TV

Happy Anniversary Spooky & Starbuck

It was 25 years ago today the X-Files premiered. Like every TV show I really like, that usually warrants repeat viewing, I never get in on the ground floor. I always have to catch up, whether it is several episodes or multiple seasons, because I typically do not pay attention to shows until I find them listed on some TV critic’s best shows of the year lists. So I’m guessing that in 1993 I didn’t see the pilot episode when it was originally aired, I think I caught up the next year during summer reruns.

Because today is the 25th anniversary of the shows premier my Google news feed is full of retrospectives and X-Files episodes to watch. Here is a sample:

I have at one time had digital copies of all 201 episodes of the original 9 seasons, a while back I weeded it out to only the shows I like to re-visit. This narrowed it down to a mere 35 shows that come from the first 7 seasons (I’m sorry, but once it was no longer Scully and Mulder…)

Here for your viewing pleasure is Brian’s Top Ten X-Files Episodes in order of their original airing:

1 Season 2 Episode 20 Humbug
2 Season 3 Episode 4 Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose
3 Season 3 Episode 20 Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’
4 Season 4 Episode 20 Small Potatoes
5 Season 5 Episode 5 The Post-Modern Prometheus
6 Season 5 Episode 12 Bad Blood
7 Season 6 Episode 3 Triangle
8 Season 6 Episode 4/5 Dreamland & Dreamland II
9 Season 6 Episode 6 How the Ghosts Stole Christmas
10 Season 7 Episode 8 The Amazing Maleeni

Chronologically TDTVS

While searching for LOST podcasts I stumbled onto one by two women called “Lost in Order.” Anna & Wendy watched an episode and every week or so dropped a podcast on their thoughts. I can’t listen to it though, it is not their voices or the sound quality, it is in the way they are watching the show.

Not long after the sixth and last season of TDTVS came on on DVD, some genius or madman or possibly Mad Genius, using a timeline found in the Lostpedia re-cut the show in chronological order. Anna & Wendy are podcasting about the results of Mike Maloney’s masterpiece, Chronologically LOST. Mike has taken all 118 aired TV episodes and created 101, roughly forty-five minute long, chronological episodes for a total of 84 hours of LOST watching pleasure.

In a way I wished I’d found out about this a month ago before starting to re-watch the show as I think it would be interesting to see the show in linear time. Would it be more interesting than the non linear original? I’ll let you know someday, I’m a little more than halfway through downloading the torrent. It is going to take about a week to get it all because unlike current popular movies, there aren’t hundreds or thousands sharing it, but each time I’ve looked in on the progress I am connected to anywhere from six to twelve peers.

TDTVS Re-Redux

Ten years ago on the third Thursday of August (it was the 21st not the 23rd) I wrote about waiting impatiently for the fifth season of LOST to start. On this third Thursday of August we watched the first two episodes of season three, having blown through the first two season in the last 2 weeks.

We tried another of The Lost Boys podcasts a couple of weeks ago, but gave up as it just didn’t work out. As with any podcast, even if you are passionate about the subject, if the voices aren’t pleasing to your ears, you just can’t listen. It was sort of a good thing that we didn’t like this podcast as we would have caught up to them in short order anyway as they were currently just starting season two and we were already in that boat with the The West Wing Weekly podcasts.

Because the King’s English from the blokes of The Lost Boys podcast was hard to understand, I went looking for another one for us to listen to about TDTVS. I hit the Jack pot (a little LOST word play) with one called Getting LOST from a couple of dudes, Clint & Adam, who speak in ‘Murican English. Their premise is eerily similar to The Lost Boys one in that one of them has seen the show seven times before and the other is watching it for the first.

Clint and Adam started back in October of 2015, so they have already finished doing podcasts for all six seasons of the show making it perfect for our two-a-day habit. But the two Getting LOST host’s voices are also somewhat similar to each other making it hard to distinguish who is who, sort of like the Flight 815 survivors Scott and Steve who are always being confused for each other by the main cast. Given enough time I’m sure we would have eventually been able to tell them apart, but after a couple of tries at listening to them, they were not to our liking either.

I think we are just going to have give up on the LOST podcast idea as all my other searching has not turned up another show that has done all six seasons or one that is currently in production and I’m OK with this.

TDTVS Redux

Well it is happening again, we are catching up to the episode of The West Wing Weekly that Hrishi & Josh discussing. They posted 5.09: Abu El Banat last Wednesday and we have now finished 5.06: Disaster Relief. We have been watching an episode a night and they are covering an episode a week, so it was inevitable that we would. There is no way we would start over again for a third time, so we have decided to just watch one episode a week. Each new podcast episode is released on Wednesday, so we are going to watch our The West Wing TV episode on Tuesday night.

If we do that, what are we going to watch the other six nights a week? There are very few TV shows that we both enjoy and wouldn’t mind watching all over again. And it would be nice if there was a podcast for the show to listen to the following day to mirror The West Wing experience. Then, in an brilliant bit of internet serendipity, I happen on an article about Evangeline Lilly talking about being cornered into filming a nude scene on the TV show LOST. She had given an interview discussing it on a podcast called The Lost Boys. Ooh, ooh, LOST was a show we really liked back in the day.

