November 4, 2019 • 47 mins
We wrap up talking about The Night Stalker (2005) with a discussion of two scripts for the show that were scrapped -- Ascendant and The M Word. However, The M Word would gain new life when it was re-adapted for the X-Files reboot as Mulder & Scully Meet the Weremonster. Mike and Chris talk about the changes between the original draft and the X-Files version.
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(00:45):
For centuries, people have looked upat the night sky in awe, believing
the planets, stars and moons werenot merely distant light shining in the firmament,
but rather the eternal source of orderin the universe, that if we
could hear the music of the spheres, we could act in accordance with that
order, rather than struggle uselessly againstit. Nowadays, the lights of the
(01:07):
city outshine those in the heavens,and that would have been the voice of
reporter Carl Kolchak if we had everseen the eleventh episode of The Night Stalker
called Ascendant, written by Melissa Blakeand Joy Beth Blake, who went on
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to do things like Heroes. Sohooray, so awesome. Folks. You
remember that show? Oh wait,you tried to forget it. Never mind,
first season was pretty good till thatlast episode. And it would have
been directed by Dan Sackheim. Iam Mike White, and I am joined
as always by Chris Dashe, muchto the chagrin of some of you,
(01:51):
I am still here. So,my plastic gray whale friend, let's talk
about Ascending. We're going to talkabout a couple episodes of the Night Stalker,
which we never saw, though wesaw one of them in a different
shape and form. Let's clarify nightStalker two thousand they talk in two thousand
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and five, Yes, very important. We're talking about what ascendant and then
the M word which did get adaptedeventually rewrote. Yes, severely. I
don't know how you want to classify. I mean, like it was retooled
into an X Files episode, severelyretooled. But let's talk about our magical
(02:38):
disability person when it comes to ascendant. If there's a magical negro trope,
and I'm not saying this to offendanyone, but magical negro is kind of
offensive. Is this the magical retardtrope? Yeah, there's got to be
a better word for it, butyeah, magical negroes not much better.
Like that's mildly offensive. And theissue with the sending is is it's pretty
(03:00):
goddamn affect. Yeah, it hasnot aged well and I'm not sure it
was very on point in two thousandand five, and it was written we're
a few years north. I mean, we're quite a few years north of
Rainman, which really did a lotof damage to the autistic community. We're
a little bit farther when it comesto stuff like what was at Mercury Rising
(03:24):
with Bruce Willis. I mean,there was a whole slate of autism films.
There was a House of Cards andone other that came out right around
the same time. But I meanthe original title for Mercury Rising was supposed
to be Simple Simon. That's howfar we came was that we knew that
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Simple Simon was not a good namefor a movie with a kid who is
an autistic person. Well, let'snot forget. Also, we're three years
before what is effectively the biggest pisstaking out of version of a mentally handicapped
character in the film, which isBen Stiller at Simple Jack in Tropic Thunder,
(04:06):
where they take the entire piss outof the playing a mentally handicapped person
for an oscar. That whole moviejust takes the wind out of the sales
of anyone ever doing that. Again, simple Jack thought he was smart,
or rather didn't think it was retarded, so he can't afford to play retarded
being a smart actor playing a guywho ain't smart but thinks he is.
(04:27):
That's tricky. Hats off of goinghere, especially No, not Tocademy is
about that ship, about what everybodyknows. You never got full retired Dustin
Hoffman, Raymond Luke, retarded,act retarded, not retarded, can't two
picks che your cards artistic shop notretarded. Yeah, time hands for his
gun slow, Yes, retard him. Maybe he braced his own his leg,
(04:47):
but he chimed the pants off next. And they want to pin pong
competition that he't retart it. Hewas goddamned war hero. You know what,
he retired a war heroes. Youdon't buy that. As Sean pant
who hasn't one, I am saying, when full retonn whim to hit him,
never go full retond. I knowpeople have varying degrees of reaction to
(05:09):
Tropic Thunder. I think it's aboutas subversive as Blazing Saddles was for a
lot of reasons. But the wholementally handicapped character trope kind of died out
after Tropic Thunder because they pretty muchcondemned Hollywood for what is ostensibly people playing
mentally handicapped characters. And and theydid a good I mean again, like
(05:31):
I said, I know a lotof people don't like that movie, but
they did a good job of essentiallypointing the finger at Hollywood and saying you
are essentially playing it up so muchthat it's unrealistic, and that in and
of itself is offensive. And inthis episode, it's really offensive because he's
not acting like an a functioning autisticperson. This is not temple grand and
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this is like just someone who isautistic, and we're just reading it.
I don't even know how it wouldhave been performed well, and that's the
other thing. Well, the thing, the thing I don't know is I
like the person in my mind thatI saw playing the character of George in
the script was Glenn Fleschler, whoplays the villain in Truth the first season,
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a true detective, and he hasthat kind of quality to him.
But again in that show, he'splaying a mentally disturbed character, not a
mentally handicapped character. And so it'sjust a weird episode to focus on like
a magically handicapped character. And it'slike, Okay, it doesn't track.
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It's problematic. And I know that'slike a word that oh, every yeah,
every snowflake uses this problematic, butit kind of is. And like,
I don't offend easily, I reallydon't like, nothing really offends me,
and I'm not offended by the script, but it's just his tone deaf.
It's very tone deaf. And thisis a literal magical person. This
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is not at the end and they'regoing to say something that will really,
you know, change the main character'smind or something. This really has stuff
to do with magic and the cosmosand stuff. So let's break it down
a little bit. We've got Georgewho is working as a bag boy at
a local grocery store and when thereis what is it, Steven is the
(07:26):
guy. There are two guys tokind of overweight, balding slub guys who
are shopping at the same time,and George, when he is bagging up
this guy's groceries, tells him thathe's going to die, and sure enough,
the guy dies. He gets killedin the parking lot. But hey,
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it was the wrong guy who gotkilled. It was actually a hit
that went wrong. The guy thatwas supposed to be killed is the husband
of a woman who has essentially beatendown and paid a hit man ten thousand
dollars to kill her husband. Hejust killed the wrong fat, overweight,
balding man. So it's one ofthose like weird X Files episodes. They
have some of those episodes in theX Files where it's like, a supernatural
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thing happens, but it's also afake out because the supernatural thing ends up
not really having any bearing on anything. It just happens to be occurring at
the same time as nefarious things goingon, and that's a kind of a
cop out and I don't like it. And then through what somehow the brother
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of George gets in the sights ofthe murderer, the hitman basically, and
then George, I mean, I'mreally shortening this down. George manages to
save the day but also gets killed, and he joins his parents, who
he thinks are in heaven and somehowhas changed fate, and of course that
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really gives Carl quite a little chubby. The big takeaway that I had from
this script is it feels just likeevery other episode of Nightstalker two thousand and
five that we've watched. Stuart Townsend'sversion of Colchack comes off just as kind
of aloof and bizarre in this scriptas he is in the show. So
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it's written pretty well if we're keepingwith the tone of what we've seen.
But at the same time, it'skeeping in tone with what we've seen,
and what we've seen wasn't particularly great. It wasn't as bad as you know,
the torch and pitchfork folks on theColchack Facebook, what have you believe?
Burn it down, kill it.It's the monster, the Antichrist.
(09:41):
It's not that bad, folks.This script is very much keeping in tone
with everything we've seen from Nights Soccertwo thousand and five, So in that
aspect it's a success, but atthe same time it's also a massive failure
because what we've seen up until thispoint is not great. We got pretty
(10:01):
much, i'd say this is Colchack. We get a little bit of Perry,
not very much at all, andthen just a hint, just a
hint of Jane McManus in this Andagain I don't think we've got any sort
of Vincenzo going on in this one. I didn't see Vincenzo at all.
(10:22):
But again, that was another thingwe talked about when we were watching the
show, is that Vincenzo is nota character. He's there because Vincenzo was
a character in the original show,and if we don't have him, Colchack
fans will be upset. You guysare missing the point putting the horse before
the wagon big time. But again, it was a quick read. It's
(10:43):
sixty three pages. I would suggestanyone who is a mildly enjoyed the two
thousand and five show to give ita read. You can find it online
with the cursory search. It's notterrible. It's an interesting episode, but
again it's just it's mildly problematic.None of the characters are really interesting,
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and the conclusion to the episode ispretty dumb, like just generically stupid.
They don't even have a Carl Colcheckvoiceover at the end or else. I
would try to do that TBW tobe written. That's right, because there's
there's that last weird page about thathas pocket dialogue on it. You know.
