"I fast-forward through the cockroach episode & I don't like 'Humbug'."
December 2, 2014 9:54 AM   Subscribe

 
Ha. I just watched Jose Chung as part of an X-Files rewatch, so this will be interesting.

Humbug and the cockroach one are of course amazing.
posted by Artw at 10:01 AM on December 2, 2014


(If you have not seen Jose Chung's From Outer Space for some inexplicable reason just go straight to Netflix, pull up season 3 and do so immediately.)
posted by Artw at 10:02 AM on December 2, 2014 [6 favorites]


JCFOS deconstructs the entire point behind the series so well that it almost feels silly to keep watching.

Which is to say its amazing.
posted by The Whelk at 10:06 AM on December 2, 2014 [3 favorites]


(If you have not seen Jose Chung's From Outer Space for some inexplicable reason just go straight to Netflix, pull up season 3 and do so immediately.)

*cough*
posted by alby at 10:11 AM on December 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


Clyde Bruckman knew how this podcast would end.
posted by Auden at 10:12 AM on December 2, 2014 [6 favorites]


I finally caught up to X-Files Files over the weekend. Clyde Bruckman's really holds up. In the podcast, you can really see how much that episode impacted Kumail's life. The line "What was it about her life? Was it one specific moment where she suddenly said, "I know... dolls." Or was it a whole series of things?" gets repeated a lot, both in this podcast episode and the one before it where he chats with Steve Asbell.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:15 AM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


"Doctor Bambi?"
posted by entropicamericana at 10:15 AM on December 2, 2014 [3 favorites]


SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

Back when this and Millennium were on, my friends and I actually had a Darin Morgan phone alert tree thing, whereby if one of us discovered that an episode he wrote was going to be on either show that week, we had to call the others and make sure they also knew so they could see it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:17 AM on December 2, 2014 [6 favorites]


The Stupendous Yappi from Clyde Bruckman's final repose appears again in Jose Chung as the presenter of the horseshit alien autopsy video, which is just perfect.

My one critisism of the episide might be that it's too specific to mid-90s Forteana and some of the stuff referenced is going to fly over your head if you're not familiar with that... But hey, you're watching an X-Files episide in 2014.
posted by Artw at 10:24 AM on December 2, 2014 [6 favorites]


And speaking of Millennium - one of his two episodes for that, Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me, is also absolutely worth watching.

It also seems to nail the Darin Morgan aesthetic perfectly - what it's about is, is these four demons who've been living on earth for eons now, and have a regular gig where they all meet up at this coffee shop once a month or something and hang out, under the guise of old men. And in this particular episode, they all start swapping stories, and in each of those stories they find they've all run into Frank Black at some point.

And in one of these stories, Frank actually calls the demon out for what he is, but not by accusing them all "begone foul beast" or whatever - he just sees the demon lurking at a crime scene, and gives him a "I've figured out what you are" look, but then says, "...you must be so lonely."

That NAILS Darin Morgan right there - his episodes are all unbelievably funny, but then he turns around and gets really heartbreaking and poignant on you.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:25 AM on December 2, 2014 [6 favorites]


(If you have not seen Jose Chung's From Outer Space for some inexplicable reason just go straight to Netflix, pull up season 3 and do so immediately.)

Coincidentally, it's the next episode in my rewatch, and I've been putting it off for some weird reason. Like I don't want to watch it unless I'm in the perfect mood. I haven't actually seen it since it aired, and all I really recall is "sweet potato pie" and "THIS IS NOT HAPPENING."
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:26 AM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


Millenium appears to be a bit harder to watch by, um, conventional means.
posted by Artw at 10:27 AM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


An unproduced Darin Morgan script for the Kolchak: The Night Stalker reboot is available online [PDF].
posted by alby at 10:28 AM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


This is also a good time to remind everyone of the great webcomic Monster of the Week, and its Jose Chung strip.

