Rant along with CathyB: Closure
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| Title: | Rant Along With CathyB: Closure |
| Creator: | CathyB |
| Date(s): | May 2000 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | The X-Files |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Rant Along With CathyB: Closure |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Rant Along With CathyB: Closure 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 #34.
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
As Season 7 began, I was resigned to the show's imminent conclusion. Seven years was a nice lucky number. The actors appeared tired (one of them, having filed a massive lawsuit against Fox, perhaps even on the verge of "tired and cranky"); the writers seemed spent as well; even many of the fans -- myself included -- were a bit weary of the whole thing. All in all it felt like a good time to retire the Spooky Patrol. Sure, there was that pesky detail of Gillian Anderson's contract going through Season 8, but that's all it seemed, a pesky detail. It's not as if they'd make her do the show alone for heaven's sake. It was over. The announcement was just a formality.
Ah, but something funny happened. Someone at Fox woke up one fine day in Los Angeles and noticed that (A) The X-Files was making them an unholy amount of money and (B) pretty much everything else on Fox either sucked or had terrible ratings, or both. This same Fox executive (some scenes in this rant have been reenacted for the purposes of dramatic illustration) sprang from his Craftmatic Adjustable Bed, kissed his poster of Tiffani-Amber Thiessen goodbye and pranced off to the office to inform his colleagues of his gigantic revelation. All the other Fox executives stroked their trendily stubbled chins maniacally, fingered their wire-rimmed glasses, and leaned back in their plush chairs around the mahogany conference table with Rupert Murdoch's head stenciled into the fine finish. "Hmmmm," they all said. "You've got something there, Chet. Maybe we SHOULDN'T just let The X-Files go without a struggle."
I think the vast majority of us let out a collective anguished groan when we heard of the possibility that Fox was trying to wring one more year out of TXF. "Let it die in peace!" some of us wailed. The words "Mad About You" were spoken in soft horrified whispers. Even Gillian Anderson was heard to utter the phrase "modicum of dignity."
I'll admit it -- I'm now at the point (possibly due to the cruel psychological torture of Fox) where I'm hoping we do get an eighth season. If the actors and writers need changes in the show to keep their interest, I say go for it. Frankly, I've felt TXF could benefit from a premise-rejiggering for a couple of seasons now. Now that we've got our closure, it's the perfect time to do something drastically different -- let's stick Mulder and Scully in a field office, or kick them out of the FBI altogether and have them operate out of the back of a pet store in Anaheim (then they could stop pretending it's not California, which they're not that great at doing anyway). I'd love something different. I think it could be lots of fun. Anderson and Duchovny both seem quite interested in developing their characters, so, hey, let 'em. They've got to understand the show better than random imports from Harsh Realm at this point. Save some money and downsize some of the big-time producers -- is Spotnitz really earning his check these days? (Just kidding, Fashion Boy.)
Those are my humble suggestions for a Season 8 with Scully and Mulder. If the only option available is a Season 8 with Scully and Nobody, or even Scully and Hercules, then I humbly suggest that Fox is a bunch of short-sighted money-grubbing freaks who would rather take a pitchfork to their golden goose and stab it good and bloody before flinging its entrails to the four winds and auctioning off pieces of it on eBay than let it bide its time and present them with golden eggs once every few years at the box office. The show can't work like that, my humble opinion of course, and I would hate to see it compromised that way. Rejiggering the premise is one thing; slicing it in half is another.
If it's a choice between a Mulder-less (or Scully-less, certainly, though there doesn't appear to be any danger of that at this point) season and no season at all, then I do think the time has come for the show to end. It'll be too bad if that happens, though, since Fox will have wasted its prime final-episode-milking time squabbling with lawyers. A last episode, a "Next time, Mulder and Scully encounter some scary snakes in the South!", and the following month a TV Guide footnote saying, "Well, it turns out that was the final season of The X-Files" is not the send-off our favorite show deserves.
Closure.
Mulder got it, finally, when he hugged his sister goodbye to the strains of Moby in the appropriately named Closure. Scully got it too, in all things when she took a hard look at her life and decided maybe crazy old Mulder was onto something all these years (suitably enough, with musical accompaniment from Moby as well).
Now I want mine, damn it.