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Oh I 100% agree and have made this same argument myself.  I don't think there's any reason for any creator to make a new version of Sliders.  You can essentially do the same concept for free without much tweaking.

My thought is only this: if Sliders were ever going to come back, it would be via Jerry O'Connell.  Torme and the other creators are either too old or too out of the game for anything to have happened.  Jerry is the only one who seems noticeably interested in a return because he'd be the star and he has fond memories of the experience.  If Sliders were ever going to return, he'd have to be the champion.

And since Jerry is on Star Trek: Lower Decks, he has the ability to make the right networking connections in animation.  He could find the right talent to either recruit someone to make a demo reel for him or at least hire the right people to get the show done the right way.

Animation also fixes several problems that a live-action story cannot.  Jerry O'Connell could voice a 20-something Quinn when he cannot do that in live action.  JRD can voice Arturo without possibly hurting himself in the process.  And most importantly, they could do all this without a huge time commitment on their part (since Sabrina and Cleavant have their own things going on).

A live action continuation is essentially off the table now.  It's too confusing and too muddled and the cast is too up in the air.  A reboot doesn't make sense logistically because it's too easy to do without the rights.  But an animated series gives Jerry an avenue, allows for a more flexible continuity, and allows for the ease of getting the actors back without a full acting commitment.  If it's ever going to happen, I feel like animation is the only road.

And, yeah, there are drawbacks.  It's not the preferred way.  But I've been watching a lot of animation this year, and I think it can be done really well.

So I finally saw Birds of Prey.  I think the movie itself was fine, but I just kept thinking that it was incomplete.  I think the tone and the aesthetic are good.  I think if all the DC films were like this, it would've accomplished what Snyder seems to have wanted to do.  It feels like a world where Shazam and Superman and the Flash can exist with street level heroes.

The problem is that it's another movie set in Gotham where they don't really do anything with it.  They mention Joker but the entire movie takes place in Gotham's underbelly.  Where's Penguin and Riddler and Two-Face?  And not even just not shown - there's no clue of any of them existing.  Batman is briefly referenced but where is he?  And outside of the one in-joke to Boomerang, where is the reference to Suicide Squad?  Where's Waller?  Where's Flagg?  Is Harley wanted by any of them?

I mean, heck, where's Katana?  She's a badass female hero.  Why not throw her on the team?  She wasn't used in the last movie - flesh her out here?

I know it's a spinoff and Iron Man doesn't drop in to say hi in Ant-Man.  But this is a huge DC universe - why not go all out?  If you can't get Affleck or Leto, that's fine.  Get someone else.  Bring in Barbara Gordon or Jason Todd or Tim Drake.  Tease another movie.  Hint at the bigger established Gotham.  A ton of people were after Harley but they were all nobodies. 

I get it - DC is doing standalone films now with a light connection to everything else.  But at least use something from the movie Harley debuted in.  If you want it to be Girl Powered, Katana and Waller and Ivy and Batgirl are all women that would fit naturally into this story.  Instead you have a movie that barely features the Birds of Prey themselves in a plot about the Gotham underworld with just one comic book character.  It just felt like a missed opportunity.

Very sad.  This one shook me up more than most celebrity deaths because he seemed like such a nice guy, and he did so much even though he must've been mad at the world and felt so, so sick.

I have thoughts on the effects on the MCU, but I'll save them for a more appropriate time.

Yeah.  I understand that Trump's going to do whatever he's going to do, but I think it's crucial not to play directly into his hands.  I think whether or not you believe in the true concept of defunding the police, that the movement is harmful to Joe Biden.  I think regardless of whether or not the protests should happen, I think the ensuing violence (caused by whoever it's caused by) is harmful to Joe Biden.  And whether you want the police defunded or you want massive social change or you want the virus to slow, the best course of action will always start with electing Joe Biden.  No matter what your Step 2 is, Step 1 is getting Trump out of office.

BLM is inspiring, but at some point, it needs accountable leadership.  Every single BLM event needs to be overwhelmingly geared toward voting and voter registration.  Protests in October should be guiding people to early voting locations and ballot boxes.  Because no matter what you want or what you're fighting for, it's all for not if Trump gets re-elected.  Getting Black Lives Matter written on the NBA court is huge and important.  But like Chris Paul did the other day, every interview needs to veer toward getting people registered to vote and out to vote.  Because all the progress is lost if Trump wins.

So.....I don't get it. 

