Gonna start watching this for the first time. should i watch every episode in order? or are there episodes i can skip

You should watch twin peaks first. Twin peaks is like a little snack you eat before the main course like a snickers bar. X-Files is more like a dinner with lots of meat and no nasty lettuce.

Your contact.
Now for your own good, delete this thread, you don't understand how deep this goes.

*puffs*

Watch it the old way.
One (1) episode on friday or saturday evening.
Only one every week. No matter the craving, do not binge.

Deny Everything.

if you like the overarching conspiracy storyline and look up "mytharc".
Monster of the week you can watch in any order and are generally self-contained.
Most people prefer stick to MOTW or mytharc. There are a bunch of MOTW that are complete clunkers and that you should skip

I'm officially reopening the X-Files

Government denies knowledge.

I tried to watch it again 5 years ago. I lasted for the first 5 episodes and then stopped. Bored the shit out of me

Skip the first 4 episodes,

Like 2 of the best motw episodes

Just start at episode 5 bro

Jersey Devil

Start at S1E1 and watch in order.

Deep Throat has one of my favourite endings, can't imagine skipping it ever.
youtube.com/watch?v=EwUtR7_24Xs

could you imagine being this much of a faggot

I will intentionally look like and sometimes act like untrustworthy person, but im actually the good guy.

If you're watching the myth arc, stop at season 6 and only watch monster of the week ones after that. In fact stop watching the show entirely at the end of season 7. Also skip the season 7 finale.
It's amazing to me that both X-files and Dexter were brought back years after ending on what most fans thought was a disappointing not, and after all that time, instead of fixing their mistakes and giving people a satisfying ending, they decided to fuck it up even more.

Why do zoomers always ask if they should skip episodes? Dude, just watch it and make up your own mind about what episodes are good and not.

1995, 1999, 2001,2003,2006,2009,2013-2021 to me

my time is limited and i value it. something that might sound very bizarre to you

That doesn't work when you're shitposting on Anon Babble

HANGAR 18
I KNOW TOO MUCH

Well you gotta trudge through some bad episodes to enjoy the good ones even more

Just watch random episodes in random order that's how we watched TV in the 90s.

this is something i'm starting to realize about life in general

why skip season 7 finale?

what the fuck this is hunter2 all over again

Actually agree with this anon.
The reason most people prefer the motw episodes to the alien plot is because sometime after the release of the first movie they fuck it up so badly it's embarrassing but for the first few seasons and the movie it's one of the best arcs in tv history imo, very compelling and leaving you wanting to see another and get upset that the next ep is motw. But my god does that change and fast. It becomes such a cluster fuck of nonsense that it's impossible to follow anyways.
Have fun anon.

Takes the alien arc in a really stupid direction which the show never recovers from.
If you do watch it, treat it as the series finale.

episode starts

Skully have you ever heard of *literally anything*?

oh yeah isn't that *exposition dump*?

yeah exactly, and *more exposition dump*

wow anon, you're the first person to discover how formulaic tv show's are

wow really? that's kinda surprising

Someone post the "Scully you're being fucked by aliens" "there's no such thing as aliens" image

It's unbelievable that the best thing they could think of for the Jersey Devil was a feral woman, what a waste.

don't believe anyone that says skip episodes
you're either all in or you're out

Just was the first three episodes. Pilot, Deep Throat, Squeeze. If you are not feeling the show after those three, you never will. If you are, just watch them all. But the show is not made to be binged

This, but I don't begrudge anyone who taps out after season 7

That episode also had one of my Mulder pet-peeves: not flashing his FBI badge.
When the cops show up in the alley he just keeps repeating "THERE'S A MAN ON THE ROOF" and he gets rolled up into the drunk tank.
Not: "Fox Mulder, FBI. I'm investigating a case and there's a suspect on that roof."

But the show is not made to be binged

why not?

I watched The X-Files in 2016 and only just watched and finished Twin Peaks recently. There are some similarities with the conspiracy intrigue stuff, but Twin Peaks (the original 2 seasons) is literally a soap opera with over the top melodrama. X-Files has a perfect mix of investigative science and supernatural elements (the science leading to unexplainable results deepens the mystery), while Twin Peaks expects you to just accept that the FBI finds evidence through straight up magic and supernatural methods and can proceed with the case based solely on that.

Example

Scully does forensics and finds human DNA modified with a substance with completely alien properties unlike anything ever seen before, which backs up Mulder's intuition that there's something greater going on

Dale Cooper has a dream with a dancing dwarf, smooth jazz, and everyone is talking forwards-backwards and giving cryptic non-sequiter statements, so he decides to have the police say the names of persons of interest and throw rocks at bottles in the woods and every time a bottle is hit or breaks from the thrown rock when a name is called, they're marked down as a prime suspect, which leads to more clues that verify forensics

There are actors who are carried over, like David Duchovny plays Dennis/Denise Bryson in Twin Peaks and Fox Mulder in The X-Files, Don S. Davis is Major Garland Briggs in Twin Peaks and Captain William Scully in The X-Files, etc.