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The whole thing about George is likeI'm going, you know, his
parents are waiting for him. Iskind of the whole thing. So it's
like he's kind of he's kind offulfilling his purpose. He's stopping he's stopping
the death of his brother, butalso he's going to Heaven to see his
parents. It's it's very mushy,it's very sappy, it's very very saccharin
and not great. I wouldn't havebeen happy had this actually gotten turned into
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an episode. And yeah, you'reright, I think this was included as
well as the M word. Ithink both of these were included on the
DVDs of nights Stalk or two twothousand and five, and then just forensically,
there are a lot of revisions inhere, but what we're looking at
is just a black and white copy. Though the front page talks about you
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know, you've got your yellow pages, your pink pages, your blue pages,
and they're all being written like anearly part of November two thousand and
five, and right around that timeis when everything starts to collapse for the
night Stalker because the last two episodesthat actually aired well, the last episode
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that aired was November tenth, andthen after that they all started getting dumped
onto iTunes. One November seventeenth,and then the last three in February.
In March of two thousand and six, just dumped. Mike unceremoniously dumped to
it two. Thank you, Thankyou for the correction, which takes us
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to the next script, the Mword, the M word, which so
we've been complaining, I've been complainingthis whole time about the lack of charisma
of Stuart Townsend, and I willbe frank, I've never seen a movie
performance of his or a TV performancethat has given me any hope about this
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guy. I mostly know him fromhis horrific performance in a horrific movie,
which was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemanwhere he was Dorian Gray. Didn't give
me much hope, and then hewas in that how was that horrible Aaliyah
movie Queen of the Damned? Butyeah, anyway, I've never been a
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fan of Stuart Townsend. And herewe have Darren Morgan writing the M word
was supposed to be directed by TonyWarmby. So this one, the first
draft is written or dated November eleven, two thousand and five. And like
I said, that's when everything wascollapsing on the Night Stalker. Do you
(14:07):
want to try to describe what's goingon here? Before I try to explain
what's going on? Like you mentioned, I think I'm going to go out
on a limb here and say thatthis was an X Files episode from mc
gett go because it's written like one. The charisma that Colchack has in this
episode doesn't feel like Colchack at all. It feels like Fox Molder. He's
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jokey and like weirdly humorous, andit's like, what fucking show did you
come from? Because this is nottwo thousand and five Nights Soccer. I
mean, was that what was supposedto happen here? Was it supposed to
be We're going to do eleven episodesof this guy being a charisma vacuum and
then suddenly we're going to have ajoke episode in the middle of this.
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I mean, when was the firstlike funny episode of The X Files,
Like the first purely comedic episode ofThe X Files. Look, the ones
that I can think about are likeX Cops, But that didn't happen until
much later in the show, likeseason seven type late, like when they
were like, you know what,we can just kind of do whatever we
want at this point, like let'sstart to kind of experiment with the formula
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of the show. This episode waswritten by Darren Morgan, who worked on
The X Files and who wrote orof the coprophages Jose Chungs from Outer Space,
Clyde Bruckman's final repose, Let's justgo out on the record and say,
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Darren Morgan wrote the episodes of TheX Files. They won Emmy's four.
This feels like and I know,you know, I'm sorry to put
you on the spot, but like, I don't know if jose Chungs was
the first purely comedic X Files,but that is the one that always comes
to mind when it's like, hey, this is a very funny episode,
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and that's what this feels like.This feels like jose Chung circa whatever.
Twenty two thousand and five. Imisspoke. Season three has wore the Coprophages,
which is a humorous episode. Seasonthree also as Clyde Bruckman's which is
funny. So yeah, season three, not season seven. You put me
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on the spot, I misanswered,I'm correcting myself, not letting anyone else
get the chance to do it.Rich assured that I was on the Internet
within minutes registering my disgust throughout thewood. Season three is where Clyde Bruckman
and jose Chung was in that season. I think we're the co Prophages two,
was it? Okay? So yeah, all three and all three written
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by the same person, And likeI said, they're widely considered to be
some of the best episodes of theshow, just like by the fan base.
Like the fan base can agree,jose Chung's from Outer Space is one
of the best, if not thebest episode of the show. Clyde Bruckman
is one of the best, ifnot the best episode of the show.
You will find people making arguments forboth of those episodes, and neither camp
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is wrong because they're fucking amazing episodes, like genuinely fantastic standalone pieces of television.
And here we are with the samewriter and writing this. Maybe they
were just going to pull like aweird bait and switch. Maybe everybody and
then the next day at the watercooler would be saying, wow, did
(17:27):
you see that episode of night Stalkerlast night? You mean that show Stillon,
Well, yeah, it is stillon, and last night they did
something completely different than they haven't anyother episode, and it was actually funny,
or an attempt at being funny.That was the thing about this I
don't understand. So, like youmentioned, we did read the script for
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The M Word, which they thenadapted into Molder and Scully Meet the Wear
Monster, which I liked the titlethe M Word a lot. I actually
think it's really clever. It's alittle on the nose, but at the
same time I like it. Andthe issue I have with the script reading
through it is because I've seen theepisode, I was just reading it as
(18:08):
Molder and Scully. I wasn't readingit as Perry and Colchack, because again,
like you mentioned, it doesn't feellike Perry and Colcheck. It feels
like Molder and Scully. And DarrenMorgan, I honestly believe he just couldn't
get out of the idea of ifyou've got a male and female lead in
a TV show, you couldn't justwrite them as Molder and Scully because it's
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so close in just content of whatthe show is talking about that it's almost
inevitable that you're just not going towrite him that way anyways. And you've
got McManus, Who've got Jane mcmanisonhere who just doesn't feel like he belongs.
And then this is the closest I'veseen Vincenzo actually beat Vincenzo, which
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is absolutely bizarre. He's like,you know, chiding Colchack and kind of
goading him on and saying like Colchackunder his breath, and Smith is a
fantastic actor. Go watch Mine Huntersmind Hunter season one. He's fantastic in
that show, so I know,and you know if you've seen Mine Hunter
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that he actually can bring a levelof gravitas to a authority figure. And
again they're wasting him in the nightStalker two thousand and five, but in
the script he's Vincenzo from the originalshow, updated to two thousand and five.
I like the bit where he hascrossed out every single line of colcheck
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story and Red Penn it's great.And he also chied him for using the
word monster because only insane people usethe word monster or children a fairy tale
is the only time you should beseeing monster in print. His words in
the script. Well, and rememberthis is kind of a reaction too against
the actual producers of the ABC show, because Frank Spottonitz told us way back
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when when we did the very firstepisode of Nightstocer two thousand and five,
which was they did and want Monsterof the Week even though they wanted Monster
of the week and we were notallowed to use the M word. So
that's where a lot of this stuffcomes from, is this is basically making
fun of those exacts, and itworks like you could It worked and again
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the problem though with all of thisis when we get to it being adapted
for the X Files, it fallsflat. And I don't know why it's
like such a bummer, because Iknow you're not a huge fan of the
script, but I like the scriptand I think it works, even if
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again, it's almost not coal chackin Perry. I mean, it's not
coal chack in Perry period. It'snot that I'm necessarily a fan of the
script or not a fan of thescript. It's that I can't see Stuart
Townsend doing No, that's a failureof the scrip. I can see Gabrielle
Union doing this, I can seeCotter Smith doing this. I can see
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everybody handling this role. Yeah ohyeah, But I cannot see Stewart Townsend
doing this stuff. I mean,he is making fun of his own character.
Like there's a scene where he isdoing the Cole Chack veo that we
have made fun of since day one, and it's him and Jane, and
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Jane is just like, are yougoing to keep doing that? And his
coal check reading into his pocket sizedtape recorder, which we've never seen him
use a pocket sized tape recorder,and this whole thing, even though it's
such a big part of the originalshow, it is a secondary character of
the show. And I was sosurprised that the wear Monster is wearing in
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the coal chack, the original searsuckersuit outfit, and even tries the hand
coal chack the jacket at the end, do you want this jacket? But
no, he doesn't, you know, he turns it down, So it
would have been an even more pointedlike, Hey, this is what the
original was, this is what youare, and you kind of suck kind
of thing. Like you said.The failure is not that it's a bad
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script. The failure is that it'swritten for I mean, can you imagine
a Terminator film right where the characterof the original Terminator not Terminator T two,
the Terminator where it's a horror movieostensibly it's a fucking sci fi horror
movie. Is that Terminator is writtenjokey and like quipping with one liners that
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like, and I know he hasone liners in the first movie, but
I'm talking about like too humorous tobe taken seriously, because there is a
feeling of dread in that first Terminatorfilm, with the Terminator being you know,
a six foot eight Austrian man whocould break you in half over his
fucking leg and you know I'll beback at Ocana. I mean a lot
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of that is one linery, butI'm talking like straight up comedic bits.
It doesn't track. And that's theway this feels. It's just oddly against
character. It's like if you deepfaked Jim Carrey from ace Ventura over Arnold
from Terminator and kept the movie.Everything else was exactly the same, but
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you've got ace Ventura doing those thoselines and those bits. Yeah, it
doesn't make any sense. It's soweird. But again, the weirder aspect
of this is when it gets adaptedfor The X Files, which did have
that kind of humorous, witty interplaybetween Moulder and Scully, which is the
reason any X Files fan watched theshow even into the tenth and eleventh season,
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which are again they have their ownproblems. You came back for the
relationship between Molder and Scully and itsomehow doesn't work. It's so weird.
