X Files was the first one where it was getting weirder and weirder, and everybody was asking what was going on, and the show finally came out to say that they never really had a story line. They never really planned one, and then the show caught on really big, and people got really invested in it, and expected a story arc, and they admitted they didn't have one. It became the beginning of the end for the show.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

As a weird comparison, How I met Your Mother did a good job with this. I don't blame X-Files for not having a plan necessarily when pitching it, and I get that TV is complicated because who knows if you'll be picked up, make it past one season, or how many you'll go for. But, HIMYM planned for that in giving the show "offramps" depending on how long it went, and it's pretty clear with the series length.

If cancelled at Season 1, Ted would have just ended up with Robin. Hooray, people feel good. If cancelled at Season 3, Ted would have ended up with Stella. Hooray, people feel good. If cancelled at Season 6, Ted would have ended up with Zoey probably. Least favorite but they were clearly building her up as a "just in case". Then they brought in Tracy for Season 8-9.

You don't need to know every detail, but you need to have a general path for your show, and X-Files... did not do that. It just kept meandering. The worst was that it kept adding more plot to the story, more stories, but then for writers you have to maintain those stories and that plot. You have to remember what happened to not contradict yourselves, and the only way to easily get around that is to.... add even zanier things. It just went off the rails.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 3 points 17 hours ago

Before X Files, most hour long dramas shows were just episodic, with a basic relationship between characters. If you wanted a long, multi-episode story arc, you wanted daily afternoon soap operas. Then in the 80s, they started doing shows like Dallas and Knot's Landing, which were essentially soap operas, but with a weekly schedule instead of daily.

So people started liking the idea of a running story arc accompanying their episodic shows. The problem with X Files is that they didn't realize this until they were too deep into it to fix it. The episodic shows were great, but the subplot with smoking man, all those guys meeting in the dark, the black goo, etc, all turned out to be just mindless, aimless meandering, with no concept of a cohesive story.

People thought they were caught up in this complex world that had been built, and it all turned out to be literally nothing. Very disappointing. I was so pissed about it, that stopped watching the show at that point.