[ SECRET POST #6375 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6375 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 16 secrets from Secret Submission Post #911.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

03. https://i.imgur.com/3f1LSIv.png

Transcript by OP

[fscom]

I will always praise filler episodes. In regular shows with them, the showrunners can look back at filler episodes and see what worked, and sometimes spin a whole new plot off from that. There is no such ability in shows without filler and breather episodes.

[(Anonymous)]

Filler is fine in moderation.

Some writers never get the memo.

[(Anonymous)]

IIRC, a lot of the Monster of the Week episodes that fans love and consider classics in The X-Files were initially conceived of as filler episodes, so I'm down with this.

[(Anonymous)]

Absolutely! I think The X-Files and Fringe were direct opposites in this: X-Files had awesome MotW episodes but the mytharc episodes soon got repetitive and dumb; Fringe had dumb MotW episodes strung together by a great plot*.

*Until that fell in a huge heap ugh. Then again, there were terrible MotW episodes in X-Files, too.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it even makes sense to think of them as "filler".

X-Files was basically an episodic procedural in the line of a long history of episodic procedurals in American television. The part of X-Files that was (somewhat) novel was the *myth-arc* episodes, not the procedural standalone monster of the week episodes.

The idea that TV series tell a story with a start and a destination is not how TV has generally been conceived of. That's historically generally been relegated to things that are explicitly labeled as miniseries. So people aren't gonna think of episodes as "filler" within an ongoing story, because they don't think of the show as an ongoing story in the first place.

[(Anonymous)]

When I say they were originally conceived of as "filler", I mean, by the people who were running, writing, producing, etc. the show. It's true that a lot of TV started off as more episodic, but X-Files in itself was created to have series-long (and multiple series-long) mythology arcs that dealt with the main theme. The MOTW episodes were filler that allowed time to breathe (because the main theme was fairly tense and not without angst), for humor and exploration of side characters and the universe in general. It resulted in a spin-off of some of the most popular characters in The Lone Gunmen. In other words, those episodes worked exactly how the OP describes, so much so that I wonder if they were writing the secret with X-Files in mind.

[(Anonymous)]

My point is that there was never a time in the process of making X-Files where they thought or conceived that they were gonna do 24 episodes a year of myth-arc. The concept was always about doing a roadshow around America showing weird paranormal stuff, and also we have this broader conspiracy storyline going on at the same time.

"Filler", to me, implies that they aren't an integral part of the design and structure. Like, in an ongoing manga-to-anime adaptation, filler episodes are episodes that you shove into the story because the anime is too far ahead in the story and needs to let the manga build a lead, right?

So to me, MOTW episodes in a show like X-Files can't be called filler, because they're as much the point of the show as the myth-arc episodes. It's different (to an extent) with a show like Fringe, where the myth-arc IS the point of the show, and they have to loop in myth arc elements into the MOTW episodes to justify their existence. But X-Files has much less emphasis on the overarching story by comparison.