In Which I Reveal The True Extent of My Nerdiness

Last weekend Mike and I made a much-needed visit to Costco. I was casually strolling past the DVD section when I noticed this:

And immediately started having horrible Vietnam Vet-style flashbacks. I did not have this blog when I saw The X-Files: I Want to Believe, so let me just take this opportunity to chronicle what was pretty much The Biggest Cinematic Disappointment of All Time.


I've never been a die-hard X-Philer or anything. In fact, I don't think I even watched the show when it was on TV. My friend Andrea was hooked, though, and even dressed up as Scully for Halloween once when we were in junior high. I think the closest we ever came to having a fight was when I saw her watching it once and mentioned that I found Scully to be a little homely in appearance. "Tread carefully," she said, and glared at me through narrowed eyes.

Both Andrea and I went to work in Alaska a few summers ago, where we discovered that, among its other wonderful qualities, the Kettleson Memorial Library had all nine seasons of the X-Files on DVD. Because of the rainy weather in Sitka that summer and our age preventing us from going bar-hopping with our roommates, many nights were spent in our room watching X-Files and eating tootsie pops.

At first I was kind of bored and confused by the show, but, after discovering that Mulder and Scully are pretty much the greatest non-couple in television history, I was hooked. I came for the sexual tension, stayed for the unveiling of Cigarette Smoking Man's evil schemes, and a new guilty pleasure was born.

So naturally, when I heard that a new X-Files movie was coming out, I was excited. Not counting-down-the-days and making-t-shirts-with-Mulder's-face-on-them excited (yes, I am looking at you, crazed Twilight fans), but definitely looking forward to seeing what came next in the X-Files saga. I thought perhaps the movie would be a tidy wrap-up of all the loose ends that the show left dangling (like what in the devil was up with Scully's Jesus Baby), or maybe just a longer version of the standard episodes where Mulder and Scully track down some supernatural creature while making witty remarks to each other.

My friends, it was neither. It was pretty much 2.5 hours worth of the most boring, random X-Files episode ever. All I remember about it is that girls were disappearing and there were creepy Russian doctors involved and Scully was all bent out of shape over some patient of hers that ended up having nothing to do with anything. Oh, and a clairvoyant pedophile priest was thrown into the mix for no apparent reason. None of it made any sense or followed any logical pattern and the sheer stupidity of it all made my brain hurt. The film's one redeeming quality was the fact that Chris Carter finally stopped messing with our minds and made it clear that Mulder and Scully do Live Happily Ever After, albeit in some creepy unabomber cabin in the middle of nowhere.

I would like to say that I have learned my lesson, that when they announce a third X-Files movie I will remember this freakshow and the crapfest that was the last three seasons of the TV series. More likely, though, I will just get my hopes up all over again because, when it comes to the X-Files, I Want to Believe.