More X-Files

I've spent the last three weeks teaching unappreciative students at the local business college, but I'm not going to rant about that. (Other than to remark that some people never leave Junior High--sad, but true).

I've actually moved on from X-Files back to Lois & Clark, but I recently watched episodes from the sixth season of X-Files. I'd heard that some fans felt that Season 6 was a cop-out, the season when--gasp, gasp--X-Files got popular and just went downhill and gave up the, you know, truth and all, man.

Usually, I disregard that kind of complaint. In High School, I had these friends who got SOOO upset when people who hadn't been listening to U-2 before Joshua Tree became U-2 fans: Like, they are so fake, like, you know. I would stand there, feeling bemused, thinking, But aren't you happy that now more people like what you like?

As I've said, some people never grow out of Junior High.

Having said all that, I have to confess that the Season 6 X-Files episodes I saw, although I enjoyed them, didn't have the grittiness . . . no, that's the wrong word, the oddity, the off-kilterness of the earlier seasons. The cases were bizarre, and there was a great deal of humor, but everything else was kind of . . . normal. It was like watching Mysterious Ways, which, don't get me wrong, I liked* but which was not exactly filled with the X-Files mystique.

On the other hand, it is usually so difficult for a show to last beyond its fifth season with any credibility that just the existence of good storytelling in X-Files Season 6 is fairly impressive.

*I really like Adrian Pasdar, although I don't watch much of the stuff he has been in recently (Judging Amy, for instance). Mr. Pasdar is THE GUY who played the psychotic businessman in the short-lived television show Profit. I saw about one episode of Profit when it first came out. I really liked it (it was the episode where he sticks nails in his shoes to pass the lie detector test), but I promptly forgot the show's name and completely disassociated the actor from that Mysterious Ways guy (I mean, Adrian Pasdar showed up on Touched by an Angel!--I just didn't make the connection to psychotic businessman). Nice to know Adrian Pasdur is something of an oddball when it comes to picking parts.