The X-Files: The Complete Fourth Season
by Robert Mandel
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Actor: Charles Cioffi, Cliff De Young, David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Sarah KoskoffDirector: Robert Mandel
Brand: The X Files
Cinematographer: Thomas Del Ruth
Editor: Stephen Mark
Producer: Chris Carter
Writer: Chris Carter
Producer: Daniel Sackheim
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 46 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-03-28
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- Box set; Closed-captioned; Color; DVD; NTSC; Full Screen
DVD Reviews of The X-Files: The Complete Fourth Season
DVD Review: Another outstanding season from the show's creative peak
Summary: 5 Stars
What a difference a year makes! A year ago I was ranting and raving that Twentieth Century Fox was bringing out the four-volume Mythology sets of THE X-FILES, something for which there was minimal demand, while what we really needed was an edition of the show that was actually affordable. And here we have it! Moreover, they aren't dawdling with the release dates. In only a few months we will have all nine seasons out at prices that the average individual can afford. Not just that, but far better packaging than in the original sets.
There are a host of opinions concerning when THE X-FILES was at its highpoint, but while I love all nine seasons, including the wildly reviled seventh and ninth seasons, I do think that from the second season until somewhere in the sixth the show was at its creative peak. Because story lines spill over from one season to another, contrasting Season Four with either Three or Five doesn't really have much of a pay off. Let's just say that here we see the show in the middle of its creative peak.
This season contains some of the show's most memorable moments, none more haunting than the opening image in "Memento Mori," as the camera seems to travel through a tunnel to look upon a woman in a hospital gown looking at an X-ray, only for us to discover that it is Scully looking at the evidence that she has a brain tumor. Or the deeply disturbing "Unruhe," which is truly nightmarish and demonstrated how scary THE X-FILES could be at its best, unlike most shows that even at their scariest are rather tame affairs. The season also contains an episode that many think may have gone too far, the genuinely upsetting "Home," in which Mulder and Scully discover a profoundly inbred family that keeps their limbless mother under a bed on a skid. I will confess that while I have watched THE X-FILES all the way through three times, I have never been able to rewatch "Home." The Fourth Season also has a host of outstanding Mythology episodes, beginning with "Herrenvolk" and continuing with "Tunguska," "Terma," "Tempus Fugit," "Max," and "Gesthemene." There is also the famous episode "Never Again," in which Jodie Foster provided the voice for a tattoo that drove a man to commit murder. It is also an important episode for showing Scully's growing sense of self-doubt about what she is doing with her life.
of THE X-FILES broke into two unequal parts. The first two thirds tended to drop many of the ongoing development of the series story arc to focus instead on individual stand-alone episodes. Now, these were largely great episodes, but THE X-FILES was always at its best when it focused more on the longer story than on individual stories. There were some major plot developments in the first two-thirds of the season, however. Most importantly, we learn that there is a deep and shocking connection between Mulder's mother and Cancer Man aka The Smoking Man, to the extent that one even wonders if he an
Season Four does not have as many great comic episodes as Season Three, partly because Darin Morgan ceased writing for the show (or any show, with only minor exceptions, a situation I hope changes because the man is clearly one of the great writers in television). Morgan does, however, appear as an actor in "Small Potatoes," as a man capable of altering his shape at will, a skill he employs to change himself into a physical copy of the husbands or lovers of women he would like to sleep with, and in once instance as Luke Skywalker. He very nearly achieves a moment of bliss with Scully by changing himself into Mulder, her willingness hinting at plot twists in future seasons. Another great comic episode is a wonderful parody of FORREST GUMP, with the Cigarette Smoking Man (who my daughter and I like to call the HCSM, since he actually does not smoke, and uses herbal cigarettes onscreen). The Smoking Man ending up as one of the driving forces of modern history, yet privately yearns more than anything to become a professional writer. In one of the most poignant moments in the entire run of the show, he manages to get a single short story published in what turns out to be a soft-core porn mag, and when he reads what they have done to his story, he agonizingly is forced to destroy the letter of resignation that he had planned to submit. It is a brilliant episode in part because he adds enormous complexity to all of his future appearances on the show.