(Edit: Or it would have been, if it hadn't been posted RIGHT IN THE POST ITSELF argh)
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:29 AM on December 2, 2014


Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose is my favorite Darin Morgan for the reason Artw mentioned - Jose Chung is too specifically bound to the series and the time to be quite as immortal. But everything he wrote (or seriously edited) is at least interesting.
posted by tavella at 10:44 AM on December 2, 2014


Until I rewatched CBFR, I had completely forgotten the grisly origin story of Scully's dog, Queequeg.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:45 AM on December 2, 2014 [4 favorites]


I guess, for the most part, Fringe avoided being all Slendermans and Benghazi.
posted by Artw at 11:03 AM on December 2, 2014


(What are the Men in Black and Abduction narratives of today? I've a horribly feeling it's all just been rolled into boring Tea Party nonsense.)
posted by Artw at 11:07 AM on December 2, 2014


I think there are probably more survivalist/pandemic/apocalypse delusions than there were twenty years ago. But alien abduction and government agent narratives haven't really disappeared.
posted by painquale at 11:22 AM on December 2, 2014


Actually, the alien plastics delusion is pretty new. It'd make for a good X-Files episode.
posted by painquale at 11:29 AM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


I like answers to the "do you hate Fox Mulder?" question.
posted by Artw at 11:33 AM on December 2, 2014


Well I love Small Potatoes, its excellent. The bit with the gun and mirror, the "where do I live" bit. Its silly, but good silly.

Also, count me as a fan of Morgan. In one of the episodes, Mulder and Scully stop at a newsstand, and one of the magazines has a headline like: "Where the hell is Darin Morgan."
posted by marienbad at 11:52 AM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


I love the cockroach episode. X-Files very rarely managed to really nail humor very well but I think that was probably the pinnacle.
posted by Wolfdog at 11:55 AM on December 2, 2014


I haven't seen his Millennium episodes since around when they originally aired, because they took forever in releasing the series on DVD. Looks like they finally got around to it ten years after the fact. I'll have to get on that.

Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense was (hilariously) bashing Scientology before it was cool.
posted by neckro23 at 12:18 PM on December 2, 2014


I looked up Morgan on IMDB and I find it odd that he's done such little writing since the 90s. That's just wrong. I now wish to create an alternative universe where Morgan and Ben Edlund get to redo all the atrocities committed by Orci/Kurtzman.
posted by Ber at 12:40 PM on December 2, 2014 [5 favorites]


Darin was most recently writing for BBCA's "Intruders", which was run by Glen Morgan and has that great X-Files feel. I loved it. Sadly, I don't think the numbers were great so I don't know if there will be more episodes coming down the pike.
posted by OolooKitty at 12:47 PM on December 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


He says he doesn't think the episides he wrote for the X-Files would be made today. I suspect the current network television enviroment doesn't favour him - I'd love to see him get to cut lose on something like Gilligan did on Breaking Bad, but that may not be his style.
posted by Artw at 12:57 PM on December 2, 2014


Huh. He says he had nothing much to do with Blood, his first story credit - another one I liked.
posted by Artw at 1:31 PM on December 2, 2014


I'd be hard pressed whether The Unnatural or First Person Shooter is my most hated x files ep.

It's a very tough competition
posted by Ferreous at 1:51 PM on December 2, 2014


I've watched the series when it aired over here in Belgium 25 years ago and decided to rewatch it during the sleepless nights when my first daughter was born (that's seven years ago). I think I only remember a fourth of all of it, even after reading the synopses. So I'm glad to say I will have to go through it all again a third time in my life, and that honestly fills me with immense joy.

(Which is not to say there weren't some big stinkers: First Person Shooter was such a one indeed. Thanks for reminding me of thàt, Ferreous).
posted by Captain Fetid at 2:04 PM on December 2, 2014


I feel like the french must have a term for sharing the misery that is awareness of "First Person Shooter"
posted by Ferreous at 2:08 PM on December 2, 2014


It contains the most William Gibson character name of all time, so there's that.

(I am encountering a lot of stinkers along the way. Big chunks of the Mythos stuff in Season 2, the appalling quasi-Native American new age stuff at the end of Season 2/beginning of Season 3, a run of multiple episodes where the killer is striking at the living from beyond the grave that just gets silly, the vampire one, the list goes on...)
posted by Artw at 2:18 PM on December 2, 2014


(An early Mark Sheppard displaying his trademark faliure to be convincingly British despite being British)
posted by Artw at 2:20 PM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


(An early Mark Sheppard displaying his trademark faliure to be convincingly British despite being British)

Ha, quite. I recall that episode also featuring an old English flame of Mulder's, which always struck me as equally implausible, though I get that they were probably still nailing down the characterizations at that point.
posted by AndrewInDC at 3:02 PM on December 2, 2014


I quite liked Syzygy, where Mulder says "horn-ed beast" a lot and a detective repeatedly tries to get it on with him to Scully's visible exasperation.
posted by Artw at 3:10 PM on December 2, 2014


Oh god, the one where a jaguar spirit makes cats go mad and kill people. That's like something from a meme generator - First Person Shooter is pretty tame by comparison.
posted by Artw at 3:26 PM on December 2, 2014


I find it odd that he's done such little writing since the 90s.

