What's mystifying to me is that networks and studios still seem to be trying to push for at least 80 episodes or so, even for serialized shows. Why? You're very unlikely to strip-syndicate a serialized show Mon.-Fri. on a cable channel. (Okay, Supernatural does well that way, sure, but that has some stand-alone…

Netflix keeps that kind of info pretty well hidden most of the time, but supposedly its CW deal is lucrative for the CW and could be worth as much as $1 billion depending on a number of different factors (though I'm not clear on what those factors are, exactly, beyond the number of episodes). I'm betting Arrow and The…

Don't you mean, "Thanks, oh Mama"?

Don't you try to put me in the ugly pile of jingoistic American exceptionalists. We get plenty of things wrong here and I never said otherwise. Don't be a dingus.

Bummer that Liz didn't turn out to be quite the savvy player that a lot of us thought she was. She seemed really cool and interesting in the first two episodes, and then here she just hands the editors a bunch of easy comeuppance-storyline bits on a silver platter. Oh well.

Sheesh, happy Wednesday to you too, jerkass.

Well, we can definitely agree that candidates who want to dismantle the EPA are weasel-licking slime-whores. I didn't mean to totally fly off the handle there, but every time somebody writes in, say, the Washington Post about, say, corruption and/or human rights abuses in China, or Ai Weiwei being beaten or whatever,…

Actually, I was oversimplifying a little there for the sake of brevity and humor. The idea to create the EPA was already on the table (with so many people outraged over smog, rivers catching fire, etc. etc.) and Nixon was kind of pressured into enacting it, as I understand it, and did so only reluctantly because, you…

I'd say that's potentially a troubling way to phrase it. It's when she realizes that Old Nick shutting off the heat might put their lives in danger that she decides that risking the kid's life to escape is worth it. But I also wondered if part of the implication was that she was worried that Jack's brain wasn't going…

Huh? Jesus, in every thread about some horrifying injustice overseas, particularly China, there's always some myopic ding-dong claiming that this or that is just as bad in America, or some other such bullshit. That seems to be what you are implying with your snark. Trust me, pal. I've been there and I've seen it…

But hey, they gave us Portuguese egg tarts! Doesn't that make everything better?

OK, I hear you. I was going a little off the reservation there trying to make a point about "Ascension" and "One Breath" — among other things, that it's bizarre to assign different writers to each of these, as they're all supposed to be part of a larger whole, and that Chris Carter, as the guy in charge, was…

No, you're not entitled to your viewpoint! Spartan Flu for you! Srsly, to each her/his own, and I'd even agree that some of these episodes you've listed (mainly the earlier ones) were great when taken alone — but NOT as a whole mythology IMHO. And some people are fine with that, but the fact that they were mostly…

No, apparently it WAS briefly ordered to series, but when Amazon had a look at what Carter was cooking up, they pulled the plug right quick! Yikes.

The ratings are strong, especially by Fox's current low standards. It'll be back. The question is when Gillian Anderson will be available. Lately she's usually busy with lots of other projects.

More like Lost picked up these bad habits from Carter's original X-Files run in the first place. All of what you're describing was in the original mythology episodes, though not usually in this high of a concentration.

This exactly matches the m.o. of the original series: The "mythology" episodes, especially the ones written by Chris Carter alone, were always the weakest, even if some were intriguing, because they rarely went anywhere and Carter's dialogue was usually bad; the show's lifeblood was its better monster-of-the-week (or…

Nice to see Fishbach trying to straighten her out on that point.

In his exit interview on a podcast, Darnell said everybody was taking dumps out there in that part of the water — in fact, he said there was a "designated area." Then he made some comment on the podcast that I couldn't understand, maybe because the sound quality was pretty poor (bad Skype connection or something).…

Don't you mean "from hell's butt, I stab at thee"? Or "from hell's heart, I poop at thee"?