X-files: Endgame 4-28
 

Better than the last couple of weeks. I watched the whole episode, so if you judge on that alone it was the best episode of the year. :)

But what a crappy teaser for next week "Who killed dogget's son?" Who cares. They spoke as if thats the driving question behind the whole series. It's probably the best way to wrap up the entire dogget character in one episode, but i hope they dont' ignore the mulder/william plot completely next week.

I really really really don't want to believe that was William.
If it really is....that is so sad!!!!!!!!!!!

This was one of THE WORST episodes of the X-Files ever made..but I guess it doesn't do much good to bitch about it since it's ending.

What the hell is "Endgame"? This episode was called 'William'

Right, but this storyline is being called "endgame" ...The teasers for the past two weeks have been calling it that.

Ummm, half brothers do not have identical DNA. This is why you've never heard of "identical half brothers". I guess O.J.'s defense team was right, the FBI crime lab does have its head up its a$$. They need to hire Greg from CSI, he'd get things right.

Glad Scully decided the best way to keep her child safe was to give him away to perfect strangers. Great plan!

Yeah, the DNA thing rubbed me the wrong way too. The only way I could make sense of it is if they did a really short test using this gel-like material. That's what we used in 9th grade biology . . . of course I'd hope the FBI would have better methods than that.

We're in the homestretch of the series finale of the X-Files, and we get an episode directed by David Duchovny.

Spoilers below:

The story was bordering of some whacked out science that could make CSI blush. The DNA angle didn't sit well with me at all.

Having Miller turn out to be Jeffrey Spender be the burnt out from inside out, and sharing Mulder's exact DNA (since he and Mulder share the same father - Cigarette Smoking Man), and making fools out of the FBI was stretching a wee bit too thin.

At least Scully knew Mulder well enough not to buy into the DNA nonsense. Plus the eyes didn't look anything like Mulder's.

For the life of me, I couldn't understand why when Reyes and Doggett broke the "news" to Scully that one of them wasn't watching Miller in Scully apartment while both of them had to be in a closed room to break the news to Scully. That's just sloppy writing.

Are we to accept that there are clones of Scully's baby, William, being raised as children from adoption agencies? Or that Miller's injection of Magnetite will thwart the alien invasion? Again, disappointed in the writing.

I'm hoping Doggett's episode next week will somehow tie into the rest of the mythology arc.

3 more episodes to go (4 hours - series ending is a 2 hour show).

Re: X-files: Endgame 4-28
 

This coming episode is tied into the mythology story arc from the remainder of the series. I would expect this to somehow link into wrapping everything up. After the return of Spender (and the obvious impending return of Mulder), I'm beginning to wonder who we can expect to see before the show ends.... Krycek? Marita Covarrubias? C.G.B. Spender (the Cigarette-Smoking Man)? Diana Fowley? Shannon McMahon? If Agent Spender was still alive, can we be sure ANYONE is really dead? Was that Gibson Praise I saw in the teaser too? Bring him back!!!!

I won't go that far, considering some of the ass-tacular episodes we've had in the last couple of years, but it was a definite yawner. The writing was really weak, and everything proceeded in an annoyingly predictable manner, with the characters only doing things to move the plot in the forced direction it was going.

I keep hoping that they'll get their act together for the final episodes and give us some good writing/stories, but with 4 hours left, we're still a long way away from any level of quality. Next week's teaser didn't look too promising either.

das

*Gasp* das watched a teaser?

So it isn't so!

I am keeping my expectations low for the remainder of this show, who knows maybe they will really tie it all up without coming off as hokey and contrived. I'm not holding my breath though. This show has seriously spun out of control, last weeks episode was way more entertaining and moving, IMO.

I end up watching teasers for shows I don't care about, this being one of them, since despite policies to the contrary, it's near impossible to avoid them on this forum. With a show like <I>The X-Files</I>, I will be exposed to the promo at least 100 times in the next 7 days, and invariably I'll see it anyway. And as the show has become a bunch of contrived nonsense, I just roll with it. Other shows are a different story, however.

das

And we're supposed to keep up with which shows you give a damn_damn about? LOL! :)

Hey, you brought it up. :) I wasn't complaining.

das

I'm just chuckling at the inconsistency. Heh heh.

lighting questions
 

don't know if this has been answered before, but does the lighting of the show bother anyone? like the interrogation scene in the room. there was no lights one, just whatever lights that came in from the outside? most indoor scenes on this series is like that. what's up? is it just for mood?

They may as well have renamed the last season of X-files to "William that bastard alien baby storyline that sucks"

Re: lighting questions
 

In this episode during the scene to which you are referring, Doggett mentions to Scully that the room is dark because Miller wouldn't speak to anyone with the lights on becuase of his physical deformities. Also this allowed the viewer to only see profiles of Miller - it seemed at times that they deliberately gave us shots that made him look like Mulder.

The interior lighting throughout the rest of the show IS usually darker in general though. I seem to recall reading somewhere that either Rob Bowman or Chris Carter said they LOVED the effect of seeing flashlight beams cut through the darkness. Hence, you will find TONS of interior shots in almost complete darkness with flashlights. Also if you think about it, darkness creates more suspense that a brightly lit white room. :)

Are we actually going to get some answers to all that stuff from the first 5 or 6 seasons?
Like:
<ul><li>the black oil
<li>the shapeshifting bounty hunters
<li>the alien/human hybrids
<li>Scully's and others' abductions
<li>the neck implant and subsequent cancer
<li>Mulder's father's involvement in it all
<li>the collection of tissue samples from all humans, kept in a big underground vault
<li>something about smallpox and bees
</ul>

And that's just off the top of my head. A lot of stuff has fallen by the wayside.

Re: lighting questions
 

I think Bill Roe moved the key light in the scene outside the examination room at Quantico. Doggett was talking to Scully and the right side of his face (his right, not the viewers) was illuminated, while the left side was not. We then cut to a shot of Doggett's profile with Reyes in the background. Except, this time, the previously illuminated cheek of Doggett was substantially darker...

I agree that the show's lighting has significantly declined in quality since the show's first three or four years. Aside from being relevant for many of the situations at hand, early years relied on the use of shadow as a plot device (Soft Light) and strong contrast between light and dark to reinforce the notion of the agents as seekers of the hidden (the super bright flashlights, best used in Apocrypha). Later years aped this style, but often pointlessly so: you'd think all of America was conserving electricity by shutting off lights whenever possible, if you believed the show, with its dark hospitals, police stations, homes, office buildings, etc.

All of that has been answered already. You have to pay attention to the conspiracy episodes.

Thanks! I was thinking - wait a minute, I know the answers to all that already! :) Most of these subjects were wrapped up by the time the Syndicate was obliterated.

What we don't know is how Gibson Praise fits into everything and this new stuff that Spender brought up this week (another re-colonization attempt)... along with how William ties into everything (e.g. the UFO that took off from Canada in the February two-parter), super-soldiers and the like. Still plenty to unravel in four hours and into the next movie! ;)

Re: Re: lighting questions
 

:)
I usually have enjoyed the dark lighting on the Xifiles, but at some points last night it bugged me a bit. I guess I am particularly thinking of when Scully ran into William's room when Spender was at his crib. She didn't turn the lights on? :hscratch: Normal people would turn the lights on right away to see what the hell some strange man is doing to their baby.

Re: Re: X-files: Endgame 4-28
 

I believe so.