I don't want to make it sound like I'm dissing Twin Peaks either. I think The X-Files is way more digestible and intriguing from the start, but that when it falls off, it never has any sort of recovery and you get the impression that it's more like Lost where it doesn't have any answer, it's made up as they're going along. Twin Peaks' soap opera elements are hard to swallow in comparison. You groan every time Donna and James are on screen, half the cast is cheating and you need a chart to map out relationships. You spend a lot of time just having to grin and bear it, but you do come to like the characters, and it has full Lynchian kino at a number of points. You have to start accepting abstract elements, ambiguity, and the feelings the story is trying to convey over actual story. There will be a girl just shrieking on the floor, no explanation given, because it's one piece of a tapestry showing societal and moral decay. Twin Peaks was also meant to never give away the answer to who killed Laura Palmer, it was the hook. You can argue that The X-Files managed to pull off the "never give the final answer" thing better, but it goes into the toilet because of it. Twin Peaks was forced by the network to give its hook an answer a third of the way into the second season, and the show died as a result. But it still has much more going on behind the scenes than The X-Files.

The only correct answer in the thread

Anyone who tells you to pick and choose episodes to watch is fucking retarded. Watch them all in order and if you think a MOTW episode is boring just skip it.

You can look up guides online for which episodes contribute to the main story vs those which dont. I recommend you watch the whole thing though.

All episodes

From S1 to S5 and the movie

Recommended

Skip the mytharc and watch the show until the first half of season 8

The main story arc is pretty meh.

I'd go through and watch all the Monster of the Week episodes, and if you want more look up a list of best X-Files episodes (mostly MotW) and work your way through that.

You'll probably have your fill by then without wasting anytime on the main arc.

Just watch the whole thing, who skips episodes? If there are shit episodes, there are shit episodes and it gives you something to talk about with people.

My favorite MOTW episodes are

Cher and Frankenstein's Monster

Nazis on the Queen Anne

How shit is my taste

for real, what a stupid answer

Skip every Cigarette Smoking Man episode.

Cher episode that excuses rape

If it wasn't so heavy handed I would have liked the edgy ending better.

I'd skip the entire myth arc, personally. I know there are some 'good episodes', but they go nowhere. X-Files is best as a monster of the week procedural.

Cher singing Walking in Memphis to the monster and he's having a great time is "edgy"

And all the mothers loved their mutant rape babies. It was a happy ending.

Fully agreed. Wanna gay marry? I'm the man.

I unironically love the ending to that episode so fucking much, even though it's corny as fuck.

every time I watch this show I get depressed because of how well dressed everyone is and how nobody dresses like that anymore

The most insane part of your comment is that that actually happens, they even go on the Jerry Springer Show to proclaim their love for their mutant rape babies. That episode is a fucking fever dream.

It's funny I read an interview with David D. Talking about his roll in the x- files and he specifically mentions the wardrobe. I'm paraphrasing but

The whole reason I became an actor was because I never wanted to have a job where I had to get up and put on a suit everyday.

Mulder inspired an entire generation of gooners.

>Cher episode that excuses rape

Aside from the fact that the episode is shot and told like a Americana fairytale so likely nothing about it was actually real (but I liked it), the worst part that no one ever mentions is that it's strongly implied several of the townspeople are medical rape products too and the old guy used his farm animals' sperm. Pic rel father was a chicken and the comicbook guy a pig kek

I hate that aspect of his character. All so the show could brainwash America into being more accepting of pornography. For that, fuck Carter.
It added nothing to the story but uncomfortable silence.

True.

I was fine with it as an aspect of his character because they never really glorify it from what I remember, it's shown as a detrimental character trait.

i watched the entirety of the xfiles recently. did people really care about the overarching plot when it was airing? it's literally just 8 seasons of "are aliens actually real" with constant copouts when you think they've actually answered it and then some nonsensical colonisationplot with shapeshifting aliens and then a mess at the end with mulder disappearing. the monster of the week episodes are what carries the show

there are guides for the "which episodes can i skip" question. they tell you which episodes are part of the long term plot, and which of the motw episodes are worth watching or skipping.
imo use them. personally, i was only able to to watch the show that way, skipping a lot of the dead weight episodes. and before that i had tried like 3-4 times and given up every time. some of the dead weight episodes are really fucken heavy.

Grey three-fingered hands typed this post.

I remember an episode where he defends it. It just makes me hate him. Scully is RIGHT THERE.

My favorite episode was "Home" the one about the deformed family of mutants that were having sex with their mother and trying to spawn more mutants. Yes, it was fucked up.

Honestly, completely understandable when you put it like that

Scully demands a bulletproof completely ironclad logical explanation for absolutely everything no matter how outlandish the shit she personally witnesses is

believes in God

Johnny Mathis' "Wonderful! Wonderful!" starts playing

terrible and overrated episode

can someone post the meme with mulder looking stoned and the text from paint saying something like "oooo fuck you scully"

Just watch the first 3 seasons and call it a day.

it gives you something to talk about with people.

Bad episodes of old tv shows are great conversation starters.