The X-Files: How the Ghosts Stole Christmas Rewatch
June 29, 2020 7:38 PM - Season 6, Episode 6 - Subscribe
On Christmas Eve, Mulder asks Scully to meet him outside an uninhabited house believed to be haunted by the spirits of two lovers, Lyda and Maurice, who died in a suicide pact in 1917.
What an adorable episode.
Lily Tomlin was wonderful (I recently saw an interesting character study in 'Grandma' [2015] starring Tomlin - and Julia Garner [Ozark] - wherein a free spirited academic goes around town with her granddaughter trying to scrounge cash for an abortion; absolutely fantastic supporting cast, too).
Whether or not that's believable Scully (believable to me), Anderson does an incredible scared witless.
Mulder flipping from being scared/ annoyed to being amused when Lydia does the book trick is so Mulder.
posted by porpoise at 9:39 AM on June 30, 2020
Lily Tomlin was wonderful (I recently saw an interesting character study in 'Grandma' [2015] starring Tomlin - and Julia Garner [Ozark] - wherein a free spirited academic goes around town with her granddaughter trying to scrounge cash for an abortion; absolutely fantastic supporting cast, too).
Whether or not that's believable Scully (believable to me), Anderson does an incredible scared witless.
Mulder flipping from being scared/ annoyed to being amused when Lydia does the book trick is so Mulder.
posted by porpoise at 9:39 AM on June 30, 2020
I watch this every Christmas.
posted by darksong at 11:53 AM on June 30, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by darksong at 11:53 AM on June 30, 2020 [3 favorites]
This was perhaps the series nadir for me... until Hollywood AD. The only episodes I dislike more than the Darin Morgan ones* are the ones where Chris Carter is trying to be Darin Morgan. (David Duchovny trying to be Darin Morgan was so painful I've largely purged it from my memory. I remember Skinner in a bubble bath and Garry Shandling asking Mulder if he dresses to the right or the left and then I have to go lie down for a while.)
*Humbug being pretty much the only Morgan script I liked. It's like he got good feedback on that one and then decided he was so brilliant he could just totally indulge himself for the duration of the show.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:21 PM on July 1, 2020
*Humbug being pretty much the only Morgan script I liked. It's like he got good feedback on that one and then decided he was so brilliant he could just totally indulge himself for the duration of the show.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:21 PM on July 1, 2020
Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin as ghosts who spend their Christmas Eve fucking with Mulder and Scully is one fantastic premise. Their psychobabble analysis is a little too on the nose, but enjoyably annoying nonetheless. Loved all the tricks with the house -- the room they couldn't escape, the disappearing/reappearing ladder, the bodies under the floorboards, the books.
Interestingly, the role of Maurice was written for Bob Newhart, but he turned it down. I could see him in this role, but I couldn't see him doing a better job than Ed Asner, so....
This is one of the few times in this show's run that we see Scully scared out of her mind.
I'm always disappointed that we don't get to see what Mulder and Scully gave each other for Christmas.
This was not a perfect episode, but I must say that there's that one scene where Mulder and Scully are painfully crawling towards each other, each of them having been shot in the stomach, and the soundtrack kicks in with Bing Crosby's cover of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, which I found deliciously twisted.
They queued the music up so that Mulder and Scully are struggling along, leaving trails of blood, and arguing about who shot whom, to the words, "Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow," heh.
posted by orange swan at 3:30 PM on July 1, 2020
Interestingly, the role of Maurice was written for Bob Newhart, but he turned it down. I could see him in this role, but I couldn't see him doing a better job than Ed Asner, so....
This is one of the few times in this show's run that we see Scully scared out of her mind.
I'm always disappointed that we don't get to see what Mulder and Scully gave each other for Christmas.
This was not a perfect episode, but I must say that there's that one scene where Mulder and Scully are painfully crawling towards each other, each of them having been shot in the stomach, and the soundtrack kicks in with Bing Crosby's cover of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, which I found deliciously twisted.
They queued the music up so that Mulder and Scully are struggling along, leaving trails of blood, and arguing about who shot whom, to the words, "Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow," heh.
posted by orange swan at 3:30 PM on July 1, 2020
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posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:56 AM on June 30, 2020 [1 favorite]