I Want to Believe.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of The X-Files first episode, and I'm honoring that the best way I know how: blogging.

Welcome to The X-Files reviewed, an exciting new blog project in which every single episode of The X-Files (and both movies) will be reviewed in chronological order. The plan is to review one episode each week, just like the series... but without those annoying seasonal breaks and reruns.

I became a fan of TXF somewhere in between seasons 6 and 7 when I caught a rerun of 2x20 "Humbug" late one night on TNT.  I immediately started browsing through TV Guide for times to catch reruns, which I taped religiously (the original piracy) and watched until the tapes literally fell apart.  I got on the original Fox forums at Delphi and ordered tapes of bloopers and extras from fellow X-Philes from as far away as Canada and by the time S7 started, I was so addicted I was about to start mainlining black oil.

I even stood in line for the midnight premiere of the second movie, I Want to Believe, and we all went back to a friend's house afterwards to drink XF-themed cocktails and reminisce about the glory days of the show.

A bit of history before we begin. The X-Files was a scifi/horror/drama created by Chris Carter which aired on Fox from 1993-2002, spanning 9 seasons and over 200 episodes. The first 7 seasons follow two FBI agents, Fox Muder (the believer) and Dana Scully (the skeptic) as they uncover a massive international government conspiracy to cover up the existence of extraterrestrial life and its sinister plans for the human race... and also hunt down weirdo mutants and beasts and sometimes plain old human beings who have straight up lost their minds.  Seasons 8 and 9 ... were a disaster, and we'll cover that when we get there.

TXF started off as a cult show but soon became mainstream enough to crossover into movies (Fight the Future, 1998 and I Want to Believe, 2008) and more recently into comics, following legends like Joss Whedon and Greg Weisman to continue telling their stories in graphic novel format.  To this day, die hard X-Philes connect in person and online to discuss episodes and mythology, and to try and shove our money at Chris Carter and 1013 Productions in an attempt to get another movie made.

But I digress, and that's probably enough for now.  Next week we'll meet the cast and dive straight into to 1x01 "Pilot" (or, as it was known in its novel adaptation, "X Marks the Spot"). Stay tuned!

(I'm also going to be fooling around with the look of this blog for the next couple weeks, so please bear with me as I try and get it to be both pretty and functional.)