What’s Worth Watching: ‘The X-Files’, ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’, ‘Becoming Mike Nichols’ and more for Monday, February 22
The X-Files (8/7c, Fox): It was nice—if at times uneven—while it lasted. The X-Files ends its limited-run reboot where it started, with the conspiracy unearthed by Tad O’Malley (Joel McHale) that brought Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) back together. While Scully tries to get to the roots of a nationwide medical crisis, Mulder confronts the person he thinks is behind everything—could it be the infamous Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis)? And given how often he’s been invoked during the run, what if anything does William—the child they gave away—have to do with all of this? Maybe we’ll find out, or maybe we’ll just be left as usual with more aggravating questions.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (8/7c, The CW): It’s all about the Joshes this week. Rebecca (the award-winning Rachel Bloom) has damage control to do with her longtime obsession Josh (Vincent Rodriguez III), who’s now getting a taste of just how crazy she is after the texting mess. And her divorced boss Darryl (Pete Gardner) is flustered about his feelings for White Josh (David Hull) after that unexpected kiss on the cheek. Someone write those two a song!
Becoming Mike Nichols (HBO, 9/8c): The second documentary portrait of the legendary director in as many months (the first aired on PBS’s American Masters) is also built around a candid and witty extended interview—his last, conducted over two days in summer 2014 with theater director Jack O’Brien. The focus is mainly on his formative years: first as an improvisational comedy performer with Elaine May (their Broadway triumph was in the Golden Theatre, where the interview takes place), and then as the Tony-winning director of Neil Simon classics Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple before turning to film, with an auspicious start directing Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate, which won him an Oscar. With anecdotal glimpses of his artistic process, this is a fitting valediction to a brilliant career.
Inside Monday TV: Police procedurals don’t come much grittier than Suspects (Acorn TV), a British import with a five-episode first season available for instant binge-watching. (A four-episode second season premieres next Monday.) Improvised dialogue and documentary-style observational camerawork bring distinctive flavor to the exceedingly grim cases-of-the-week. … After all these years, CBS’s NCIS: LA (10/9c) promises that Callen (Chris O’Donnell) will finally learn what the “G” of his first name stands for. … PBS’s Independent Lens (10/9c) goes inside a complicated, troubling FBI counterterrorism sting in (T)error—pun intended. The film, a 2015 Sundance Special Jury Prize winner, follows a black revolutionary recruited by the FBI to spy on a white Muslim convert. But who’s really the target here?
