toast they asked us if we wanted "white or brown" and we had Ovaltine instead of coffee because it was the Ovaltine Cafe so how could you not and then we drove like hell back to Portland to make it back in time for the Simpsons and the X-Files AND THE FUCKING OVALTINE CAFE WAS ON THE XFILES.

I love that episode.
posted by dersins at 1:42 PM on May 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

[dons pedant hat]

Not all of the aforementioned episodes WERE all actaully written by Darin Morgan, though.

He did write the one with Peter Boyle ("Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"), and it won him an Emmy. He also did write the Jose Chung one (as well as a Jose Chung episode for MILLENNIUM) and the cockroach one ("War of the Corporophages"). He also co-wrote an episode, "Blood," about a town where people started to hallucinate that their electronic devices were telling them to kill people, and he wrote "Humbug," an episode set in a town populated by retired circus freaks. (And a couple trivia points: He also was IN two episodes, once as Eddie Van Blundht, the guy who could change the way his face was shaped to make himself look like anyone else -- he used it to get laid by disguising himself as other women's husbands -- and he also was the poor guy who was inside the rubber flukeman suit in "The Host.")

But the Luke Wilson episode was actually by Vince Gilligan, also another writer who liked humorous episodes; Gilligan also co-wrote the one with Michael McKean together with frequent collaborators John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz (the three wrote together so often that the creators of the show referred to the three collectively as "John Gilnitz").

....And yes, I do know precisely how much of a geek I am.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:43 PM on May 14, 2008 [4 favorites]

PS NO ILLEGAL DRUGS WERE CONSUMED
posted by dersins at 1:43 PM on May 14, 2008

EC, you're now officially required to comment on every single writeup.
posted by cortex at 1:48 PM on May 14, 2008

The worst? The William Gibson episodes. First Person Shooter? Oh god, oh god.
posted by birdie birdington at 1:48 PM on May 14, 2008

man, this thread is pretty great.
posted by shmegegge at 1:49 PM on May 14, 2008

He also was IN two episodes, once as Eddie Van Blundht, the guy who could change the way his face was shaped to make himself look like anyone else

"Small Potatoes."
posted by peep at 1:51 PM on May 14, 2008

Ah, memories. I used to love the X-Files; we'd get a bunch of friends together for "X-Files Night", have dinner, then watch the show. Good times.

I've read the first two so far. Great fun!
posted by mogget at 1:52 PM on May 14, 2008

Oh, and Empress, I genuflect at your temple of pedantry.
posted by mogget at 1:53 PM on May 14, 2008

amarynth writes "That episode was just too much for me. The way the mother rolled herself under the bed like she was an auto mechanic using one of those things that auto mechanics use to roll herself under cars freaked me right the fuck out."

That's about as intense as it gets. They other two in the top three are the first toombs and the one with the green bugs released from the old growth tree that need light to keep them at bay. Watching that last one can keep me up for days. Oh and the voodoo episode can be freaky at times.

However the rest of the X-Files is pretty good you just have to have the correct watching strategy. Skip all the Alien conspiracy episodes (not all the alien episodes just one ones dealing with the conspiracy) and the show is excellent.

And I liked First Person Shooter, if only for all the wallpapers it produced. Rawwr!
posted by Mitheral at 1:54 PM on May 14, 2008

One thing I can say for the series is that only once in the entire span of the show did we get stuck with two episodes in a row that were unutterably bad. Usually it'd be like "man, that episode sucked, let's watch another quick, AHHHH, MUCH BETTER". But oof did whichever those two were in a row hurt.

That I've forgotten which they were now means we'll be in for an awful surprise when we get back around to them, too. Lucky us!

And yes, "Home" was awful (everybody remembers it! I think people who never saw the episode remember it! Bad reviews of it can probably be found on long-buried spacecraft.) beyond belief (despite the cute Andy Griffith bits). And William Gibson should never have been allowed to write for the show. Ugh.
posted by cortex at 2:00 PM on May 14, 2008

Badlaa freaks me the fuck out. Just the sound of that creaky cart makes me want to tear my hair out. And then fucking Tim Burton goes and makes that dude the oompa loompas? No. Tim Burton, no.
posted by birdie birdington at 2:03 PM on May 14, 2008

Home, the Toombs episode, and the flukeman (The Host - played by Darin Morgan) episode are my top contenders for Creepiest X-Files Episodes Ever.