So let's talk about Moulder and Scullymeet the war Monster, and I will
say right off the bat, Iwas very happy to see Thailand of being
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show up, prizing his role asStoner from the two previous episodes Quagmire and
more of the copra Phages, whichI loved when he showed up in stuff
and I love him. I loveeverything that he's done that I've ever seen
him in. I mean, Tuckerand Dale is fantastic. There's a show
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that I've been touting to you fora long time called Dead Last that I
really enjoyed. Really like this guyReaper. He was fantastic and he's a
classic man. He shows up inthis and I was just like, Okay,
this is a nice continuity that thisguy is still hanging out in the
woods trying to get high. Dude, that's a good crop. Then it
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kind of sets the tone as faras this is going to be a jokey
episode of The X Files, whichwas weird because at that time we were
reviving the show. We get tofinally wrap up some stuff here. You
know, we've got this one lastseason now that they're doing for us,
not knowing that they're going to doa second got this one last season.
We're going to wrap up stuff.So then suddenly when they do Mulder and
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Scully meet the wear Monster, It'slike, what the fuck you doing guys,
this feels like filler. But here'sthe thing, because it's only what
ten episodes, it is filler.And the problem is if it hadn't been
just a limited time engagement or whatevernonsense it was being billed as at the
time. And look, I wantto say, I don't remember exactly,
Like I'm pretty sure that this likebroke records for viewership at Fox, Like
(25:30):
it was insanely successful for them XFiles coming back, and I think everyone's
expectation when it came back with sixepisodes, not even ten, was that
it was going to be this kindof final reveal of the mythos and the
myth arc and finishing it out right, and then they don't do that at
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all. They actually completely fucking destroyall the goodwill that they had built up,
which wasn't very much, to befair at the end of the season
nine, because season nine is justthe mythology. The mythology after the Syndicate
dies at the hands of the alienBoundery Hunters is where I honestly stopped caring
about the mythology for the show,because then they start going to super Soldiers
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and nol Roar, And even thoughI love Adam Baldwin and Lucy Lawless is
great in her time on the show, and I'm sorry if I'm going on
an X Files tangent. We haveto talk about the exiles a little bit,
and where this shows up in thiskind of grand scheme of the show.
It shows up in a point wherethey should not have ever put this
episode. It should have been justmythology and talking about their son and the
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cigarette smoking man and everything else,and all these things they should have been
focusing on, and instead they putthis episode in, which is an interesting
episode, but it's very misplaced inwhen it aired in the revival of the
show, and it would have beenokay if it was a better episode.
Rice Starvey's good, but he's justkind of doing his flight of the Concords
(27:02):
thing. Yeah, I mean thereare moments in here. Hallelu I likes
Angela, so seeing her and herewas pretty good. The whole idea of
this hotel that they're at, wherethe guy, the hotel owner can go
behind the walls and spy on people, and when they're doing this back and
forth time thing, when he spieson Fox Molder and he's there in that
(27:25):
little red like junk holder. Iwas like, Okay, that's funny.
That actually made me laugh, butnot very much else. I mean,
there are a couple things, likegoing back to the comedian episode of the
Twilight Zone revival. We've got ourfriend who Mail nan Gianni, and he
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is in this episode. You knowwhy he's in this episode, right?
No? I don't know why.Okay, so let's pull the casing back
on the sausage. We're podcasters.We're talking about cole check the night Stalker.
The original show. If we we'reonly talking about that showed the two
thousand and five reboot had never happened, and our podcast was so popular that
it drummed up interest in Kolchak somuch that they rebooted the show. We
(28:10):
would be in the show the sameway Kumail nan Jianni's in The X Files
his X Files podcast. I listenedto that podcast because I'm such a fan
of the X Files. I didn'teven know who he was at the time.
He wasn't Kumail nan Jianni of castin a fucking Marvel movie like he
is now. He was just kumaldanJianni, stand up comedian and massive fan
(28:30):
of The X Files, and hispodcast was so wildly popular, coupled with
the fact that X Files was,at the time on Netflix one of the
most streamed shows that they had.Fox was like, maybe we could get
Molder and Scully back together for onemore ride. And because he was so
(28:51):
well known because of his podcast,and then obviously he transitioned into becoming a
much more well known stand up comedianand screenwriter, he was given a role
in this episode and he's awful.He's awful. The only thing I like
about him, and the only otherlaugh that I got from this really was
at the end when it is revealedthat he's the killer and he's done all
(29:12):
these horrible things, which I don'tknow if that necessarily makes sense with how
this episode is structured, but whenthey're taking him away and he's like it
all started when I was a child, just uncontrollable urge to torture small animals.
As I got older, I'm compulsion. All right, leave it for
the trial, all right, mother, you see one serial killer seeing them
(29:34):
all, But I have a wholespeech prepared that was about it. And
I like that, Gillian Anderson,that Dana Scully is going and doing these
potentially dangerous things on her own andthat she is fine both times. She
never becomes a woman in distress.What this episode really reminded me of a
(29:57):
lot other than some of the otheror Darren Morgan episodes is Bad Blood,
which was in the fifth season andit had Luke Wilson in it. It's
like an almost Raschamun style episode whereyou've got Mulder recounting his version of the
events to Skinner, Scully recounting herevents version of the events to Skinner,
and it's like very different. Soon one of them, Luke Wilson's like
(30:18):
this dashing smalltown sheriff and in Mulder'sversion, he's like a fucking ocal yokel
hick with like, you know,ridiculous stereotypical hillbilly teeth. That's kind of
what this episode veers into at theend, where it's Rice Darby recounting what
happened, like, oh and thenI banged Scully, which I mean that
whole bit is pretty damn funny becauseMulder just is like that did deafen?
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And I love this idea that RiceDarby is becoming human and he's the monster.
Like so it's it's really clever.It really is like I think we
can agree on how clever it is, and like, the last ten minutes
of the episode are amazing. Thefinal monologue between Molder and the wear Monster
(31:03):
are honestly sublime. They're pitch perfect, They're really well written. They honestly,
if you're a huge fan of theshow, that might even bring a
tear to your eye because of youknow, Molder at this point is very
disillusioned, and it's kind of likea reaffirmation of his belief in the unexplained.
The first time we see him,he's throwing pencils at the I Want
to Believe poster, which we thenfind out is Scullies, which was interesting,
(31:26):
right, and then his whole onesided argument that he has with Scully
where he keeps countering and like,I know what you're gonna say, You're
gonna say that, and it justthe way that that bounces back and forth.
That's all stuff that was not inthat Coal Check script, and I
think that is much better. Ithink the way the episode was realized was
(31:48):
much better than they would have doneit as a Coal Check episode because I
just don't buy Stuart Townsend well andthat relationships already baked in and Ducovney.
Ducomny's fucking awesome. Gilly Anderson,She's fucking awesome. So I can see
Ducovney. I've seen Ducovany be funny. Ducovny just on Howard Stern is hilarious.
I mean, just a plain oldinterview with David Ducovney. He's a
(32:12):
very funny guy, very quick witted. Just watch Californication. His comedic timing
is impeccable. I liked Rise Daviesin this, the interplay and then how
they've got Molder in front of theKim Manners gravestone, which was a nice
thing since Kim Manners directed a coupleof these Darren Morgan episodes, So yeah,
(32:34):
that was it was nice. Itwas a very nice kind of like
homage to those older episodes. Butin that time watching this as part of
that package of X Files episodes,I was like, what the hell is
this doing here? This just doesn'tfit well. And then the weird thing
is is you know, obviously,like we mentioned, the X Files would
come back for eleventh limited engagement andDarren Morgan would write another episode, the
(33:00):
Lost Art of Forehead Sweat, whichhe also directed, and he directed this
one. But it's again, it'svery much that like poking fun at the
X Files, like that was alwaysthe thing that Darren Morgan did that I
loved about his episodes is he deconstructsthe show in a way that only he
could be successful at doing, andhe subverts your expectations in a way that
(33:23):
feels earned and it's smart, andit's not like he subverts your expectations by
subverting them even more than you thoughtthey could be subverted. And that's why
Darren Morgan's episodes were such a joyto watch because when you knew you were
when you sat down and saw thatDarren Morgan's name was the writing credit for
the episode, you knew it wasgoing to be something special. You knew
(33:45):
that it was going to be anepisode that was truly going to be great
or different or heartfelt in a waythat a lot of the other episodes aren't.
