'Yo Scully! The truth about Philly is out there!'
It's only relatively recently that Philly has been made to look cool on film. With some notable exceptions, like last year's Creed, the city has more often than not served as a nameless stand-in for crime dramas or action flicks in need of a grimy postindustrial backdrop. Name that abandoned factory or burned-out block and win a prize.
It's only relatively recently that Philly has been made to look cool on film.
With some notable exceptions, like last year's Creed, the city has more often than not served as a nameless stand-in for crime dramas or action flicks in need of a grimy postindustrial backdrop. Name that abandoned factory or burned-out block and win a prize.
But it's 2016. We're a city on the rise. So it was with much excitement and trepidation that I tuned in to watch the latest episode of the rebooted X-Files on Monday night. Agents Scully and Mulder were coming back to Philly. A horrific trash monster was on the loose, ripping sinister city officials apart limb by limb. And it wasn't even election time.
I love The X-Files. I watched it scared out my mind in high school in my darkened basement. And then in my college dorm with beers and buddies, still scared out of my mind.
Admittedly, The X-Files may not be the best lens through which to judge depictions of our city. On The X-Files, everywhere is supposed to be horrifying. But Philly was always made to look especially horrifying. It seemed that in the nine seasons the hugely influential cult hit was on the air, whenever they needed a truly terrible looking urban backdrop, Philly was their go-to town.
And though the show never actually filmed in Philly - it was shot in Vancouver, British Columbia, and then Los Angeles - the Philly it portrayed was beyond bleak.
It was a city of little, if any, life and light. No one was ever on the streets. It was always raining. Abandoned shopping carts overflowing with transients' possessions were everywhere, as if the poor souls who had commandeered the carts couldn't take it anymore and had caught the last Greyhound out. In fairness, it was the '90s. But still.
In one episode, Broad Street is a dark and deserted alley. In another, a "Little Russia" section of the city is filled with "crummy bars" where "everyone looks like their problems are worse" than yours. In yet another, a surly bus driver abandons a man stuck with a poisonous dart because he's got a schedule to keep.
(OK, so when it came to Philly dive bars and bus drivers, the show sometimes got it right.)
Monday's episode opened with a city official gleefully ordering firefighters to open up their hoses on the denizens of a homeless encampment, all pushing shopping carts. Again with the shopping carts.
Then some Bucks County bigwig goes on about the "drug bazaar, the rats, the urine" that foul Philly.
Hey, we closed the Gallery.
So maybe, in X-Files land, we are consigned to being a city of little life and light, no matter how much we change.
And that stinks, because this show always been as much about exploring the strange and haunting American underbelly as it is about extraterrestrial conspiracies. And we've got oodles of strange underbelly. You don't need to work so hard when it comes to Philly.
Philly is an X-File in and of itself.
Wing Bowl. The Mummers. Isaiah Zagar and his Magic Garden.
X-Files.
The creepy Scientology building on Chestnut Street. The endless weirdo ghost stories and cemeteries. Entire swaths of the Northeast. Milton Street.
X-Files.
You can hear it, can't you:
"Yo Scully! The truth is out there!"
So, here's hoping The X-Files lives on, and Scully and Mulder come back to Philly soon. And when they do, they just need to lose the shopping carts and let Philly be Philly. I promise it'll be weird and scary enough.
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