The X-Files To Return 166
An anonymous reader writes: Fox announced today that The X-Files will return with six new episodes. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson will both reprise their roles as Mulder and Scully, respectively, and show creator Chris Carter will return as well. Production begins this summer, but air dates are not yet known. The X-Files originally started in 1993 and ran for 9 seasons, spawning two feature films and a short-lived spinoff called The Lone Gunmen. It won 16 Emmy awards and 5 Golden Globe awards before critical reception soured over the last few seasons. Carter said, "I think of it as a 13-year commercial break. The good news is the world has only gotten that much stranger, a perfect time to tell these six stories."
I want to believe... (Score:5, Funny)
"The money is out there, Scully..."
The Plot (Score:3)
Scully and Mulder will have gone on a spacecraft into the past, which causes the unanticipated side affect of being 13 years older, somewhat plumper, and in need to cash.
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Oh good.... (Score:5, Funny)
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So this time will it be headed somewhere with an endgame in mind, or will it simply be more filler because the writers have no idea how to make all the threads pay off in the end?
I'm not bitter or anything.
This is like doing 6 episodes of Dallas after 30 years. Pointless.
The world has marched on, and left the X-files in the nineties.
Re:Oh good.... (Score:4, Funny)
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I could see there being a good story basis in having them need to come back to look into something from the past. Think of it like the British show New Tricks, wherein the solution to the cases hinge on the retired detectives knowledge of the time in which the event occurred.
The nineties were an era of innocence. Where the FBI were the good guys and 2-3 smoking men were the bad guys. This doesn't fly anymore. In this day and age the whole FBI/NSA/CIA are composed of crooks. Criminals, torturers you name it. The few good people that worked in those institutions were either ostricised or kicked out or put in prison ('cause leaking info to the american people is a treacherous thing). The meme "the truth is out there" is meaningless. So no I personally don't give a shit about Mulde
Come again? (Score:2)
Huh? In the X-Files, once you got to a certain level in TPTB, everyone was a corrupt murderous Orwellian shitbag, or under the thumb of a corrupt murderous Orwellian shitbag.
Nah, there's relevance to modern times, where candidates that run on promises of transparency and pro
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The nineties were an era of innocence
Only someone born after the year 2000 could possibly say that with a straight face.
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I could see there being a good story basis in having them need to come back to look into something from the past. Think of it like the British show New Tricks, wherein the solution to the cases hinge on the retired detectives knowledge of the time in which the event occurred.
So does Mulder get to sing the theme tune?
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So change the dynamic a bit. Six episodes is a good amount of time to bring closure to that adversarial relationship that never really happened properly in the original show. In the end, Scully finally believes, and they set up a hook for the next generation / next iteration of the show with new blood. Could work.
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No, but he can be much more cynical. That could be amusing.
Re:Oh good.... (Score:4, Funny)
So Scully will step out of the shower and realise it was just a dream?
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Reboots are old hat. Now we're *reviving* 1- to 2-decade old series.
First, we hear Twin Peaks will get a new season in 2016. Then that recent Friends movie. Now X-Files. With any luck, we'll get new seasons of Millennium, Dark Angel, and Space: Above and Beyond.
It could work, right?
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Except Dallas resumed for three whole seasons.
Re:Oh good.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I always thought that the best episodes, were the ones that avoided the "dreaded main thread" . . . just show something weird, about some creepy-crawly critter, and do a bit of self satire.
Those were the best.
Re:Oh good.... (Score:5, Funny)
The best one was, IMHO, War of the Coprophages [wikipedia.org].
---
Mulder: Bambi also has a theory I've come to acro...
Scully: Who?
Mulder: Dr. Berenbaum. Anyway her theory is...
Scully: Her name is Bambi?
Mulder: Yeah. Both her parents were naturalists. Her theory is that UFO's are actually nocturnal insect swarms passing through electrical air fields.
Scully: Her name is Bambi?
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Mulder: I'm just speculating here, but if extraterrestrial lifeforms do exist...
Ivanov: Oh, there's no need for speculation, I believe they do.
Mulder: And assuming that they're more technologically advanced than we are, and if your own ideas about the future of space exploration are correct, then...
Ivanov: Then the interplanetary explorers of alien civilizations will likely be mechanical in nature. Yes. Anyone who thinks alien visitation will come not in the form of robots, but of living beings with big eyes and gray skin has been brainwashed by too much science-fiction.
(Mulder looks away, shrugging slightly)
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MotW (Score:2)
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as long as Gillian Anderson is in it thats all that matters. She was totally hot in "The Fall". Now she gets to go back to being a hot red head with a big rack. Sweet
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They are 20 years older now and middle managers. Instead of tracking down actual abnormalities themselves, they spend their days in meetings wondering which of their other co-workers are aliens or supernatural.
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the AARP-files (Score:5, Funny)
Re:the AARP-files (Score:5, Funny)
get those aliens off my lawn!
Sorry. Obama granted all of them amnesty, and they won't be deported to their home planet.
Deal with having aliens on your lawn.
Try bringing them out some lemonade, and trying to make friends with them . . . ?
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You won't be laughing by 2024. :-)
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Ayy LMAO!
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He is well before that TOS / Harrison Ford old man event horizon.
Is the "old man event horizon" caused by stars putting on a *lot* of weight as they age?
In which case, I think Harrison Ford will escape that fate and simply turn into a white dwarf.
Marlon Brando on the other hand- yes, he became supermassive in later years, and quite likely turned into a black hole. In fact, lots of people in the film industry were inadvertantly killed when they got too close. No-one noticed this because to outsiders they still appear to be hovering around the "Brando event horizon".
Now, do Firefly (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Now, do Firefly (Score:4, Insightful)
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Plus a lot of the characters were killed off in that movie
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X-Files or Firefly? Keep in mind if you say the wrong one I'll have to kill you.
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I watched Firefly again last year, it's as good as ever. That kind of show doesn't really age, and it is genuinely well written and acted.
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But, but, if you still like Firefly, you hate women!
Didn't you hear, because Adam Baldwin supports gamers, you're not allowed to like Firefly any more.
Signed, SJWs
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He's an actor - who cares about his political predilections?
I'm old enough to remember when Bill Clinton first ran for president. All of these Hollywood types were jetting around the country, talking about how great he was - and all I could think was "why does anyone give a rat's ass what Morgan Fairchild thinks about politics?"
Seriously, just enjoy them for their talent in their chosen profession... and ignore everything else. It works much better.
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He's an actor - who cares about his political predilections?
When people say this, it usually means the actor supports their political predilections.
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Yeah, but unlike illiberal SJW brownshirts like yourself, RWNJ's like Baldwin aren't trying to dictate control over creative content they don't like.
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The boat is missed on that one. All the actors have aged a bit and the chemistry wouldn't be the same. Are we going to have Summer Glau still playing a kid?
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But Firefly wasn't popular as The X-Files. :(
Only decent episodes were the Darin Morgan ones (Score:4, Insightful)
There, I said it.
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6 Jose Chung episodes (Score:1)
Jose Chung's Botox Galore
Jose Chung's Doesn't Hold Up
Jose Chung's Some Things Are Better Left In The Past
Jose Chung's What Did You Expect?
Re:6 Jose Chung episodes (Score:5, Funny)
Why (Score:4, Funny)
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Gillian Anderson will you ever stop getting hotter?
The Lone Gunmen are dead! (Score:4, Informative)
So I'm sure we won't be seeing them in any of the episodes.
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Not actually true. There's a canonical Season 10 that was released as a comic book series. In the second issue, the Lone Gunmen are revealed to have faked their deaths; they're alive and well and operating out of a secret bunker accessed through their grave-site in Arlington.
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That's interesting. I did not know that. Though my original post was a (weak) attempt at referencing the infamous front page spoiler from 13 years ago.
I used to love X-Files ... (Score:2)
I used to love X-Files until a friend spoiled it for me. He basically said that Mulder and Scully were basically witnesses to whatever mystery they were uncovering. Nothing would have changed if they weren't there. Sure, the random person would have lived or died, but it's not like they solved any big mysteries.
