Shapes

Honestly my favorite episode from season 1. The pacing is amazing, the mystery is great. ( even tho extremely predictable ) and i'd say what truly held this in place like a perfect glue was the atmosphere, the build up, the tension... it was all too good.

A different take in the Werewolf as we know, choosing a different name from an older legend, so clever.

Btw i've seen some people confused about Scully in this and all i can tell you is DENIAL. She is in extreme denial, she saw a Poltergheist in the other episode and was still in denial, i can't fathom people not realizing this about the character in season 1.

I think this episode is underrated. It was interesting and really different as far as the monster stories are concerned. The Native American aspect was cool and it was an exposition of the conflict between three different entities.

Werewolves are admittedly not my favorite classic horror monsters, although there have definitely been some great portrayals in movies and TV (I think it's great when there's a fun spin put on it, like in "Dark Shadows", and even the more traditional "The Wolf Man" and "An American Werewolf in London" are terrific films). The problem is that they are SO overused that just about anything involving them, unless written especially well, is going to be so-so, and probably worse than that.

"Shapes" is definitely NOT especially well-written. There's a couple of good lines here and there, and some interesting background on the X-Files and their origin, and it's always nice to see Michael Horse from "Twin Peaks" make an appearance, and it's a nicely-shot David Nutter-directed episode so it never feels as taxing or boring as things like "Space" or "Teso dos Bichos", but it really isn't particularly good.

"Shapes" may put A spin on the traditional werewolf tale, by adding Native American folklore to the mix, but it's not an INTERESTING spin, which is what is needed to make a werewolf tale worthwhile. It's a generally poorly-written episode with some horribly cheesy moments, but not nearly as intolerable as the very worst episodes of the show are.

4/10

This is one of those episodes that has a historically bad reputation and, while it has its flaws, it's a pretty good episode all told.

The plot moves along at a good pace and it has a nice and tangible atmosphere.

As indicated, there are some flaws in the plot which I won't detail because I would prefer to avoid spoilers, but there are instances where evidence simply isn't looked into in any great detail, and that's frustrating. I'm referring to evidence that could be obtained with plaster casts, photographs, impressions and the like.

I also felt like the episode could have been longer, the ending seemed far too abrupt.

All that aside, I enjoyed it.

This continues the mini-horror film format of Ice, Ghost in the Machine and the subsequent Darkness Falls, a werewolf tale with some feuding about land borders between Montana ranchers and Indians of the nearby reservation. We have lazy, stiff acting and plot, 'mystical' Indians, and a trite twist and conclusion, unusually bad even by X-File standards.

A redeeming value is the sort of Twin Peaks vibe going on, as the pair of detectives investigate sinister happenings in a tightly-knit community harboring secrets. And right there is all the difference. Whereas in Twin Peaks there is a marvelous subversion of tropes, a delightful earnestness undercut by the irony of familiarity, Scooby Do plunged into dark sexual jazz, here we have no irony, no real danger and just a po-faced acceptance of genre.