I understand why everything happened the way that it did.  WB was all in with Zack Snyder because they spent the early 2000s wasting most of their IP.  They had the Dark Knight the same year the MCU started.  They had the better movie, and the better cast of characters, but they were so late to the party that they had to try and catch up.  So they give Snyder full reign to get the universe kickstarted.  And because there was no one there with a love for the characters, Snyder's pitch of "EVERYONE IS BATMAN" worked because Batman was successful both critically and financially.  And because they were so rushed to compete with Marvel, they didn't have time to see if BvS worked.  It got a standing ovation internally and that was good enough.

But then like they did with everything before and after, they panicked.  And instead of letting Snyder do his thing, they literally got the Avengers guy to put a cheap Halloween costume on Zack Snyder's movie.

And now there's a pandemic and HBO Max needs content and they can give him a few million bucks to finish his movie.  A hundred things had to go this exact way for us to get here....

....but here's the thing.  I cannot get excited about this movie.  Because we saw it.  Sure, there were some dumb things that were obviously added by Whedon, but Whedon also gave us the first likable version of Superman.  I think there are fun character beats that I think were Whedon.  And I think the biggest thing is...Whedon was given a broken movie.  I don't think Whedon would've made the Justice League that his name is attached to.  It's completely unfair to refer to the theatrical version as Whedon's.  One is Whedon/Snyder and one is Snyder.  Snyder had a hand in both.

We aren't getting a totally new film.  It's the Ultimate Edition of BvS again.  Sure, it cleaned some stuff up, but the Ultimate Edition didn't solve my biggest problems with BvS.  And the Snyder Cut isn't going to solve my biggest problems with Justice League.  I mean, heck, Snyder essentially outlined his version for the Justice League trilogy and it sounded terrible.

I admire Zack Snyder because I think his vision is uncompromised.  And I'm glad that he's getting to finish his version of the movie because I'm sure he feels like he's going to finally heal from what was a very horrible and traumatic time in his life.  But BvS was Snyder's vision.  Snyder likes cool visuals and fun action sequences, but he doesn't have any interest in real character.  And that's why all his characters are essentially the same.  They're all Batman.  But not even the real Batman - a stylized version of Batman that only vaguely corresponds to the comic version.

I watched the trailer and it's just a new coat of paint on a movie we've already seen.  So I watched it and haven't thought about it since.

I think it works, but AoS did a good-enough job in the last two seasons of simply ignoring the movies (in retaliation for themselves being ignored) that just about any theory works.  I did have my own thoughts, but it requires spoilers:

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There's a moment in the last couple episodes that they discuss the idea that they're no longer in the same universe - that they're on a diverging timeline.  Although this doesn't exactly jive with what we understand about this via Endgame, I was actually thinking at the time that it was a fairly genius way of dealing with everything.  They'd literally chart their own course and end up in a completely different universe - maybe on where there are no Avengers or Fury or anyone they'd need to step around.

It worked well enough in my head that I actually was a bit disappointed when it didn't happen.

I'm sure the Biden campaign is doing something like this, but they also need to be arranging for people to go around and pick up mail from people and deliver them to a ballot box or polling location.  If Trump wants to go after the post office, then Biden can create their own post office.

I was sure they were.  This isn't necessarily going to be easy because the Republicans are good at this, but it's not exactly hard either.  I saw that there was a big social media push to make sure people send in their mail-in votes by October 22 to give the system enough time to get in and get in on time.  Hopefully this helps people get it done.  I also saw a campaign about the different ways to make sure your mail-in vote gets counted so, on some level, the Democrats are in the right area.

I enjoyed the Agents of SHIELD finale.  The show came so far, and I think it grew into a really solid companion piece to the MCU.  It was the little stepsister of the movies, but I think it found it's place.  Season one wasn't sustainable, and it had to do its own thing.  And even when the movies abandoned it, it was able to find ways to be interesting and cover relevant ground.

I wish they could've kept the connections to the movies, even just in special event episodes, but I understand why things went the way they did.  And maybe it was for the best.

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I was surprised that they didn't have any big cameos.  No Peggy Carter.  No Nick Fury (not even a young version unless I missed it).  I knew they wouldn't get an Avenger (even a minor one), but someone connected to the show made sense. 

But even without that, it was a good show with a good ending.  I'll miss it.

