unpopular stance: ACAB includes Scully but not Mulder, because there's absolutely no way Fox Mulder understands what the law really is or that his job is to enforce it. he has less capacity for moral cognition than a K9 unit.
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I feel like the best part of that is they’d hop on a plane and do whatever they felt like for months at a time but were always driving the absolute shittiest car possible.
counterpoint: ACAB includes Mulder but not Scully, because in that one vampire episode Mulder's initial reaction to being frightened is immediate, deadly violence and then faces no consequences and if that isn't the most Cop thing imaginable I don't know what is
yes but that was not his reaction due to his job or a feeling of impunity, it was his reaction because he believed in vampires and kinda thought he was Blade
Sorry, K9s are also bastards, with the unmarried parents and all.
I want there to be doggie weddings so they can have traditional families but, sadly, dogs only reach the age of consent to marry each other in the reddest states-- and that isn't because they live longer.
Mulder strikes me more as the sort of opportunistic Loki-like Private Investigator character who leans on the implied authority of his job but doesn't meaningfully use that authority unless it's either *really important* or *really, really funny*
I choose to believe his depiction from the crossover episode they did with the Simpsons, where he genuinely couldn't imagine why the FBI would care about illegal weapon smuggling rings, is canon.
At least 2 episodes per season are “Local cop gets mad at Mulder for letting a suspect walk because he thinks the real killer is a Dracula. And then the killer is a Dracula.”
Man I haven't seen X-Files in a while but does he even identify himself as an FBI agent when he's waving his gun around because I don't remember a single instance of Mulder yelling like
I think he’s apprehended people but I don’t think we really seem like…arrest anyone. But someone had to get someone to wrestle the Eves to the ground and get them back in their compound, right?
I've seen Mulder use his gun in anger wice. Once against someone hurting his beloved Scully, and the second time on an alligator that scared the shit out of him.
My unpopular X-Files take: they ruined Scullys entire character in one episode She spends the show doubting everything Mulder believes when she sees some of it because she lacks hard evidence, then in season 3 they have ONE case where the supernatural element is God so she's completely bought in
cops understand who they exist to protect and where they stand in the power structure. fox mulder looks at a drug deal and his immediate assumption is that the aliens have crafted a new super soldier vaccine
Even without the Smoking Man and the whole conspiracy, handsome weirdo whose dad is a big deal in the State Department becomes an FBI agent who doesn't even know what the rules are tracks perfectly
All of his best friends are also weirdos and his work big sister barely tolerates him and every case has him put in a perilious situation , he’s perfect
Its genuinely hilarious that like…once or twice every season the writers had them do some “real” F.B.I. work before getting on with the main plot of an episode.
doggett also died from COVID but did get the vaccine he's just got a lot of other pulmonary issues from one time he fought a race of fungal-human hybrids in the sewers of a suspiciously LA-looking NY
This helps me clarify my uncritical support for the dog Rex in the Canadian police procedural Hudson and Rex, which I can best describe as cozy garbage, but the dog fucking kicks ass and always tackles the bad guys
Are we talking a trial by combat sort of situation, does this make him - spiritually - more of an ancient champion of sorts ("representing the courts of FB and I!") and does that impact the acabity of it all?
I think a lot about how many of the people who produced the "fun, kooky" alien conspiracy stuff I used to read as a kid in the 90s, if they haven't gotten mental help by now, probably wished they could've been at the Jan.6 rally ...
9/11 was extremely confusing for me, because I had watched the pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen - which involves people trying to crash planes into the World Trade Centre - the night before. I had taped when it was first aired in Australia like a week or two previously.
I would have watched it earlier, but I had to get a new tv because, and this is not a joke, a possum urinated in the ceiling, it leaked through a gap and went directly into the vents on the back of my old school CRT TV while I was watching something else, blowing it up.
the lone gunmen reboot pilot would be 'jan 6 was an inside job' but b/c it's a comedy the inside job would be a new biden staffer accidentally hitting send all on a bunch of trump WH draft emails
the resist libs are, in the current American political space, the closest to the kind of republican he is ('racism is bad, capitalism is good' conservatives)
I feel like Cancer Man would have made sure the bullet didn't miss Trump because he would destabilize the plans the aliens made with the government too much. Also damn Fight the Future is an incredible movie.
