The X-Files

Love for the franchise and its characters likely will blunt the momentary ridiculousness for longtime fans (it did for this one), while newcomers should hang in for the second and third hours--because that’s when the series finds its bizarre rhythm.

Those expecting a return to form should not be disappointed: Both for good and ill, The X-Files is back, and in essentially the original packaging.

It’s looser--and smarter--and it could just make believers out of those who never joined the conversation in the first place.

“My Struggle” is, at best, clunky.... Anyone who loved the original has much better news coming on Monday, when the second of the six new episodes airs.... Better still is Episode 3.

Other than a few missteps here and ther --Why would someone who claims to have been abducted by aliens several times live in the middle of nowhere away from people and protection?--the reboot feels like Linus’ blanket, warm and comforting. Duchovny and Anderson slip easily back into the give-and-take which helped make the original series so darn entertaining.

In the opener, “My Struggle,” Carter plays to fan expectations on all fronts as he suggests only the most sinister conspiracy ever, one that manages to shake the typically unflappable Mulder and could up-end the premise of the entire series. It’s just that juicy.... [The second episode is] a perfectly serviceable monster-of-the-week tale. It also features some dopey reveries about Scully and Mulder’s lost son William.

Above-average special effects and the presence of two old and beloved friends--you know who!--more than make up for an eye-rolling new premise.

Duchovny and Anderson both seem more relaxed, finally rediscovering their old zip-zap chemistry. Guest stars Kumail Nanjiani and Rhys Darby are delightful. It’s scary, then funny, then existential, then shockingly moving.

It starts well enough, with effects-filled flashbacks to Roswell 1947 and a call from Assistant Director Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) that brings the old team back together--Scully in her scrubs helping put ears on earless children, and Mulder an Internet-perusing recluse who dresses himself from the Travis Bickle Catalog for Men. But it collapses into poorly motivated, out-of-nowhere speechifying, accompanied by stock footage of old puzzling phenomena. Fortunately the other two episodes push the right buttons.

The first episode is called “My Struggle,” which aptly describes the experience of sitting through it. It lumbers. It plods. The actors chew sawdusty mouthfuls of expository dialogue.... Thankfully, the second episode shakes the dourness and gives Mulder and Scully more room to breathe. But it’s the third--a comic palate-cleanser in the “monster of the week” vein--that finally recreates the show’s oddball delights.

This first hour is all about reinvention. It's a rather clunky attempt to remake the 1993-2002 vehicle in a manner that will please loyal fans and new viewers. The second episode, with guest star Doug Savant ("Desperate Housewives"), pushes this redesigned vehicle into a higher gear.... Now this is the X-Files we fondly remember. Can they push this to yet a higher gear? Why, yes, they can, and they do with the third episode.

Don’t be discouraged by the utter incoherence of the first hour: The spirit of the show is still here, waiting to be drawn out, and each installment is better than the last.

If the first episode left me disappointed, the next two made me hope that this six-episode experiment works well enough to justify more. They’re that good.

After a skittery and slightly tedious start, which is heavy on Carter’s need to keep infusing Mulder and Scully’s world with a convoluted master theory, The X-Files settles in and starts to relocate some of its creepy vibe and playfulness.

[Chris Carter has] brought back and distilled the show into six hours of pure X-Files, good and bad. Duchovny and Anderson are entertaining and reliably classic (if unsurprising), conspiracies are discussed in clandestine secrecy (if confusingly), flashbacks reveal exciting truths (that feel more important to the characters than maybe to you), and Mulder’s extraterrestrial friends feel tantalizingly closer than ever (and then they aren’t, again).