Rant Along with CathyB: Season 8: Maybe No One Will Notice
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| Title: | Rant Along With CathyB: Season 8: Maybe No One Will Notice |
| Creator: | CathyB |
| Date(s): | December 2000 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | The X-Files |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | December 2000 News for the OBSSEsed, Archived version Wayback link |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Rant Along With CathyB: Season 8: Maybe No One Will Notice is a 2000 essay by CathyB.
The essay was part of a series of columns the author did for the X-files newsletter, News for the OBSSEsed, this one for issue #37.
NOTE: none of CathyB's columns had titles; the titles used here on Fanlore were created from a prominent, descriptive phrase in the essay.
Essays in the Same Series
- Rant along with CathyB: Closure
- Rant Along with CathyB: Era of the Celebrity Guest Star
- Rant Along with CathyB: John Doggett
- Rant Along with CathyB: much of my vexation could be spelled F-O-X
- Rant Along with CathyB: Season 8: Maybe No One Will Notice
Excerpts
Well, as I write this we're four episodes into Season 8: Maybe No One Will Notice. And as I've been complaining about it, and I appear to be in the minority (which is okay), I thought I would use this forum (pause here for groaning and running away) to explain just what my damn problem is.
I'll tell you guys the main thing that's been bothering me this season. It's not this season at all, really. I'm worried about what's going to happen next season.
With Gillian signed on for another year and David not signed on at all, or at most willing to agree to another piecemeal year like this one, The X-Files, basically, is never again going to be the show it used to be. That is not disputable, unless David makes a radical turnaround and suddenly wants to do the show full-time again, at the same time that monkeys spontaneously decide to fly out of my butt. Let's assume for simplicity's sake that that will not occur. So if the series continues for a season 9, which is looking increasingly likely, one of two things will happen.
One, Mulder will be on the show half-time again, and Scully and Doggett will be the leads. I'd rather have some Mulder than no Mulder, but how on earth would they explain his absence this time? Abducted again? On vacation? I don't care for the scenarios of Mulder-as-informant or Mulder-as- occasional-consultant. The way Mulder and Scully have been written since the series began, it makes no sense that they would voluntarily be away from each other indefinitely. And they've done the involuntary thing already.
Two, Mulder will leave the show for good. This is the one I'm the most worried about. I would not put it past TPTB to kill him off, movie franchise be damned, in exchange for some blockbuster sweeps ratings and/or a big season opener. Scully and Doggett would continue on ad infinitum, or at least until Fox gets another drama hit for their Sunday lineup.
Here's the main reason I want Mulder back. It's not because I lust after David Duchovny. It's not because I want to see Mulder and Scully hold hands and pretend to be married. It's because there is one, exactly one, arc that I care about on the show, and that is the Mulder/Scully arc. I don't care if we never hear another word about Samantha. I don't care whether or not aliens colonize the earth (well, I'd rather they didn't in REAL life, but you know what I mean). I don't care what happens to Skinner or Krycek or Marita or CSM or Doggett or Kersh or the Shapes guy or Senator Matheson or anybody else.
No, that's too strong, let me modify that. I care about all that stuff, to a degree. I like all those characters (with the possible exceptions of Marita and the Shapes guy). I enjoy watching those storylines, when they're done well especially, and I get annoyed when they're resolved unsatisfactorily or not at all. But any one of those things never being addressed again would not be something that would cause me to stop liking the show. The ONLY thing that would cause me to stop liking the show would be losing Mulder or Scully for good. Say those other elements are the limbs, and Mulder and Scully are the head. I'd certainly rather the show NOT lose the limbs, but it could carry on. It can't lose the head. Well, sure it can, but it wouldn't be good for much after that.
By the "Mulder/Scully arc" I mean that I want a satisfactory end for these two characters and their relationship. By that I don't mean that I want them to buy a home in the suburbs and have eight children named Melissa and Samantha and Fox Jr. and Will and Margaret and Walter and Teena and Katherine. I mean that, when the show ends, I want Mulder and Scully to end up together. By "together," again, I don't mean the house in the suburbs. I don't even necessarily mean romantically together. I mean that I don't want one of them on a spaceship, or dead, or across the country, or having turned evil, or in the monkey bin. I want one of them, should the impulse arise, to be able to look up and see the other one sitting across the desk, or in the same car, or under the same tree, or in the same adorably wallpapered nursery if need be, AND I don't want it to be a vision, a hallucination, a ghost, a shapeshifter, or any of that crap. I'm flexible on the particulars. I just want them TOGETHER, as opposed to APART, when the series ENDS. I want the creators to do right by the characters and relationship they've built over the course of seven years. I'm not exaggerating when I say that, to me, is the reason for the show's existence, and if they don't end up together in some fashion I'm going to feel like I may as well not have bothered watching at all.