The X-Files is Kind of Bad, Actually: Thoughts on Dated TV Shows

I spend a lot of time trying to become acquainted with classic TV shows. In a medium that has historically been incredibly formulaic, I think there’s a lot to be learned by looking at where TV has been and the direction it’s going. You get a sense of what makes a show feel so different or revolutionary as it picks which tropes and conventions it wants to follow or reject.

For the upcoming video about Spooky Cops in my Copaganda series, I dug into the Fox classic The X-Files. And well—it’s kind of bad actually. Okay, “bad” is a little harsh. More accurately, it’s dated.

I’m no stranger to older, dated TV shows—it often feels most palpable in how comedies approach social issues. Community, Scrubs and 30 Rock all used blackface humor and The Office had a whole episode entitled “Gay Witch Hunt.”

There’s a 1983 episode of Cheers where a bunch of our familiar regulars freak out that a gay person might be in the bar. The punchline of the episode takes aim at their casual homophobia, which was progressive for the time, but certainly feels weird to see so much normalized and outward bigotry in the 21st Century

That’s usually what people are talking about when they say a show feels dated, that they hold views that are now widely accepted as bigoted or offensive. The X-Files is not this kind of “dated.” Sure, there’s no diversity in the show, everyone is straight, white, and middle class, but the show certainly does not embrace the status quo.

In fact, some of its anti-establishment rhetoric feels pretty appropriate nearly 30 years later.

But while the content of Cheers can feel dated, it still flows like the sitcoms we’re used to watching today. There are multiple storylines going on and the show is interested in the same ensemble of characters episode to episode. We come back each week (or these days we just let autoplay take care of things) to hang out with these characters, investing our time in their dynamic and the setting.

Despite debuting nearly 10 years later, The X-Files somehow feels older. Each episode follows Detectives Fox Mulder and Dana Scully as they investigate unexplainable phenomenon as part of the FBI’s X-Files program. There are really only two characters who appear in every episode and their relationship is the only one worth investing in. Scully is skeptical while Mulder is the true believer and this dynamic plays out in each supernatural crime they investigate. Mulder will assert that it has to be aliens and Scully tells him to hold his horses and then usually Mulder is right. And then we do the same thing next week.

Keeping a central dynamic in stasis isn’t what makes the show feel old though. Going back to our Cheers example, Sam and Diane bicker to cover their underlying sexual tension for the first five seasons, then Sam does the same when Diane is replaced with Rebecca Howe in season 6. Carla always gives Cliff a hard time, Woody and Coach are the ditsy bartenders, and Norm is an alcoholic avoiding his wife. The difference is the number of dynamics going on. Character pairs can be mixed up and new ones can be introduced to unlock new dimensions like when Frasier and Lilith were introduced.

The X-Files doesn’t. It’s just Mulder and Scully all day, every day. Don’t get me wrong, their relationship is fun and it shines in the first season. In fact, the pilot of The X-Files is downright great as it introduces us to the premise of this world. But it gets old quickly.

And this is what I mean when I say that The X-Files is bad. It is all A-plot all the time. There’s no character development, there are no other characters, it’s all just Mulder and Scully investigating a single crime. The show is dark and humorless. In short, it has one mode. If you’ve seen one episode of The X-Files, you’ve kind of seen them all.

It’d be easy to blame this on how The X-Files uses a “monster of the week” formula, where each episode follows a single investigation. Also called a procedural, this format has been the predominant style for network television, allowing for viewers to miss an episode and not be lost as the story goes on. In the last 15 years, with the advent of streaming and the binge watching it’s created, TV has become more serialized, asking its viewers to watch every episode in order to follow the overarching story—think Game of Thrones or Mindhunter or The Americans.

But I don’t think we can pin the outdated nature of The X-Files purely on its procedural elements. The Mandalorian has become wildly popular mostly because it’s got the Star Wars tag, but also in part due to its embrace of the “monster of the week” formula and the fact that you don’t need to have seen every Star Wars property to enjoy it.

Besides, about 20-30% of the show’s episodes are “mythology” episodes, where the greater serialized conspiracy narrative slowly unravels, but even those become pretty formulaic. Mulder will pursue something, get close enough that we learn an iota of new information, only to be pulled away and watch the truth become shrouded again in mystery.

Watching The X-Files for the first time in 2021, it’s this kind of structural change that feels the most jarring. The show feels more like early single story cop shows like Dragnet or The Naked City than contemporary shows like NYPD Blue or ER—shows with more character development and larger casts. The X-Files feels small considering its larger-than-life reputation.

None of this is to diminish the legacy of The X-Files. The show marked the starting point for dozens of pre-peak guest stars and famously is where Bryan Cranston and Vince Gilligan first worked together before cooking up meth in Albuquerque. The show has been revived three times (one 2008 film and a season in both 2016 and 2018)—it clearly has lasting appeal.

But it does make me think about how far the medium of television has come, not just from becoming more socially progressive, but how the stories it tells have become more and more complex.