There’s a lot of great TV kicking around the airwaves (and internet cables) lately. I always find it pleasantly surprising when I find out an X-Files crew member is involved with one of the newer shows I get into. Vince Gilligan is probably the most talked about (you know, that little show Breaking Bad?), but there are quite a few other behind the scenes folks involved in a lot of fantastic television making recently.
Kim Manners directed a bunch of Supernatural episodes before he passed away, but before that he directed and produced so many X-Files episodes that I’m not even going to try list them all. (You can go see for yourself on Manners’ imdb profile.)
I was a late-to-the-party xphile (6th season joiner), but I threw my teenage self into it wholeheartedly. I’m a little rusty, but even today you could tell me an episode’s title and I could probably give you a complete rundown. I never knew the last seasons as well as the earlier seasons and there are a few early episodes I was never a huge fan of, but my memory is decent about a lot of the storylines.
Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose (written by Darin Morgan) is my all time favorite X-Files episode. Back when Fox had an X-Files fan forum on delphiforums there was a group that ran a list of iconic things that people “claimed” from different episodes. I was the “owner” of the banana cream pie from Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose. It was sort of a silly thing, but silly things are often the best things, and it was a nice way to conceptually connect myself to what I considered X-Files’ finest hour.
I’m also fond of Darin Morgan’s episode Humbug about circus performers, though that could also be attributed to my repressed love of old timey circuses. (Freaks, my favorite book Nightmare Alley, Carnivale – it’s probably time that I admitted I love the circus? I still need to read Water for Elephants, though I can definitely say that the movie was a yawn.)
Despite the wonderful surprises of discovering X-Files alumni in current TV favorites, I think the most shocking connection between a TV show writer/director/producer of the 1990s/2000s and present day media belongs to Melissa Rosenberg. About the same time I fell in love with X-Files I was also crushing on The Magnificent Seven, a late 1990s TV take on the movie of the same name. Well, Rosenberg wrote the episodes “Witness” and “Working Girls,” (and co-produced several others) but today she is much better known for working on Dexter – and writing The Twilight Saga screenplays! I definitely did a doubletake on imdb when I saw that. I’m already a Dexter fan, but I guess I finally have to watch The Twilight Saga. Sigh.
P.S. The Magnificent Seven was an overlooked and underrated TV series that is worth a viewing.
Illuminated Past 