And like I said, that finalback and forth with Molder at the
end of this episode is really heartfeltand it does kind of hit me down
in my heart of like an XFiles fan, like what it means to
(34:06):
be a fan of the show,or what it means to be a fan
of supernatural things and you know,kind of believing in in metaphysics and the
supernatural and the paranormal, and soit kind of hits me there in a
way that I didn't expect it to. But at the same time, it
doesn't have any place here. Itjust doesn't. And that's the unfortunate part.
It gets your written the field,so it does. It kind of
(34:28):
does in a way that I wasn'texpecting the X Files too. But then
you also have the scene with thetransgender woman and that's really not great.
It's actually kind of weird because it'slike twenty sixteen and it's fucking tone deaf.
Well that it was written originally intwo thousand and five, I mean,
because that doesn't really change. That'spretty close to what that I know,
(34:51):
And that's the bad part. Well, and then she had a worse
name. What was her name,like baby doll or baby and then yeah,
that that line of the war monsterslike she can change from man to
a woman, and it's like,oh, it was bad. And then
he goes like moldres is, no, you have to have your generals.
He's going, I'll keep that,Like did you guys film this thinking this
was like gonna be funny because it'skind of cringey. But other than that,
(35:14):
I mean it's a fairly fun episode. But again, like you said,
if the ultimate exercise here was towrite a episode of Coal Check two
thousand and five, boy, failureupon failure and then failure some more,
I can't see it having ever happened. I mean, maybe, you know,
maybe we've been completely surprised. We'vebeen like, oh wow, yeah
(35:36):
that's hilarious, and maybe I'll stickwith this night stock or reboot, and
wow, maybe it'll be fantastic.No, well, it would have been
funny, it would have been interesting, but the problem is is it wouldn't
have made any sense with everything we'veseen up into that point. He would
have just been like, who thefuck show is this? Like, what
show is this? All of asudden, this is not Cold Check.
This is some other show that's moreexpertly written. This is the X Files.
(36:00):
That's true what it said. Youknow what, I'm like, this
is just the X Files. WellI just watch that, just change the
channel. Because it was still onat the time. X Files had been
off for four years at that point, oh ended in May two thousand and
two, so we left it upto y'all the listeners about what you wanted
us to do for the next showafter cole Check. And obviously Kat's out
(36:22):
of the bag because y'all picked it. We're doing Barney Miller. But a
lot of y'all mentioned The X Files, And since this is pretty much going
to be my last opportunity to talkabout The X Files on the Cold Check
tapes, I do want to saythat as a fan of The X Files,
I am one of those conflicted fanswho loves the show deeply. It
is probably still my favorite show everto air on television. The interplay between
(36:45):
Dicovny and Anderson is sublime. It'sperfect. They are, in my mind,
a perfectly cast group of characters.You got Walter Skinner, Mitch Pelegie,
William B. Davis's a cigarette smokingman. I mean, you know,
Crycheck. I mean everything about theshow is great. I love it
to death. It came out ata perfect time, but it is one
(37:06):
of those shows that, like coalCheck, it should never have come back.
Even if I didn't like the wayit ended, which I didn't and
a lot of fans didn't, itcame back and didn't justify its return.
What I'm getting at here is thething that everybody talks about Coal Check two
thousand and five is that it's notgood. But the issue isn't that it's
not good. It didn't justify itcoming back. It didn't give us a
(37:30):
reason to carry that it came back. And that's the problem with all of
these reboots or returns of shows.I mean, that's like so popular now
is you have to give the peoplea reason to want to watch more of
the show outside of just getting tosee the characters again. And with Coal
Check, they didn't do enough tojustify it. And like the X Files
(37:52):
those two seasons, they didn't doenough to justify it, and honestly,
they did more harm than good tothe mythology. So off my soapbox,
word underneath the table. That's thelast time I'm talking about the X Files
on this podcast. Oh, I'msure you'll find a way to work at
end over the next couple of weeks. Can't. There's no way there.
I'm done. What happens if youbring it up over the next couple episodes
(38:14):
where we're wrapping up the original it'llbe a passing mention, but it won't
be that. It will be thatwas me. I mean, because that
whole thing with the wear Monster likeit really is indicative of coal Chack two
thousand and five and the X Filesreturn as well, because they're inexorably length
now, because that was originally goingto be a coal Jack episode. That's
(38:37):
why Bryce Davies is wearing that Colchackoutfit. That's why he is dressed like
that. Even though the original wearMonster would have been dressed like that.
That just doesn't make sense, sure, I mean again, it was kind
of taking the piss out of it, you know. Yeah, well the
original script was. But then like, it doesn't make a whole lot of
(38:59):
sense in the X Files episode otherthan like if you were sly enough to
catch on that this was originally aColchack episode, yeah, because otherwise he
would have been like, well,why is he dressed like that? And
that's why I was saying it,unless it's like, oh, well,
Colchack influenced the X Files, whichobviously it did. But yeah, before
I knew that this was originally anepisode of night Stalker two thousand and five,
(39:22):
I had no idea why he wasdressed like that. And that's and
that is again a weird thing aboutthe way that the script got made and
then re edited into a X Filesepisode. It's like some weird idiosyncrasies stuck
around that don't work anymore, likehim being dressed up like Colchack, and
it's like, so, I meanagain, for us, it's iconic,
and for a certain generation it's iconic. But another generation people, why the
(39:45):
fuck is he dressed like this?He's dressed like us, a reporter from
the seventies. Why Yeah. Nextmonth we will be back with our Wow,
it's not our final episode of theshow, and we still have a
couple more after that, but ourfinal discussion of an actual episode of cole
Chack the Century, and after thatwe will do a couple more episodes where
(40:09):
we talk about things like Colcheck andother mediums. You know, he appeared
in a form in a tomb ofDracula. There's a whole series of books,
comics, all kinds of stuff.And if those fine folks over at
Moonstone Publishing want to finally fucking getback to us, maybe we'll have an
(40:30):
interview with them, and maybe we'lltry to help you pimp some of their
books. Colcheck, the character oforiginal col Check Darren McGavin's Cold Check has
been lovingly kept alive by a fairnumber of people, and to you,
I say thank you for keeping thecharacter alive because two thousand and five show
didn't do a very good job ofdoing No. No, nobody's doing fan
(40:52):
fiction about the Stewart Townsend version.Again, with the overwhelming response that we've
gotten from the culture back fan pages, they don't even want us to talk
about it. So sorry, sorry, but we did well. We did,
we got We got to do ourdue diligence, as they would say,
and give it all a fair shake. And that's why we sprinkled these
(41:13):
throughout because I think we kind ofwould have gone crazy had we just concentrated
on the two thousand and five.Can you imagine doing a podcast on just
the two thousand and five. It'salmost like it would be just a one
season show. That'd be kind ofnuts. So, Chris, what are
you up to? These stays?So I actually run a podcast Cold the
one season show with my good friendJess byired Her and I talk about shows
(41:35):
that only lasted one season. Ifwe hadn't done Cold Check, the Night
Stalker or the original show on thiswe probably would have done it there,
so I do that with her.And then I also have my own podcast,
cold the Culture Cast, where Italk about movies once to twice a
week, depending on if a newmovie has come out of value. We
just did an episode on It chaptertwo, which I heard is Mike's new
(41:58):
favorite film of all time, besthorror movie have you ever written? And
I also do a podcast with youand our good friend father Malone called Dreams
for Sale, and I do apodcast with him called Chronicles from the Crypt
about shockingly tales from the Crypt.So that is what I do when I'm
not here. What about you,Mike? What do you do when you're
not here? I like to goto the range and do target practice.
