Not trying to be bratty. I was just confused. Apologies.

…um…not if they have structural similarities?

Todd, I'm with you in preferring the short story model to novelistic storytelling on TV, but I've found that it's an especially rare type of show to encounter. Besides Mad Men and The Sopranos, Lost is the only other show I can think of that fits the bill (unless we're counting traditional episodic TV, which is sort…

Ditto. Julia isn't exactly being completely reasonable, but she's pretty dang upset about some legitimately upsetting stuff, and Joel is being completely insensitive about it. Which feels really uncharacteristic for him. I guess that's my problem with the storyline. It seems like they just turned Joel into a different…

Despite the fact that I love, love, love the awesome, cheesy, classic-rock cliche solos, I think I'm going to go with Wilco's "Via Chicago," because I'm a softy and it puts a lump in my throat.

Perhaps they should.

Yeah… guess I had that coming.

A question that's always nagged me: if the pioneer's name is Shelbyville, shouldn't the city's name be Shelbyvilleville?

Definitely.

I agree that Season 8 definitely feels like a modern TV approach to serialization, but it's not exactly an unprecedented form for The X-Files. Both Seasons 2 and 6 began with series of standalone eps that also contribute to ongoing storylines.

I'd contend that Nirvana still matters because they put out some awesome music. Bands like Fleetwood Mac and Big Star, for instance, weren't very innovative, but it seems like most people (including myself) still consider them to be important because they put out some albums with great songwriting. Same thing with…

"The Gift" is pretty good, to be sure, but one of the best Buffy eps? Even just compared to the other Buffy finales prior to Season 5, I wouldn't call it the best.

In my opinion, "The Gift" is where Season 8 hits its stride. Pretty much everything from here on out is fantastic. Plus, the monster vomiting up the bodies is damn disgusting, in the best way possible.

Does anyone else out there think that this episode's Cosby reference is kind of really lazy?

I've actually been seeing a lot of people in these comments praise it, too, but it's absolutely one of my least favorite episodes of the series. Everything about it is just so distasteful for me and poorly defined, to boot. I do think there's something to what Todd's saying about preferring a "bad" episode to a merely…

Well, I thought it was a clever thing to say when I first posted it, but it does seem kind of pretentious now. Anyway, I just meant that "Via Negativa" is ambitious in a way that is interested in exploring off-format stylistic and thematic tangents, kind of like some of the more experimental episodes from the fifth or…

I'd add "Ice" to the mix. I remember it terrifying me the first time I saw it, and even in rewatches when I knew everything that was going to happen already, it still stressed me out.

I dunno, there's a pretty fine line between "boring" and "bad."

Season 9 is reprehensible. But I'd also argue that the penultimate episode ("Sunshine Days," aka the one with the Brady Bunch superfan) is a legitimately good episode of television and a much more satisfying series finale than the actual finale. So maybe drop in for that one alone?

"Via Negativa" is one of the best post-Mulder episodes, in my opinion. That final dream sequence has an explorative ambition that this season (good as it is at capturing the traditional X-Files model) only rarely aspires to.