The X-Files is an American science fiction drama television series created by Chris Carter. The original television series aired from September 1993 to May 2002 on Fox. During its original run, the program spanned nine seasons, with 202 episodes. A short tenth season consisting of six episodes ran from January to February 2016. Following the ratings success of this revival, The X-Files returned for an eleventh season of ten episodes, which ran from January to March 2018. In addition to the television series, two feature films have been released: The 1998 film The X-Files and the stand-alone film The X-Files: I Want to Believe, released in 2008, six years after the original television run had ended.
The series revolves around Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), who investigate the eponymous "X-Files": marginalized, unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena. Mulder is a skilled criminal profiler, an ardent supernaturalist, and a conspiracy theorist who believes in the existence of the paranormal, whereas Scully is a medical doctor and a skeptic who has been assigned to scientifically analyze Mulder's discoveries. Early in the series, both agents become pawns in a larger conflict and come to trust only each other and a few select people. The agents also discover an agenda of the government to keep secret the existence of extraterrestrial life. Mulder and Scully's shared adventures lead them to develop a close platonic bond, which by series' end develops into a romantic relationship. Roughly one third of the series' episodes follow a complex mythopoeia-driven story arc about a planned alien invasion, whereas the other two-thirds are "monster of the week" episodes that each focus on a one-off villain, mutant, or monster.
The X-Files was inspired by earlier television series which featured elements of suspense and speculative fiction, including The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Tales from the Darkside, Twin Peaks, and especially Kolchak: The Night Stalker. When creating the main characters, Carter sought to reverse gender stereotypes by making Mulder a believer and Scully a skeptic. The first seven seasons featured Duchovny and Anderson equally. In the eighth and ninth seasons, Anderson took precedence while Duchovny appeared intermittently. New main characters were introduced: FBI Special Agents John Doggett (Robert Patrick) and Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish). Mulder and Scully's boss, Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), also became a main character. The first five seasons of The X-Files were filmed and produced in Vancouver, British Columbia, before production eventually moved to Los Angeles to accommodate Duchovny. The series later returned to Vancouver to film The X-Files: I Want to Believe as well as the tenth and eleventh seasons.
The X-Files was a hit for the Fox network and received
largely positive reviews, although its long-term story arc was
criticized near the conclusion. Initially considered a cult series, it
turned into a pop culture touchstone that tapped into public mistrust of
governments and large institutions and embraced conspiracy theories and
spirituality. Both the series itself and lead actors Duchovny and
Anderson received multiple awards and nominations,
and by its conclusion the show was the longest-running science fiction
series in U.S. television history. The series also spawned a franchise that includes Millennium and The Lone Gunmen spin-offs, two theatrical films, and accompanying merchandise.
Mad TV (stylized as MADtv) is an American sketch comedy television series created by David Salzman, Fax Bahr, and Adam Small. Loosely based on the humor magazine Mad, Mad TV's pre-taped satirical sketches were primarily parodies of popular culture and occasionally politics. Many of its sketches featured the show's cast members playing recurring original characters and doing celebrity impressions. The series premiered on Fox on October 14, 1995, and ran for 14 seasons. Its final episode aired on May 16, 2009.
Salzman created Mad TV with record producer Quincy Jones after they purchased the rights to Mad in 1995. Salzman brought on Bahr and Small, who had formerly written for the sketch comedy television series In Living Color, as showrunners. The show was intended to compete with fellow sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live (SNL), which was experiencing declining viewership and poor critical reception. Critics noted that Mad TV had a more diverse cast than SNL and dealt with edgier, more lowbrow humor.
Fox made few efforts to promote Mad TV, which typically fell behind SNL in ratings. Throughout its run, the network continually cut the series' budget before eventually canceling it in 2009. It was nominated for numerous awards, including 43 Primetime Emmy Awards, five of which it won. Critical reception of the series was mostly negative during its run and its sketches attracted notable controversy. Since its cancellation, it has appeared on several critics' lists of the best sketch comedy television series of all time.
A 20th anniversary reunion special aired on The CW on January 12, 2016. The CW also rebooted the series for a 15th and final season, which premiered on July 26, 2015.
