Millennium

Although our initial foray into Chris Carter's Millennium began in 2017, we skipped several episodes in the first season and all of season 3. The uneven show reinvented itself for each of its three seasons, and we were mainly interested in the second one for its Christian eschatology. Season 1 had its occasionally great "serial killer of the week" episodes but the repetitive nature of it became difficult to watch. Undoubtedly, season 3 is by far the worst. The Millennium organization lost nearly all of its meaning in the final season for the show. It became an incoherent rambling mix of conspiracy theories closer to the more nonsensical arcs of the larger X-Files mythology. We wanted to like Emma Hollis but couldn't get past the weak building of her character or the loss of Catherine. Furthermore, Frank Black living back on the East Coast instead of gloomy Seattle just didn't seem right considering the dark themes of the show. To be fair, season 2 had its clunkers and some inconsistencies regarding Millennium's origins and the rather silly episode involving Nazis in South America. 

Despite these problems, Millennium was overall a successful show demonstrating what Chris Carter and 1013 were capable of outside of X-Files. Both shows dealt with faith in an age of secular post-modern affluence but Millennium, due to its brevity and ultimate focus on the choices made by humans as the final factor in our future, seems the more meaningful (and relevant) show to those of us living in the 21st century. It certainly does appear that we are headed toward an apocalypse of our own making. And one must definitely be wary of those who seek to control the process and direct it for their own nefarious purposes. We just wish the show had ended with the season 2 finale or had received, perhaps, a final season that attempted to wrap up the plot for the second season. In spite of these shortcomings, at least Millennium ended at a "good" place compared to its sister show which ran for far too long. Both went out with a whimper, yet the whimper for Millennium was understandable due to problems behind the scenes and pressure from the network.