Darin Morgan makes sombre television stranger by allowing it to be funny. We value the sympathy beneath his absurdity, though his jokes about the programmes themselves work best once we know them well.
Fi1m perspective
The X-Files (1993) can be sombre company until Darin Morgan starts finding jokes in the unexplained. His episodes make the programme funny without treating its interest in strange people as something to be embarrassed about. We rate that contribution highly, even when the series' wider fondness for secrecy tries our patience. His early distinction was as a writer: Humbug (1995), his first solo episode, established his comic approach to its mysteries.
We were moved by Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose (1995), because its blend of humour and close attention to character makes the person matter as much as the puzzle. That is the Morgan we value most, interested in how peculiar people think and feel even while he is making us laugh. Jose Chung's From Outer Space (1996) puts more weight on convoluted storytelling and jokes about the programme itself. There is pleasure in the ingenuity, but those jokes ask rather more of anyone who has not already become a regular viewer.
Chris Carter hired Morgan for both The X-Files and Millennium, where he wrote and directed two episodes in 1997–98. The move also made the limits of his approach apparent. Some viewers found Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense (1997) at odds with Millennium's prevailing bleakness, and we can understand the objection. A joke about how a programme tells its stories can interrupt our interest in the people living through them; the writing needs to give us a reason to care beyond recognising the joke.
Morgan returned to The X-Files as writer-director with Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster (2016), continuing his comic approach, and wrote and directed another episode in 2018. We would not treat the comedy as something to skip on the way to the serious episodes. His interest in peculiar people is part of what makes this series worth spending time with. Start with Humbug and Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose; leave the more self-referential work until the programme's habits are familiar.
Biography
Darin Morgan is an American screenwriter, director and producer. He studied film at Loyola Marymount University and began his association with The X-Files (1993) by appearing as the Flukeman in the episode 'The Host' before contributing a story credit to 'Blood'. He went on to write several episodes for the series, including 'Humbug', 'Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose', 'War of the Coprophages' and 'Jose Chung's From Outer Space'.
Morgan's teleplay for 'Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose' won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series in 1996. He also wrote episodes of Millennium (1996) and returned to The X-Files for the revival seasons, writing and directing 'Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster' (2016) and 'The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat' (2018). He is the younger brother of writer and director Glen Morgan.