FiveThirtyEight came out with their election forecast and gives Biden a 71% chance to win at this exact moment in time.  They're an interesting site because they seemed to give Trump the most chance in 2016.  The bad news is that the numbers aren't all that different from 2016.  The good news is that as long as nothing big happens between now and November, that number will just go up (seems like they're leaving about 20% of Trump's chances to stuff like Covid and August/September/October surprises - they say if the election was today it'd be 91%).

What's interesting is a something I never hear talked about - they've adjusted from what they learned in 2016.  So they're doing their best to take as much of what they've learned and adjusted it.  Secret Trump voters, lying to polls, voter suppression.  I think most people (mostly Trump people) assume that polls have the same flaws they had.

The GOP is broken.  There's no argument there.  The problem is that the GOP is so broken that we can't see that the Democratic Party is also broken.  Maybe irreparably broken.  They had four years to come up with the best plan to beat Donald Trump.  They had four years against a corrupt, dangerous, hateable monster of a president to come up with their hero.  Four years for every Josh Lyman in the country to go out and find their version of Matt Santos.  Or if you want an example from real life, for the next Barack Obama - someone who came out of nowhere and, faults or no, inspires people.

Because Barack Obama would destroy Trump in an election even more than Biden is.

And in four years, who was the primary Democratic voice against Donald Trump?  Pelosi maybe?  Bernie?  AOC?  Schiff? 

When Trump won, I was expecting two things to happen.  Neither did (so take anything I ever say with a grain of salt).  I expected the Republicans to support Trump until it made sense for them not to, and then they could replace him with Mike Pence (someone much more palatable to them and conservatives).  "You had your chance, Donald, but you blew it" and they'd help vote him out for the guy that made more sense. 

I also expected the Democrats to get their champion.  Someone who made their name attacking Trump.  Trump would be the dragon, and 2016-2020 would be a series of jousting tournaments to determine the brave knight that would take on the dragon alone.

And....Joe Biden?

They had four years to come up with something, and they picked Obama's VP?  Broken.  In fact, if you ignore the miracle that Obama was, then the Democratic choices have been pretty uninspired since 2000.  Gore.  Uninspired.  Kerry. Uninspired.  Clinton was supposed to win in 2008 - much like 2016, the field stepped back and expected her to run away with it - Obama was the no-name guy who she was supposed to easily run over so that the race looked like an actual race.  We all know how I feel about Hillary as a candidate.

I get why Biden is the choice.  He's recognizable.  He easily recalls a better time.  He's popular with the right groups.  And I think this is key, his age actually allows him to be a simple 4-year stabilizing force so that the country can breathe again and to give experience to Mayor Pete or Andrew Yang or Kamala Harris or even AOC.

But, man, I was expecting a better gauntlet for 4 years.  I was expecting this election to have the perfect candidate.  And while I probably like Biden more than most of you, he's definitely not that.

If I were on the Biden team, I'd be doing everything I could to get people out to vote in person and early.  I don't know if if's the case everywhere, but I've voted early in every presidential election (disclaimer: I'm white).  And I'm fairly sure that, at least where I live, you can essentially vote wherever you want when you're early vote.  I've never been in a line, and I usually go after work.  So if the Biden team can send volunteers to certain places to a) make sure everything is as clean and organized as possible and 2) they get people in and out as quickly as possible.

If Trump's going to go after mail-in voting, Biden should make sure mail-in voting is as good as possible, but I'd also make sure that as few people as possible are mail-in voting.

Well, I think some of that is certainly possible, but I think we're allowing our nightmares to get the best of us.  We have to remember a couple of things that would drastically harm Trump's ability to do certain things:

1. If Trump is out, Republicans cannot help him scorch the Earth.  He may be leaving, but they aren't.  If Trump is setting fire to the Lincoln Bedroom and forcing himself to be carried out by the secret service or puts tanks in front of polling places, the Republicans will have to live with those images for decades.  It would put nearly every Republican politician in danger for the near future because it wouldn't just represent Trump - it would represent *them*.  I think that's part of the reason why Gore and Hillary didn't put up more of a fight than they did - it would reflect poorly on Democrats to do so.  So while, yes, Trump himself could potentially throw a fit, he wouldn't get support from anyone that wants to be in politics in 2021 and beyond.

That also might include his children.  If Ivanka or Don Jr. or Eric Trump want to be in politics, they can't be involved with a guy who threw the world's biggest hissy fit.  Same with Jared Kushner.  Trump can throw a temper tantrum, but it would tarnish the Trump name forever.  There's a really good chance that Trump's too narcissistic to care about his kids, but if they're fighting on it (because, again, they might want to have lives in the United States going forward), then it makes it harder.