A lot of writers have a lot more writing experience than official credits.

Big chunks of the Mythos stuff in Season 2

It's funny, in the 90s when the show was in its original run, you THRILLED for the myth-arc episodes and kind of didn't care about the monster of the week episodes. On rewatching a few years ago, honestly my favorite episodes are all one-off episodes, and none of the serialized stuff is all that compelling anymore.
posted by Sara C. at 4:03 PM on December 2, 2014


First Person Shooter is pretty tame by comparison.

Fun fact: every single TV series that had any part of its run from 1990-2010 had an episode titled "First Person Shooter". Apparently it was some kind of obscure WGA bylaw.
posted by Sara C. at 4:05 PM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


Well I love Small Potatoes, its excellent. The bit with the gun and mirror, the "where do I live" bit. Its silly, but good silly.

See, technically Darin didn't write that, he was just acting in it (he played Eddie Van Blundht). But I have always suspected that he did some ghost writing for that episode.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:12 PM on December 2, 2014


honestly my favorite episodes are all one-off episodes, and none of the serialized stuff is all that compelling anymore.

A while back, we noticed the X-Files was on Netflix and my SO had NEVER SEEN IT so I made a watch list of about 18 Episodes I thought where the best, almost all monster of the week stuff or stuff that needed very little set-up and when you see a heavily pruned "just the good parts" edit of the show like that it comes off as this completely revolutionary series of home runs.

Then I tried to watch a myth arc episode at random oh dear lord I suddenly remembered why I didn't include those.
posted by The Whelk at 4:19 PM on December 2, 2014


I didn't realize that Eddie Van Blundht was played by Darin.

There were at least two times that a Mulder impersonator tried to get it on with Scully (the other I can think of being Michael McKean in "Dreamland"). It's a wonder she could ever take their eventual relationship seriously.
posted by AndrewInDC at 4:23 PM on December 2, 2014


Let's not forget Flukeman.
posted by Artw at 4:30 PM on December 2, 2014


The worst ones are the ones where Mulder and Scully show up, observe some weird shit go down, get a vague idea what's going on, but then completely fail to stop it or save the majority of the victims.

The X-Files must be full of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯s.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:07 PM on December 2, 2014


Well because they more or less have to hit the reset button each time, and they can't like ..extrapolate out from the cases or have anything conclusively proven, the plots tended to bend over backward to make them resolve without any effect on anything.
posted by The Whelk at 5:09 PM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


I also think it's sort of a 90s TV reaction to the earlier convention that, in a procedural, every episode will end with Our Hero protagonists solving the case and saving the girl. The 90s in TV drama was all about moral ambiguity, grey areas, and not always getting to be the good guy on the white horse.
posted by Sara C. at 5:22 PM on December 2, 2014


I like the ones that let Scully be right about something. I also like that she is constantly exasperated because, my god, wouldn't you be?
posted by Artw at 5:29 PM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


Both Jose Chung's From Outer Space and Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose are of course immortal classics, but I give a slight edge to Clyde Bruckman because it contains the two greatest bits of dialogue in the whole series:
MULDER: Mister Bruckman, this murderer has already committed four homicides.
CLYDE BRUCKMAN: And he'll commit more whether I help you or not.
MULDER: How can you be so sure?
CLYDE BRUCKMAN: How can I see the future if it didn't already exist?
MULDER: Then if the future is written, then why bother to do anything?
CLYDE BRUCKMAN: Now you're catching on.
and
PUPPET: So there's something I've been wanting to ask you for some time now. You've seen the things I do in the past as well as in the future.
CLYDE BRUCKMAN: They're terrible things.
PUPPET: I know they are. So, tell me, please, why have I done them?
CLYDE BRUCKMAN: Don't you understand yet, son? Don't you get it? You do the things you do because you're a homicidal maniac.
PUPPET: That... that does explain a lot, doesn't it?
posted by DaDaDaDave at 5:36 PM on December 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


The problem also is scully is literally wrong 24/7 in the show. Like yeah "science" I get it, but in the universe of this show you have seen a man who can crawl through heat vents and hibernate for decades, but every week you're incredulous that someone might be psychic or something?