My other favorite (non-creepy) episodes include The Unnatural (1947 black minor league baseball player is really an alien!); The Post-Modern Prometheus (filmed in black and white! With cameos of Jerry Springer and a fake Cher!); Triangle (Mulder ends up on a British ship taken over by Nazis in 1939 in the Bermuda Triangle - features Scully in awesome clothes).

And all the ones shmegegge listed. And Humbug.
posted by rtha at 2:13 PM on May 14, 2008

Home! So THAT'S the name of the episode that freaked me the holy hell out when I was eight years old. That song they played at the end of it haunted my nights for months afterwards.

I watched the X-Files with my dad from the time it premiered, when I was five. Other childhood favorites included Homicide: Life on the Streets and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'm so well-adjusted.
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:36 PM on May 14, 2008

aargh! "Home"! I'd banished that episode from my mind. Weirdest, creepiest, grossest TV ever aired?

According to this finalist in the hardest-to-read-web-page competition, the idea for that story came from a true incident Charlie Chaplin experienced and related in his autobiography.
posted by taz at 3:46 PM on May 14, 2008

The Dreamhost mysql server behind our site seems as of the last little while to be deeply, deeply non-functional. Gah.
posted by cortex at 3:49 PM on May 14, 2008

Probably a conspiracy of some sort cough, aliens, military industrial complex. I'd sleep with the lights on tonight if I were you.
posted by taz at 3:55 PM on May 14, 2008

he already sleeps with the lights on.

powered by batteries.

always blocking me at my every move, someday my precious
posted by mrzarquon at 4:02 PM on May 14, 2008

THE TRUTH WAS UP UNTIL THE LAST HALF HOUR OR SO OUT THERE
posted by cortex at 4:07 PM on May 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Taz, I think you mean the military industrial entertainment complex (to quote Jose Chung).
posted by mogget at 4:34 PM on May 14, 2008

THE TRUTH WAS UP UNTIL THE LAST HALF HOUR OR SO OUT THERE
posted by cortex at 7:07 PM on May 14

Arghhh! That's what I get for reading the thread here first!
posted by lyam at 4:47 PM on May 14, 2008

Looks like it is good now. Oof!
posted by cortex at 5:07 PM on May 14, 2008

I just watched "Home" but it is listed as "Teliko"
posted by Jikido at 5:35 PM on May 14, 2008

I remember, right about the third X-Files episode, turning to someone and saying, "They'd better come up with something resembling a story arc eventually, because this Monster of the Week schtick can't stay around forever." Unfortunately, what we got was the alien conspiracy - convoluted instead of surprising, incomprehensible rather than mysterious, and generally unsatisfying. The "mythology" story just never made much sense to me and, despite the dire threat of alien invasion, didn't feel particularly compelling.

Although I was a regular watcher of the show up until maybe the last couple of seasons, it's not holding up so well as I rewatch episodes with someone who has never seen them before. That first season, you can feel the shoestring budget. And, yes, there was a lot of repetition - "2Shy," in particular, grated. Almost all of the religious ones centered around Christianity were annoying.

But there were some high points: "Je Souhaite", "Unusual Suspects", "Syzygy," "Pusher" and "Kitsunegari," "Folie a Deux,", "The Amazing Maleeni" and even "Kill Switch" were personal faves for me. I try to focus on those while I grind my way through the less interesting episodes.

GOODBYE. IT'S BEEN NICE WORKING WITH YOU.
posted by adipocere at 6:13 PM on May 14, 2008

Man, I was a HUGE X Files fan back in the day but I somehow never saw Jose Chung's From Outer Space.

THANK YOU INTERNET.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:22 PM on May 14, 2008

aargh! "Home"! I'd banished that episode from my mind. Weirdest, creepiest, grossest TV ever aired?