Also remember that Trump's approval rating is hovering around 40%.  I think we like to think of Trump's MAGA people as all being indoctrinated wackos who worship him, but that number isn't anywhere near that 40%.  People support Trump because he's good for the economy or whatever - and setting fire to the country on his way out isn't going to be good for the economy.  Yes, you'd absolutely get white supremacists and evangelicals marching on behalf of Trump, but how many people is that in reality?

2. Trump's own incompetence.  People see Trump as this dictator figure who will pull off a suppression campaign with military precision.  But look at his presidency and tell me where he's shown any ability to pull that off.  He had a chance to do it in 2018 as a trial run, and the Republicans lost big.  His government, despite having control of the House and Senate for the first two years of his presidency, passed nothing.  He didn't repeal or replace Obamacare.  He didn't build a beautiful wall and Mexico didn't pay for it.  And even though it would've benefited him in every way to deal with the pandemic effectively, he botched that too.

Even when you look at his criminal enterprises, he's inefficient and sloppy.  He didn't win on Russia and Ukraine because the Democrats couldn't prove it - he won on technicalities.  He's winning on tax returns because of technicalities.

Trump doesn't know what he's doing and the people around him don't know what they're doing.  Trump might actively want to send the military to polling places, but he's just as likely to send them to the wrong polling locations or the wrong states entirely.  Nothing he's done so far has indicated that anyone in his administration is capable of pulling off a successful voter suppression organization, especially if he's lost support from the party.  And with the electoral map looking the way it is, he'll need to pull off something that he's just not capable of pulling off in my opinion.

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All that being said, Biden's team needs to keep up enthusiasm and do everything in his power to get people out voting early and voting in person.  There's plenty of time to organize efforts at a community level.  If people need to plan ahead, they can plan ahead.  How people can find time between the opening of early voting and the close of it.  How people can get their mail in ballots in quickly and efficiently.  There's tons of time to be working out kinks, and they know the Republican playbook.

With the map the way it is, if Trump is able to pull off a suppression campaign and win, Biden is going to have plenty of share of the blame because there's ways around everything Trump would try.

Agreed - hope it isn't true.  Although moving to streaming only can't be good for its future hopes.  I know some shows on streaming-only get longer runs, but it seems like most of these shows are 3-4 seasons and then go away. 

My favorite idea is still for CBS to buy the series and have it seamlessly reset in the Trek universe.

Trump tweeted inferring that he'd delay the election.  Something the Constitution is fairly clear that he cannot do.  It's a very desperate move that shows he knows he doesn't stand much of a chance.  It's looking very bad for him in Florida, and if he loses Florida, he essentially needs to win Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  He's losing all those states too.

Trump's best chance is to hack into the election records and physically change votes.  I don't think there was any evidence of that in 2016.  He can stifle mail in voting and throw out voter eligibility, but it would need to be on a massive scale (10-15% of the total voters in the country).  And it would need to be vastly more successful than anything he's been able to pull off in the last four years.

You guys are all assuming that Trump is capable in any way.  He's not.  I think he's tried and failed a ton.  I don't think he intentionally allowed any of his business ventures to fail - I think he likes to win and winning means success. 

The problem is that he is incapable.  It isn't that he's not trying.  It's that he's trying and failing.  He gets bad information from bad sources, and everyone around him has either been fired or sucks as bad as he does.  I think he absolutely wants his presidency to be a success.  He wants to be the best.  He wants to be re-elected.  He just doesn't have any idea how to do any of that.

Again, look back at the Wallace interview.  He legitimately thought that he US had the lowest mortality rate in the world.  No one who knows they're wrong would insist on bringing up the data.  If you get caught in a lie, you don't demand proof.  You move on.  He didn't which means he believed the lie.

I think he doesn't know how to work.  He doesn't know how anything works.  He doesn't understand the problem and so he has no means of fixing it.  So he asks someone dumb like Jared Kushner to fix it for him.  And they either come up with nothing or some ridiculous plan that won't work.  And then he asks Jared for a status update and Jared either lies or makes something up.  And Trump buys it.  When someone says that he's failing, someone tells him that it's fake news.

Imagine that you woke up onboard a Russian nuclear submarine.  Sirens are going off, lights are flashing, and you're all alone.  You get a message that says the submarine is speeding toward a trench and they won't be able to save you unless you turn it around.  You look around and see a bunch of buttons with characters in Russian.  You don't know what any of the buttons do.