At least until the last season, then she's the more relaxed mulder theories.
posted by Ferreous at 6:26 PM on December 2, 2014


Of course Mulder's first pass at an explanation in any given episode is whatever random horseshit he's been reading about in Fortean Times that week , recited deadpan like he's human wikipedia. When the writer isn't asleep at the wheel that turns out to be wrong as well.
posted by Artw at 6:38 PM on December 2, 2014


Aw, thanks for finding this. That guy wrote some of the TV that lodged itself deepest in my preteen brain.

I could not possibly choose between Jose Chung and Clyde Bruckman, except that Jose Chung was so much farther over my head when I watched it as a kid, and I appreciate it so much more now. I tend to only rewatch the funnier ones, but I think I'm overdue to revisit CBFR.

(But wow, the number JCFOS can do on the mind of an eleven year old. The awesome, baffled number.)
posted by jameaterblues at 6:46 PM on December 2, 2014


Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose has some extremely funny moments.
posted by crashlanding at 7:35 PM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


jeez, David Nutter directed both "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" and Game of Throne's"The Rains of Castamere" episode (with its infamous Red Wedding scene).
posted by Auden at 8:22 PM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


A while back, we noticed the X-Files was on Netflix and my SO had NEVER SEEN IT so I made a watch list of about 18 Episodes I thought where the best, almost all monster of the week stuff or stuff that needed very little set-up and when you see a heavily pruned "just the good parts" edit of the show like that it comes off as this completely revolutionary series of home runs.

Then I tried to watch a myth arc episode at random oh dear lord I suddenly remembered why I didn't include those.
i imagine most serial tv is that way. you can't simply reconstitute a season's (or decade's!) worth of momentum in your head; dipping into an out-of-sequence episode of a heavily serial show means losing most of its actual narrative content. (i've long suspected that Lost will age very very poorly, not just because so much about it was amateurish and witless but because that degree of seriality makes casual revisiting irritating.)

google 'secret sun x-files mythology' for a strong argument that the show's 'mytharc' is much more worthwhile than it seems, btw.
posted by waxbanks at 8:23 PM on December 2, 2014


Both Jose Chung's From Outer Space and Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose are of course immortal classics, but I give a slight edge to Clyde Bruckman because it contains the two greatest bits of dialogue in the whole series...

eh yeah no. This is the greatest bit of dialogue in the series:

Clyde Bruckman: You know, there are worse ways to go, but I can't think of a more undignified way than autoerotic asphyxiation.

Mulder: Why are you telling me that?

Clyde Bruckman: Look, forget I mentioned it. It's none of my business.

(... just looking at all the fantastic dialogue for this episode on IMDB makes me appreciate again the genius and the craft of this screenplay. One of the best written TV episodes of all time. Off to re-watch it now)
posted by Auden at 10:22 PM on December 2, 2014 [5 favorites]


One of the best written TV episodes of all time.

And that's why it won an Emmy!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:40 AM on December 3, 2014


I just watched the lake monster one and I loved how damn emo Mulder got that the monster was merely a massive man-eating crocodile.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:56 AM on December 3, 2014 [2 favorites]


I just watched Avatar, the one directly after Jose Chung, and man is that a step down in quality.
posted by Artw at 6:33 AM on December 3, 2014


Listening randomly to some of the other episodes and they're pretty enjoyable, so I might go through the whole thing. And there's more Darin Morgan to come!
posted by Artw at 5:20 PM on December 3, 2014


Now I am wondering if I should give Silicon Valley a shot.
posted by Artw at 5:21 PM on December 3, 2014


I was turned off Silicon Valley because if you don't even bother putting women on the poster, I'm not going to bother with your show. Though they at least were better than Betas where the lone women was in the back, draped adoringly over a mans shoulder.
posted by tavella at 8:04 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Kumail Nanjiani is the only thing that makes Silicon Valley even barely watchable.

I'd recommend just dialing into a bunch of his standup or other non-awful work.
posted by Sara C. at 9:00 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


He tends to be very funny on Harmontown when he's on.
posted by painquale at 3:07 PM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Just listened to Harmon on the show doing Conduit.
posted by Artw at 7:05 PM on December 4, 2014


« Older "Would you want your town policed by these men?"   |   The only certain fact is that he "disappeared" in... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments