I agree with you: solid, but far from perfect. Overall, I liked it, and best of all, it felt like a real episode of X-Files, which was, let's be honest, always a mixed bag.

Wow, that's awesome! I'm a bit older than you (39), and my life is less interesting (and less successful) than yours, but I also love X-Files and Taxi Driver. I also went to film school for a time, but that dream fizzled after a brief heroin problem (ugh).

He obviously learned from its mistakes, though: Buffy stuck to the "one Big Bad per season" rule, because he didn't want to end up with a long, multi-season arc that got increasingly complicated and frustrating as time goes on.

The pilot of Supernatural captured my interest before I ever saw it. The summer before the show aired, The WB (remember, it started out on the WB. That's how long this show has been airing), aired teasers show clips from the pilot. One pilot had Sam and Dean arguing about their father. Sam says (paraphrased from…

Ok, this is two years later and I don't even know why I'm reading these comments, but you're right. The kid's decision to become a Hunter made no sense, seeing as his fiancee was killed by a Hunter! Sam's fiancee was killed by a demon, the same demon that killed his mother. Becoming a dedicated Hunter made sense. For…

You keep mentioning schoolwork. Mind if I ask how old you are? I'm curious because you are very knowledgeable about The X-Files, so I'm wondering how someone young enough to be in school, even college, is so well schooled. I mean, I remember watching X-Files back in, like, sophomore year of High School, and that was,…

Yeah, that's something that bugged me about "My Struggle": Mulder (and the show itself), just chucked everything we knew about the alien arc based on one conversation and one girl. Mulder is quick to latch onto new, crazy theories, but this happened too quickly.

He had a big arc on SVU and Chicago:PD(ugh, that show).

I like Zach and Grace, and I don't understand why so many viewers
dislike them. You want to see truly horrible tv kids? Check out
Madame Secretary (or better yet, don't check it out,
because it sucks). The kids on that show are insufferable, though
they're not quite as bad as their father, the main character's…

And if we're bi, we want to be both of them.

Buffy, of course, is one of the shows that was hugely influenced by X-Files, with others being Fringe, Supernatural, and Grimm, to name the most obvious examples. Hell, Joss Whedon's original pitch for Buffy was "X-Files meets My So-Called Life."

That's one of my favorite lines from "Jose Chung's From Outer Space." The best line, of course, is Mulder's little yelp.

Hey now, I love Supernatural, especially the first five seasons (i.e. before Kripke left). It's no X-Files or Buffy, but it's a good show in its own right.

Exactly. Even if the other episodes turn out to be crap, this episode made the reboot worthwhile. I suspect that would be the case, because Darin Morgan, and I'm happy I was right about that.

That's what's great about Darin Morgan episodes: they're funny, but they also have some real ideas going on.

I had heard legends of an un-produced Darin Morgan script for the Night Stalker remake. Good to see that it finally saw the light, in some form anyway.

Ben Edlund + Darin Morgan. Can you imagine?

My Dad laughed out at that "Boxes or briefs?" line.

I fucking loved this episode. I watched it with my father, who is not an X-Files fan, and even he seemed to enjoy it (at one point he asked, "Is this show supposed to be a comedy?" and he even laughed out loud a couple times).

I was just thinking the other day how amazing it was that show like X-Files, with all its sci-fi and horror elements, managed to a huge mainstream hit. You might expect a show like that to be a cult hit, with a brief run and dedicated following, but X-Files was a huge ratings smash. That still blows me away.