It's A Zen Thing
The X-Files self-destructs in Part III of our ongoing series, "The Carter Conundrum."
      by pisher

[Editor's note: This article is the conclusion to a three-part series, the first two installments of which ran in our May and June issues, respectively.]

Yeah, we thought you might like that.

Previously -- on The Carter Conundrum --

pisher: because he trusts -- (A shot rings out! pisher falls to the floor, mortally wounded!)

Sarah: Who, pisher? Who does Chris Carter trust?

pisher: Trusts -- NO WONG! (dies)

And now -- The Conclusion.

(Scene: The 11th Hour offices. pisher is sitting there talking to Sarah and Linda as if nothing had happened. This is not explained. This will never be explained. Get over it. It's an X-Files article. The California Surfing Man looks on wearily from the rat infested loft, his sniper rifle hanging impotently at his side. "Geez", you can almost hear him thinking, "Does this guy EVER shut up?"

Sarah: pisher, tell us about season four.

pisher: The last hurrah, for many of us old time philes. The first for many others, who were just tuning in. Though the ratings had improved dramatically in seasons two and three, it was in season four that The X-Files became a mainstream hit. For the first time ever, Fox took third place during the May sweeps, pushing ABC back to fourth. It began to look like Fox would take ABC's place as the third network. Yes indeed, it looked like ABC's days were numbered. Poor old ABC.

Linda: And Chris Carter got to be a millionaire, just like he wanted.

pisher: Yes, though his final answer turned out to be wrong, once the audience was polled. The network had bet a lot on moving the show to Sunday. Carter openly resisted the move, stating his opposition in a number of interviews. His gut told him that the show should be on Fridays at nine -- the intended title of his still to be written memoirs, and the timeslot The Night Stalker had once held. But with The Simpsons and King of the Hill as oddly synergistic lead-ins, and Vince Gilligan, Howard Gordon, and R.W. Goodwin all contributing mightily, on Sunday, The X-Files shed its last remnants of cultdom, for good or ill. With this newfound mainstream acceptance came an increasing tendency to resort to forced melodrama. But there were also episodes like "Paper Hearts," cut out of the same harrowing pattern as "Pusher." "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" made many of us take a breath and think. "Home" hit us right where we lived, and knocked the legs out from under us. And let's admit that many fans loved the emotional drama of eps like "Memento Mori" -- the American appetite for bogus intubation. As for Morgan and Wong, this would prove to be a brief return engagement for them. As the saying goes, you can't go "Home" again. No, "Never Again." This would turn out to be the Deal Where They Fried --

Sarah: Would you stop with the damn puns already?!

pisher: (colors slightly) Ahem. We should have paid more attention to "Redux I." While Oliver Stone's influence on The X-Files had always been obvious (and acknowledged), there was a difference between Morgan and Wong naming a high placed informant 'X', and Carter's literally copying Donald Sutherland's pivotal scene with Kevin Costner almost shot for shot during Mulder's pivotal scene with Michael Kritschgau. JFK was not that long ago, and it wasn't exactly a classic. In retrospect, this seems less like veneration than desperation. And there was so much further to go. So much further for all of us.

Sarah: This is not going to go to four installments, pisher.

pisher: (hastily) But as I was about to say, the end is in sight! The Truth will at last be known!

Linda: Will we learn why a man who had sculpted what seemed destined to be a classic series would then turn and smash it to bits?

pisher: Oh certainly. For as you will see --

THE CARTER CONUNDRUM, PART III: IT'S A ZEN THING

Carter, in the little-documented Jolly Green Giant years.

There had always been a tendency for TV journalists to give Chris Carter credit for everything good about The X-Files. Memorably, Matt Roush once credited Glen Morgan and James Wong for the "grand assists" they gave the "X-Files auteur" in the making of "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" -- though Carter's only contribution to that episode had been to rewrite the ending against their will.

But by the end of the fifth season, there was really nobody else to give the credit to, none of the co-founders anyway. Alex Gansa left early on, and created the intriguing but short-lived Maximum Bob. Howard Gordon, who stayed much longer and wrote some of the most popular X-Files episodes, had the gloomy but distinctive Strange World, which was not long for the world at all, strangely.

Morgan and Wong, who in a fair world would have been called the co-creators of The X-Files, stated their disinclination to do another year. Carter said in one interview that they had told him they were out of ideas. Truth was, they had lots of ideas, and he didn't want to use them, which was certainly his call to make. Since they had a year to run in their contract, they finished with an utterly remarkable year on Millennium -- the other dark 1013 show. The one not many people were watching.

Though there has sometimes seemed to be a "Curse of The X-Files", in that the creative people who left it to start their own shows never seem to have much success, it should be pointed out that the curse seems to descend most harshly on Chris Carter himself. Millennium's pilot episode had gotten incredible ratings -- people were obviously determined that this time they would get in on the ground floor of a new trend. Then they noticed it was a grim, darkly lit, and seemingly endless revue of serial killers, who were being tracked down by this depressed middle-aged man who was perhaps not quite as attractive as Mulder and Scully. Okay, so maybe that's a bit shallow. But the lack of sex interest aside, there didn't seem to be much happening there, other than grisly deaths and endless monologues. Still, there was something oddly appealing to some people about the somber brooding mood of it all. You had to give Carter credit for trying something new. And then note in passing that he had no idea what to do with it.

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