Psychobabble’s 12 Days of X-Mas Episodes: Day 2

Does the mere idea of stepping into another mall, watching It’s a Wonderful Life for the zillionth time, or talking to your loved ones make you throw up? Then settle your bowlful of jelly into the La-Z-Boy® and deck your hall with today’s installment of Psychobabble’s 12 Days of X-Mas Episodes instead! Merry vegetating!

Series: The X-Files

Episode: “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas”, in which Mulder does a totally Muldery thing by dragging Scully to an alleged haunted house on Christmas Eve. There the shows’ heroes encounter a pair of goofy ghosts played by Lily Tomlin and Ed Asner who scheme to manipulate Mulder and Scully into reenacting their own Yuletide murder-suicide. Merry! Tomlin comes close to upstaging the series’ main characters, but the real stars are the ingenious special effects and haunted house setting with its neat trick rooms.

My Story "Denise Bryson" is on Welcome to Twin Peaks.com

To promote Mark Frost's book Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, the Welcome to Twin Peaks web site called for fans to submit their own dossier entries on Twin Peaks characters whom Frost did not chronicle in his book. Frost himself was the fan-fiction contest's judge. So I whipped up a story about FBI Agent Denise Bryson. Frost didn't pick my story (you can read Matt Latterell's winning entry here), but it is currently posted on Welcome to Twin Peaks as part of the site's ongoing Fan Dossier series, which features one of the non-winning entries every Friday. Last Friday's entry was my own "Denise Bryson", which you can read here. Thanks to Pieter Dom for posting it, hosting this series, and creating the damn fine banner above!

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 312

The Date: August 7

The Movie: The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998)

What Is It?: Chris Carter’s paranoia was just too big to limit to the little screen, so he gave Mulder and Scully a chance to grapple with aliens, cancer men, and each other in a feature film released between the series’ drab fifth season and its epic yet goofy sixth one. The cinematic allowances of bigger special effects and a couple of cuss words (Mulder says “shit”!) are evident, yet it's still Mulder and Scully’s intimate chemistry that made this movie worth leaving your sofa for.

Why Today?: On this day in 1960, David Duchovny is born.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 119

The Date: January 27

The Movie: The Rapture (1991)

What Is It?: A year before writing the more renowned The Player, Michael Tolkin wrote and directed a film that walks the line between camp and dead seriousness, leaping onto each side at key points along the way. Mimi Rogers is fantastic as a promiscuous woman who becomes a born-again Christian, and does some truly horrible, horrible things for her god. The “fuck you” ending will have you standing on your seat and screaming, “Right on, Mimi!”

Why Today?: On this day in 1956, Mimi Rogers is born.

21 Underrated Monster of the Week Episodes of 'The X Files' You Need to Watch Now!

When The X-Files returns to FOX on January 24, 2016, what can we expect? A six-episode mythology arc or a half-dozen all-new monsters to make us hide under our FBI-issued trench coats? I’d wager that Chris Carter is going to give us the former, and I will definitely watch it even though my favorite episodes of his investigative sci-fi/horror series were the ones that freaked us out with one-off parasite men, robotic cockroaches, and inbred families. Personally, I’m a Monster of the Week guy.

Classic X-Files MOW’s such as “The Host”, “War of the Coprophages”, and “Home” need no introduction to casual X-Files fans. They are regularly praised in “Best Episodes Ever!” features in print and online publications such as Empire, Entertainment Weekly, the AV Club, Vanity Fair, and Hollywood Reporter. But what about the less known, less celebrated monsters of the week? Monsters need love to. Didn’t we learn anything from Frankenstein, or more on-topic, the monstrously overrated “Postmodern Prometheus” episode of The X-Files that James Whale’s movie inspired? Well, that’s what this post is all about, Spooky!

After eliminating all the shows covered in the aforementioned publications, I came to a few sobering realizations. There aren’t quite 21 “great” underrated Monster-of-the-Week episodes, and there isn’t a single underrated episode written by Darin Morgan. That wasn’t too much of a surprise since Morgan gets my vote for the series’ greatest writer (sorry, Vince!), but I was still hoping to give the man a little love in this piece. So—for the record—I love you, Darin Morgan.

