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X-Files Series Finale - 5/19/02 (1 Viewer)

Rex Bachmann

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Ryan Spaight wrote:
I have no problem with your scenario ( though I've never seen the movie, by the way, so there's an automatic gap for me).
However, the statement quoted here is contradictory. A "suggestion" is by definition ambiguous, since it can be taken more than one way, as opposed to an out-and-out declaration. As I remember that episode, it was clear that they had slept together in the literal sense. Whether anything else happened before the sleeping began was anything but clear (left deliberately so, no doubt). The sight of Scully adjusting her clothes and fixing her make-up in the mirror is just that: "suggestion". (And it's not as if either of them had been shown lying in bed smoking a cigarette, as in the old days!)
 

DonWinzen

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My wife and I hadn't watched X-Files in awhile but when we found out that they off'd the Lone Gunmen, we were both royally po'd. With some characters, you NEVER kill them off because it alienates the audience. If I had known prior to the series finale, we may not have watched it.
 

Ryan Spaight

Supporting Actor
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Ryan, stop it. You're making the show make sense. How dare you
Ack! I don't think that *anyone* could do that.
Seriously, though, if you've seen enough episodes and make a few assumptions, the "mythology" does hang together, more or less. It'll never "make sense" from any sort of scientific point of view, but it's more internally consistent than many people give it credit for. Not perfect by any stretch, but not bad for nine years of making it up as you go along.
Ryan
 

Rex Bachmann

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Andres Munoz wrote:
Yes, and that's part of its appeal, no?
For all those discontented with the "finale":
__________________________________________________ _____________


Updated 3:13pm ET on 21-May-2002
9:00am ET, 19-May-02
"Spotnitz Says More X-Files To Tell"
The X-Files executive producer Frank Spotnitz told SCI FI Wire that even though the series ended its run last night with "The Truth," all has not yet been answered. "There are things we had to take out," Spotnitz said in an interview. "We were like, 'We hate to take this out, because if we do this, then we will end the series not having explained this [whole] thing.' But you've got to do what you've got to do, [and] we had to make room for commercials," he explained. "I would expect that it will be in the DVD." [emphasis mine]
Spotnitz added, ". . . . . this episode is a finale, a culmination of nine years. We really wanted to come up with a story that would allow us to draw together into a narrative everything that's happened."
__________________________________________________ _____________
 

Nico

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Could any of you guys tell me how the lone gunmen die? Who killed them? In what episode?

Nico
 

Mike St.Louis

Supporting Actor
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Sep 22, 1999
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The Lone Gunmen sacrificed themselves by sealing themselves into an isolated area with a lethal disease carrier.
It happened about 4 episodes ago. Check the official website (www.thex-files.com) for more specific details.
 

Rich Malloy

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My wife and I tuned out of the X-Files a couple of seasons ago, but caught the season finale due to a late-night signal from the LA-Fox station on my dad's satellite.

Sucked. Hate to thread-fart and run, but it was bash-your-head-against-the-wall, throw-yourself-off-a-cliff, and pile-feces-upon-your head bad. Two of the lamest foot-chase scenes ever shot book-ending the worst, exposition-ridden excuse for a kangaroo court clipshow, with a dumbass stuff-gettin'-blowed-up-real-good "climax", and last-minute moist insipidness from our two leads as denouement.

The writing, acting, directing... all terrible. Sucked beyond my wildest expectations. Just fucking terrible.
 

Mike Broadman

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Rich, normally posts like yours tick me off, but after thinking about this episode for the last couple of day, I cracked a huge grin while reading it. You are so right, it's not even funny.
The thing that pissed me off the most was the whole faith thing at the end. The whole point of the show was about truth, proof, etc. Now, at the very end, it's all not important. It just doesn't matter. Oh, so the earth will be invaded. Well, we have hope, so it's OK.
It was a cheap, lazy way to cover up the mess they made of this show. If I believed in God, I would be insulted that they would exploit these believes and use them as a veil to cover up how awful the episode really was.
Taking Truth out of the X-Files is like taking Law out of Law & Order or Stars out of Star Trek. It's just... so... :angry:
Whew, I feel better. :)
 

Neil Weinstock

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Well, I didn't think the final episode was so bad, but I am certainly pleased to learn the term "thread-fart".

I actually enjoyed the whole run of the show. Even the weaker episodes gave me something to take with me. I found the series of shows leading up to the finale to be very bittersweet; the final Lone Gunmen episode in particular really got me.