Development
William Gaines, who owned EC Comics and published the American humor magazine Mad from 1950 until his death in 1992, refused to sell the rights to the magazine as he disliked television. In 1995, three years after Gaines's death, EC Comics sold the rights to Mad to record producer Quincy Jones and TV producer David Salzman.[1] The two launched Mad TV through their joint venture, QDE.[2]
Fax Bahr and Adam Small were hired as the showrunners of Mad TV alongside Salzman. They had previously worked as staff writers on the sketch comedy television series In Living Color since 1992. The two left the show in its third season.[2] The series began with 12 writers, including Patton Oswalt, Blaine Capatch, and writers from The Ben Stiller Show. Its pilot episode premiered on October 14, 1995, at 11 p.m. on Fox. The network approved of the pilot and ordered 12 episodes for its first season, which was heavily inspired by the eponymous magazine. It was pre-taped and contained a combination of short live-action sketches, movie parodies, and animated sketches.[3][1] Animated segments of Spy vs. Spy, a wordless comic strip originally featured in Mad and created by Antonio Prohías, appeared on the first four seasons of Mad TV.[4] The show's theme song was created by American hip hop group Heavy D & The Boyz, who had previously created the theme song for In Living Color, and composed by Greg O'Connor and Blake Aaron, the latter of whom was Mad TV's guitarist.[5][6] Filming took place in Hollywood at Hollywood Center Studios and later at Sunset Bronson Studios.[7][8]
The series satirized popular culture, with sketches parodying film, television and music.[9][10][11] Sketches often featured celebrity impressions and occasionally contained political satire, and Fox executive Joe Earley called the series "an equal opportunity offender".[9][10][12] Bruce Leddy became the show's director and supervising producer starting in 2000.[13] After Mad TV's first season, Fox rarely promoted the series and frequently made budget cuts, with cast and crew members such as Debra Wilson and Bahr referring to the series as the "redheaded stepchild" of Fox.[1] The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibbard wrote prior to its cancellation that Mad TV had been "like a distant cousin of [Fox's] other programming" during its runtime; David Nevins, Fox's former executive vice president of programming, attributed the lack of promotion to Fox focusing on advertising its new prime time series instead.[14][11] Fox executives and Mad TV's showrunners often shot down sketch ideas that were viewed admirably by the staff writers, who wanted the show to be "edgy".[1][15] Mad TV was partially intended to compete with fellow late-night sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live,[16] which, at the time of Mad TV's debut, was being poorly received by critics.[17] However, SNL quickly bounced back and Mad TV typically trailed behind the show in ratings.[1]
In November 2008, Fox confirmed that Mad TV's 326th episode during its shortened 14th season would be its last, telling Salzman that the show was too expensive considering its ratings and time slot. By this point, it was the fourth longest-running Fox series after The Simpsons, Cops, and America's Most Wanted.[14] Salzman said that he would be exploring the continuation of the show on another channel, possibly cable.[16] In early 2009, the show was briefly moved to air after Talkshow with Spike Feresten, the show that normally followed MADtv, before being moved back. The series finale aired on May 16, 2009.[18] It featured both new and old sketches and revolved around a fictional telethon called "Mad TV Gives Back".[19]
Reunion special
Mad TV had a one-hour-long 20th anniversary reunion special, titled MADtv 20th Anniversary Reunion.[20] It was executive produced by Salzman, directed by Bruce Leddy, and produced by Telepictures and Epicenter Ventures. It aired on The CW on January 12, 2016, at 8 p.m. and garnered 1.7 million viewers.[21][9][22] Its plot involved 19 returning cast members going to an awards show where things go awry.[23]
Cast and characters
Mad TV's cast was considered diverse by critics, especially compared to that of SNL.[9][24] According to casting director Nicole Garcia, the showrunners sought a diverse cast from the beginning of the series.[1] Its first season starred Debra Wilson, Nicole Sullivan, Phil LaMarr, Artie Lange, Mary Scheer, Bryan Callen, Orlando Jones, and David Herman.[25]
Wilson was the first cast member hired for Mad TV.[1] She starred in the first eight seasons of the series from 1995 to 2003, making her the longest-running original cast member and the only Black female cast member during her time on the show. She later stated that she left the series in 2003 after learning that she received a lower salary than a white male cast member who had joined after her, and that her salary negotiations had failed.[26][27] Sullivan was added to the cast because, according to her, Bahr and Small wanted someone on the show who "the audience would like to have dinner with".[1] She starred on the show from 1995 to 2001 and left to star in the ABC sitcom Me and My Needs, which was not picked up by the network after its pilot episode.[11][28] Herman starred in the short-lived Fox sketch comedy series House of Buggin' before appearing on Mad TV, while Jones had written for the Fox series Roc.[17] Jones, Callen, and Lange all left the show after its second season.[29][30]
