Early on the episode introduces a new yet familiar villain.

Right off the bat astute viewers will know the premiere is written by Chris Carter because the episode begins with a long-ass voiceover by David Duchovny, reiterating the premise of the series and filling in the gaps between 2002 and today. It’s followed by the classic series opening with the addition of Mitch Pileggi as Walter Skinner in the main cast. Everything else is the same, and that’s a relief coming from someone who fucking hated the last two seasons’ openings with that falling David Duchovny stunt double bullshit. When we last left our heroes, Mulder and Scully were living together, he a hermit/bum and she the breadwinner doctor at Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital (“Lady at Sad Time” in my notes). Now they’re apart, Mulder watching Jimmy Kimmel clips on MindQuad (YouTube for bums) and Scully is helping earless children…have ears, I guess. Chris Carter has indeed broken them up and it’s created a tension between the characters. It’s an annoying but understandable change, because I have to imagine Scully would eventually get sick of the chronically unemployed Mulder saying “hey, Scully, did you see this about crisis actors? I’ve seen the same woman at Sandy Hook and Aurora” and “people take too many showers, Scully”. Frankly it’s a miracle Mulder survived the break-up; can you imagine him even shopping for groceries? By week two of post-Scully living he’d be running on Cheerios dust and orange juice pulp. I’ll be optimistic and say Mulder looking like garbage throughout this episode was an acting choice on Duchovny’s part and not a lifestyle choice. Despite the breakup, the two characters’ chemistry is as good as ever. That’s a quarter of the battle right there.

Skinner reunites them by asking the two to meet with Tad O’Malley (Joel McHale, Deliver Us From Evil), an Internet TV host who believes in the second amendment and 9/11 being an inside job. Alex Jones if he didn’t look like a fat piece of shit. Flimsy excuse for a reunion, yes? I like to think that Skinner is a secret shipper and looked for any contrivance possible to bring his favorite couple back together. “Yeah, uh, this guy on the Internet wants to talk to you both…no it’s not a sex thing…” O’Malley believes in UFOs and has a house in the middle of nowhere with a perky Russian girl to show Mulder and no, again, it’s not pornography. Remember, the only actor to reprise their role in The Sex Files was Mitch Pileggi, so. Sveta, played admirably by Nina from The Americans, is a multiple abductee with tons of marks on her belly and the alien-derived ability to determine the cause of the Mulder/Scully relationship deterioration. Oh, and she can sometimes move shit with her mind. She’s Jean Grey before she became the Phoenix, minus the implicit and explicit sexism. With some prodding she admits what did done tooked her babies away was men, not space people, further creating an emotional bond between her and Scully.

“Scully! You haven’t aged a bit.”

“Mulder…you…uh…so how about those Knicks?”

Meanwhile, Mulder falls prey to what now amounts to a recurring theme on The X-Files: overinvestment in a new conspiracy. Upon realizing Sveta was abducted by men, not moon men, he basically gets really high on cough syrup and bewilders his ex-girlfriend and his former boss with phrases like “fiction masquerading as fact” and “we’ve never been in more danger.” Pepper his speech with a couple of “man”s and David Duchovny would be playing my best friend from high school.

See, after hearing Sveta and going to see an ARV with his new buddy Tad, Mulder’s figured out what he figured out in Season 5: this ain’t about fucking aliens, it’s dudes pretending to be aliens. They’re using alien technology against us for…I dunno. A doctor from Roswell who’s now cosplaying as Simpsons writer George Meyer tells Mulder he’s close now that he’s been disabused of that faceless aliens setting people on fire bullshit. At this point I think it’s less that Mulder wants to believe and more he’s gullible as shit. God, if he had Facebook he’d fall for so many hoaxes. “I have to post this notice on my wall, Scully, or else Zuckerberg can use all my photos for commercial gain.” You’ve seen fucking spaceships, shapeshifters, your son can move objects with his baby mind, there’s been nine seasons of that shit and now you’ve gone for a new Alex Jones-tinged bundle of conspiracies because it’s the 21st century and a black man’s in the White House?

Joel McHale isn’t especially good in his role as slick stand-in for any number of tin foil hat wearers, his role in the episode consisting of being the Eddie Haskell to Mulder’s credulous Cleaver boys. “That’s a lovely suit you’re wearing, Ms. Scully! Can Mulder come out and conspiracy?” The introduction of yet another “everything you know is wrong” plot point justifies everyone who says the mytharc of the series is mired under a pile of gaffes and bad puns.

They missed a great opportunity to have Skinner open up the X-Files office, only to find Mulder sleeping on the floor, using the I Want To Believe poster as a blanket.