I guess I hoped that more would be wrapped up, but didn't really expect it. I'll be there when/if they release a new movie, though I wasn't crazy about the last one.

I'll definitely miss the show. Onward...
 
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The final episode was just flat out painful to watch. I have a horrid aversion to shows which feel they can ease off and do a flashback episode, and to see the final episode of such a great show spiral down that rathole just left me wishing it had gone off the air years ago. And the who's-who treatment with the ghosts, ack!! To see something like this steaming turd after the phenominal episode where the LG met their demise is just pathetic!! Even the general 'feel' of the series was gone, just a long drawn out visit by everyone who was ever on the show. AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!

At least the Buffy finale rocked...

PS - did I mention it REALLY REALLY sucked?!?!
 

Rex Bachmann

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Mike Broadman wrote:
Not that I want in any way to defend Mr. Carter or his associates but was "truth" really the "whole point" of the show? Wasn't there always this tension between the Mulder-character the "truth-seeker", who "wanted to believe" (i.e., had faith, but no particular religion)(thesis), and Scully, the skeptic scientist, who resisted believing (i.e., had religion, but not much faith) (antithesis)? If so, couldn't the way the series turned out be interpreted as some attempt, at least,---whether or not successful is highly debatable---at a synthesis of these two?
Just a thought.
 

Mike Broadman

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The dichotomy of Mulder's faith (in the truth) and Scully's skepticism was abandoned a long time ago. That's one thing I respect they they did, because it would be completely implausible to keep that up for so long.

But Mulder's "faith" was that there were phenomena out there that weren't explained and that he wanted to make known to the world. At the end, it seems like that all just got thrown out the window, as if the fight wasn't so important.

Eh.
 

Brian Bunn

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Mike--Aaaahhh...your post above explains a lot. NOW I know where you are coming from and your "take" on things...and your great dislike of the ending minutes of the series finale. Not that there is anything wrong with that! It just explains why you and I always seem to be on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Yes, the whole idea behind The X Files was the search for "The Truth". Atleast on the surface Mulder's search for "The Truth" of existence of an alien life. But I think you may be missing/denying the real point of his search, and perhaps the series. That in essence Mulder's search led him on a parallel search, one that Mulder maybe was not even quite aware of. One that involved the search for the existence of God. And in the end that was a force that he could not deny, just as he could not deny his belief in alien life. Both involved belief in something in which there was no positive tangible proof of their existence. Both were essentially based on only a FAITH in their existence. This religious aspect to the show had run throughout the series to a degree, with both Mulder & Scully struggling with their own beliefs regarding their faith.

So when you say "the whole point of the show was about truth, proof, etc.", I believe you are only half right. The whole point of the show was perhaps about truth and FAITH...faith being defined as a belief that does not rest on logical "proof" or material evidence.

All along Mulder strongly believed in the existence of extraterrestrials, even when there WAS no logical "proof" or material evidence to back his beliefs up. It was really not until the very end did he equate this to his belief in God, a faith which ALSO may have lacked logical proof or material evidence. It was always Scully who needed scientific proof to believe in something. Which is why she struggled so much with her faith. Mulder was always ready to believe without any hard evidence to back up his beliefs. And in the end the two met at the same place...with a faith in God...having perhaps finally resolved the conflicts they both had struggled with in reaching that point of convergence.

Thus the poster in Mulder's office...and really the essence of the series..."I Want To Believe"...perhaps had a double meaning all along. And in the end...he DID believe.

Just my take...
 

Brian Bunn

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Darn Rex...I believe you and I were on the same wave length there for a bit! I was just a tad more wordy than you were!:)
 

Rex Bachmann

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Brian Brunn wrote:


Quote:



All along Mulder strongly believed in the existence of extraterrestrials, even when there WAS no logical "proof" or material evidence to back his beliefs up.






I disagree here. There were ofttimes in the early seasons tangible, physical, material (whatever) evidence of extra-terrestrial life and/or technology (e.g., the alien corpse dug out of the grave in the pilot episode, the neck implants that were kept in those little capsular jars when removed from female patients, etc.) Yet always these things were destroyed or expropriated by the ends of the respective episodes, so they could not be brought forth to the public eye. His experiences with these were the bases of his belief in extra-terrestrials among us.

If one review many of those episodes, one finds that often---too often to be plausible, actually---Mulder witnesses events that Scully is either just out of sight/hearing range of or that she's unconscious during (e.g., in "The Calusari", the pilot episode (where people disappear into the spotlighted whirlwind in view of Mulder, but not Scully), "Shapes" (werewolf transformation in the next room), "Shadows" (poltergeist activity in a room with Mulder in it; Scully unable to enter), etc.)


