Yesterday night my lovely wife and I lit candles, sat close on the sofa
enjoyed the next two episodes of the first season, s01e02 Deep Throat
and s01e03 Squeeze.

s01e02 Deep Throat was fun, predictable in a sense by somebody who knows
the topic of the series. I enjoyed Mulder interacting with the typical
UFO believer, always in an intelligent way and with the intent of
obtaining useful information; intellectually superior but never spiteful
-- differently from Scully. A few fun moments. In the end Mulder was vindicated, of course.
My wife commented about bras in the Nineties, and Gillian Anderson's
breasts bouncing during her short run out of the hotel's reception. The
happy husband I am, with eyes only for his lady, had not even noticed.
We went back a few seconds and watched again. Indeed.
What I still remember vividly, of course, is the shot of the alien
spaceship over Mulder letting us at least glimpse at the grand mystery “they” keep from us, and remain staring in awe.

Does s01e03 Squeeze count as the first Monster-of-the-Week episode, or
should we disqualify it only because of the follow-up episode with the
same character? To me it counts.
A few very good directing ideas: I noticed the little
globe-in-a-snow-globe office toy in the first scene, on the desk of the
first victim; and then the surprise of recognising it again on Tooms's
trophy table on when our hero eventually reach his lair. My wife
instead noticed Scully's necklace on the same table as to, announce what
was about to happen. It was still a jump scare. Great fun.


As a general comment I am starting to notice that the production, while
not improvised is not cinema-quality. It might be that we are spoiled
by high-resolution displays now: but the 1990s me would have vehemently disagreed.

As another minor complaint, the amount of light in night scenes is
unrealistic. This was the case in s01e02 and maybe even more in s01e01
Pilot, in which the need of investigating by night had little plot justification, and was more of an aesthetic choice.

The comparison of fingerprint by computer, with stretching and
superposition and the “100% match” verdict (including the same missing spots at the boundary of the prints) feels so naïf nowadays. I forgive
it because I love the series, the memory and this new shared experience.
These things I forgive easily. We all should.

--
Beard

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