But enough about the love between a lowly blog writer and a wonderfully talented TV writer. Let’s shift our love focus to the “ship” between “I’ll believe anything!” FBI wackadoo Fox Mulder and “It isn’t scientifically plausible!” FBI scientist Dana Scully. We’re also going to focus on getting you, dear reader, to fall in love with these 21 Underrated Episodes of The X-Files You Need to Watch Now!

Review: 'Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks'

Shows as cinematic, daring, and genuinely artistic as “Twin Peaks” come along rarely even in television’s new “golden age” (and with shows like “Breaking Bad”, “Mad Men”, and “Game of Thrones”, I truly do believe TV is enjoying a renaissance). Back in 1990, there simply wasn’t anything else to compare to it even with a crop of excellent series like “China Beach” and “Northern Exposure”, so it’s understandable that all these decades later its cast and crew are still so eager to speak of “Twin Peaks” in DVD and blu-ray bonus documentaries and onstage in last year’s series of panel discussions at the University of Southern California. Big stars like Piper Laurie and David Duchovny will still make time to chat about a 25-year old series that lasted a mere season and a half.

As a crazed Peaks Freak, I make time to watch every one of these recollections I can find, so as excited as I was to read Brad Dukes’s new book, Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks, I was skeptical I’d learn much. I was totally wrong to be skeptical. Reflections is the best book I’ve picked up all year. Dukes scores by digging into the aspects of the show that have not been discussed to death already. Yes, he covers the oft-told origin of the series that began life as “Northwest Passage” and the origin of Killer BOB, the media frenzy that met the show and the early demise that followed the forced resolution of the core “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” mystery, and everything else obligatory. But Reflections really shines when getting into less-traveled zones and giving them surprisingly serious attention. Full sections are devoted to Duchovny’s Agent Bryson (though Dukes did not interview that particular actor), Josie Packard ending up in the pull knob, Diane Keaton and Uli Edel’s turns as director, and most welcome of all, the sweetness of Frank Silva, the set decorator who ended up playing television’s most heinous creature. Mysteries are solved. We finally get some specific details about Stanley Kubrick’s mythic screening of Eraserhead, and Kubrick was not the only legendary director in attendance. Kimmy Robertson reveals her very personal role in getting Duchovny cast. We learn why Windom Earle appears in demonic makeup in the penultimate episode. We get some juicy tidbits about the much-loathed James and Evelyn Marsh mini-noir that will make me look differently at a subplot I sometimes skip through. And though no one holds back their personal opinions (Sherilyn Fenn is as forthcoming as ever about how she thinks Lara Flynn Boyle screwed up the series), you really get a sense that the cast and crew loved working together and loved “Twin Peaks” as a job and a show. If they didn’t, Dukes probably would not have been able to gather nearly 100 of its former denizens (including long-time holdout Michael Ontkean!) to reflect on it two and a half decades down the road.

Review: “Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery” Blu-Ray: Part 3

As I mentioned in my previous post in this series, I’m having trouble with my “Entire Mystery”. Although I have ordered a replacement set, the fact that I’m having issues with multiple discs makes me think there is a problem with the way it is interacting with my otherwise fine blu-ray player (an Orei BDP-M2) rather than the preferable possibility I’ve received a defective box set. If I'm correct this could be the final installment of this series.

Update: My replacement discs arrived, and the new discs were having the same problem on my Orei. So I updated my player's firmware, and tried again. Well, things were working fine until I got cocky and tried playing the extra that kicked off my problems in the first place: the Season Two photo gallery (and I was just doing it to test the player...I don't even really give a damn about photo galleries). As soon as I did that, all the problems returned. So a word of advice to Orei owners...steer clear of the photo galleries on "The Entire Mystery"! They apparently have some sort of virus effect.

The 20th Anniversary X-Files Reunion Panel Discussion!

Mulder and Scully have sex on their first date, and their baby makes a surprise appearance! Chris Carter resists discussing a third "X Files" movie until he can resist no longer! Vince Gilligan plugs "Breaking Bad"! All this and more at the hilarious, historic 20th Anniversary X-Files reunion panel discussion. You've heard all about it. Now watch it. Watch it!

Many thanks to the original poster of this video...