And after I while I just got tired of the whole X-Files mythology.
Besides, weren't the aliens supposed to have invaded by now?
Re:I used to love X-Files ... (Score:4, Informative)
The aliens' plan of releasing a sentient virus to, in effect, terraform human bodies into human/alien hybrids whom would have their consciousness downloaded... it got *seriously* disrupted when Mulder injected the antidote into the main colonization ship, at least a decade or two too early.
Now, they would have to traverse the stars, and we have NO idea AT ALL if FTL travel is even possible in the X-Files universe (all of the alien vessels could have been coming from the Antarctic mothership), so maybe it will take them 20 years to get here? maybe 2,000? Maybe they have parked motherships in reserve 30 years away from Earth? who knows? :)
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I used to love X-Files until a friend spoiled it for me. He basically said that Mulder and Scully were basically witnesses to whatever mystery they were uncovering. Nothing would have changed if they weren't there. Sure, the random person would have lived or died, but it's not like they solved any big mysteries.
Wait, if it wasnt for FBI arc would never had ended up in the warehouse. Diana and Fox collected and delivered the arc to the proper authorities for filing, like HEROES!
I'd rather they bring back Fringe... (Score:2)
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Dr Walter Bishop has a new job in Sleepy Hollow
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Along with the LSD tripping Dr. Walter Bishop. Much better series, except for the last season where it got ridiculous.
I really liked the last season of fringe it was like Xfiles and Halflife 2 had a baby.
Unless this is filmed in Vancouver it will be... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fad over? (Score:2)
Are aliens still a big thing? I thought that fad had kind of fizzled. We have got to the point where no camera footage with UFO's in will be believed because footage is so easy to fake now.
Real dystopian world domination by corporations is being achieved one treaty at a time, but that doesn't make for a juicy story.
I may watch it on one condition - they change the theme tune, it's annoying.
Re:Fad over? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's what the aliens want you to believe. They are just waiting till everyone is onto the next big thing before they invade.
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Real dystopian world domination by corporations
Corporations run by the lizard people.
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They should keep the original melody and syncopation, but they should play it in really whacked-out "80's b-movie" style metal guitar.
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Are aliens still a big thing?
Aliens only featured in a minority of episodes*, and they were never the best ones. Episodes, I mean, not aliens.
*yeah, I'm guessing, but I think I'm right.
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We have got to the point where no camera footage with UFO's in will be believed because footage is so easy to fake now.
Meteor in the middle of nowhere in Russia? sure, we got clip of that.
Plane crashing into a river in Taiwan? got one recorded from 30 meters away.
We are living in a world with more than one video camera (cellphone) per person now, and there is a lot less 'ufo sighting' movies than ever.
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Maybe this isn't true, there are half a million 'ufo sighting' videos on youtube, this one video is interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Includes congress people, senators etc.
I don't think we need to worry about aliens, we're probably going to destroy the planet ourselves.
The Lone Gunmen could have been good... (Score:3)
...if they had respected the characters and the world.
It should have been a darkly comic thriller with a team that only managed to hold together because of the importance of what they were doing. Instead, "they" derailed the cast with Jimmy Bond (and also with Yves Harlow--what, they couldn't find a woman ANYWHERE who could become a functioning part the team?) and turned The Lone Gunmen into a shallow, slapstick-ridden mockery of its X-files version.
Still disappointed after all these years.
What about McGyver (Score:2)
It was almost as long ago. Or what about Quantum Leap, or Sliders. Sorry.. 911 changed everything, they said. I'll like it if they make good anti-american episodes that deal with real conspiracy theories.. That's what changed since 15 years ago, real conspiracies rather than wanking about UFOs. Does Mulder still wank himself or what. Eight seasons and he never made out with Scully because he's either gay, or a wanker or both.
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There is a "new McGyver" project going, involving the original producer (or was it the original writer?)
http://thenextmacgyver.com/ [thenextmacgyver.com]
A new Quantum Leap would be cool. There's a pretty cool John Maus song by the same title that's kind of about the same subject.
