Or a human centipede.

Ablative?
Ablative of place? Ablative of instrument? Ablative of separation? Throw a former Latinist a bone here.

The swines. Strange thing is they make such bloody good cameras.

Also great: the PALM/LAMP mislead, which I'd forgotten about completely until Zack mentioned it above. Very, very clever.

From my days on the old a.t.x.c. fanfiction boards, I can remember a lot of interesting descriptive terms: shipper fic, MulderTorture, babyfic, songfic, and, of course, slash. (Mulder/Krycek was always a popular pairing.)

Also, in my comment above, for "Zach," read "Zack." (A little too late, I know, but I hate it when people screw up my name.)

Musings of an X-Files Watching Fan
Now that this series of recaps is drawing to a close, at least for now, I thought I'd post some of my thoughts on what it feels like to watch this show again, fifteen years after these episodes first aired. (In my case, it's literally half a lifetime ago.)

I also love "Quagmire" because of its location. A lot of The X-Files took place in the dark, in creepy laboratories or shadowy basements, but as far as I'm concerned, the show was at its best in the pine forests of Vancouver, with Mulder and Scully going after the unknown in hiking boots and parkas. Any episode with…

Quagmire
I just watched it again today, in anticipation of Zach's review. During most of the first half, it was even slighter than I'd remembered, and I began to worry that in my fondness for the series as a whole, I'd overrated this episode. Then we got to the scene on the rock—which Darin Morgan did, I believe,…

Gordon and Speck
A friend of mine worked on the production side of this movie, and she says that it was pretty clear that the directors didn't know what they were doing. Apparently they were used to larger budgets, so they had some trouble running the set—not to mention coming up with a usable screenplay. Everyone…

Dale Peck
At this point, I'd normally post a link to Dale Peck's massive critical assassination of Rick Moody's entire body of work, but since Peck forfeited his own critical reputation by writing that awful book with Tim Kring, I won't.

But shouldn't there really be something about Mission: Impossible 4? The last movie was solid, and with Brad Bird directing, I was actually looking forward to this.

"Inner City Pressure" is clearly a parody of "West End Girls," which isn't exactly a message song. Still, I love it, so thanks for the link.

I was a little curious about this, too, so I did some research online. Apparently Perry has a deal where he'll deliver ten episodes of a sitcom, and if it averages a 2.0 rating or higher, the network—usually TBS in this case—will order another 90 episodes in order to get to syndication levels.

@Brendan: Good question. There was a movie store in Cambridge, MA where I used to buy movie scripts—it's where I got my teleplay of "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"—but I'm not sure where to find this stuff online.

Also, if you ever have the chance to see a classic movie at the Ziegfeld—the largest conventional movie screen in New York City, and one of its last great movie houses—get yourself over there posthaste. I never really understood the love for Blade Runner until I saw it at the Ziegfeld, in all its restored glory, and…

@Pinkney: The Walter Reade is fantastic, although their selection is very eclectic. The four weeks I spent watching their Michael Powell retrospective was possibly the best month of my life.

For once, I'm with teadoust: the Angelika is my least favorite theater in New York—decent art house selection, but tiny screens, auditoriums with an aisle running down the center, and built right over the subway tracks, so that underground trains periodically rumble by during the movie. Landmark Sunshine is a much…

So…it WASN'T essential viewing, flaws and all?

I actually screwed up the song: it's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," which Murphy Brown sings to her baby at the end of the famous childbirth episode. So now you know.