Mike Broadman wrote:


The whole point of the show was about truth, proof, etc. . . . Taking Truth out of the X-Files is like taking Law out of Law & Order or Stars out of Star Trek. . . . The dichotomy of Mulder's faith (in the truth) and Scully's skepticism was abandoned a long time ago. . . . . But Mulder's "faith" was that there were phenomena out there that weren't explained and that he wanted to make known to the world.

Maybe it was "about truth", as you say. However, what is truth and how does one attain it? The whole puzzle of what was going on in the so-called "mythology" thread of the series has not yet been worked out, but one of the things that anyone can observe is that there are a whole lot of "facts" in the X-Files universe that don't in and of themselves---and wouldn't even if they were all known/revealed (which they aren't)---add up to "the truth". The truth about anything, including our existence (whether looked at religiously, philosophically, or otherwise) is greater than the mere sum of the relevant facts. It lies somewhere within the interrelationships of those facts, yet above those elements and the interrelationships among them.

"Logic" is a useful process of concatenative "fact"- and observation-based reasoning that some of us (sometimes) use to try to get at "the truth", but in the real world it has many logistical and empirical limitations. (And, of course, to some philosophers one can never arrive at "the thing itself" (das Ding an sich), one can only ever at best approximate it.)

What to do? For all the "fact"-gathering that Mulder does in the early seasons of the episodes, most of what he has come to believe seems to me to be characterized by what's called the "leap of faith"; maybe not faith in "God", but support nevertheless from the "intangible". In fact, Scully is shown to have to revive her own faith (e.g., in "All Souls"), but, as far as I can tell, she never really makes the kind of "leap" that Mulder does. She comes around because she actually and finally gets to see and hear things that in the first few seasons always manage to be outside of her sensory perception range. As she tells Doggett when asked by him whether she believes in the "X-Files" phenomena: "I've seen things . . . ." Before that, no belief on her part, I think.

Where the two meet is that religion and Mulder's kind of will-to-believe are both searches for meaning. It's discovering the "meaning" of related facts, I believe, that lets us arrive at their truth-value, and is part of what drives the existence of "sentient" beings.

I don't strictly remember the whole closing dialog between the two---I didn't think it was very memorable at the time---but, faced with the "truth" of alien invasion and infiltration of the civil authority, what would one do? I didn't get from what I remember hearing the impression of total resignation on the part of the characters that you (and others?) seem to have. One can be weary, yet not resigned. In its purest form, "optimism", so-called, is in fact a deterministic belief in the inevitable "best-outcome" scenario, despite our efforts, not because of them.

If that ain't "faith", I don't know what is. But that's what I think Mulder ended up with. (In the absence of "facts" about an uncertain outcome and in the face of tremendous negative odds, what else can you do for starts?)
 

Mike Broadman

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Brian, maybe I haven't seen enough X-Files episodes in the past couple of years, but I really don't remember Mulder searching for any kind of religion or God-faith. Scully, yes, absolutely. I have no problem with her at the end of the series (except for the whole baby thing), but the Mulder that appeared at the end just doesn't jive with the Mulder that we, or at least I, have known.

And Mulder did absolutely have proof of aliens and the paranormal. It's just that the proof was only for himself, ie, he would experience certain things, but there's no way he can present such proof to another.

Allow me to draw a parallel with the movie Contact: Foster's character experienced contact with an alien, so she knows they exist. However, she couldn't prove it. Because faith was a keep concept in the film that was dealt with throughout and maturely, her resolution of the situation made sense: she accepts that peolpe don't believe her, and learned to appreciate and respect her her boyfriend's faith. That made sense.
 

Jeffrey_Scotts

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Well, I DO believe in God and am not in the least upset, quite the reverse. It's times of hardship, when nothing else can help you that you must open yourself up to something higher and beyond the physical and tangable presence of existance. Mulder came to that conclusion at the end and knew there was nothing left, but that somehow and someway it would all be OK. More important, he found what he had been looking for all along. It wasn't proof in the end he was after but faith.
It doesn't matter rather or not others agree with me or not. As a person of faith and God, I totally respect what Chris Carter did with the show. Something I never suspected would happen, a show of faith himself. Now, if there were just more shows that could end so well. :)
Jeffrey
 

Frank Anderson

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Finally had time to watch it this morning. The last few years have been like a car wreak for me. I want to look away but can't. I am pleased it is no longer up to me. It's over, thank God.
 

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