Rights and Wongs
Part II of "The Carter Conundrum", our continuing look at The X-Files.
      by pisher

As we entered the third season, Carter kept saying he had a vision of what the "Mytharc" was going to be, but it seemed to be a remarkably flighty little storyline, constantly going off on sidetracks, so to speak -- you might say Carter was losing his train of thought. Well if you were me, you might. The mytharc contradicted itself as often as the Cigarette-Smoking Man, and changed shape more often than the Bounty Hunter. Up to a point, one could call this postmodern -- I hate postmodernism, but at least you could call it that.

Chris Carter: Man with a plan. Sort of.

After that point, it began to look a lot like Carter was just making things up as he went along. He had Spotnitz write an entire episode based on an image he said he had in a dream, of a man banging from the inside of a submerged plane -- he never did say where the idea for the alien black oil came from though. And we never asked, did we? Carter said he had a plan. But suppose the plan all along was to pretend there was a plan when there was, in fact, no plan? Just a lot of borrowed ideas, which Carter hoped to eventually reshape into something new and exciting, as he had done in the Pilot? That was an Extreme Possibility most of us simply refused to contemplate.

Particularly when we had far more wonderful things to talk about. We had Vince Gilligan, Chris Carter's one great contribution to the X-Files writing staff, though in truth, he almost recruited himself, volunteering to pay his own way to come to Vancouver as his freelance script was produced.

Carter's almost uncanny luck with collaborators continued to hold. Gilligan was an anomaly, an experienced screenwriter with a mainstream movie credit under his belt who was also a serious fan of the show, and after his first script would also win the privilege of not being rewritten by Chris Carter. Who wrote episodes like "Pusher" that seemed to epitomize the show and its two lead characters at their very best, and stretch the form to its utmost limits. Who gave us funny yet frightening allegories about the hidden violence within each of us, always threatening to break out and destroy those around us. Who apparently had no idea that he was perceived as the "shippy" writer. Which he was, in the sense that he was better than anyone in making the Mulder/Scully relationship the center of his stories. Lesser artists would emulate him at their peril.

Yes, we had Vince. We still had Howard Gordon, providing some outstanding episodes like "Grotesque." But most of all -- we had Darin. Darin the Magnificent. Darin the Eccentric. Darin the Irritatingly Self-Deprecating and Insecure to the Point Where You Wanted to Strangle Him. Darin Morgan, younger brother of Glen, who according to the Official X-Files magazine, was brought onto the show by Morgan and Wong to help write "Blood", and was encouraged to write a whole episode on circus freaks by his self-abnegating elder sibling -- who then left his brother alone to do what apparently only he knew his brother could do. Darin Morgan, who was soon invited to come on staff by Howard Gordon. Darin Morgan, who nearly turned down the job offer until his agent -- clearly a man of princely self-restraint -- practically threatened physical violence upon if he did not take the damn job already. A wonderful story. A remarkable story. A story those few people willing to shell out six bucks for the Official X-Files magazine read with great interest.

Care to hear Chris Carter tell the story, in his own inimitable fashion, in his filmed intro to the "Humbug" video?--

"I saw something in Darin, a sense of humor, a sense of the absurd, the bizarre, and I just had a sense that he was a very good writer. I just sensed he was right for the show, and asked him to come on staff."

Darin Morgan

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. He just knew. He sensed it. Instinct, ladies and gentlemen, gut instinct. The great ones all have it. Now over in this exhibition to your left, you will see Shiban the Catfaced Boy--

Yes, Darin Morgan, who, in contradistinction to Chris Carter -- who said he was inspired to become a scriptwriter by Raiders of the Lost Ark -- was brought to the same calling by Buster Keaton's silent classic, The General. He had studied Chaplin and Keaton as a boxer studies the fight films of Sugar Ray Robinson or Muhammed Ali, and had quietly learned the art of being funny without being stupid. Darin Morgan, who shook up the world of The X-Files forever.

Sad, world-weary, farseeing, comi-tragic Clyde Bruckman. Mysterious killer cockroaches from outer space-or were they? The infuriatingly endearing Jose Chung, who said our beloved Mulder was a ticking bomb of insanity (duh). The future governor of Minnesota riding around in a black sedan with Alex Trebek. All this and much more did Darin Morgan give us. He gave us our sense of wonder back. He startled us. He confused us. He enraged us. He made us laugh at our own pretensions and shallow artifices. He forced us to question everything we had seen to date on The X-Files, and to question what we were seeing at that very moment in time and in all time to come. God damn Darin Morgan anyway.

And then, as so often happened in his scripts, the impossible occurred. He won an Emmy for writing an episode of a genre show. He marched up the aisle to claim his statue -- now probably buried under pizza boxes somewhere in his apartment -- with his brother yelling in astonished delight, and Chris Carter applauding politely in the background.

And here, perhaps, is the moment in time where The Music Man ends and Amadeus begins. Where Carter's Professor Harold Hill morphed into the bitter and outclassed Salieri -- the man who knows genius when he sees it, but can never grasp it himself. The man who both loves and hates the mad young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart -- and decides to destroy him and steal his music. Well okay, I'm going overboard here, I know -- I can never resist a good movie analogy. But take a look at "Syzygy", and the increasing number of Carter "funny eps" of later seasons. It was not lost upon Carter that the fans and critics alike had adored "Humbug" -- much more than they had liked any of his second or third season scripts. Neither did he fail to note the coveted professional honor conferred upon the younger Morgan brother by their peers in the industry. One that he had never received. One that he has still never received. Maybe the right musical movie metaphor would be Damn Yankees -- what Carter wants, Carter gets. Carter wanted an Emmy. Carter wanted to be funny. Trouble was, Carter wasn't.

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