I borrowed the first season of the X-Files from my sister-in-law, to learn just what I’d missed by ignoring the show when it aired. Didn’t miss much. While the show has some nifty moments, which can be mined for playable material, the general production elements are uniformly B-list: artificial dialogue, stories that substitute vagueness for mystery, and dubious acting.
Gillian Anderson is six times the actor David Duchovny could ever dream of being. For a while, I thought Duchovny’s legendary lack of expression was at fault, and he does indeed lack something in the emote department, but eventually I noticed an even stronger reason why he seems to be reciting his lines rather than acting. He is. Watch the timing of his lines and watch his expression – such as it is – when someone else is doing the talking. He adopts none of the natural responses to the novel and unpredictable qualities of another person’s speech: he doesn’t fidget, he doesn’t watch hand gestures as much as the flapping of the mouth, and he doesn’t wait that necessary beat we often take to absorb what someone says to us. Duchovny is only waiting for his fellow actor’s line to end, so he can take his turn in proper sequence. He behaves as though the audience can only see the current speaker, and nothing else on screen matters.
I don’t pretend to know much about acting, but I can say this point is worth noting, because the mistake is widespread. Ever watch an amateur (or even semi-professional) theater troupe perform? I’ve seen four or five. Their dialogue is often stiff and unconvincing, because amateur actors, too, all too often merely recite their lines, making sure they get the words right instead of getting the meaning of the words right.