If you die, it isn't because you weren't trying.  It will be a failure on your part, but you were way in over your head.  You might pray that someone saves you.  You might frantically press buttons hoping something will work.  You might just sit back and accept your fate. 

And maybe the radio keeps popping up and saying you're doing a great job.  Maybe a button you press turns off the sirens and the lights even though you're still in danger.  You would have no idea.  You're Trump.

I agree with this.

But to be fair, I think we also inject Trump into everything.  I follow a very select few of what I consider to be reasonable people who are truly conservative/Republicans that are wary of (but not fully against or fully supportive) Trump.  I do this because I feel like I need to at least understand where these people are coming from.  In the age of "block everyone who disagrees with you", I try to at least be educated so I don't start believing that everyone agrees with me.  I think that's how radicalization happens.

And these people get frustrated because people make everything about Trump.  Does he suck?  Yes.  Is he doing a terrible job?  Yes.  But I think we too often drag him into situations that he doesn't belong.  For example, there was a widely circulated video of a great lightning strike behind the Statue of Liberty.  That quickly devolved into Trump.  Trump didn't say anything about it (or maybe he did, I don't follow him) and the event itself had nothing to do with Trump.  And the conservatives I follow were exhausted by the idea that a cool weather shot ended up getting political.  I know there's symbolism there, but I think we need to be enjoying moments that Trump isn't affecting and not making *more* things about him.

The sad thing for us is that I think Trump is actually trying.  Covid is going terrible for him, and unlike BLM, there's no political reason for him to handle it the way he is.  I just think he's in over his head and has no idea what he's doing, and he's surrounded himself with sycophants that don't know what they're doing.  So it's just this circular disaster that he can't pull his way out of.

Biden, for his faults, at least has an inkling of what he's doing.  But more importantly, he can surround himself with people who know what they're doing.  And he's capable of replacing people who don't.

Change doesn't only have to come from Congress.  Change can simply come about from rejoining the Paris Accords.  Helping shift the country towards cleaner energy.  Working with our allies on pandemic prevention and response.  Stuff like that is easily done from the executive branch.  Trump has done next to nothing legislation-wise, but we've still felt the impact of his presidency.

I'll put that clip up against any Sleepy Joe video the MAGAs want to throw at him.  I don't think Trump has dementia, but I don't have any idea why he was given that test.  Maybe he asked for it and his doctors gave it to him for a laugh.  If it wasn't a real test, we know that Trump wasted at least (per him) 30 minutes to an hour messing around with a meaningless test.  If it was real, he's either showing symptoms of dementia, Alzheimers or Parkinsons.

I know you're down on Biden, but Trump was a long shot to win no matter who his opponent was going to be.  We can argue all day about whether Biden is the worst candidate or a boring candidate, but he's *crushing* Trump.  Trump is going to have to work his ass off to get to 200 electoral votes at this point.  If this was Obama, Trump might struggle to get to 100 electoral votes.

I've said this so many times but the math is the math.  The US has had shifting demographics for a long time, and there just aren't enough white conservatives to justify the GOP's insane "only campaign for whites" agenda.  I live in Texas, which everyone would expect would be Trump country and I don't know one (1) person who would vote for him.  I don't even think I know someone who would lie about it and then vote for him secretly.  Polls in Texas are showing Biden up.  I don't think Biden wins Texas, but the fact that it's even in play shows how much trouble the Republicans are in.  Because if the Democrats have Texas, New York, and California, it's over.  Absolutely over.  And that's not only a real possibility - it's a near certainty.

And we can take a shit on polls all we want and point over and over again to 2016 as the main reason, but 2016 was such an aberration.  Things that are one in a million happen once every million times - it doesn't mean that the percentages were wrong if that one time happens first or fifth or whenever.  Yes, the polls were wrong, but they've never been that wrong before or since.

Trump was so bad his whole presidency that no matter who emerged from the Democratic field, he was going to lose.  That's why every single candidate (Bernie, Warren, Biden, Mayor Pete, Klobuchar, Yang, etc) was polling ahead of Trump.  The math was on their side.

Yeah but it'd be just as bad or worse in the South.  If Hillary had suggested wearing masks, I think even less people would've listened to her.  There might not even have been shutdowns as Republican governors would've worked against Hillary.  I think the divide might've even been worse because there would've been irate/irrational hate against the Clinton administration as the election draws nearer.

