The X-Files: The List

Finally 2020 is over, everyone thought, and a week in 2021 is escalating rapidly. On this side of the Atlantic we're fairly glad the US has the Trump card in the embarrassment stakes but hope Ireland notices when we all starve.

In the somewhat apocalyptic times, this X-Files is about what matters both in this world and the notional afterlife. You can see this as being about reincarnation and revenge from beyond the grave, but it is even more about loyalty and doing the right thing in this life.

What kind of prison is it where the prisoners routinely get beaten up by the guards? A desperate one where the remedies of the law don't work. Do people who take the law in their own hands ever have justification? Difficult to tell, and I feel that should depend on what they are up against. The even more difficult question is what to do if the system is stacked against yo

u. Manley apparently took the supernatural route, and this can clearly be understood like that.

What if the process is basically fair but you don't like it.... That's when the violence really kicks off and the strongest will rule. I have found myself having some really quite dangerous thoughts recently, such as that some people shouldn't have the vote. I actually don't agree with prisoners not having the vote as such but when I start thinking that, for example, white supremacists shouldn't have the vote, I stop and realise I'm on really dodgy ground.

I honestly don't know how things will end - this is where TV has the advantage over real life - but I'm fairly sure the coronavirus will mutate to be resistant to the vaccine.

Perhaps the real lesson of The List is that what we are made of is revealed by adversity.