What I've Been Watching: Last Week of May 2023


Regular readers will notice that I've commented a few times recently that this blog isn't always representative of what I'm actually watching. This is mainly because I like to do one blog post for one episode of a show, but of course doing it that way is much slower than we ever view TV, requiring as it does at least a little reading round, etc. This post is therefore an experiment to try to do a blog post which represents the TV which is going in through my eyes and ears and running around in my head, to see whether I like this format of post. I will simply write about what I have been viewing, and in this case comment on some episodes which have been in my mind as possible blog posts but probably won't hatch.

I have watched my way through Series 9 of The X-Files again. There are two episodes which I was comsidering making blog posts but probably now won't. The first was Improbable, which is an absolute joy because it introduces the subject of numerology to the work of the FBI. Annabeth Gish as Agent Reyes takes the Mulder role of believer in the pseudoscience, and it's interesting because she gets a shock when, having played with it herself from childhood, she asks an actual professional numerologist to get involved in a case and is shocked that it won't be that much help, and also that the entire FBI just stand around and take this seriously. It is as if Mulder actually took over the bureau. The episode is also noteable as being directed by David Duchovny and guest starring Burt Reynolds as God.

The other X-Files episode which I've been tossing around as a possible blog post, but probably won't become one because the plot is too problematic and I don't want to do a hatchet job, is William. This is the one in which as strange, disfigured man just turns up in the X-Files office one day looking at files. Now obviously what would happen in reality in that situation would be he would be questioned very vigorously until they found out what he thought he was doing. In the world of the X-Files he may or may not be Fox Mulder (despite looking completely different and being quite a bit shorter) and Scully takes him home to meet her progeny (because baby is an inadequate word here) and leaving the guy alone with him so he can inject the progeny with something. I did say it was a problematic plot. Nonetheless it's great stuff and is honestly worth watching just to see Scully singing Jeremiah was a bullfrog to the baby just as she did to Mulder in a previous series.

I have been watching slowly through Get Smart again. I looove that series so much that I just like to wallow in it. I'm watching it in the order the discs are in the box set so not in broadcast order and loving it. Mike Doran is of course right that I would love the series 3 episode Run, Robot Run, in which the entire US track team are taken out by KAOS and Hymie the robot has to take over. There are of course also the two British agents, Mr Snead and Mrs Neal, and we all who know who they're spoofing. I love the technology and spy devices...

Which is obviously why I'm watching Mission Impossible again for the first time in some years. 

So there we have it, a blog post which actually reflects what I'm watching, and I'm shocked.