If it's wanking you're concerned with, maybe you should do a google search for the images of Anderson (and Duchovny perhaps) that Rolling Stone did.
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I forgot the photo shoots FHM did of Anderson, as well.
Also, considering the stars basically stated publicly that they had some romance going on and had considered marriage, what does it matter if Mulder is getting any action with Scully? Duchovny was (maybe is) getting action with Anderson. The best thing the show could do is keep the tension high by not having the characters hook up.
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Californication is the follow-on series anyway. Hank (Mulder), Karen (Scully), Becca (Scully's love child with either aliens or Mulder, no one knows)
All it needs is some young Snowden-like stud (played by Tim Minchin!) to sweep Scully off her feet and make Fox jealous, all the while he's having a bit on the side with Walter Skinner's jailbait daughter. Melodrama at it's finest?
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A new Quantum Leap would be cool
On the basis that sequels are the opposite in quality of the original, you may have a point.
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Or maybe he respected her.
Nah, let's remain myopic.
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"Parallels" could have been a Sliders type show if it had been picked up as a series and not released as an edited-into-a-movie pilot only on Netflix.
It was done by the guy who did "The Lost Room" which is probably one of the best things ever to appear on SciFi.
Jumped the shark: No closure (Score:4, Insightful)
When X-Files originally aired it was fresh. 9 seasons later they just waffled back and forth with absolutely no closure.
Fans got tired of Christ Carter not having any balls to commit one way or another.
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That is why I've stopped watching after season 5.
But it was indeed awesome at first.
Ugh. Let it die. (Score:2)
It wasn't that good a show. Yes, it was better than most of what was on, but most of what was on was pretty horrible at the time too. In the most recent years shows like BSG, Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Better Call Saul, and many others have set a whole new standard that X-Files couldn't even hope to measure up to. As for Duchovny , he was 10,000% better in Californication which had brilliant writing.
X-Files just has a plot that goes nowhere fast, while the writers recycl
Re:Ugh. Let it die. (Score:4, Insightful)
BSG was a rewrite of a terrible though nostalgic 70's TV show. X-Files for its time was pretty good. If they can reboot the franchise, why wouldn't the quality of the show improve in this case? Right, it doesn't fit your narrative.
The fact that TV has gotten better is a testament to modern TV's higher standards, and we can all applaud that. As for if the show's any good, only time will tell. Flaming a production we know essentially nothing about seems a little disingenuous.
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"set a whole new standard"
Did you notice that all of your favorite shows are on cable, and most are the equivalent of R rated? So in other words, to you a high-quality show must include naked women, explosions, guns, blood, drug use, murder, sex, etc.
Now try to write a TV show without any of that, to be aired on network TV. How good is the show you wrote? I didn't think so.
From your rant, I'll assume you're under 30. Which means you now watch 90's PG-13 shows and compare them to today's R shows. OF COU
13 years later (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a rainy night. Mulder is sitting in an empty low-lit bar. His head rests on his arms. There's few empty glasses on bar table in front of him. Broody country tones fill the space.
Scully walks in with intention. She spots Mulder and shakes the rain off her coat. He doesn't see her as she walks over. She stops right beside him.
Scully: "Your online dating profile says you're blond."
Mulder (chuckles): "It's funny, you sound just like someone I knew long time a..."
He lifts his head off of his arms and meets her eyes. His face expression changes into bewilderment.
Mulder (whispers): "Scully?!"
Scully: "Hello, cowboy. We're back!"
(intro titles cut in, followed by commercials. Twitter explodes, Facebook explodes, Instagram explodes)
What? There were two movies? (Score:2)
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Great show for kids; sad show for adults (Score:1)
This was a great show when I was 14. As an adult, I look back and think about it, and I find it juvenile and stupid.
I can't imagine being an adult and sitting down to watch the X-Files. The writing was pretty silly, and with the exception of the two actors (both of whom are pretty talented) the show is rather terrible.
It's also vaguely sexist. They did an interesting role reversal by making Scully the rational one, but it turns out that she's wrong about the big picture. So men win again, as usual.
