Millennium

I appreciated/respected the show for what it was, but I never enjoyed it. It was very grim to sit down and watch, honestly.

I still liked it better than anything the X-Files did after season 3, and that includes Robert Patrick too. Guess I'm a sucker for Lance Henriksen.

I really liked the first 2 seasons, especially anything dealing with Lucy Butler, season 3 kind of lost it's way, with Carter trying to correct the course of the show too drastically too soon. It was really grim and bleak for it's time but I think over the years the rest of TV sort of caught up with it in that regard.

BLB: It says that you have a large sign above your head that says 'BEAT ME HARD'.

Just giving you shit. It was definitely a quality show, but it wasn't entertaining.

I think I'm with Judas Booth on this one. I watched the first season when I was in my "watch everything Chris Carter has done" phase, but it was more of a slog than an enjoyable experience. I'd much rather watch The Lone Gunmen again, which was a surprisingly awesome show.

I only liked Season 2 which was great. I couldnt get into 1 or 3

Some of the one-offs were pretty good, but overall this was even a worse case of making shit up as you go along than the X-Files. Half of the time it felt like Carter didn't even know what the show was meant to be about.

The only episodes that should be required viewing are the ones penned by Darin Morgan during season two.

Pretty much, "Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me" is a really great episode.

"Owls" and "Roosters" are also required viewing.

Season 2 actually ranks up there with the best Season of any show ever for me. I raced through it on DVD in about 2 days.

Carter bailed 3/4 of the way through Season 1 (To go back to the troubled 'X Files') and handed the reigns over to Morgan and Wong who inserted a mythology into the show for Season 2. The only problem is that we only get one season to see that play out (As Morgan and Wong were told the show wouldn't make it to Season 3, they decide to bow out with the Apocalyptic ending). Fox then made a suprise move of renewing for a third Season, Morgan and Wong were asked not to return (And still won't talk about their experience on the show) and so the other writers (Carter still didn't return) had to bail the show out, so we spend the first few episodes of Season 3 purely retconning.

It was a fucking dark show I'll give it that, and yeah it could get a little overwhelming at times. But I think it would go down really well if it came out now. I prefer it to 'The X Files' mainly because the mythology worked a lot better (And though it comes out of nowhere it was clear that Morgan and Wong had an endgame in mind, obviously the same can't be said for 'The X Files').

I'm a big fan of parenthesis today.

I think that's maybe true for the first season, which was pretty straighfaced and dour, but I think season 2 was definitely entertaining (for the most part).

I haven't really bothered to catch the 3rd season, fairly satisfied to take season two as the end of the series considering some of the regretful comments of those that finished it all the way through.

I kind of like that the show ultimately ended up being three different things.

I got to think that the makers of Criminal Minds really liked Millenium season 1.

I really, really loved this show. The final episode of season two was great and felt like a real (and unusual) ending. I didn't even bother with more than one or two episodes of season three.

The second half of Season 3 picks up a bit, and the show is actually given a final (Happy) ending. But the clumsy retconning of Season 2 is painful (Oh yeah we got that end of the world thing wrong, some people died but it sorted itself out in the end).

The problem with Millennium was producers Morgan and Wong (folks behind the sublime S:A&B), despite making some of the best episodes, wrote the show into a corner by having the Millennium Group turn out to be a bunch of apocalyptic whack-jobs.

But I still remember the first minutes of the pilot, the Nine Inch Nails, the strip club....knew that show was going to be a winner.

I need to watch it again but isn't it split into factions? There's a part of the group that believe the World is coming to an end etc and there's a part that doesn't.

I love what Morgan and Wong did though, if they didn't insert that arc into it then it would've just plodded along as another procedural. Albeit a pretty fucked up one.

Oh and anything that has Ashyln Gere as a Nazi is alright by me.

Yep, she was in pretty much everything they did, including an unbought pilot.

Not exactly. The "Owls" faction believes that a catastrophic Outer Space disaster will occur in 60+ years. They are the secular faction.

The "Roosters" faction (which consists of most of the leadership) believes in the traditional Biblical prophecies. They are big into mystical relics and posit the end to arrive in about 165 days.

I prefer the Season 1 and 2 Millenium Group. Their moltivations were shady but you generally felt that they had some form of "Higher Knowledge" about them. Its hinted in Season 3 that they have been infected by the Lucy Butler "Demonic force" they were supposed to be fighting.

Watch "The Hand of St Sebastian", "Owls" and "Roosters" to get the definitive view on The Milennium Group.

I have never liked a show so much despite it having so few actual good episodes. It's weird.

The majority of season 1 and 2 are fantastic, with 2 being superior on repeat viewings. My favorites were the comedy episodes, with Jose Chung and the demons at the coffee shop. Interesting factoid: a late season 2 episode has the exact same plot as "Into The Wild", including precious literary voice over.

I've been waiting for a chance to talk about Season 3 with someone. I have never seen a show take such a nosedive. It's nearly unfathomable how bad it became. Not a single episode rose to the level of the worst season 1 and 2 eps, or even the worst X-files eps. It was like a curse of blandness was cast upon it, or the producers had strict rules against making episodes that I could keep my eyes open all the way through.

It took me nearly a year to finish watching my Season 3 box. As expected, the finale was beyond atrocious. They remade fucking Silence Of the Lambs. Unbelievable. Then, Frank and his daughter run down a hallway. The end.