Home creeped me out big time, but the episodes that really freaked me out were the ones with evil/possessed/murderous little kids. I don't know why, but they scared me more than any mutant 100-year-old serial-killing human/tapeworm/alien hybrid vampire werewolf.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:26 PM on May 14, 2008

jose chung was such a great episode. one of those truly fabulous, shiny tv moments. and humbug was awesome, too. yes those darin morgan eps were good stuff.

i hated home. it just seemed like a weak, prurient rip-off of texas chainsaw massacre (a movie i like, a hell of a lot). but now, i see all kinds of stuff on television, pure crap that's meaner and more prurient than that home episode. so, whatever.

those tooms eps are also faves. it's been really fun seeing the actor on lost, lately. and what a delight to see callum keith rennie, aka the cylon leoben, return! to appear in the movie! woo hoo! (yeah i am a nerdy girl, love my sci-fi and horror.)

but i am a little scared. the first movie was a disappointment, and the last couple seasons of x-files were so bad, they were unwatchable. oh, i hope this film good. because... i want to believe.
posted by lapolla at 6:34 PM on May 14, 2008

What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth? --Winston Churchill, July 1952.

To this day, whenever I enter a dark, unfamiliar room, and I'm fumbling along the near-hand wall to find the light switch or lamp, I play the X-Files version of "Marco Polo," asking "Scully?" with some trepidation, and awaiting the proper response: "Mulder!"
posted by steef at 7:09 PM on May 14, 2008 [2 favorites]

Thanks for the nice words.

Having watched every episode, I would say that the later seasons are certainly a different flavor of show, but not entirely bad. I had a memory that they were unwatchable, but it turns out I am capable of watching them, and at times even enjoyed them.
posted by Secretariat at 9:05 PM on May 14, 2008

Needs a couple of robots.

Sorry, just not getting this. It's like a bad MST3K.

Now if you had some robots, popcorn, and did this as a video showing the back of your heads while you "riffed" I'd be more into it. Oh, and funny. Don't forget to bring the funny next time. That's an awful lot of text without a lot of funny (or any!). Up the funny to text ratio.

Other than that, it's genius!

P.S. Maybe try being more funny, mkay?
posted by mikhail at 10:54 PM on May 14, 2008

Ooooooooooooooooooh. That's the inner-geek in me sighing happily to see something--anything!--about the X Files on the blue.

Though, ok, I admit that fond memories of MBTV (before they changed their name and got bought out and totally jumped the shark) are preventing me from fully enjoying the Mulder's Big Adventure snark; the links to the original episodes are worth the price of admission, though.

AND there's a new movie coming out, and I don't care how bad seasons 6-9 and the first movie were, it's the X Files and I will be there on opening night and if they screen an advance I will damn well try to be there, too (it would be nice to actually get a perk out of living in LA...).

I was always a 'shipper XPhile, so my tastes in fave episodes are somewhat....broader than most. Memento Mori, for example
posted by librarylis at 12:42 AM on May 15, 2008

The Websense category "sex" is filtered.

Happens with every Cortex site. I guess he just exudes it through his pores via the intertubes. Accursed cyber-pheremones. I blame his hair.

War of the Corporophages

Coprophages. Means something completely different (and worse)

Darin Morgan
posted by Sparx at 3:06 AM on May 15, 2008

Does anyone have a link to a good explanation of the story line of x-files? I mean, something that tries to explain all the plot twists and where the story was really going? Was Mulder's sister kidnapped? By Aliens or the Govt? Was she cloned? Are the aliens invading, colonizing, or just curious? Is the cigarette smoking man a good guy or bad guy? And did it relate to deep throat and the black X guy? Seriously, I watched that show religiously for 3 years and I still don't have a clue.
posted by Vindaloo at 8:40 AM on May 15, 2008

i love the x-files with every ounce of my being.

however, by season 3 i really wish scully and mulder would have learned NOT TO SPLIT UP because it generally always meant something bad happening to scully.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 8:54 AM on May 15, 2008

Seriously. We may need to add a "splitting up is a bad idea" tag.
posted by cortex at 9:03 AM on May 15, 2008

The worst? The William Gibson episodes. First Person Shooter? Oh god, oh god.

I remember Milagro making me angry because it was so damned pretentious, and not in the fun pretentious way that Chris Carter's purple prose was usually good for. Also insanely boring.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 9:54 AM on May 15, 2008

I remember Milagro making me angry because it was so damned pretentious, and not in the fun pretentious way that Chris Carter's purple prose was usually good for. Also insanely boring.

Ooh, that reminds me. What was the episode where Mulder was being tortured on a cross-shaped table, and on his head is a metal band with sharp, thorny barbs of metal?

I almost died of cringe. I couldn't even look straight at the TV.
posted by peep at 1:09 PM on May 15, 2008