Michael McDonald starred on Mad TV for ten seasons starting in 1997 and was the show's longest-running and oldest cast member, also occasionally directing segments.[29][10] The show's second longest-running cast member was Aries Spears, who appeared in 198 episodes from its third season in 1997 until its tenth season in 2005.[31][32] Other popular cast members included Alex Borstein, who starred on the show for five seasons from 1997 to 2002;[33] Ike Barinholtz, who joined in 2002 and left in 2007;[34] Will Sasso, who joined the show in its third season;[35] Mo Collins, who joined in 1998 and left in 2004;[36] Stephnie Weir, who starred on the show for six years;[29][37] Nicole Parker, who appeared on six seasons of the show; and Bobby Lee, who appeared on eight seasons of the show from 2001 to 2009.[38] Other cast members, such as Andy Daly, Simon Helberg, and Taran Killam, the last of whom was the youngest person ever to be cast on the show,[39] found fame after brief tenures on Mad TV.[30] Comedians Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key met after being cast on Mad TV in 2004 for its ninth season, and the two would later star together in the Comedy Central sketch comedy series Key & Peele.[40][41] Peele left the series in 2008, while Key stayed until the show's final season.[34]
Borstein and Peele were both kept from leaving Mad TV to pursue other roles due to their contracts, with Borstein having to turn down a role as Sookie on the CW series Gilmore Girls and Peele turning down a role playing Barack Obama for SNL.[42][43]
Recurring characters
Numerous characters and sketches on Mad TV became notable for their frequent appearances.[44] Michael McDonald played Stuart Larkin,[45] an overgrown, spoiled child with a bowl cut, bright red cheeks,[46] and a rainbow plaid shirt.[47] His overbearing single mother, Doreen (played by Mo Collins), has a strong Wisconsin accent and was inspired by McDonald's own mother.[48] Sketches with Stuart often involve him and his mother visiting various businesses where he frustrates the employees with his antics.[10] He has a number of catch phrases, including "Look what I can do!", "I don't wanna say," "Let me do it!", and "Dooooon't!", while his mother always mentions that Stuart's father left on Tuesday.[47] Stuart appeared in 38 sketches in nine seasons from 1998 to 2008.[10][46][49] He was described by Megh Wright of Vulture as the show's most memorable character and by Thomas Attila Lewis of LAist as "incredibly popular".[47][50]
Alex Borstein appeared in 44 sketches as the popular recurring character of Bunny Swan,[44] better known as Ms. Swan, an immigrant nail salon owner and manicurist[51] with a strong, exaggerated accent who annoys others by not being able to answer simple questions.[52][10] She has a bowl cut and wears a muumuu and a rainbow plaid jumper; she also has catch phrases such as "He look-a like-a man".[52][47] Although Ms. Swan was presumed by audiences to be Asian, the series identifies her as hailing from Kuvaria, the home of Santa Claus, while Borstein stated that her inspirations for the character were her Hungarian grandmother and Icelandic singer Björk.[44][11] Elahe Izadi of the Washington Post included the Ms. Swan sketches on a list of the "20 defining comedy sketches of the past 20 years" in 2019, writing that they were "among the most widely remembered of Mad TV's work".[53] Borstein briefly reprised the role outside of Mad TV for a parody of the trailer for the 2010 film Black Swan and for a video about the 2016 United States presidential election.[54][52]
The Vancome Lady, an emotionally abusive, racist woman who struggled to keep a job due to her ignorant remarks, was played by Nicole Sullivan and made over 25 appearances on the show, starting with its pilot episode.[44][10] She was described by Candace Amos of the New York Daily News as "one of the characters fans loved to hate".[46] A sketch featuring cast member Anjelah Johnson as the irritable Latina fast food worker Bon Qui Qui became popular on YouTube.[30][55] Johnson has frequently reprised the character since, releasing the album Gold Plated Dreams as the character in 2015 through Warner Records.[56]
Many of the show's recurring characters were parodies of celebrities such as Will Sasso's portrayal of singer Randy Newman and Aries Spears's portrayal of Bill Cosby.[47][46] Debra Wilson and Aries Spears frequently appeared on the show as married singers Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, who they portrayed as drug-addled, frantic, and "ghetto".[57][58][59] Along with her impression of Houston, Wilson also earned fame and acclaim for her impression of Oprah Winfrey on the show, with Vanity Fair's Yohana Desta describing Wilson's impression of Winfrey as "the gold standard" and HuffPost's Pollo Del Mar writing that Wilson's impressions of Winfrey and Houston were "as iconic as they were scathing".[60][61] Wilson went on to play Winfrey on the animated sitcom The Proud Family and in the 2006 parody film Scary Movie 4.[34][62] Other frequent celebrity impressions included Sasso's impressions of actors Robert De Niro and James Gandolfini, Lee's impression of newscaster Connie Chung, and Frank Caliendo's impressions of John Madden and George W. Bush.[29]