Reviews
[Review] “The X-Files” Finale, ‘My Struggle II’!
‘The X-Files’ return goes out like it knows best, a roller coaster of exposition and teasing things into the sunset
“You don’t want to believe.”
So here we are at the end of this mini-season, with what might not only be the final episode of The X-Files that we’ll get on television (although I doubt it). The X-Files makes it their business to go crazy with their finales, and with this really only being the second mythology episode of season ten, there is a lot that is expected here. Not only that, it’ll be the lasting impression of the series that is left on everyone, again placing very lofty goals on this entry. It’s not surprising that Chris Carter is the one behind it, but this also had me reasonably worried considering his two episodes were the least successful of the season, in my opinion (although I’ll be forever grateful for that shroom trip). Many people seemed to take contention to “My Struggle’s” first part, like I did (and seriously, when the “Previously On” sequence plays I was kind of astounded at how ridiculous the episode looks in piecemeal), but a lot of the X-Files operates like a well-done magic trick. Perhaps this second half of the story even re-contextualizes what we saw in the premiere in a more positive light?
Kind of!
Okay, “My Struggle II” is a problematic, busy finale, but what I love about it is how it very obviously plays parallel to the premiere, only moving forward with Scully’s perspective on things. It’s a smart tool considering this bifurcated point of view is a crucial point of the show, and it makes even more sense when you’re just devoting two episodes to mythology. PS: Very happy that we at least got one subversion to the The Truth Is Out There card during the credits. I was disappointed we didn’t get one during the premiere, but the finale’s This Is The End makes up for it. At the same time, Carter, I know you like your purple prose, your flowery intros, and your on-the-nose-ness of everything, but I could have gone without that silly shot of Scully morphing into an alien in the cold open.
It’s nice to see the threads from other episodes come together here with Skinner, Joel McHale’s Tad O’Malley, Ambrose and Amell’s Agents Einstein and Miller returning, not to mention—wait for it—Annabeth Gish as Monica Reyes! Okay, I might be the only one excited by that, but it’s gestures like that that go a long ways here. Also, the absence of Duchovny for the first chunk of things isn’t the worst and having Scully and Einstein run around as the Red Headed FBI Science Super Squad is something I could easily watch a lot more of.
Most of this episode is concerned with Scully’s discovery that her gene work revealed that she had partial alien DNA. This claim is doubled down on the leap that everyone has partial alien DNA, with this obviously being ripe for claims of colonization, the seventh extinction, and general doom and gloom pablum. It looks like a global contagion is on the plate, with this attack completely shutting down immune systems in the process.
This goes hand-in-hand with the ideas that the first “My Struggle” gets into regarding government manipulation and this all ultimately being the fault of the trust that we’ve given them. Surprisingly, even though what this episode tries to push forward is more incredulous than what the premiere tries to do, this manages to be easier to swallow because it doesn’t try to mess with the established continuity in the process. It’s a definite step up, at least. Seeing Scully act in paranoid conspiracy theorist mode is also never not fun, although I’m a little surprised the gene stuff moved in this direction versus getting closer to the hanging thread of William.
On the topic of hanging threads, using Reyes as the connective tissue to how the Cigarette Smoking Man has survived the aircraft missile to the body from season nine’s finale works well enough (although the plausibility behind it is all sorts of suspect). By proxy, Reyes becomes a big exposition box, and much like the last time The X-Files ended, a lot of this episode is swallowed in explaining things, What I do like though is the show’s continual insistence to try and connect its dots, so to hear that this cleansing plan of the Syndicate/aliens began in 2012—even though we didn’t see it happening—is exactly the sort of stuff that I want to hear. I didn’t exactly need Reyes being turned into a coward and pseudo traitor survivalist in this last appearance, but I thought she was going to originally reveal that Doggett was dead, so this is better than an offscreen spite death at least.
As the episode moves into its final act, it manages to stir up a lot of emotions. The incredibly pessimistic note that it rides out on is a surprising one, as is the fact that Mulder and Scully spend the entire episode apart (and Mulder barely says a word—it’s a really shitty Mulder episode). While I can appreciate a good cliffhanger, this felt really bait-y, almost as if all of this was simply meant to be prelude to a movie that wraps all of this up. I think a lot of people might be upset over the lack of closure provided here, I just ultimately wish we had gotten a longer season. Even if the premiere and the finale remained the same, and we just got seven more monster-of-the-weeks to round out a season of thirteen, I think this would feel a lot more complete. As it stands, the series certainly proved that it is still relevant and has stories to tell, but once more, this really just feels like, “Okay, can we finally do our third alien invasion now?”
Regardless of the machinations behind it and whether it leads to another movie, mini-season, or full on return, I’m just happy to go out on a solid mythology episode that actually operates on a global scales and manages to feel threatening. If nothing else, “My Struggle II” leaves you wanting more, and that’s certainly a lot better than a shrug or some missed landing. A question mark can be dissatisfying, but it can also lead to the best answers sometimes. The title card at the beginning tells us This Is The End and it feels like it, but in many other ways this is also just the beginning for the return of The X-Files.
Reviews
“AHS: Delicate” Review – “Little Gold Man” Mixes Oscar Fever & Baby Fever into the Perfect Product
‘AHS: Delicate’ enters early labor with a fun, frenzied episode that finds the perfect tone and goes for broke as its water breaks.
“I’ll figure it out. Women always do.”