Season 3 was a pisser. Tv shows get so terrified of casual viewers bailing out from confusion, they do these boring-ass generic episodes that are more self contained. And yet Millennium's whole reason for existing was to build up to something, so they were chasing these Murder She Wrote housewives who were never gonna watch it anyway. (I still liked Frank though, I think they should bring him back in an apocalyptic FX show with a new title)

If they could do two shitty X-Files movies, I don't see why they wouldn't be able to come up with a nice low budget Frank Black movie.

My thoughts exactly.

Ah Season 3, you bastard kid.

Well Carter had lost interest at that point (As he so often does) and so it was just left there for people to run without any kind of guiding force. If I remember rightly the latter half starts to get better before the show comes to an end. But that whole Season just should never had been made.

I'm going to need to watch the show again as there's so much I've evidently forgot but there's a few points I wanted to make.

-- Lucy Butler is amazing, her episodes in Season 1 and Season 2 are some of the best the show as done.

-- 'The Mikado' was a great episode that had a fairly accurate idea of how technology works (Killer kills people over the Internet, nothing new but the web cam is a crappy thing that refreshes frames every few seconds - I thought it was a nice touch)

-- Darin Morgan needs to work more.

-- The end of the world is a fucked up montage set to Patti Smith's 'Horses' - all 10 minutes of it.

It's a shame that on the Season 2 Doc the failure of the show was put on Morgan and Wong. There's about 10 minutes on the Doc where they just get blamed (Including by Henrickson who for some reason refers to Season 2 as "too jokey" and with "gimmick episodes"). If anything Season 2 needed those episodes because as a whole it was fucking grim. Only Carter puts up a (half) defense by saying he didn't really see the show but he thought what they did was 'interesting'. Weirdly enough Morgan and Wong declined to speak on the Doc (And still won't talk about the show).

I love this show and I thought season 2 was the best. Seemed like the stories were heading somewhere. That "jose Cheung" episode was brilliant. I've always loved the bit when he sees the victim "woah! blood!".

Lo and behold I caught a random X Files episode and it happened to be the Millennium one. Is that how you honour the show Carter? By turning the group into some Zombies? What the fuck.

I've literally only just discovered this show, I've been plowing through the DVD Boxsets, and I'm really enjoying the show. It's interesting because I started off liking the procedural elements of the show, the crime of the week stuff, and was hoping that it wouldn't get hit by any big meta-arcs.

But the way they handled the segue into the mythology of the show was brilliant. I'm only just starting Season 2 now, about five episodes in, but the way that The Legion and The Millennium Group are being set up as long arcs is remarkably subtle.

The episode which marks the start of Legion is one of those real 'holy fuck' episodes because it transforms from an already interesting story about a Hannibal Lecter style killer into something even darker and, in a way, and almost terrifying. That shot of Lucy walking down the stairs and changing into a man and then into the demon is one of the creepiest things I've seen on TV since Twin Peaks.

I remember that moment well. It's little things like that that the show specialized in that are hard to forget.

I could never take Millennium that seriously but I always enjoyed it and thought it was mostly well done (until it went off the rails somewhere around season 3). I think Henriksen grounds the show with his weariness and Terry O'Quinn is as good as always. Ultimately, I view Millennium as a fascinating failure, though. I don't regret watching it. At times I'd say it was a good show (certainly ambitious). But unfortunately it was rushed and then axed before it had the chance to become great.

The Owls and Roosters double bill halfway through Season Two is mind boggling weird. Whilst I keep hearing that Morgan and Wong had a definitive plan for Season Two I'm not seeing much of it. Sure they're expanding the mythos of the Millennium Group, but the show doesn't feel like it has an overarching narrative at all/

Yeah, especially after the ballsy move of the apocalyptic ending of season 2. It feels like it almost comes out of nowhere. And then in season 3 we find out it was just isolated groups of people. The fuck?

The problem with Owls/Roosters is that it completely abandons what makes Millennium so compelling to have this big, roving, adventure story, with shoot outs in Damascus, Nazi fortresses in Paraguay and a shady conspiracy on the verge of civil war. It just doesn't fit into the very personal, and really quite small, show Millennium had been before. The Hands of Saint Sebastian has this exact same problem.

However Season 2's one off episodes have been a league ahead of Season 1. Goodbye Charlie, The Curse of Frank Black, Luminary, Jose Chung's Doomsday Defence and Monster are all incredible, incredible episodes. Jose Chung's episode, and its wild stabs at Scientology, are brilliance.

Jesus, the finale of Season 2 was fucking brilliant. I have no idea how Morgan or Wong got away with going quite so out there at times. I've only seen two episodes of Season 3 and I already resent the series for its existence. Continuing after the ending of Season 2 was a bad idea anyways, making the show a lame X-Files rip off (in terms of cinematography, music, characterisation, plot points) was a really stupid decision. I also love how the Millennium Group has progressed from being a bunch of retired FBI consultants, to a 1000 year old dynastic movement, to a shady paramilitary group.

So I tried to get back into Season 3, but the first episode I watch has an antagonist who is essentially Randy Marsh. The guy's executing people left and right to protect them from the threat of the.......MILLENNIUM BUG

Holy shit, that's awesome.