“My Struggle II” and Chris Carter’s Daddy Issues
Why is this man still alive?
No, I’m not just asking the question we’ve all asked so many fucking times about how any viewer with two brain cells could accept as plausible the claim that the missile fired DIRECTLY INTO THIS MAN’S FACE in “The Truth” did not blow him into thousands of red stringy bits. No, my question is not “how can we accept his continued existence as a character in the X-Files after he has been shot, pushed down the stairs, and blown up,” but rather, “why is Chris Carter asking us to do that?” Or to put it another way: Why can’t Chris Carter let this poor man die?
The answer, I believe, takes us deep into the heart of the badness of Chris Carter’s Season 10 two-parter, “My Struggle I & II.” “My Struggle I” was not the best introduction to the series that could have been made, but overall I would say I enjoyed it because it was my first time seeing Mulder and Scully in something new since I made the catastrophic mistake of paying money to download I Want To Believe. “My Struggle II,” as a season and perhaps a show finale, was terrible. It is true that since it was less static than “The Truth” and less batshit crazy than I Want To Believe, it still ranks as Chris Carter’s most successful show finale yet. But that’s only because Chris Carter is REALLY BAD at writing show finales. “My Struggle II” was an intensely disappointing conclusion to what had, until we hit “Babylon,” really been a very successful revival. And more than disappointing, I would say that “My Struggle II” is really almost insulting to any and all of the fans who have followed this show for up to 23 years. And that is in large part because Chris Carter cannot let this man go.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that “My Struggle II” utterly fails at the project of bringing the X-Files into the future because Chris Carter clings so tightly to the past--a past in which everyone knew that the fate of the world rested in the hands of powerful, nearly-dead, white American men. Sure, Carter hates Cancer Man. But he can’t imagine a world without him.