American Horror Story is no stranger to remixing real-life history with ludicrous, heightened Murphy-isms, whether it’s AHS: 1984’s incorporation of Richard Ramirez, AHS: Cult’s use of Valerie Solanas, or AHS: Coven’s prominent role for the Axeman of New Orleans. Accordingly, it’s very much par for the course for AHS: Delicate to riff on other pop culture touchstones and infinitely warp them to its wicked whims. That being said, it takes real guts to do a postmodern feminist version of Rosemary’s Baby and then actually put Mia Farrow – while she’s filming Rosemary’s Baby, no less – into the narrative. This is the type of gonzo bullshit that I want out of American Horror Story! Sharon Tate even shows up for a minute because why the hell not? Make no mistake, this is completely absurd, but the right kind of campy absurdity that’s consistently been in American Horror Story’s wheelhouse since its inception. It’s a wild introduction that sets up an Oscar-centric AHS: Delicate episode for success. “Little Gold Man” is a chaotic episode that’s worth its weight in gold and starts to bring this contentious season home.
It’d be one thing if “Little Gold Man” just featured a brief detour to 1967 so that this season of pregnancy horror could cross off Rosemary’s Baby from its checklist. AHS: Delicate gets more ambitious with its revisionist history and goes so far as to say that Mia Farrow and Anna Victoria Alcott are similarly plagued. “Little Gold Man” intentionally gives Frank Sinatra dialogue that’s basically verbatim from Dex Harding Sr., which indicates that this demonic curse has been ruffling Hollywood’s feathers for the better part of a century. Anna Victoria Alcott’s Oscar-nominated feature film, The Auteur, is evidently no different than Rosemary’s Baby. It’s merely Satanic forces’ latest attempt to cultivate the “perfect product.” “Little Gold Man” even implies that the only reason that Mia Farrow didn’t go on to make waves at the 1969 Academy Awards and ends up with her twisted lot in life is because she couldn’t properly commit to Siobhan’s scheme, unlike Anna.
This is easily one of American Horror Story’s more ridiculous cold opens, but there’s a lot of love for the horror genre and Hollywood that pumps through its veins. If Hollywood needs to be a part of AHS: Delicate’s story then this is actually the perfect connective tissue. On that note, Claire DeJean plays Sharon Tate in “Little Gold Man” and does fine work with the brief scene. However, it would have been a nice, subtle nod of continuity if AHS: Delicate brought back Rachel Roberts who previously portrayed Tate in AHS: Cult. “Little Gold Man” still makes its point and to echo a famous line from Jennifer Lynch’s father’s television masterpiece: “It is happening again.”
“Little Gold Man” is rich in sequences where Anna just rides the waves of success and enjoys her blossoming fame. She feels empowered and begins to finally take control of her life, rather than let it push her around and get under her skin like a gestating fetus. Anna’s success coincides with a colossal exposition dump from Tavi Gevinson’s Cora, a character who’s been absent for so long that we were all seemingly meant to forget that she was ever someone who was supposed to be significant. Cora has apparently been the one pulling many of Anna’s strings all along as she goes Single White Female, rather than Anna having a case of Repulsion. It’s an explanation that oddly works and feeds into the episode’s more general message of dreams becoming nightmares. Cora continuing to stay aligned with Dr. Hill because she has student loans is also somehow, tragically the perfect explanation for her abhorrent behavior. It’s not the most outlandish series of events in an episode that also briefly gives Anna alligator legs and makes Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian kiss.
“Little Gold Man” often feels like it hits the fast-forward button as it delivers more answers, much in the same vein as last week’s “Ava Hestia.” These episodes are two sides of the same coin and it’s surely no coincidence that they’re both directed by Jennifer Lynch. This season has benefitted from being entirely written by Halley Feiffer – a first for the series – but it’s unfortunate that Lynch couldn’t direct every episode of AHS: Delicate instead of just four out of nine entries. That’s not to say that a version of this season that was unilaterally directed by Lynch would have been without its issues. However, it’s likely that there’d be a better sense of synergy across the season with fewer redundancies. She’s responsible for the best episodes of AHS: Delicate and it’s a disappointment that she won’t be the one who closes the season out in next week’s finale.
To this point, “Little Gold Man” utilizes immaculate pacing that helps this episode breeze by. Anna’s Oscar nomination and the awards ceremony are in the same episode, whereas it feels like “Part 1” of the season would have spaced these events out over four or five episodes. This frenzied tempo works in “Little Gold Man’s” favor as AHS: Delicate speed-runs to its finish instead of getting lost in laborious plotting and unnecessary storytelling. This is how the entire season should have been. Although it’s also worth pointing out that this is by far the shortest episode of American Horror Story to date at only 34 minutes. It’s a shame that the season’s strongest entries have also been the ones with the least amount of content. There could have been a whole other act to “Little Gold Man,” or at the least, a substantially longer cold open that got more out of its Mia Farrow mayhem.
“Little Gold Man” is an American Horror Story episode that does everything right, but is still forced to contend with three-quarters of a subpar season. “Part 2” of AHS: Delicate actually helps the season’s first five episodes shine brighter in retrospect and this will definitely be a season that benefits from one long binge that doesn’t have a six-month break in the middle. Unfortunately, anyone who’s already watched it once will likely not feel compelled to experience these labor pains a second time over. With one episode to go and Anna’s potential demon offspring ready to greet the world, AHS: Delicate is poised to deliver one hell of a finale.
Although, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “How do you expect to be a good conclusion if this is what you’re chasing?”
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