"déjà view"

I read about a phenomenon "déjà view" which silly as it is (the feeling you keep seeing the same episode of a TV show over and over) it struck a chord with me.

I have often thought about situations that have caused me to believe that there must be some great cosmic conspiracy out there built just to annoy me. This is one of those situations, with a slight difference.

It started many years ago. It was late at night, I was watching TV alone and I had just finished watching a video tape of some movie. When I shut the VCR off the TV channel behind it was playing an X-Files episode. It was something about a woman who said she was a genie. As I watched for a few minutes I realized it was one I didn't recognize. I mean I didn't recognize it at all, and I would have sworn I had seen every single episode.

As the realization hit me that here was an episode I had never ever seen, I got excited, then upset. Excited because, well, here was a "fresh" episode of The X-Files! But upset because I had missed most of it. I threw a blank tape into the VCR and taped it, but later on I couldn't get myself to watch it, since it was incomplete.

I looked it up and learned the episode name was "JE SOUHAITE" from season 7. I tried to find it in any of the local station's schedules, the Sci-Fi channel, everywhere I could to see if I could find when it might be rerun again. I got nowhere.

I forgot about it. Some time much later, it must have been two or three years, it happened again. It was late at night, I had just finished watching a movie, I turned off the VCR and was flipping around the dial for a few moments, and there it was. That same X-Files episode, and at practically the same point in the story I had seen before, which meant that it was already almost over.

And I had missed it again.

I turned it off. I didn't want to ruin it for myself when I someday actually got to watch it in full.

It happened one more time some time later but not in quite the same way. Again it was late at night, and picked out a tape from a pile on the shelf. When I threw it into the VCR and hit play I expected to see one thing, but damn if it wasn't that tape that had the episode from years earlier that I had taped but never watched. And of course because it was a tape, it was queued to the beginning of the tape at that exact same scene, that same teasing bit about a girl who says she's a genie. Damn her.

I have since acquired the first 8 seasons of The X-Files on DVD. (if season 9 ever is priced at $5 I might splurge) Even thought I now have a complete and pristine copy of this episode, in Dolby, widescreen, etc. etc., I now find that I cannot get myself to watch that one final episode. I have this feeling that once I do, The X-Files will really and truly finally be 'over.'

Of course, if I watch it and it is a sub-par episode I will have felt cheated somehow.

So what is worse? Watching the episode, risking the possibility that it wasn't worth all the bother, and also having The X-files all really be 'over', once and for all? Or staying in my own little reality where The X-files hasn't really 'ended' and just imagining the episodes' greatness?

Or have I already put way too much thought into this?

That is all for today. Our lines are open for your comments.