(42:22):
You like movies about gladiators? Oh, Billy? Do I ever? And
Yeah? Then I do a podcastcalled The Projection Booth, which you can
find out Projection Booth podcast dot com, where every episode we're looking at a
different movie, which most of thetime you haven't heard of. Sorry,
so big thanks to John Walker forproviding our theme music. Big thanks everybody
(42:45):
for listening. Stick with us overthese next few episodes, and then return
to this feed for listening to ourwhole discussion of Barney Miller, and thank
you, by the way, foreverybody who actually knows who Chris and My
Car on our Facebook group? Whywhat a weird? What a weird conversation
(43:07):
of that one? Whoa who areChris and Mike? Oh God? I
feel that I can say whatever Iwant to about that guy because I don't
think he's listening to the podcast.You know. I think that's a safe
bet considering how you know, heasked who Chris and My Car? Sometimes
I wonder who we are Chris.Sometimes I wonder, deep in our hearts,
(43:28):
who are we really? Sometimes Ilook up in the night sky and
I see the stars, and Iwonder, are those just blinking gases of
light? Where is there more inthis universe? Um um um give m
(45:47):
m m mmm mm boom mmm mmmmmmmm mmm m m m m m hm h
For centuries, people have looked upat the night sky in awe, believing
the planets, stars and moons werenot merely distant light shining in the firmament,
but rather the eternal source of orderin the universe, that if we
could hear the music of the spheres, we could act in accordance with that
order, rather than struggle uselessly againstit. Nowadays, the lights of the
(01:07):
city outshine those in the heavens,and that would have been the voice of
reporter Carl Kolchak if we had everseen the eleventh episode of The Night Stalker
called Ascendant, written by Melissa Blakeand Joy Beth Blake, who went on
(01:29):
to do things like Heroes. Sohooray, so awesome. Folks. You
remember that show? Oh wait,you tried to forget it. Never mind,
first season was pretty good till thatlast episode. And it would have
been directed by Dan Sackheim. Iam Mike White, and I am joined
as always by Chris Dashe, muchto the chagrin of some of you,
(01:51):
I am still here. So,my plastic gray whale friend, let's talk
about Ascending. We're going to talkabout a couple episodes of the Night Stalker,
which we never saw, though wesaw one of them in a different
shape and form. Let's clarify nightStalker two thousand they talk in two thousand
(02:15):
and five, Yes, very important. We're talking about what ascendant and then
the M word which did get adaptedeventually rewrote. Yes, severely. I
don't know how you want to classify. I mean, like it was retooled
into an X Files episode, severelyretooled. But let's talk about our magical
(02:38):
disability person when it comes to ascendant. If there's a magical negro trope,
and I'm not saying this to offendanyone, but magical negro is kind of
offensive. Is this the magical retardtrope? Yeah, there's got to be
a better word for it, butyeah, magical negroes not much better.
Like that's mildly offensive. And theissue with the sending is is it's pretty
(03:00):
goddamn affect. Yeah, it hasnot aged well and I'm not sure it
was very on point in two thousandand five, and it was written we're
a few years north. I mean, we're quite a few years north of
Rainman, which really did a lotof damage to the autistic community. We're
a little bit farther when it comesto stuff like what was at Mercury Rising
(03:24):
with Bruce Willis. I mean,there was a whole slate of autism films.
There was a House of Cards andone other that came out right around
the same time. But I meanthe original title for Mercury Rising was supposed
to be Simple Simon. That's howfar we came was that we knew that
(03:45):
Simple Simon was not a good namefor a movie with a kid who is
an autistic person. Well, let'snot forget. Also, we're three years
before what is effectively the biggest pisstaking out of version of a mentally handicapped
character in the film, which isBen Stiller at Simple Jack in Tropic Thunder,
(04:06):
where they take the entire piss outof the playing a mentally handicapped person
for an oscar. That whole moviejust takes the wind out of the sales
of anyone ever doing that. Again, simple Jack thought he was smart,
or rather didn't think it was retarded, so he can't afford to play retarded
being a smart actor playing a guywho ain't smart but thinks he is.
(04:27):
That's tricky. Hats off of goinghere, especially No, not Tocademy is
about that ship, about what everybodyknows. You never got full retired Dustin
Hoffman, Raymond Luke, retarded,act retarded, not retarded, can't two
picks che your cards artistic shop notretarded. Yeah, time hands for his
gun slow, Yes, retard him. Maybe he braced his own his leg,
(04:47):
but he chimed the pants off next. And they want to pin pong
competition that he't retart it. Hewas goddamned war hero. You know what,
he retired a war heroes. Youdon't buy that. As Sean pant
who hasn't one, I am saying, when full retonn whim to hit him,
never go full retond. I knowpeople have varying degrees of reaction to
(05:09):
Tropic Thunder. I think it's aboutas subversive as Blazing Saddles was for a
lot of reasons. But the wholementally handicapped character trope kind of died out
after Tropic Thunder because they pretty muchcondemned Hollywood for what is ostensibly people playing
mentally handicapped characters. And and theydid a good I mean again, like
(05:31):
I said, I know a lotof people don't like that movie, but
they did a good job of essentiallypointing the finger at Hollywood and saying you
are essentially playing it up so muchthat it's unrealistic, and that in and
of itself is offensive. And inthis episode, it's really offensive because he's
not acting like an a functioning autisticperson. This is not temple grand and
(05:51):
this is like just someone who isautistic, and we're just reading it.
I don't even know how it wouldhave been performed well, and that's the
other thing. Well, the thing, the thing I don't know is I
like the person in my mind thatI saw playing the character of George in
the script was Glenn Fleschler, whoplays the villain in Truth the first season,
(06:13):
a true detective, and he hasthat kind of quality to him.
But again in that show, he'splaying a mentally disturbed character, not a
mentally handicapped character. And so it'sjust a weird episode to focus on like
a magically handicapped character. And it'slike, Okay, it doesn't track.
(06:35):
It's problematic. And I know that'slike a word that oh, every yeah,
every snowflake uses this problematic, butit kind of is. And like,
I don't offend easily, I reallydon't like, nothing really offends me,
and I'm not offended by the script, but it's just his tone deaf.
It's very tone deaf. And thisis a literal magical person. This
(06:58):
is not at the end and they'regoing to say something that will really,
you know, change the main character'smind or something. This really has stuff
to do with magic and the cosmosand stuff. So let's break it down
a little bit. We've got Georgewho is working as a bag boy at
a local grocery store and when thereis what is it, Steven is the
(07:26):
guy. There are two guys tokind of overweight, balding slub guys who
are shopping at the same time,and George, when he is bagging up
this guy's groceries, tells him thathe's going to die, and sure enough,
the guy dies. He gets killedin the parking lot. But hey,
(07:47):
it was the wrong guy who gotkilled. It was actually a hit
that went wrong. The guy thatwas supposed to be killed is the husband
of a woman who has essentially beatendown and paid a hit man ten thousand
dollars to kill her husband. Hejust killed the wrong fat, overweight,
balding man. So it's one ofthose like weird X Files episodes. They
have some of those episodes in theX Files where it's like, a supernatural
(08:11):
thing happens, but it's also afake out because the supernatural thing ends up
not really having any bearing on anything. It just happens to be occurring at
the same time as nefarious things goingon, and that's a kind of a
cop out and I don't like it. And then through what somehow the brother
(08:33):
of George gets in the sights ofthe murderer, the hitman basically, and
then George, I mean, I'mreally shortening this down. George manages to
save the day but also gets killed, and he joins his parents, who
he thinks are in heaven and somehowhas changed fate, and of course that
(08:58):
really gives Carl quite a little chubby. The big takeaway that I had from
this script is it feels just likeevery other episode of Nightstalker two thousand and
five that we've watched. Stuart Townsend'sversion of Colchack comes off just as kind
of aloof and bizarre in this scriptas he is in the show. So
(09:18):
it's written pretty well if we're keepingwith the tone of what we've seen.
But at the same time, it'skeeping in tone with what we've seen,
and what we've seen wasn't particularly great. It wasn't as bad as you know,
the torch and pitchfork folks on theColchack Facebook, what have you believe?
Burn it down, kill it.It's the monster, the Antichrist.
(09:41):
It's not that bad, folks.This script is very much keeping in tone
with everything we've seen from Nights Soccertwo thousand and five, So in that
aspect it's a success, but atthe same time it's also a massive failure
because what we've seen up until thispoint is not great. We got pretty
(10:01):
much, i'd say this is Colchack. We get a little bit of Perry,
not very much at all, andthen just a hint, just a
hint of Jane McManus in this Andagain I don't think we've got any sort
of Vincenzo going on in this one. I didn't see Vincenzo at all.
(10:22):
But again, that was another thingwe talked about when we were watching the
show, is that Vincenzo is nota character. He's there because Vincenzo was
a character in the original show,and if we don't have him, Colchack
fans will be upset. You guysare missing the point putting the horse before
the wagon big time. But again, it was a quick read. It's
(10:43):
sixty three pages. I would suggestanyone who is a mildly enjoyed the two
thousand and five show to give ita read. You can find it online
with the cursory search. It's notterrible. It's an interesting episode, but
again it's just it's mildly problematic.None of the characters are really interesting,
(11:05):
and the conclusion to the episode ispretty dumb, like just generically stupid.
They don't even have a Carl Colcheckvoiceover at the end or else. I
would try to do that TBW tobe written. That's right, because there's
there's that last weird page about thathas pocket dialogue on it. You know.
(11:26):
The whole thing about George is likeI'm going, you know, his
parents are waiting for him. Iskind of the whole thing. So it's
like he's kind of he's kind offulfilling his purpose. He's stopping he's stopping
the death of his brother, butalso he's going to Heaven to see his
parents. It's it's very mushy,it's very sappy, it's very very saccharin
and not great. I wouldn't havebeen happy had this actually gotten turned into
(11:48):
an episode. And yeah, you'reright, I think this was included as
well as the M word. Ithink both of these were included on the
DVDs of nights Stalk or two twothousand and five, and then just forensically,
there are a lot of revisions inhere, but what we're looking at
is just a black and white copy. Though the front page talks about you
(12:11):
know, you've got your yellow pages, your pink pages, your blue pages,
and they're all being written like anearly part of November two thousand and
five, and right around that timeis when everything starts to collapse for the
night Stalker because the last two episodesthat actually aired well, the last episode
(12:37):
that aired was November tenth, andthen after that they all started getting dumped
onto iTunes. One November seventeenth,and then the last three in February.