Mulder would actually be the guy you meet at a party that draws you in by immediately making really good points on politics but then devolves over the course of no more than 2 drinks into aliens talk while you desperately plot a way to detach from the convo.
Cancer man would have taken T***p out as a candidate. Not for any noble reason or even a political one, but just because dude can't keep his mouth shut and that's an unacceptable risk.
Krycek is SUCH an easy read! It's astonishing they wrote him so good before social media ...Or maybe he shaped social media. Who knows, X-Files is genius-tier
The blonde lone gunman started a beef with a lady holding guns at a target range. This is weirdly canon and completely in character for their dumbness.
I love Mulder to pieces, buuuuut he can quote weird bylaws by heart when he needs to to. (rewatching the series right now) and has a working knowledge of legal standings as an fbi agent. As much as he breaks them.
We should all be pushing for police reform and accountability. Most police training doesn’t involve anything about the constitution they swore to uphold.
Eh it's fine i just meant to make a joke about Mulder being insane and a subset of folks have taken it as an excuse to litigate very serious opinions about the police. Normal social media stuff i am just tired today.
I feel like because they're doing paranormal investigations Scully really shouldn't be either. Much of the time they're not doing anything that keeps societal hierarchy in check it's either literal vampires, alien parasites or even working against the government.
I dunno. Mulder seems far more likely to include the phrase "officer involved shooting" when describing any given day at work... while flourishing his pistol and downing his third neat bourbon. Peak cop behavior
dogs aren't choosing to be agents of the state or enforce laws, they're trying to please a master and earn food. they aren't morally culpable for anything they do in that capacity.
I think the guy who could make himself look like anyone and made himself look like Mulder to steal his life would have been an equally effective FBI agent.
Even if he misspelled "bureau" twice in the same report.
no idea who these people are but regardless there’s plenty of cops that don’t know the law, especially in local law enforcement in the US; it seems like in many jurisdictions it’s practically a job requirement.
This is why Colombo also isn't ACAB. Do we even know that he's a cop? Or is it more likely that he's just a rumpled old guy who starting solving crimea and who they forgot to ask to leave?
All I know for sure is: given the Cardassisn penchant for "mysteries where we know whose guilty already" Colombo is probably pretty popular on Cardassia.
Columbo is like a fey type creature. The mischief, the semantic trickery, the talking in circles and total diesregard for procedure. He doesn't care for the law, he just likes outsmarting people.
It is interesting that Colombo is always taking down pompous rich people who think their privilege and intelligence can get them out of murder, when modern cop shows all focus on poor people and psychos terrorizing normal law abiding people.
The LAPD gave him a badge to bind him to the organization. He just kept showing up to crime scenes and solving cases they needed to divert him from investigating them.
I'm assuming he found it in a promotional stunt of some kind and nobody at the LAPD ever got close enough to examine it and see that it makes him "Sheriff of Chili Town" or whatever.
I’ve always thought the “bastard” aspect of ACAB referred to the fact that they hurt people. Whether or not they understand the damage they’re doing is not only irrelevant, but it centers the discussion on the perpetrator rather than the victim
It was a kind of odd through line in his life. One of Duchovny’s early roles was on the soft core porn show Red Show Diaries. Mulder was a porn addict. He portrayed a sex addict for years on Californication and in real life went to rehab for sex and porn addiction.
I find it funny that in the first episode they tell you he's this super psychoanalist that can't be fired because he's a hero with unparalleled insight into the human psyche, and he spends the rest of the series doing like exactly none of that
"...absolutely no way he understands what the law really is or that his job is to enforce it. he has less capacity for moral cognition than a K9 unit."
I don't know. This sounds an awful lot like an awful lot of cops out there...
Doesn't "understand what the law really is or that his job is to enforce it. he has less capacity for moral cognition than a K9 unit" describes most cops
Reading these replies... I know I haven't watched the show for about a decade, but so many of these references are making me say "I can't remember that! Better rewatch the show again"
"Your honor, my client cannot be held accountable for killing that child, he has the mental capacity of a golden retriever when it comes to anything other than aliens."
When K-9 was informed a school full of kids was in danger his first suggestion was for Mickey the human car to start the car they were both in, drive through the front doors and then they both help rescue the kids.