Also: hey man nice beard Mitch Pileggi

Scully brushes off the Mulder/O’Irish theory that is backed up by a clip montage as borderline treasonous, and the next day Nina from The Americans is admitting to a shitload of reporters that Tad paid her to lie about alien pregnancies and the like. “My Struggle” never establishes how popular Joel McHale is supposed to be, whether he’s Internet popular (Hannibal) or real people popular (The Big Bang Theory). Either way he’s rattled the cages such that THE MAN takes his website offline and the military blows up that alien replica vehicle that was shown off earlier. As for Sveta, an alien craft or humans joy riding on an alien craft blow her car up. She’s probably dead, but you never know, as goddamn explosions didn’t kill a now smokin’ through the throat Cigarette Smoking Man. Although the show makes some timely references to Uber and Billiam O’Reilly, I’m happy that they didn’t revamp CSM as a vaper. He’s unhappy that the X-Files has reopened; Mulder and Scully saw no other option, and someone wrote “DON’T GIVE UP” with the dust on Scully’s rear window. Scully is motivated partially by the fact that she got test results confirming both Sveta and she have some alien DNA all up in the genome, whereas I think Mulder misses being a person who has to shave regularly and know what a W2 is. I like how the episode establishes/restablishes that Skinner is gay for Mulder and would happily restart the X-Files if given the opportunity. This element helps to explain how two former FBI agents can get their old jobs back without a hitch 14 years later. Nepotism is great.

Alien practicing its Maxim pose in its final moments

From what I can tell, the purpose of this miniseries is to tell more stories with these characters and nothing more. Yeah, there’s mythology, but it’s not as though Carter and co. are taking six episodes to conclusively end things or provide answers at a higher rate than the drip feed so associated with the series. They’ve already trotted out the line of “well, if the ratings are good and it’s positively received, we’d love to do more”. Determining a TV show’s purpose and judging it based on that is necessary, and by that metric so far Season 10 is a success. It acquits itself in dealing with the fact that the nature of conspiracy theory has changed in the last decade and a half, becoming much more of the survivalist strain that was a brief patron of the 90s. The means of communicating conspiracy theories has changed too – the Lone Gunmen with their newspaper is as antiquated as newspapers now (I get all my news from Buzzfeed listicles). The script thankfully integrates this aspect without coming across as an old man trying to keep with the times. That does make me kinda want to see a revival that just keeps beefing it on the contemporary culture. Like, an episode about butt chugging that’s also about ghosts, or Scully having to go inside the Internet to stop a cyberbully. Mulder matches wits with an MRA whose hat tipping causes things to set on fire! The good thing about Mulder and Scully is they can star in enjoyably awful fare as opposed to the Doggett/Reyes pairing that’s just awful.

Goddamnit, FOX, you can’t show this! What if impressionable kids see this and get tracheotomies to emulate their favorite character who was last seen before they were born?!

“My Struggle” isn’t a great episode, and in some parts it’s not even a good episode (Chris Carter has not gotten better at info dumps with age). But it was necessary, a dose of medicine to get down so as to facilitate the rest of the miniseries. I have seen worse episodes of the mytharc that try to reposition it or place it in some sort of context – most of Seasons 8 and 9, for example. The important things are present in this premiere, like the chemistry, the mood, the atmosphere, even Mulder’s dry and sardonic sense of humor. I have faith that with the assembled creative team that this will only improve. It’s hard to fuck up a Darin Morgan script, after all. I’m on board to see what happens next and admittedly I’m susceptible to the allure of “your favorite characters, back and older than ever”. It feels like classic X-Files: shot in Vancouver, scored by Smallville‘s Mark Snow, dudes meeting in secret for reasons that don’t involve oral sex. It’s a better use of FOX’s timeslot than Gotham.

Today at exactly 10:00pm will be the fifty-fifth anniversary of the aforementioned, The Twilight Zone. Everyone knows a few of the iconic episodes, ‘the one with a crazy twist ending,’ ‘the one with the Shat man on a plane,’ ‘the one with the talking doll,’ ‘the cookbook one,’ etc. Some of you reading this might be thinking, “So what?! I care about new things: cool, modern and sexy things like Game of Thrones, not boring ole’ Rod Serling and Buck Houghton.” Well, for those of you thinking that, George R. R. Martin wrote on the 80’s reboot of TZ. It unlocked the floodgates for nerdy entertainment in pop culture like Game of Thrones.

The Twilight Zone ran for five seasons, 1959-1964. In the fourth season they experimented with the hour long format but reverted back to half hour format for the final season. Not every episode was amazing, there were a few stinkers here and there but they hit more than they missed. Rod Serling created, narrated, and wrote the show with a staff of other highly influential writers like Richard Matheson – I am Legend (1954) and George Clayton Johnson – Logan’s Run (1967). The show tackled important social issues like war, race relations, and love struck computers much to the chagrin of CBS. There were numerous cases of ‘before they were famous’; Billy the Shat man in Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Charles ‘No Dice’ Bronson in Two, Richard ‘Jaws’ Kiel in To Serve Man, Cloris Leachman in It’s a Good Life, Richard Donner directed Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Don Siegal directed Uncle Simon, and countless others.