In March of two thousand and six, just dumped. Mike unceremoniously dumped to
it two. Thank you, Thankyou for the correction, which takes us
(12:58):
to the next script, the Mword, the M word, which so
we've been complaining, I've been complainingthis whole time about the lack of charisma
of Stuart Townsend, and I willbe frank, I've never seen a movie
performance of his or a TV performancethat has given me any hope about this
(13:22):
guy. I mostly know him fromhis horrific performance in a horrific movie,
which was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemanwhere he was Dorian Gray. Didn't give
me much hope, and then hewas in that how was that horrible Aaliyah
movie Queen of the Damned? Butyeah, anyway, I've never been a
(13:46):
fan of Stuart Townsend. And herewe have Darren Morgan writing the M word
was supposed to be directed by TonyWarmby. So this one, the first
draft is written or dated November eleven, two thousand and five. And like
I said, that's when everything wascollapsing on the Night Stalker. Do you
(14:07):
want to try to describe what's goingon here? Before I try to explain
what's going on? Like you mentioned, I think I'm going to go out
on a limb here and say thatthis was an X Files episode from mc
gett go because it's written like one. The charisma that Colchack has in this
episode doesn't feel like Colchack at all. It feels like Fox Molder. He's
(14:30):
jokey and like weirdly humorous, andit's like, what fucking show did you
come from? Because this is nottwo thousand and five Nights Soccer. I
mean, was that what was supposedto happen here? Was it supposed to
be We're going to do eleven episodesof this guy being a charisma vacuum and
then suddenly we're going to have ajoke episode in the middle of this.
(14:54):
I mean, when was the firstlike funny episode of The X Files,
Like the first purely comedic episode ofThe X Files. Look, the ones
that I can think about are likeX Cops, But that didn't happen until
much later in the show, likeseason seven type late, like when they
were like, you know what,we can just kind of do whatever we
want at this point, like let'sstart to kind of experiment with the formula
(15:18):
of the show. This episode waswritten by Darren Morgan, who worked on
The X Files and who wrote orof the coprophages Jose Chungs from Outer Space,
Clyde Bruckman's final repose, Let's justgo out on the record and say,
(15:39):
Darren Morgan wrote the episodes of TheX Files. They won Emmy's four.
This feels like and I know,you know, I'm sorry to put
you on the spot, but like, I don't know if jose Chungs was
the first purely comedic X Files,but that is the one that always comes
to mind when it's like, hey, this is a very funny episode,
(16:00):
and that's what this feels like.This feels like jose Chung circa whatever.
Twenty two thousand and five. Imisspoke. Season three has wore the Coprophages,
which is a humorous episode. Seasonthree also as Clyde Bruckman's which is
funny. So yeah, season three, not season seven. You put me
(16:22):
on the spot, I misanswered,I'm correcting myself, not letting anyone else
get the chance to do it.Rich assured that I was on the Internet
within minutes registering my disgust throughout thewood. Season three is where Clyde Bruckman
and jose Chung was in that season. I think we're the co Prophages two,
was it? Okay? So yeah, all three and all three written
(16:44):
by the same person, And likeI said, they're widely considered to be
some of the best episodes of theshow, just like by the fan base.
Like the fan base can agree,jose Chung's from Outer Space is one
of the best, if not thebest episode of the show. Clyde Bruckman
is one of the best, ifnot the best episode of the show.
You will find people making arguments forboth of those episodes, and neither camp
(17:07):
is wrong because they're fucking amazing episodes, like genuinely fantastic standalone pieces of television.
And here we are with the samewriter and writing this. Maybe they
were just going to pull like aweird bait and switch. Maybe everybody and
then the next day at the watercooler would be saying, wow, did
(17:27):
you see that episode of night Stalkerlast night? You mean that show Stillon,
Well, yeah, it is stillon, and last night they did
something completely different than they haven't anyother episode, and it was actually funny,
or an attempt at being funny.That was the thing about this I
don't understand. So, like youmentioned, we did read the script for
(17:48):
The M Word, which they thenadapted into Molder and Scully Meet the Wear
Monster, which I liked the titlethe M Word a lot. I actually
think it's really clever. It's alittle on the nose, but at the
same time I like it. Andthe issue I have with the script reading
through it is because I've seen theepisode, I was just reading it as
(18:08):
Molder and Scully. I wasn't readingit as Perry and Colchack, because again,
like you mentioned, it doesn't feellike Perry and Colcheck. It feels
like Molder and Scully. And DarrenMorgan, I honestly believe he just couldn't
get out of the idea of ifyou've got a male and female lead in
a TV show, you couldn't justwrite them as Molder and Scully because it's
(18:29):
so close in just content of whatthe show is talking about that it's almost
inevitable that you're just not going towrite him that way anyways. And you've
got McManus, Who've got Jane mcmanisonhere who just doesn't feel like he belongs.
And then this is the closest I'veseen Vincenzo actually beat Vincenzo, which
(18:49):
is absolutely bizarre. He's like,you know, chiding Colchack and kind of
goading him on and saying like Colchackunder his breath, and Smith is a
fantastic actor. Go watch Mine Huntersmind Hunter season one. He's fantastic in
that show, so I know,and you know if you've seen Mine Hunter
(19:10):
that he actually can bring a levelof gravitas to a authority figure. And
again they're wasting him in the nightStalker two thousand and five, but in
the script he's Vincenzo from the originalshow, updated to two thousand and five.
I like the bit where he hascrossed out every single line of colcheck
(19:30):
story and Red Penn it's great.And he also chied him for using the
word monster because only insane people usethe word monster or children a fairy tale
is the only time you should beseeing monster in print. His words in
the script. Well, and rememberthis is kind of a reaction too against
the actual producers of the ABC show, because Frank Spottonitz told us way back
(19:52):
when when we did the very firstepisode of Nightstocer two thousand and five,
which was they did and want Monsterof the Week even though they wanted Monster
of the week and we were notallowed to use the M word. So
that's where a lot of this stuffcomes from, is this is basically making
fun of those exacts, and itworks like you could It worked and again
(20:17):
the problem though with all of thisis when we get to it being adapted
for the X Files, it fallsflat. And I don't know why it's
like such a bummer, because Iknow you're not a huge fan of the
script, but I like the scriptand I think it works, even if
(20:37):
again, it's almost not coal chackin Perry. I mean, it's not
coal chack in Perry period. It'snot that I'm necessarily a fan of the
script or not a fan of thescript. It's that I can't see Stuart
Townsend doing No, that's a failureof the scrip. I can see Gabrielle
Union doing this, I can seeCotter Smith doing this. I can see
(20:59):
everybody handling this role. Yeah ohyeah, But I cannot see Stewart Townsend
doing this stuff. I mean,he is making fun of his own character.
Like there's a scene where he isdoing the Cole Chack veo that we
have made fun of since day one, and it's him and Jane, and
(21:22):
Jane is just like, are yougoing to keep doing that? And his
coal check reading into his pocket sizedtape recorder, which we've never seen him
use a pocket sized tape recorder,and this whole thing, even though it's
such a big part of the originalshow, it is a secondary character of
the show. And I was sosurprised that the wear Monster is wearing in
(21:44):
the coal chack, the original searsuckersuit outfit, and even tries the hand
coal chack the jacket at the end, do you want this jacket? But
no, he doesn't, you know, he turns it down, So it
would have been an even more pointedlike, Hey, this is what the
original was, this is what youare, and you kind of suck kind
of thing. Like you said.The failure is not that it's a bad
(22:08):
script. The failure is that it'swritten for I mean, can you imagine
a Terminator film right where the characterof the original Terminator not Terminator T two,
the Terminator where it's a horror movieostensibly it's a fucking sci fi horror
movie. Is that Terminator is writtenjokey and like quipping with one liners that
(22:30):
like, and I know he hasone liners in the first movie, but
I'm talking about like too humorous tobe taken seriously, because there is a
feeling of dread in that first Terminatorfilm, with the Terminator being you know,
a six foot eight Austrian man whocould break you in half over his
fucking leg and you know I'll beback at Ocana. I mean a lot
(22:51):
of that is one linery, butI'm talking like straight up comedic bits.
