The X-Files

Love for the franchise and its characters likely will blunt the momentary ridiculousness for longtime fans (it did for this one), while newcomers should hang in for the second and third hours--because that’s when the series finds its bizarre rhythm.

Those expecting a return to form should not be disappointed: Both for good and ill, The X-Files is back, and in essentially the original packaging.

It’s looser--and smarter--and it could just make believers out of those who never joined the conversation in the first place.

“My Struggle” is, at best, clunky.... Anyone who loved the original has much better news coming on Monday, when the second of the six new episodes airs.... Better still is Episode 3.

Other than a few missteps here and ther --Why would someone who claims to have been abducted by aliens several times live in the middle of nowhere away from people and protection?--the reboot feels like Linus’ blanket, warm and comforting. Duchovny and Anderson slip easily back into the give-and-take which helped make the original series so darn entertaining.

In the opener, “My Struggle,” Carter plays to fan expectations on all fronts as he suggests only the most sinister conspiracy ever, one that manages to shake the typically unflappable Mulder and could up-end the premise of the entire series. It’s just that juicy.... [The second episode is] a perfectly serviceable monster-of-the-week tale. It also features some dopey reveries about Scully and Mulder’s lost son William.

Above-average special effects and the presence of two old and beloved friends--you know who!--more than make up for an eye-rolling new premise.

Duchovny and Anderson both seem more relaxed, finally rediscovering their old zip-zap chemistry. Guest stars Kumail Nanjiani and Rhys Darby are delightful. It’s scary, then funny, then existential, then shockingly moving.

It starts well enough, with effects-filled flashbacks to Roswell 1947 and a call from Assistant Director Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) that brings the old team back together--Scully in her scrubs helping put ears on earless children, and Mulder an Internet-perusing recluse who dresses himself from the Travis Bickle Catalog for Men. But it collapses into poorly motivated, out-of-nowhere speechifying, accompanied by stock footage of old puzzling phenomena. Fortunately the other two episodes push the right buttons.

The first episode is called “My Struggle,” which aptly describes the experience of sitting through it. It lumbers. It plods. The actors chew sawdusty mouthfuls of expository dialogue.... Thankfully, the second episode shakes the dourness and gives Mulder and Scully more room to breathe. But it’s the third--a comic palate-cleanser in the “monster of the week” vein--that finally recreates the show’s oddball delights.

This first hour is all about reinvention. It's a rather clunky attempt to remake the 1993-2002 vehicle in a manner that will please loyal fans and new viewers. The second episode, with guest star Doug Savant ("Desperate Housewives"), pushes this redesigned vehicle into a higher gear.... Now this is the X-Files we fondly remember. Can they push this to yet a higher gear? Why, yes, they can, and they do with the third episode.

Don’t be discouraged by the utter incoherence of the first hour: The spirit of the show is still here, waiting to be drawn out, and each installment is better than the last.

If the first episode left me disappointed, the next two made me hope that this six-episode experiment works well enough to justify more. They’re that good.

After a skittery and slightly tedious start, which is heavy on Carter’s need to keep infusing Mulder and Scully’s world with a convoluted master theory, The X-Files settles in and starts to relocate some of its creepy vibe and playfulness.

[Chris Carter has] brought back and distilled the show into six hours of pure X-Files, good and bad. Duchovny and Anderson are entertaining and reliably classic (if unsurprising), conspiracies are discussed in clandestine secrecy (if confusingly), flashbacks reveal exciting truths (that feel more important to the characters than maybe to you), and Mulder’s extraterrestrial friends feel tantalizingly closer than ever (and then they aren’t, again).

Seeing Mulder and Scully back together is enough to maintain interest, even if The X-Files starts diving into political themes that are a little unnerving.

By episode two, Mulder and Scully are, jarringly, back on the job and once again investigating an X-Files case that may or may not involve alien-human hybrids.... [The third episode is] the best of the first three episodes but also the weirdest.

After the catastrophe of the first episode come two self-contained installments, each improving on the one that came before.... [The second episode is] less stilted than the first episode, but still weighed down by extraterrestrial baggage. The third episode, not coincidentally the one in which the show rediscovers its dry sense of humor, finally gets on track.

After a sluggish start in the opener, which dived too deeply into the murky swamp of alien-human conspiracy.... Things pick up the next night with spooky-icky generic manipulation. Now, at the midpoint: "Mulder & Scully Meets the Were-Monster," by Emmy winner Darin Morgan at his whimsical best. [1-14 Feb 2016, p.19]

The [first] episode is stilted and odd, the plot not engaging, and no one looks particularly excited to be there. So much time is spent on exposition and reminders of the past that it's groan-worthy. The following two entries are episodic, monster-of-the-week affairs and they reminded me how good The X-Files could be.

The new run of The X-Files may well, in time, encompass some more up-to-date conspiracies. If so, they’ll be welcome. Nobody is likely to grieve long over the absence of the latest on Roswell and invading aliens from space.

At a minimum, wait until Monday when the series airs a second episode that's a marginal improvement on Sunday’s dispiriting premiere.... Things do get better in Monday’s episode, which dumps the mythology for stand-alone horror, and with next week’s comic outing as the series continues its tradition of mixing in the three forms. But “better” is not “good”--and nothing shakes the depressing sense that time has passed the series and the characters by.

The three episodes represent what was good and maybe not so good about the original series. They also remind us that, somehow, even when Carter and company went off the rails, The X-Files was usually worth watching.

The first episode, titled "My Struggle" (the English translation of Hitler's manifesto, "Mein Kampf," which seems strange) starts off well enough. But then things go haywire.... The second episode, directed and written by X-Files veteran James Wong, is a welcome step up from the first. And the third (only three were made available for screening), is a comic horror gem.

Duchovny and Anderson slip easily into their old roles. But character chemistry and nostalgia are not enough to carry a new season, even (or especially) such a short one.

They [Duchovny and Anderson] slip back into their roles with a gratifying conviction, if not quite enough to make you forget their recent prominence in Californication or The Fall or Aquarius or Hannibal.... The new X-Files hour is fine for what it is, but it lacks the kick of minty-freshness, in favor of the musty tang of mythology.

Chris Carter seems to be creatively bankrupt at this point, with Episode 3 screaming out a vote of no confidence. For a while at least--early in Episode 1--it was kind of nice to see Scully tell Mulder, “I’m always happy to see you.” And for him to reply in turn, “And I’m always happy to have a reason.” But then the story went on, straining, lurching and tripping before falling flat on its face.

The result is a clunky hour of bad one-liners and exposition.... The narrative tightens up in Episode 2, at least, as the series settles into a Monster-of-the-Week format. That allows Duchovny and Anderson to play to their respective strengths, but it also feels like the show is marking time.

The look of the new X-Files may be familiar, but as a whole, it feels rote and unintentionally dreary.

The writing is alarmingly clunky, less a coherent story than a pastiche of beloved catchphrases, iconic images, and exposition dumps, as well as blatantly gif-ready moments.

Mulder’s suspiciousness feels, now, like a dull stating of something close to conventional wisdom, and the show’s mysteries lack the spark they once had. The great success of The X-Files’s paranoid vision may be that its popularity made a series revival feel, ultimately, behind the times.

A well-meaning but deeply flawed exercise in nostalgia.

What we’re left with is a very underwhelming hour that will force even diehard fans (and yes, I was one of them) to consider whether pushing onward is really worth the time.