There is no more somber plot line in THE X-FILES than the Scully cancer arc. The last third of the season is dominated by the sense that she is a dying woman, a fact the viewers are reminded of by her frequent nosebleeds. During the last third of the season the plot thickens considerably indeed. The year ends with a host of questions. Will Scully die? Did Mulder really die in the final episode? If not, why did Scully identify the corpse as Mulder's? What is the connection between the CSM and Mulder? Could he be Mulder's biological father? And will more develop out of that big tease moment in the episode where there Mulder-lookalike comes within an inch of kissing Scully? And was she as willing to kiss him as she appeared? In fact, although Mulder and Scully are have a great interpersonal chemistry and both are ridiculously gorgeous looking, the first four seasons are remarkable for the lack of romantic interest they express towards one another. In Season Three there are a couple of episodes where they express considerable jealousy towards others who get close to their partner (e.g., "Bambi" in the great cockroach episode from Season Three), but the show never lingers over this or expands this. Clearly Mulder and Scully love each other and are deeply committed to the welfare of the other, but there is little or no romantic element in this.
Season Four also illustrates some of the problems that plagued the show, in fact the only problems that plagued the show until the very end when it lost some of its creative energy. This was the tendency both to develop parallel plot lines that somewhat contradicted other plot lines and before a prior plotline had been fully developed. For instance, by the end of the season there was the clear implication that the X-Files were a gigantic scam on the part of nefarious forces within the industrial-military complex, that they had "created" Mulder. In fact, the first episode of Season Five would take this a step further, in a very funny episode in which the gents who would form The Lone Gunman pooled their resources for the first time and at the same time met Mulder, who at the time was not interested in the X-Files. The episode represents Mulder as being exposed to a powerful drug that would cause extreme paranoia and a tendency to conspiratorial thinking. This was all enormously funny, but it also undercut the show's own mythology. This lack of internal consistency was, in my opinion, the only thing that kept THE X-FILES from being as superb overall as BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. While BUFFY got its mythology straightened out, THE X-FILES never did. Speculating further along these lines, one wonders if this illustrates the difference between Chris Carter and Joss Whedon. Carter tends to be more tactical as a creative talent, whereas Whedon is a strategist who thinks seasons ahead. The Carter versus Whedon factor is especially crucial when one considers that several key figures on THE X-FILES, including David Greenwalt, Howard Gordon, Tim Minear, and Jeffrey Bell, would serve as producers on ANGEL (and in the case of Minear, FIREFLY) as well. Or perhaps Greenwalt, Gordon, Minear, and Bell learned the mistake of not under girding a show with a consistent mythology.
Nonetheless, THE X-FILES managed a consistency despite the inconsistent mythology behind the episodes. This largely stems from two things: the absolutely magnificent writing on individual episodes and the astonishingly good cast. Few characters in the history of TV have held a show together as well as Mulder and Scully. BUFFY, to keep that parallel going, was always held together more by the writing than by the cast (though the cast was good also). David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson (by the way, a natural blonde who is impossible to imagine without her red dye job) are not merely the glue of the show, but the nuts and bolts as well. I believe Anderson especially is outrageously underrated as an actress (though if everyone saw her in THE HOUSE OF MIRTH their minds might be changed). In episode after episode I marvel at how both of them bring so much more to their roles than can possibly be contained on the page).
But this is nitpicking. By any standard this is one of the highpoints in the history of television. And I am just grateful that I am now going to own these sets instead of being a frequent renter.
Description of The X-Files: The Complete Fourth Season
Two FBI agents investigate cases that seem to involve the paranormal.Genre: Television
Rating: NR
Release Date: 28-MAR-2006
Media Type: DVD
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