The Lone Gunmen (Score:2)
The Burt Reynolds episode could have been a pilot (Score:1)
This is a summary of the episode so good (and different) it could have been a spin off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improbable_%28The_X-Files%29
The Guardian listed "Improbable" as one of the "13 best X-Files episodes ever". UGO named God/Mr. Burt as one of the "Top 11 X-Files Monsters", noting that "as [series creator Chris Carter] imagines him, [God] is a benevolent deity, constantly prodding his creatures to look at the patterns before them, to see the overall plan that he's laid out. He's doomed to failu
Hopefully logic and reason will win this time (Score:2)
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Mulder and Scully didn't so much represent "supernatural" vs "logic, science, and reason" as they did paranormal vs mundane. A whole lot of the things Mulder thought were happening were things that could have had a naturalistic explanation that you could do science to understand if they actually were happening at all —they were just extraordinary things the likes of which would require extraordinary evidence to accept. Scully was rightly hesitant to accept such things without extraordinary evidence, b
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Imagine a show where, at the end, the weird supernatural was always explained by rationality. That's a show I'd like to watch, and it would be educational, too!.
Castle is more or less that; although the show as a whole is not really to be taken seriously either so I'm not sure I'd call it educational... but at least it knows its not a serious show and doesn't take itself too seriously either.
Unlike, say CSI which gradually turned from a fairly neat sherlock holms-ey style science based detective show at the very beginning to a really unwatchably bad soap opera with unbelievably bad science that took itself so seriously that the unbelievably bad science and general
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2016 could prove to be a good year for David Duchovny
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Twin Peaks is/was crap. I barely made it through all the melodramatic screaming and wailing in the first episode, and lines like "Diane, if you ever get up this way that cherry pie is worth a stop." I gave it two more episodes thinking, "this has to get good at some point," but it just didn't.
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Twin Peaks was one of those "right show at the right time" kind of thing. The country was in a weird state and no one really knew where we were going, nothing like Twin Peaks had ever been tried before so all the twists and turns were new and unusual. Not that I'm saying it's great TV today, but at the time it was something completely different and that's what made it interesting.
Compared to TV today is very tame in comparison. the US was still weaning itself off westerns, detective shows and sitcoms and
Re:twin peaks (Score:4, Interesting)
Compared to TV today is very tame in comparison. the US was still weaning itself off westerns, detective shows and sitcoms and Twin Peaks was edgy in comparison. Quite a few shows we loved in the 80/90's are like that. they were great at the time but didn't really stand the test of time.
Just the fact that its episodes weren't self-contained, it's subject matter was the rape and murder of a teenage girl, and the fact that it had supernatural elements made it pretty revolutionary for 1990. Add to that David Lynch's signature weird style and it truly was ground-breaking for the time.
The X-files, for all its hype, is pretty tame in comparison. Its episodes are almost entirely self-contained, for example. With the exception of a handful of mythology episodes, every episode begins and ends with the characters in exactly the same place. There are no real character arcs to speak of. By the end of the series Mulder is basically the same guy and Scully is SLIGHTLY less skeptical maybe. But that's about it. There are some great individual episodes (mostly the Darin Morgan ones), but taken as a whole it's a pretty conventional procedural detective show.
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Not true at all. "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" had rape in the first episode, and much of his stuff involved the supernatural. It could easily be argued that he was the pioneer of the genre in television, a good 40 years before Twin Peaks. Of course, judging by our relative moderation points, people want t
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That's funny, because when the X-Files came out the general meme was "The X-Files is for people that can't handle Twin Peaks".
The X-Files was much more formulaic, in its way. And I imagine its announced return now - coming a few months after we learned about Twin Peaks return - is not a matter of coincidental timing.
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Twin Peaks is/was crap
Compared with what? Shakespeare? Jersey Shore?
Re: twin peaks (Score:1)
Are you being funny, or are you not aware that Twin Peaks is returning for a season on Showtime?
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JJ Abrams is actually scheduled to be a reboot of the comfort bubble in 2019.
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I suspect the new mini-series will have some sort of embedded sublimital leftist propaganda messages like most American TV shows have these days.
I know, what with that and the fluoride in the water you might as well be living in Soviet China.