I don't know how a President Clinton would've made any of that better.

I remember liking Batman Forever too.  It wasn't as campy as Batman and Robin or as dark and depressing as Batman Returns.  I probably think Forever is just as good as Batman 89 just in a different way.  I never liked Returns - it's just too dark and weird for me.

I think if Schumacher had dialed back the neon, I think it would've felt right as a sequel to Returns.  But I also think the neon makes sense in a lot of ways.  After the insanity of the Burton movies, I think the city would've gone neon to try and brighten itself after the dark insanity of the beginning of Batman's era.

I'll be watching for sure.  I'm fascinated to see how it works out, especially since the show was so much about Kate.  I also hope the fans are nicer to Javicia than they are to Candice Patton.

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Regarding Sawyer, I just saw your previous post about the cast not supporting him.  I wonder if they can't publicly.  Grant Gustin didn't support him, but he also didn't condemn him.  I think he's toeing the line because he can't appear to support what Sawyer said, and he can't support Sawyer without appearing to do that to some people.  I think a brief but firm statement is the best he can do.  I hope if they genuinely thought he'd changed and was a good person and a friend that they'd call him personally and try to help out in some other way.

I don't think Sawyer is an amazing talent, but he's likeable.  I think he'd actually be a pretty decent Quinn Mallory in the right circumstances - he gives me a 1995 Jerry O'Connell vibe - someone who is obviously classically attractive with action movie star qualities, but who seems a bit too quirky to pull it off.

Here's a question I wonder about: does Trump like being president?  I think he likes the power.  I think he likes the attention.  But does he actually like the job?  He can have power and attention and do any number of things.  He's done enough where he can get (more) wealth and attention doing anything else.  He could "write" a book - he could get a movie easily made about his life.  He could get a TV show with just about any network.

I agree that he'd probably do anything to keep the job, but I can't imagine he likes the hours or the work.  He doesn't seem to like the press conferences.  I think he could have essentially everything like he likes about the job without the job.

He was the president of the United States for four years and has tons of state secrets.  He also has a base of millions of Americans that they could use him to manipulate.  He'd be the greatest state asset in the history of the world, no?

I think there's something to the idea that he could drop out before November.  It's looking more and more like he'll get crushed.  And even if the polling is wrong, his ego won't chance that.  He'll take his ball and go home first.  It's play 1 in his playbook.

That flag is simple, but I like it.  The flags that I like best are the ones that are simple.  Texas has a great flag, and it's the simplest version of the American flag.  New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Alaska....just a flag with colors and some sort of symbol.  When a state flag has too many things going on (what are you doing, Maryland?) with an intricate seal or writing (several states have the name of the state written on it for some reason - if you make a great flag, people will recognize it without telling them).

To me, a great flag should be able to be drawn freeform by a child with crayons and be recognizable to most people.  I'd maybe invert the white and the blue on that flag.  Or leave it as it is - I think it would instantly be a top 20 state flag (there are so many bad ones IMO)

I thought the movie was going to be bigger too.  I had actually gotten into X-Files around the time of the movie.  I rented all the collections on VHS that they had, and watched the show.  I had read (god knows where) that the movie was going to pick up where the show left off.  I even went to an X-Files convention where they showed a trailer for the movie (and I got a script signed by Mitch Pileggi (god knows where that is).

The movie ended up just being a seemingly random two-hour episode.  Not even as good, in my opinion, as some of the two-parters we'd seen on the show.

Maybe Carter just didn't understand spectacle.  Or didn't want it.  I do think a CGI-fest invasion would've felt weird.  X-Files wasn't about it.  It was about small towns and back alleys and government buildings.  Something would've felt off if X-Files went Independence Day.  But I think you're right.

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You make a great point about narrative structure for a show.  X-Files was built around a story that just kept getting delayed.  They thought if they ever got to that part, the show was over.  And in their case, maybe it was.

The Flash set their whole show around crisis, and they've struggled a bit after crisis (but those struggles were happening pre-crisis).  I think the best example is Supernatural - they had a roadmap for a five season show and hit it out of the park.  They'd beaten the devil.  And they realized there was even more story after that.  The show never got as good as it was in seasons 1-5, but they kept it going.

Could X-Files have done the same?  I don't know.  It seems like Carter was never comfortable with any level of conclusion to his show.  Like Twin Peaks before it, it's destined to end open-ended.