We are going to rewatch TDTVS. Thursday night we watched Episode 1.01: The Pilot – Part 1. Friday we listened to its corresponding The Lost Boys podcast episode. Hmmm, this is not as satisfying as The West Wing Weekly podcast. The premise is cool, it is one fellow’s 1st time watching the show and the other’s 7th time, but I’m betting it is a language thing, these guys are speaking English. They are in England, so it is the King’s English and one is slightly harder to understand than the other. Both of their voices are kind of similar too, so that doesn’t help either. We have now watched the first 6 episodes of LOST and still only listened to just the one of the podcast. We should probably try at least one or two more episodes of the podcast before giving up entirely. Maybe tomorrow.

Previously on The West Wing

Just the title of this post has been sitting in the drafts folder since January 9th of this year. This not too long after Donna and I decided that maybe we should give one of our favorite TV shows a re-watch. The phrase comes from the intro of the show before it shows little snippets of past episodes to foreshadow what is coming up and to perhaps remind you of characters or events that will be featured in this show that you might have forgotten.

The phrase also perfectly fits our desire to go back to, even if fictional, a less calamitous presidential administration. We wanted a version of the goings on in The West Wing of the White House that seemed to be filled with smart caring people that selfishly wanted to serve in government to better the lives of everyone in the country, not just the top one percent.

We have been watching an episode a day, with the exception of a couple of two-part episodes we watched back to back, and are now two-thirds of the way through season 4. We are a little more than halfway through the, 155 episode, seven season run.

So, after gathering dust in the drafts folder for the last 2-1/2 months, why have I decided to flesh out the post you ask. Good question. I have been having trouble finding a book I want to read the whole way through and after my failed attempt at audio books I started to widen my passive entertainment search and opted to try some podcasts. Wow, there are as many of these things as there are books and finding one I’m interested in is actually harder than finding a book that works for me. For one here is the whole voice issue, with a book, it is my voice, which I really like1, while with a podcast not only does the subject have to be interesting, but the person(s) have to sound pleasant to me.

Sunday I found a perfect one that will keep myself (and Donna) entertained for a good while, it is called the The West Wing Weekly. Once a week the two hosts watch an episode of the TV show the West Wing and talk about it. One voice is Hrishikesh Hirway a musician and composer, and the second is Josh Molina who played the character Will Bailey on the show from 2002-2006. Because of the continued popularity of The West Wing and possibly because of Mr. Molina’s showbiz connections they will occasionally have actors from the show on as guests.

They are doing one episode per week and started doing the podcast 2 years ago. The trouble with this is that the latest show they did a podcast for, 4-17: Red Haven’s on Fire, is exactly the same episode as Donna and I watched last night2, so we are now perfectly in sync. But with the differing time tables we will be soon be long ahead of the podcast. By the time we have wrapped up watching the entire seven season run of the show the podcast will only five episodes into season five.

We have been going back through some of the earlier episodes of the podcast to listen to some of the TV show’s stars guest appearances and then binge listened to the first few of the first season’s shows. I think now we are at the point where we might just jump back to season one of the TV show, starting over, so we can watch an episode and then right afterwards listen to the relating podcast.

I Just Want To Remember How It Was

I was a big fan of the X-Files from back in the day. My interest dipped sharply in 2000 when Season 8 started without Mulder. But, I hung in sporadically because I still enjoyed the format of the mystery/monster of the week. While I didn’t care for the UFO mythology shows anymore, they had come completely nonsensical by then, it was still better than TV than any “reality show” clogging the airways. Of the 19 shows in season 9, I probably watched all of 5. Including the tiresome show finale which really soured me on the franchise.

So needless to say, I wasn’t too thrilled when they dragged the show out of retirement in 2016 for a 6 show special event miniseries. And I was not disappointed, it was pretty bad, expect for maybe one show, “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster” and that was merely alright.

April 2017 rolls around and Fox decides that they can milk the dead cow once more and produce 10 episodes for an eleventh season in early 2018. So, like a moth to a flame on January 3rd I tuned into Fox to watch the first new episode. Can you say hot mess? The Cigarette Smoking man was still alive? Wasn’t he killed in a helicopter rocket attack back at the end of season 9? I didn’t even make it to the series title sequence, I turned it off.

I recorded the show anyway figuring I’d gather all ten shows and maybe binge watch them, so once I got going I would get into them. After about 3 weeks, there was nothing else to watch, so I tried to re-watch the first show again. This time I got past the intro and maybe 10 more minutes in before giving up in disgust.

When I learned the fourth week’s episode had been written by Darin Morgan, I decided that I was going to watch that particular show. Mr. Morgan has written 5 other X-Files episodes, 2 of which are among my top 5 favorites (Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose and Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’), 2 are in the top 20 (Humbug and War of the Coprophages) and the 5th was the only barely watchable episode from season 10 (Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster.)

Well, unfortunately, The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat was a lot more like the last one Mr. Morgan wrote and not the other four. Even though there are 6 more episodes left in this season, this is the last one I am going to bother to watch.

At the end, Scully and Mulder are sitting together on a couch (in his place I guess) and they are about to dig into a batch of Goop-O ABC (think Jell-O 123) that Scully remembers fondly from her childhood. She had molded it in Mulder’s fake Sasquatch footprint maker because that was all she could find. As Scully scoops up a spoonful and brings it towards her mouth, she pauses, shakes her head, puts the spoon down and says, “I just want to remember how it was. I just want to remember how it all was.” Fade to black.

A pitch perfect ending for me to go out on. And apparently for the actress who plays Agent Dana Scully, Gillian Anderson, to go out on too, because at the very end of last year she announced flat out that she was through playing the character.

If Fox wants a season 12 of The X-Files it will have to be without the two of us.