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What were Morgan and Wong planning?

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Guest byron lomax

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Kay Reindl co-wrote with Erin Maher The Midnight of the Century, Anamnesis, Matryoshka, and an unfilmed season 3 episode. I haven't checked her blog yet.

Yes there were problems but these were most notably caused by the unexpected commisioning of a third outing not simply from a lack of direction. Once the melee of bringing together a stable creative team had settled we were served with some suberp episodes.

The lack of direction was caused by the fact that nobody expected the show to come back. Another factor is that season 2 was specifically designed as a roller-coaster with an ending that was supposed to be a series finale. Carter did not only purposefully move away from the universe Morgan & Wong had built, he had no choice but to ignore certain elements of the "season 2 mythology" in order to go forward. But he was not much more present either; Johanessen and Duggan were left alone to come up with a new direction. Carter was present only from time to time, creatively, with episodes that didn't touch on the "new" Group-as-a-conspiracy direction the show was taking. I'm not sure why Duggan left or was made to leave after ep.8, but surely his dissatisfaction with a creative dead-end must have come into play. It is significant to add that (for me) the best episodes of season 3 -- for there are excellent episodes indeed -- were not those concerned with this new direction. MLM suffered from the fact that Morgan & Wong didn't care for MLM after season 2, which is also a factor why this season 2 is so good!

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Guest ZeusFaber
Kay Reindl co-wrote with Erin Maher The Midnight of the Century, Anamnesis, Matryoshka, and an unfilmed season 3 episode. I haven't checked her blog yet.

Don't forget "A Single Blade of Grass". Then again, maybe we should.

MLM suffered from the fact that Morgan & Wong didn't care for MLM after season 2, which is also a factor why this season 2 is so good!

An interesting way of looking at it. My outlook is almost the exact opposite -- that M&W's selfishness in focusing on the single season they were signed to do before departing, without a longer-term perspective, is a factor why Season 2 is not so good!

Just goes to show, we all see things differently.

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Guest RodimusBen

I, too, tend to see Morgan and Wong's ending of season 2 as a little narrow minded. As the season 3 finale shows, it is perfectly possible to do a season finale that could potentially serve as a series finale, while also paving the way for a potential continuation. "Goodbye to All That" did this perfectly.

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Guest Laurent.

That's probably because they were more confident that there would be a fourth season after Goodbye to All That than they were about a third season after The Time is Now.

I'm pretty sure that Chip or Chris mentioned his expectations in the bonus features of season 3... he did say that he had plan for season 4 (unlike M&W)!

edit: That's not a stab toward M&W, just a proof that the situation and expectations were different at the end of each season.

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Guest RodimusBen

I have my share of things I liked about season 2 as well as beefs about what M&W did. The finale was a beef, because it felt like they were leaving with a "scorched earth" sendoff.

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Guest EzekielWatts

I think it would have been quite interesting to see the series run in a capacity where M&W and Chris Carter were co-executive producers for part of the series. It was difficult when Carter set up a great set of characters and just hinted at some supernatural elements and then M&W had to figure out what to do with these story elements and make it entirely their own; which I think they did beautifully. However, I do have to say that the "Scorched Earth" finale of season 2 may have not been a great way to go in hindsight; as good as the it was. I think Morgan and Wong did everything they wanted to with the series, yet packed it into only one season and it came out feeling like there was a wealth of potentially remarkable storylines that were only briefly touched upon for the sake of getting everything they wanted into the series. I think that is my biggest problem with the M&W reign over the show; too much material for one season.

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Guest Jim McLean

Regardless of quality (both season endings are well constructed, barring the music video montage in season two which is a little long for my taste), I prefer season two's end as a show finale. I thought it was gutsy, dark and would have been a very memorable ending to the series. It's a book end, sure we don't know what happens to Frank, but the story of Millennium has very much been told; that the horrors of man manifested the apocalyptic prophecy of the millennium.

With season 3, the battle still continues and we are forced to say farewell. I don't find as an ending that as satisfying even if it is a lot less dark.

As I've said on my blog, I find the rather average "Millennium" episode of X-Files actually helps answer some of these questions, albeit in inference, so I find Millennium as a whole has a better ending because of it rather than in spite of it.

It's sad they didn't get their season 4 renewal, that show was so diverse it seems a crime to finish it before it had explored all its potential.

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Guest RodimusBen

Ain't that the truth. And as Klea Scott said in the DVD interview, it would have been nice if they had even done a half-season of episodes, to finish right around the time of the actual millennium.

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  • 9 months later...

Well, you could always view Season 3 as what might've happened if the world hadn't ended.

I adore Season 2-especially the final two episodes. It's a perfect ending to a show that started off bleak and stayed that way, and like my favorite X-Files multi-episode arc of Gethsemane, Redux, and Redux II, is practically a movie unto itself. Catherine's death is pretty unexpected and, happily, not played dramatically at all-she simply walks into the woods, and the next scene is Frank in a state of shock.

It's great.

As for season 3, I think it holds its own for the most part. There are some episodes that just left me like ".....what?" but there's a goodly number of strong ones.

Mainly the ones that reference the end to Season 2. :p

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Guest AD Skinner

I don't want to knock Morgan and Wong too much here, cause the guys are geniuses and those final two episodes are superb, but I do agree with some of the sentiment that they should have held back with the amount of apocalyptic plot twists that The Fourth Horesman and The Time is Now display. The start of season three is a little hit and miss due to the fact that the show has to deal with the aftermath and set up a new direction, but once it settles down the season is superb and mixes the serial killer with the metaphysical in superb fashion (The Sound of Snow, Saturn Dreaming of Mercury, Forcing the End and Something Borrowed are all fantastic pieces of television), it's just that they should have done what Chip and Ken did at the end of season three which was to settle for the prepare for more, expect the end apporach that Goodbye to all That did so well instead of just trashing the universe as the end of season two did, albeit done well. Those two episodes are truly haunting and unforgettable, it's just how do you come back from it? Fair enough if they weren't expecting to come back, but nothing is ever definitive and maybe, just maybe, they should have held back, but then again, if they hadn't, would the episodes have been as good and memorable? I guess we'll never know.

Edited by AD Skinner
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