I don’t typically binge-watch television shows, but the future Mrs. and I can’t stop slamming our way through The X-Files. We heard the calling, decided to start from the beginning and, as expected, our lives have now been fully consumed. I hardly know what day it is anymore and I now realize how little that matters in the first place. I see time in increments of X-Files episodes; how many X-Files episodes is it until we need to meet up with our friends and can we cancel everything else in our lives to watch more episodes? I’ve always loved the show, but it’s been years since I’ve seen any of it and I really only caught fragments of seasons growing up. It’s back with a glorious vengeance.
And thanks to Netflix, it’s all here for us. Scully’s pantsuits and wildly 90’s hairstyles. Mulder’s ability to always come across an X-File, even when it’s a random case that doesn’t begin as such. The thick sexual tension that leaves you sweating and ready for a cigarette after every episode. Every day we commit ourselves to watching as many episodes as possible until one of us finally comes to and realizes just how long our path of television destruction reaches and we cannot physically go any further. I envy the soldiers in that one episode where they were genetically modified to never need sleep. They’d be done with the series in a week.
When the rumor about the show possibly leaving Netflix started spreading, I understandably panicked, blacked out for three days and then tracked down information like one of the Lone Gunmen, furiously typing away on multiple computer screens, hacking databases and digging deep until I got an answer (which is, apparently, that the show isn’t leaving). I feel whole again.
Like any great show you’re in the middle of binging, it’s impossible to think of anything else. The show itself creeps into your subconscious and you have bizarre dreams about it, see the potential for it to spill over into reality. Are all the check-writing senior citizens that I see at the grocery stores really just alien pods? Probably! Am I immediately suspicious of anyone I see smoking a cigarette? You bet! The X-Files has taken our lives and is threatening to never give them back. We’re okay with that. We accept those consequences but deep down, we know that it will end someday, and we’ll have watched I Want to Believe knowing there’s nothing left but the comics that continue the canon, which will…have to do.
However, the flickering flame of a potential limited return exists, strengthened by the success of the 24‘s recent resuscitation. Like Mulder’s unrelenting quest for the truth, the possibility of seeing more episodes of The X-Files will keep us going. It…it has to. But we’re not quite there yet. There’s plenty of meat left in the series. We’re coming for you, John Doggett.
Did I mention that I had a sex dream involving Mulder and Scully? I wasn’t involved in the sex, I was just kind of there cheering them on.