It doesn't track. And that's theway this feels. It's just oddly against
character. It's like if you deepfaked Jim Carrey from ace Ventura over Arnold
from Terminator and kept the movie.Everything else was exactly the same, but
(23:14):
you've got ace Ventura doing those thoselines and those bits. Yeah, it
doesn't make any sense. It's soweird. But again, the weirder aspect
of this is when it gets adaptedfor The X Files, which did have
that kind of humorous, witty interplaybetween Moulder and Scully, which is the
reason any X Files fan watched theshow even into the tenth and eleventh season,
(23:37):
which are again they have their ownproblems. You came back for the
relationship between Molder and Scully and itsomehow doesn't work. It's so weird.
So let's talk about Moulder and Scullymeet the war Monster, and I will
say right off the bat, Iwas very happy to see Thailand of being
(23:57):
show up, prizing his role asStoner from the two previous episodes Quagmire and
more of the copra Phages, whichI loved when he showed up in stuff
and I love him. I loveeverything that he's done that I've ever seen
him in. I mean, Tuckerand Dale is fantastic. There's a show
(24:18):
that I've been touting to you fora long time called Dead Last that I
really enjoyed. Really like this guyReaper. He was fantastic and he's a
classic man. He shows up inthis and I was just like, Okay,
this is a nice continuity that thisguy is still hanging out in the
woods trying to get high. Dude, that's a good crop. Then it
(24:40):
kind of sets the tone as faras this is going to be a jokey
episode of The X Files, whichwas weird because at that time we were
reviving the show. We get tofinally wrap up some stuff here. You
know, we've got this one lastseason now that they're doing for us,
not knowing that they're going to doa second got this one last season.
We're going to wrap up stuff.So then suddenly when they do Mulder and
(25:03):
Scully meet the wear Monster, It'slike, what the fuck you doing guys,
this feels like filler. But here'sthe thing, because it's only what
ten episodes, it is filler.And the problem is if it hadn't been
just a limited time engagement or whatevernonsense it was being billed as at the
time. And look, I wantto say, I don't remember exactly,
Like I'm pretty sure that this likebroke records for viewership at Fox, Like
(25:30):
it was insanely successful for them XFiles coming back, and I think everyone's
expectation when it came back with sixepisodes, not even ten, was that
it was going to be this kindof final reveal of the mythos and the
myth arc and finishing it out right, and then they don't do that at
(25:52):
all. They actually completely fucking destroyall the goodwill that they had built up,
which wasn't very much, to befair at the end of the season
nine, because season nine is justthe mythology. The mythology after the Syndicate
dies at the hands of the alienBoundery Hunters is where I honestly stopped caring
about the mythology for the show,because then they start going to super Soldiers
(26:15):
and nol Roar, And even thoughI love Adam Baldwin and Lucy Lawless is
great in her time on the show, and I'm sorry if I'm going on
an X Files tangent. We haveto talk about the exiles a little bit,
and where this shows up in thiskind of grand scheme of the show.
It shows up in a point wherethey should not have ever put this
episode. It should have been justmythology and talking about their son and the
(26:38):
cigarette smoking man and everything else,and all these things they should have been
focusing on, and instead they putthis episode in, which is an interesting
episode, but it's very misplaced inwhen it aired in the revival of the
show, and it would have beenokay if it was a better episode.
Rice Starvey's good, but he's justkind of doing his flight of the Concords
(27:02):
thing. Yeah, I mean thereare moments in here. Hallelu I likes
Angela, so seeing her and herewas pretty good. The whole idea of
this hotel that they're at, wherethe guy, the hotel owner can go
behind the walls and spy on people, and when they're doing this back and
forth time thing, when he spieson Fox Molder and he's there in that
(27:25):
little red like junk holder. Iwas like, Okay, that's funny.
That actually made me laugh, butnot very much else. I mean,
there are a couple things, likegoing back to the comedian episode of the
Twilight Zone revival. We've got ourfriend who Mail nan Gianni, and he
(27:45):
is in this episode. You knowwhy he's in this episode, right?
No? I don't know why.Okay, so let's pull the casing back
on the sausage. We're podcasters.We're talking about cole check the night Stalker.
The original show. If we we'reonly talking about that showed the two
thousand and five reboot had never happened, and our podcast was so popular that
it drummed up interest in Kolchak somuch that they rebooted the show. We
(28:10):
would be in the show the sameway Kumail nan Jianni's in The X Files
his X Files podcast. I listenedto that podcast because I'm such a fan
of the X Files. I didn'teven know who he was at the time.
He wasn't Kumail nan Jianni of castin a fucking Marvel movie like he
is now. He was just kumaldanJianni, stand up comedian and massive fan
(28:30):
of The X Files, and hispodcast was so wildly popular, coupled with
the fact that X Files was,at the time on Netflix one of the
most streamed shows that they had.Fox was like, maybe we could get
Molder and Scully back together for onemore ride. And because he was so
(28:51):
well known because of his podcast,and then obviously he transitioned into becoming a
much more well known stand up comedianand screenwriter, he was given a role
in this episode and he's awful.He's awful. The only thing I like
about him, and the only otherlaugh that I got from this really was
at the end when it is revealedthat he's the killer and he's done all
(29:12):
these horrible things, which I don'tknow if that necessarily makes sense with how
this episode is structured, but whenthey're taking him away and he's like it
all started when I was a child, just uncontrollable urge to torture small animals.
As I got older, I'm compulsion. All right, leave it for
the trial, all right, mother, you see one serial killer seeing them
(29:34):
all, But I have a wholespeech prepared that was about it. And
I like that, Gillian Anderson,that Dana Scully is going and doing these
potentially dangerous things on her own andthat she is fine both times. She
never becomes a woman in distress.What this episode really reminded me of a
(29:57):
lot other than some of the otheror Darren Morgan episodes is Bad Blood,
which was in the fifth season andit had Luke Wilson in it. It's
like an almost Raschamun style episode whereyou've got Mulder recounting his version of the
events to Skinner, Scully recounting herevents version of the events to Skinner,
and it's like very different. Soon one of them, Luke Wilson's like
(30:18):
this dashing smalltown sheriff and in Mulder'sversion, he's like a fucking ocal yokel
hick with like, you know,ridiculous stereotypical hillbilly teeth. That's kind of
what this episode veers into at theend, where it's Rice Darby recounting what
happened, like, oh and thenI banged Scully, which I mean that
whole bit is pretty damn funny becauseMulder just is like that did deafen?
(30:42):
And I love this idea that RiceDarby is becoming human and he's the monster.
Like so it's it's really clever.It really is like I think we
can agree on how clever it is, and like, the last ten minutes
of the episode are amazing. Thefinal monologue between Molder and the wear Monster
(31:03):
are honestly sublime. They're pitch perfect, They're really well written. They honestly,
if you're a huge fan of theshow, that might even bring a
tear to your eye because of youknow, Molder at this point is very
disillusioned, and it's kind of likea reaffirmation of his belief in the unexplained.
The first time we see him,he's throwing pencils at the I Want
to Believe poster, which we thenfind out is Scullies, which was interesting,
(31:26):
right, and then his whole onesided argument that he has with Scully
where he keeps countering and like,I know what you're gonna say, You're
gonna say that, and it justthe way that that bounces back and forth.
That's all stuff that was not inthat Coal Check script, and I
think that is much better. Ithink the way the episode was realized was
(31:48):
much better than they would have doneit as a Coal Check episode because I
just don't buy Stuart Townsend well andthat relationships already baked in and Ducovney.
Ducomny's fucking awesome. Gilly Anderson,She's fucking awesome. So I can see
Ducovney. I've seen Ducovany be funny. Ducovny just on Howard Stern is hilarious.
I mean, just a plain oldinterview with David Ducovney. He's a
(32:12):
very funny guy, very quick witted. Just watch Californication. His comedic timing
is impeccable. I liked Rise Daviesin this, the interplay and then how
they've got Molder in front of theKim Manners gravestone, which was a nice
thing since Kim Manners directed a coupleof these Darren Morgan episodes, So yeah,
(32:34):
that was it was nice. Itwas a very nice kind of like
homage to those older episodes. Butin that time watching this as part of
that package of X Files episodes,I was like, what the hell is
this doing here? This just doesn'tfit well. And then the weird thing
is is you know, obviously,like we mentioned, the X Files would
come back for eleventh limited engagement andDarren Morgan would write another episode, the
(33:00):
Lost Art of Forehead Sweat, whichhe also directed, and he directed this
one. But it's again, it'svery much that like poking fun at the
X Files, like that was alwaysthe thing that Darren Morgan did that I
loved about his episodes is he deconstructsthe show in a way that only he
could be successful at doing, andhe subverts your expectations in a way that
(33:23):
feels earned and it's smart, andit's not like he subverts your expectations by
subverting them even more than you thoughtthey could be subverted. And that's why
Darren Morgan's episodes were such a joyto watch because when you knew you were
when you sat down and saw thatDarren Morgan's name was the writing credit for
the episode, you knew it wasgoing to be something special. You knew
(33:45):
that it was going to be anepisode that was truly going to be great
or different or heartfelt in a waythat a lot of the other episodes aren't.
