Ugh...

The beginning was such a disappointment - wow - what a fake out.

Lazy lame story writing.

1 out 10

"Did they pull off a 'Dallas' and write off the cliffhanger from the last season as Dana Scully's dream?"

Major rule of screenwriting if you're going to end on a cliffhanger have a resolution planned, instead of writing yourself into a corner where the only way to resolve it is to retcon it.

Honestly, I am embarrassed for Chris Carter.

I fell asleep half way through. Ugh is right. I said to my wife "this is like a bad soap opera". Yes, Jeffery Spender WAS burned badly, but for Christ sake, we seen CSM get blown to bits and his scull on fire with no flesh or meat on it anymore. How the hell could he survive that? If he can survive that, they can bring back the Lone Gunmen, or anyone else for that matter.

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1. I don't think they suggested it was a dream.
4. It was Scully who grabbed the scalpel and sliced the guy's throat, I think, then Mulder finished it.

Yes, Spender was deemed to be CSM's kid, not sure what episode.

Didn't Monica and Robert Patrick's character hide William?
CSM made a miraculous recovery.
As to him being William's father - BAH I say!!

I agree with ALL your points--they are exactly the same thoughts I had upon watching this premiere. To add to your comments:

1. The "bridge" finale from last season... Even though I generally didn't like most of last season, I thought the conclusion--with Scully trapped in traffic on the bridge with hundreds of other people when a huge UFO appears in the sky--would finally be the direction that the X-Files MUST move towards...that is, FINALLY humanity will have unquestionable proof that the aliens are indeed among us. It would be a game-changer for this show, and god knows, the X-Files desperately needs its game changed.
However, in the premiere, they actually have the gall to suggest that this occurrence was...just a friggin' dream of Scully's. W. T. F??? I am infuriated that Carter and Morgan actually have the gall to try and foist this kind of crap on us.

2. The direction and pacing... Did Carter hire an editor who was between assignments on the Bourne or John Wick movies? The ENTIRE goddamned episode was cut like it was some kind of moronic action movie, with shots barely a few seconds long...even in DIALOGUE scenes! Holy crap, it was like an endurance test just to try and watch it. You know how Ritalin--an amphetimine--is prescribed for kids with hyperactivity because it actually "slows" them down? That's how the pacing of this worked on me--I was bored. It seemed like they were speeding things up just to try and distract the audience from how silly and left-field the plot was for this episode. Throwing everything but the kitchen sink for characters and sub-plots from the past up against the wall and hoping they'd stick didn't help either.

3. The car chase... What you said. And also...Mulder is now driving a white Mustang? Um, what? Is that standard FBI issue for vehicles now? And how the hell was able to follow someone for hundreds of miles without being spotted in such an easily recognizable car? Beyond ludicrous.

Chris Carter really screwed things up...AGAIN. Whenever you introduce a retcon to the story, you undermine what you previously expected the audience to invest in when they were along for the ride the first time.

All he had to do in Season 10, was wrap up the conspiracy storyline by some thow away line like, the faceless alien rebels defeated the alien colonists, effectively quashing their plans for invasion. Or something along those lines would have been fine. Then they could have explored stuff with William and other storylines involving aliens that wasn't beholden to the colonization angle.

Instead, he said it was actually men, not aliens in seasons 1-9 which made so sense. And then in this season introduced another pathetic retcon, convoluting the plot yet again. All we know now is that the aliens said never mind because of global warming but there are so many more things that don't make sense. Ugh is the perfect way to describe all this nonsense.

Never cared for mythological episodes. They are without any humor and too cliched to be taken seriously. MOTW is where I see creativity in it.