From: ask-me-in-public-if-you-want-my-address@address.invalid   
      
   Yesterday night my lovely wife and I watched s01e05 The Jersey Devil.   
      
   The premise was an investigation over an aggressive primitive human or   
   humanoid killer, feeding on people in the Atlantic City outskirts; and   
   the local authorities trying to suppress investigation of the crimes in   
   order not to damage the economy based on tourism and gambling.   
      
   Is this a Monster-of-the-Week already, again?  I would say it is.   
      
   We are offered some glimpse into Scully's personal life and her   
   half-hearted attempts at dating; she looks clumsy around children, and   
   stuffy and unnatural in her pretentious dress dining with a boring   
   divorcee.  When commenting about Mulder as a possible partner, instead,   
   she first defines him as “a jerk”, then quickly corrects herself: No, he   
   is not a jerk.  But he is too obsessed with his work.  (At that point my   
   wife agreed, vocally.  She also thought that Mulder was too “cute”,   
   despite his work obsession, not to be casually courted by women.)   
      
   The episode worked, with no major flaws.  The anthropologist character   
   brought a smattering of “science” discussing the killer's behaviour and   
   making it easier to predict, which provides a justification for the   
   quick succession of events.  There is no waiting time in The X-Files:   
   narration proceeds quickly with no false steps.  As I wrote the previous   
   time, “economy of exposition”: no waits, no silence, no dull   
   conversations: only either meaningful or quick and witty exchanges.   
      
   One quick unexpected scare made my wife visibly jump -- and she is not   
   so easily scared; those moments are fun for me, as part of the shared   
   experience of a couple's viewing.   
      
      
   At the end I wanted to watch another episode, but instead my wife   
   proposed something “modern” instead.  That made me feel old before I   
   acknowledged that the series is in fact thirty years old.  Scully is   
   dressed too conservatively, says my wife.  True.  The aesthetics have   
   changed a lot already.  And the narration, I would say.   
      
   And so after The Jersey Devil we watched one Black Mirror episode: the   
   first of the second season.  Hauntingly painful and beautiful, a true   
   work of art.  The Jersey Devil, unfortunately, was not.  I find this too   
   difficult to openly admit.   
      
   --   
   Beard   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)