I Want To Believe This Movie Will Be Good

Some six years after they signed off the small tube for the final time, Agents Mulder and Scully (David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson) return on the big screen when "X-Files: I Want To Believe" debuts at midnight.

As I noted a few weeks ago, "The X-Files" has been kind of out-of-sight, out-of-mind for me. As much as I enjoyed the series for its first five or six seasons, I haven't been pining away for Mulder or Scully in same way I have for Buffy or Angel, for example.

Part of it has to do with how the series unfolded over the years. When "The X-Files" first debuted, it had this wonderful underlying conspiracy revolving around the government and aliens. As Mulder and Scully uncovered one piece of the puzzle, more questions than answers would arise.

It was great TV - for a while. Eventually, creator Chris Carter felt he had to keep pushing the mystery by leading the viewer around an endless series of plot loopholes and changes that left even the most devout X-Files fan in the dark. The plot twists and conspiracies became white noise after a while because they were so endless.

One of the reasons I love "Lost" so much is that while the creators of the series introduce difficult storylines, sci-fi elements and conspiracies, they do a much better job of giving the viewer resolution to some of the questions they raise. We may not like the answers, but we get them. Knowing that "Lost" only has 48 episodes left, the creators have a definite ending point they can map themselves to; hopefully, this will mean the viewer won't feel cheated when all is said and done.

That wasn't the case with "The X-Files," which got to be meandering after a while. As a friend pointed out to me recently, Carter & Co. didn't seem to get that the heart of the series was the Mulder-Scully relationship, and that the series often worked better with the standalone and humor episodes than it did with all of the conspiracy.

With the exception of "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man," almost all of the episodes I remember fondly were the standalone episodes that displayed a lot of comedy and/or heart: "War of the Carcophages," "The Unnatural" (written by Duchovny), "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," etc. Honestly, I can't remember whose side the government or the aliens were on at this point.

Based on early reviews of the new movie, it comes off more as a standalone bit rather than a continuation of the series. Mulder and Scully, six years after leaving the FBI, are brought in to examine a case in which a defrocked priest (Billy Connolly) seems to have ESP.

Hopefully, Carter and co-writer Frank Spotnitz will focus on what made the series great in the first place: its heart.

THURSDAY'S BEST BETS: Another series in which the relationship among the main characters surpasses the weekly storylines is USA's delightful "Burn Notice" (USA, 10 p.m.), though the weekly plots are often quite witty and clever. Adding the ridiculously gorgeous and talented Tricia Helfer to the mix only makes it that much better.

CBS has flip-flopped "Flashpoint" and "Swingtown" on the schedule, meaning you'll get the SWAT-oriented "Flashpoint" (CBS, 10 p.m.) tonight instead of Friday. It doesn't matter to me - I gave up on both shows after the pilots.

Another show I gave up the ghost on: "Fear Itself" (NBC, 10 p.m.), which never lived up to its promising beginning. Most of the episodes have been plodding, not scary and so predictable that I've usually figured out the twist by the second commercial break. (Oh, for the days when "The X-Files" would scare the socks off you.) Anyway, tonight's installment stars Brandon Routh of "Superman Lives."

"My Boys" (TBS, 9:30 p.m.) winds its season down as PJ (Jordana Spiro) must decide if she will date Bobby's womanizing brother. It follows a new "Bill Engvall Show" at 9 p.m.