And like I said, that finalback and forth with Molder at the
end of this episode is really heartfeltand it does kind of hit me down
in my heart of like an XFiles fan, like what it means to
(34:06):
be a fan of the show,or what it means to be a fan
of supernatural things and you know,kind of believing in in metaphysics and the
supernatural and the paranormal, and soit kind of hits me there in a
way that I didn't expect it to. But at the same time, it
doesn't have any place here. Itjust doesn't. And that's the unfortunate part.
It gets your written the field,so it does. It kind of
(34:28):
does in a way that I wasn'texpecting the X Files too. But then
you also have the scene with thetransgender woman and that's really not great.
It's actually kind of weird because it'slike twenty sixteen and it's fucking tone deaf.
Well that it was written originally intwo thousand and five, I mean,
because that doesn't really change. That'spretty close to what that I know,
(34:51):
And that's the bad part. Well, and then she had a worse
name. What was her name,like baby doll or baby and then yeah,
that that line of the war monsterslike she can change from man to
a woman, and it's like,oh, it was bad. And then
he goes like moldres is, no, you have to have your generals.
He's going, I'll keep that,Like did you guys film this thinking this
was like gonna be funny because it'skind of cringey. But other than that,
(35:14):
I mean it's a fairly fun episode. But again, like you said,
if the ultimate exercise here was towrite a episode of Coal Check two
thousand and five, boy, failureupon failure and then failure some more,
I can't see it having ever happened. I mean, maybe, you know,
maybe we've been completely surprised. We'vebeen like, oh wow, yeah
(35:36):
that's hilarious, and maybe I'll stickwith this night stock or reboot, and
wow, maybe it'll be fantastic.No, well, it would have been
funny, it would have been interesting, but the problem is is it wouldn't
have made any sense with everything we'veseen up into that point. He would
have just been like, who thefuck show is this? Like, what
show is this? All of asudden, this is not Cold Check.
This is some other show that's moreexpertly written. This is the X Files.
(36:00):
That's true what it said. Youknow what, I'm like, this
is just the X Files. WellI just watch that, just change the
channel. Because it was still onat the time. X Files had been
off for four years at that point, oh ended in May two thousand and
two, so we left it upto y'all the listeners about what you wanted
us to do for the next showafter cole Check. And obviously Kat's out
(36:22):
of the bag because y'all picked it. We're doing Barney Miller. But a
lot of y'all mentioned The X Files, And since this is pretty much going
to be my last opportunity to talkabout The X Files on the Cold Check
tapes, I do want to saythat as a fan of The X Files,
I am one of those conflicted fanswho loves the show deeply. It
is probably still my favorite show everto air on television. The interplay between
(36:45):
Dicovny and Anderson is sublime. It'sperfect. They are, in my mind,
a perfectly cast group of characters.You got Walter Skinner, Mitch Pelegie,
William B. Davis's a cigarette smokingman. I mean, you know,
Crycheck. I mean everything about theshow is great. I love it
to death. It came out ata perfect time, but it is one
(37:06):
of those shows that, like coalCheck, it should never have come back.
Even if I didn't like the wayit ended, which I didn't and
a lot of fans didn't, itcame back and didn't justify its return.
What I'm getting at here is thething that everybody talks about Coal Check two
thousand and five is that it's notgood. But the issue isn't that it's
not good. It didn't justify itcoming back. It didn't give us a
(37:30):
reason to carry that it came back. And that's the problem with all of
these reboots or returns of shows.I mean, that's like so popular now
is you have to give the peoplea reason to want to watch more of
the show outside of just getting tosee the characters again. And with Coal
Check, they didn't do enough tojustify it. And like the X Files
(37:52):
those two seasons, they didn't doenough to justify it, and honestly,
they did more harm than good tothe mythology. So off my soapbox,
word underneath the table. That's thelast time I'm talking about the X Files
on this podcast. Oh, I'msure you'll find a way to work at
end over the next couple of weeks. Can't. There's no way there.
I'm done. What happens if youbring it up over the next couple episodes
(38:14):
where we're wrapping up the original it'llbe a passing mention, but it won't
be that. It will be thatwas me. I mean, because that
whole thing with the wear Monster likeit really is indicative of coal Chack two
thousand and five and the X Filesreturn as well, because they're inexorably length
now, because that was originally goingto be a coal Jack episode. That's
(38:37):
why Bryce Davies is wearing that Colchackoutfit. That's why he is dressed like
that. Even though the original wearMonster would have been dressed like that.
That just doesn't make sense, sure, I mean again, it was kind
of taking the piss out of it, you know. Yeah, well the
original script was. But then like, it doesn't make a whole lot of
(38:59):
sense in the X Files episode otherthan like if you were sly enough to
catch on that this was originally aColchack episode, yeah, because otherwise he
would have been like, well,why is he dressed like that? And
that's why I was saying it,unless it's like, oh, well,
Colchack influenced the X Files, whichobviously it did. But yeah, before
I knew that this was originally anepisode of night Stalker two thousand and five,
(39:22):
I had no idea why he wasdressed like that. And that's and
that is again a weird thing aboutthe way that the script got made and
then re edited into a X Filesepisode. It's like some weird idiosyncrasies stuck
around that don't work anymore, likehim being dressed up like Colchack, and
it's like, so, I meanagain, for us, it's iconic,
and for a certain generation it's iconic. But another generation people, why the
(39:45):
fuck is he dressed like this?He's dressed like us, a reporter from
the seventies. Why Yeah. Nextmonth we will be back with our Wow,
it's not our final episode of theshow, and we still have a
couple more after that, but ourfinal discussion of an actual episode of cole
Chack the Century, and after thatwe will do a couple more episodes where
(40:09):
we talk about things like Colcheck andother mediums. You know, he appeared
in a form in a tomb ofDracula. There's a whole series of books,
comics, all kinds of stuff.And if those fine folks over at
Moonstone Publishing want to finally fucking getback to us, maybe we'll have an
(40:30):
interview with them, and maybe we'lltry to help you pimp some of their
books. Colcheck, the character oforiginal col Check Darren McGavin's Cold Check has
been lovingly kept alive by a fairnumber of people, and to you,
I say thank you for keeping thecharacter alive because two thousand and five show
didn't do a very good job ofdoing No. No, nobody's doing fan
(40:52):
fiction about the Stewart Townsend version.Again, with the overwhelming response that we've
gotten from the culture back fan pages, they don't even want us to talk
about it. So sorry, sorry, but we did well. We did,
we got We got to do ourdue diligence, as they would say,
and give it all a fair shake. And that's why we sprinkled these
(41:13):
throughout because I think we kind ofwould have gone crazy had we just concentrated
on the two thousand and five.Can you imagine doing a podcast on just
the two thousand and five. It'salmost like it would be just a one
season show. That'd be kind ofnuts. So, Chris, what are
you up to? These stays?So I actually run a podcast Cold the
one season show with my good friendJess byired Her and I talk about shows
(41:35):
that only lasted one season. Ifwe hadn't done Cold Check, the Night
Stalker or the original show on thiswe probably would have done it there,
so I do that with her.And then I also have my own podcast,
cold the Culture Cast, where Italk about movies once to twice a
week, depending on if a newmovie has come out of value. We
just did an episode on It chaptertwo, which I heard is Mike's new
(41:58):
favorite film of all time, besthorror movie have you ever written? And
I also do a podcast with youand our good friend father Malone called Dreams
for Sale, and I do apodcast with him called Chronicles from the Crypt
about shockingly tales from the Crypt.So that is what I do when I'm
not here. What about you,Mike? What do you do when you're
not here? I like to goto the range and do target practice.
(42:22):
You like movies about gladiators? Oh, Billy? Do I ever? And
Yeah? Then I do a podcastcalled The Projection Booth, which you can
find out Projection Booth podcast dot com, where every episode we're looking at a
different movie, which most of thetime you haven't heard of. Sorry,
so big thanks to John Walker forproviding our theme music. Big thanks everybody
(42:45):
for listening. Stick with us overthese next few episodes, and then return
to this feed for listening to ourwhole discussion of Barney Miller, and thank
you, by the way, foreverybody who actually knows who Chris and My
Car on our Facebook group? Whywhat a weird? What a weird conversation
(43:07):
of that one? Whoa who areChris and Mike? Oh God? I
feel that I can say whatever Iwant to about that guy because I don't
think he's listening to the podcast.You know. I think that's a safe
bet considering how you know, heasked who Chris and My Car? Sometimes
I wonder who we are Chris.Sometimes I wonder, deep in our hearts,
(43:28):
who are we really? Sometimes Ilook up in the night sky and
I see the stars, and Iwonder, are those just blinking gases of
light? Where is there more inthis universe? Um um um give m
(45:47):
m m mmm mm boom mmm mmmmmmmm mmm m m m m m hm h
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