THE X-FILES (1993-2002, 2016)
After stumbling through a lousy ninth season and a soppy 2008 movie, X-Files lifers Fox Mulder and Dana Scully were resurrected in 2016 for a six-episode event series exploring the 21st century’s unique exhaustive paranoia. Wildly divergent in tone and quality, season 10 turned over every major touchstone that has defined the series: “mytharc” aliens, the Mul/Scull romance, monsters-of-the-week, and left-field comedy. Creator Chris Carter, long past caring about anything as small as audience satisfaction, delivers a possible series-ending double whammy of Mulder succumbing to a virus as a UFO descends upon him and Scully.