This episode was messed up... like Bad Blood level messed up! I loved it! The Mandela Effect is so much fun. (Berenstain Bears anyone?)
Mulder with his Twilight Zone mess of DVD's, VHS's and guide books is so me. That is me when I need that one piece of X-Files info that I know is only in a book or a magazine and I can't quit until I find it.
Mulder as a kid was hilarious! The CGI was cute but the Jiffy-Pop popper was the best (FTF).
Poor Reggie. Just busy losing is marbles. (Or having them stolen?)
Small Potatoes... no. Just no. They crossed the line there.
Best line: I'm Fox Freakin Mulder... you punks!
Skinner: "Where the hell are they taking Reggie." Priceless!
Oh... and I have those lawn darts!
Did anyone else get a Jimmy Kimmel vibe? Like from the skit. I mean, Mulder sounds EXACTLY like Keith. Reggie, too.
At first I disliked that Forehead Sweat based itself too much in the world of today, with too many references to Trump and details of his pre-election campaign that might not ring any bell to a viewer from a few years from now. It's as if the episode lost some of its timelessness by being too current. Then I rewatched From Outer Space, which remains one of my favourite things ever, and in it there's Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek among many other references. You could say the references in the world of UFOlogy and conspiracy theories (Jacques Vallee, etc) are purposefully obscure for any viewer, but Ventura and Trebek were there for the average viewer of the 1980s and 1990s to recognize! Today they are very quaint, and while the Men In Black are still entertaining, the oddity of having these actors in there is lost on today's viewer. So references to current events and pop culture always were in Darin Morgan's scripts. I wonder how Forehead Sweat will hold up to future viewers.
Quote: kimmy wrote:
I wonder how Forehead Sweat will hold up to future viewers.
You very eloquently explains this point, which I totally share as well. On a similar yet different topic, one of the reasons I really disliked The X-Files’ Sunshine Days episode (S09E18) is the fact that I have never seen any episode of The Brady Bunch. If for instance the episode would have taken place in the world of... let’s say Little House on the Prairie, I guess there would have been a sense of total joy that I would have loved - I should have selected another example, as the location was taking place in a secluded environment, but you get the point.
What I am saying is that I disliked the episode (Sunshine Days) because I did not get the references. While it is different in the case of The Lost Art, I think it is quite similar to making small references to the current affairs. It is, from my point of view, a cheap way to get a few cheap laughs. Don’t get me wrong, I love the episode, really. But who will remember the following, twenty years later? - because we are actually watching episodes that aired 25 years ago today (the pilot episode aired in 1993):
Because art (whether lost or not ;) stays. Current affairs are just that, current.
I thought about the exact same thing when watching My Struggle III. In the opening credits, we get to see many advisors from the Donald Trump administration. It is quite obvious that Chris Carter is showing them as bad guys, but really... who will remember Steve Bannon, 25 years from now? Even today, he’s no longer a Trump advisor. You can rewatch the entire original nine years of The X-Files, you will not find as many references to current affairs. Even when all hell broke lose on 9/11 (2001), you could see almost no reference to it all. Ironically, this is precisely when the world became what The X-Files was talking about, that The X-Files became irrelevant. But while it makes perfect sense on paper, I think the reason laid only in storytelling, simple as that, but that’s another story.
Again, The X-Files was beyond great when it focused on that, the X-Files. Paranormal stories with scary mutants like Eugene Victor Tooms or thrilling stories like Mulder chasing Duane Barry in Ascension and ending up looking at the stars for her lost partner. When The X-Files tried to be contemporary political, it really miserably failed, i.e. the horrendous monologue of Fox Mulder in My Struggle.
This was The X-Files (see below) and no exercise of reboot or revival will ever touch this quality. Because this was, truly, a lost art. You cannot recreate magic. You cannot recreate this moment with filming on digital with old actors wearing wigs and stories including zooms on Mustangs.