On paper there is nothing mainstream about it. There were aliens, parallel universes, time travel, immortals, androids, monsters, and cowboys. Those things aren’t what most people are interested in but somehow Rod Serling and crew made it accessible. It hit at the exact right time at the exact right place. It wasn’t the first show like it however. Anthology shows had been since early radio. A few other TV shows laid the foundation. They were Tales of Tomorrow (1951-1953), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (This premiered exactly four years before TZ, October 2, 1955; 1955-1965), and One Step Beyond (1959-1961). All of these are on DVD, Hulu and Netflix, if you’re curious.

The show’s influence can be felt everywhere. TZ’s bizarre and enthralling sensibilities show up in The X-Files (1993-2002), Twin Peaks (1990-1991), Lost (2004-2010), Kolchak: the Night Stalker (1974-1975), Fringe (2008-2013), Star Trek (1966-1969), Planet of the Apes (1968), and too many others. Remember the Hugh Jackman classic Real Steel (2011), it’s based on the TZ episode, Steel. J. J. Abrams, Gene Roddenberry, and Joss Whedon were all hugely influenced by it. I could go on but that’s boring.

My personal experience with TZ is odd. As a kid I always caught it in passing. It was until very recently ‘that weird show my mom likes.’ The only episode I knew of was Eye of the Beholder. The pig faces were permanently branded onto my brain. At the time it registered as confusing, boring, weird, and for old people. I noticed earlier this year, it was on Netflix and figured why not give it a shot. I instantly loved it. It felt like when you get a gift from your grandparents but you dismiss it immediately then, a year later you realize just how awesome it is. It’s become my new go-to thing to watch and I discovered a whole new dimension of TV. So let’s celebrate this momentous day by joining Rod Serling in The Twilight Zone.

Here are my favorite episodes (Don’t get mad if I skip a classic, these are my favorites):

Number 12 Looks Just Like You – Season 5, Episode 17; This is similar to Eye of the Beholder. It’s about society’s standards of beauty and the pressures that come with it. Eye is too famous for its own good and lost some of its effectiveness. No. 12 takes the theme really runs with it in a cleverer way. It’s my favorite episode.

Judgment Night – Season 1, Episode 10; I have a soft spot for the military episodes. This is the story of a German soldier in WW2 that suddenly appears on a British civilian ship. As you watch you’ll learn how and why he got there. It’s like a Greek Myth with Nazis.

The Obsolete Man – Season 2, Episode 29; This is a beautiful episode much in the vein of Fahrenheit 451 and 1984. A librarian, named Romney Wordsworth, gets the death sentence for being reading books. He’s in a world run by smug Nazi jocks. He gets to choose his own style of execution. It’s the perfect example how to have a simple message with layers of meaning behind it. Warning, it’s very heavy-handed. However, I can look past that and really enjoy it.

Mr. Dingle, the Strong – Season 2, Episode 19; Usually the comedy episodes don’t work but this one is amazing. The scrawny and weak Mr. Dingle gets super strength from Martians for an experiment. Imagine if Milhouse was given superpowers from Kang and Kodos and that’s this one. If you don’t like your dish of TZ served goofy, you will not like this. It’s extremely goofy. Also Don Rickles is in it.

The Monsters are Due on Maple Street – Season 1, Episode 22; This is a classic episode. I don’t have much to add that hasn’t been said before. Just watch it if you haven’t and again if you have.

People are Alike All Over – Season 1, Episode 25; I don’t want to say too much besides a couple of astronauts go on a space mission and things take a crazy turn. It’s more fun if you go in with nothing to expect.

The Changing of the Guard – Season 3, Episode 37; Imagine Dead Poet’s Society (1989) in the Twilight Zone, it’s basically that. A young Donald Pleasance with terrible old makeup and a weird beard stars in this bittersweet Christmas tale. It’s one of the best sentimental episodes.

The Big, Tall Wish – Season 1, Episode 27; This is about simply believing in magic and the power of wishes. It’s also about alternate realities. This is a refreshing change of pace with a nearly all-black cast. It’s one of the most interesting episodes in that, it’s very grounded compared every other episode and exudes an infectious air of childlike innocence. It’s gravely underrated.

I am the Night – Color Me Black – Season 5, Episode 26; This is another heavy-handed one. It might be a little much for some but should give it a shot. A man is sentenced to death and the town excitedly waits for his death. The sky is getting progressively darker as they get closer to the hanging. Again, the message is very obvious.

The Mind and the Matter – Season 2, Episode 27; I knew I was going to love this one once I saw who was starring in it, Shelley Berman. He’s a fantastic standup from the 50s and 60s. Our hero, Archibald Beechcroft, learns how to change reality with only his mind. It’s similar to the movie Lucy (2014) but smarter, better and making a point.

Honorable Mentions:

-Execution – Season 1, Episode 26

-The Howling Man – Season 2, Episode 5

-Five Characters in Search of an Exit – Season 3, Episode 14

-The Masks – Season 5, Episode 25 *only episode directed by a woman and an actor/actress from another episode, Ida Lupino

-The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross – Season 5, Episode 16

-And When the Sky Was Opened – Season 1, Episode 11

-The After Hours – Season 1, Episode 34

-Where is Everybody? – Season 1, Episode 1