I dunno, I'm betting Langley went along until lockdown hit, then they kind of drifted apart, he started checking out some new forums on Reddit, and long story short now she's living in an anarchist/punk house in Seattle and has some incredibly strong opinions about DIY HRT
I want to say no but look how badly they treated Scully. They actually start confirming some of their life long research endeavors and then start stumbling around like drooling idiots because one of the helpful FBI agents is hot.
Mulder is terrible at his job, his job is to DO the cover-up, not uncover the cover-up. But because he is so bad at uncovering the cover-up, he is actually really good at his job because he makes everyone who believes in UFOs and bigfoots look like idiots. Top notch gaslighting!
did he kneel on the tapeworm guys neck and say “why are you resisting” a bunch? if he kneeled on the tapeworm guy’s neck then my previous statement holds true.
i’d ask the beautiful encyclopedia of x-files information that i’m married to, but she’s asleep.
oh my god it's a joke about Mulder not being compos mentis to understand his actions not an essay on the ethics of policing
But yes cops understand what they are doing and what their job is and that's why i consider them bad people. i don't consider k9s evil because they don't know they're cops
Sure, but also I'm rewatching for the first time in like a decade and Mulder is real bad in cases with child victims. He traumatized several children over the course of the show.
The only justice Mulder was interested in delivering was three bullets to the oversized foreheads of the gray skinned, lidless cunts that took his sister.
a lot of the science Scully advocates for has been debunked in the intervening years so the show just comes across as a philosophical argument between two insane people now.
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https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-spectacle-5086263/episodes/the-only-good-fictional-cop-202463505
"Scully, I didn't spend all morning on r/conspiracy to get bogged down by technicalities. Also we are clearly in Vancouver."
I've already watch X-Files. That's enough for me.
I want there to be doggie weddings so they can have traditional families but, sadly, dogs only reach the age of consent to marry each other in the reddest states-- and that isn't because they live longer.
Off the top of my head I can't remember him ever like, using his law enforcement powers
Did he ever arrest anyone?
"Freeze! FBI!"
I'll have to rewatch lol
He both knows what the law is, and what his job is; he just doesn't care.
Real ancient Greek punishment stuff.
The odd thing is that Mulder only looked for him on his weekends off, though.
My point is, cops often don't even care to maintain the pretense, and arrest/brutalize outside even their broad legal permissions.
Scully all day everyday
like objectively all the crazy shit he says is just straight up correct
ACAB doesn’t include mulder because he has precisely 0 omtrtest in enforcing the law.
Do you have any friends who could elaborate on that for a couple hundred hours maybe?
I'm going to work on a counterargument, though I agree with the last sentence.
Weird month all around.
Cancer man playing Trump like a fiddle with the UAP stuff
I'm trying to imagine them all on Alex Jones show now.
"HELL YEAH"
"Huh... i guess so"
"Ok"
"... oh no"
His name is Fox. Technically, he IS a K9 unit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sadly he falls under the acab rule.
Mulder: 'I am'
Scully is Mrs Columbo.
Even if he misspelled "bureau" twice in the same report.
Mulder has no interest in criminals he's chasing monsters and aliens
So this tracks.
That seems like the situation you are describing regarding Mulder. And that sounds like a bastard
I don't know. This sounds an awful lot like an awful lot of cops out there...
Chris Carter really needs to be tarred and feathered.
..and it's a looong time since I watched any X files but I'm pretty sure you're wrong on both counts anyway.
Also ACAB is simply not true -but is a useful rule of thumb and baseline assumption
give it a nice georgia drawl
When K-9 was informed a school full of kids was in danger his first suggestion was for Mickey the human car to start the car they were both in, drive through the front doors and then they both help rescue the kids.
(see #SCPFoundation).
They do look for aliens and weird stuff ala XFiles.
Only they don't have the budget and their best agents keep getting hired by the Foundation LOL.
but it was written by aliens
i’d ask the beautiful encyclopedia of x-files information that i’m married to, but she’s asleep.
The Mentalist, A.K.A. Patrick Jane was at first only a dirty copper because he needed state resources to hunt down serial killer/cult leader Red John.
Then he stayed for a while after that because his boss was hot and into him.
they don't understand the law, or their jobs.
they just like power with a side of violence
You're right. That is not a popular opinion. It's takes more training than most cops receive, to understand the law and develop moral cognition.
But yes cops understand what they are doing and what their job is and that's why i consider them bad people. i don't consider k9s evil because they don't know they're cops
https://youtu.be/yscLj2FySdo?feature=shared