Mulder and Scully in the upcoming revival.

Before it has even aired, the revival of The X-Files has drawn what seems like droves of new fans, which makes me absurdly happy. What fans the news hasn’t created it’s bringing back, and I’m one of those. In celebration, I’m doing a massive recap of the series.

When the show first aired I didn’t watch it until I went with a friend to the first movie. I fell wide-starry-eyed in love with Mulder and Scully, from the moment they appeared on the screen. After the movie I watched all of the reruns I could, curled up in the dark with a bowl of popcorn and a mug of coffee. I also bought the movie on VHS, which I own to this day. I don’t think I watched the new episodes as they aired, because I always had rather a not completely in order understanding of the series. But I loved every minute of it, the way you do when you’re a lonely teenager in courtly love with two brave heroes who should just KISS ALREADY.

I didn’t think about doing a complete watch of the series until I found out about the revival. I’d had…a rough year already, and then I got sick. Dangerously, terrifyingly sick. For weeks it took herculean effort to lift my head off my pillow. I thought a rewatch of The X-Files might be a good distraction, and it definitely was. One of the most poignant things I realized, seeing it again after almost twenty years, was how profound an effect Mulder and Scully had had on me. They had been my heroes, my role models, my monster slayers, my lights in the dark. They still were, even with the more nuanced reading I had of the show as an adult. Once I finished the series (and felt better, I’m fine now) I realized that I had a lot to say about the show…so here we are.

My approach will be semi-formal: I’m going to put all the money and effort I wasted spent on a Master’s in English to use by analyzing the show as a text. Having said that, I’m never ever above a bit of fangirling, and because studying fandoms is one of my passions and TXF has a gorgeous fandom I’ll be referencing other fan reactions and fanworks. For now I’m going to an episode per post, one post per week. Again for now the plan is to only go through the penultimate episode of the seventh season, for reasons I’ll talk about when we get there. Finally, just in case there are people new to the show reading this, I’ll go as spoiler-free as I can.