There is nothing like this, but it is not untouchable
I think many of us adults now hold X-files as a sort of a holy relic. It is one of those things from our childhood that kept our eyes fixated at the TV in awe, keeping some of us past our bedtime, and it carries a lot of nostalgic value. Gillian Anderson provided adolescent boys with material for their fantasies and Mulder was the cool adventurer with a gun and a suit, who made the said boys want to draw and carry fake FBI badges.
However, looking at the whole show from a closer perspective as an adult, brings to light its many imperfections, like the closer inspection of childhood heroes often does.
One of the first noticeable things is the difference in acting quality between the two main protagonists, Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson). Maybe it doesn’t help that the dialogue given to the sceptical agent Scully is so dry, especially in the beginning of the 1st season, but her acting is clearly one level below Duchovny’s. There is only so much sceptical eye rolling and recycled lines a viewer can take. Ms. Anderson does get better as the series progress.
The believability of the characters also becomes shaky after just a few episodes. The relationship between agent Scully and agent Mulder is that between a sceptic and a believer. It is one of the defining features of the show. However, already in the first few episodes, Scully witnesses several UFOs, a ton of monsters, and confirms that the government is brainwashing people. Yet, well into the series, she is still keeping up the act of a disbeliever. Many shows with two main characters suffer from this problem of not being able to build a believable character arch throughout the show out of fear of changing the formula. But in X-Files, this problem is particularly apparent.
This brings us to the next issue: the quality of storytelling varies from episode to episode, because different episodes are written and directed by different people. There is corner cutting, like when one organisation used the same uniforms as another organisation in a different place in another episode. There are occasional illogical plot points, like the by now infamous disappearing tattoo to indicate that a person’s soul left the body.
It doesn’t help that the creators were trying to tackle all the main folklore tales and phobias and do so with a straight face and plausibility, as the show tried to maintain a realistic tone. This was a tall order.
The other known issue is the one that plagues all long-running shows: the drying up of the story well in general. The show starts with the so-called monster-of-the-week format, where each episode has a self-contained story. This is great and keeps the show fresh. Every now and then, the show returns to the alien conspiracy plotline. With the seasons going by, the alien conspiracy completely takes over the narrative, and you can only have the shadowy government men sit in a dark room and spout vaguely threatening lines for so long before the public gets bored. The show went on for so long, that even its main character left for greener pastures.
Thankfully these issues are not very significant or they manifest themselves much later in the show’s life. Occasional bad acting and story glitches apart, the show is quite awesome and ages well. It manages to keep your attention using just the right amount of action, special effects and spooky sound effects to keep things interesting but not so much as to become overbearing. The show has a unique visual style with its suits and grey government sedans against the backdrop of all the different locations to which our agents travel. There is a wide range of stories. X-files goes from political thriller to mystery to horror and manages to keep that variety up for quite some time, before the spark dies out.