The Bubble’s toothless showbiz satire mostly comes down to teasing its characters for their entitlement and self-importance.
The Chair too often downplays its potentially thorny political subject matter.
The episode’s emotional epicenter is Bobby Briggs, now white-haired and working as a deputy for the department.
The season finale, written and directed by series creator Chris Carter, is charged with implicative catharsis.
The episode is tone deaf in a memorable what-the-hell-were-they-thinking sort of way.
“Home Again” pivots on two narratives, one of which is promising and occasionally quite chilling.
Duchovny has some wonderful moments in the prior episodes of the season, but this is the first time this season that he’s really come to play.
Mulder and Scully’s disregard for protocol is one of the more interesting, partially inadvertent frictions of bringing The X-Files into the present.
The episode’s most obvious sign of desperation is its reliance on slide shows to orient viewers.
It makes a classic mistake of trying to summarize an entire decade in America, with all its social tribulations and ideological transitions.
Never once does it project an intuitive understanding of how humans would behave or react in the midst of such a shattering misfortune.
Todd Robinson’s Phantom is a third-rate submarine drama until, in its final moments, it sinks to fourth-rate.
The season’s contrived storyline is a forced and inelegant string of events that tries to come across as serendipitous.
Goats is a bland coming-of-age story with some pretty cinematography but little pulse.
Tom Kapinos’s resolve to find a fresh approach for Californication wherever it may be sacrifices some of the show’s consistent strengths.
The fourth season of Californication proves there can indeed be too much of a good thing.
David Duchovny orchestrates Neil LaBute’s new play like a virtuoso.
A high-concept premise too-tidily comments on its underlying subject matter in The Joneses.
If you eliminate almost all of the sci-fi elements, you’re left with The X-Files: I Want to Believe.
David Duchovny’s sleepy-time conviction to Rick Greenwald’s script is the least of this documentary’s problems.