Patricia Sargeant

Didn’t See that Coming…

I used to enjoy The X Files. You probably remember it. It’s the science fiction series that ran from 1993 through, I think, 2004. It starred David Duchovny as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder, Gillian Anderson as FBI Special Agent Dana Scully and Mitch Pileggi as their boss, FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner. Mulder and Scully were partners assigned to investigate cases that defied traditional resolutions.

The episodes were creepy, gory, violent. Sometimes I had to close my eyes because of The Eww Factor. Still, I knew those creepy, gory, violent moments were coming even if I didn’t know when.

Switching genres, I also enjoyed Touched by an Angel. This inspirational series aired from 1994 to 2003. Roma Downey starred as Monica, an angel. Della Reese portrayed Tess, Monica’s supervisor. Under Tess’s supervision, Monica helped guide people through a current, critical crossroad in their lives. To my memory, Touched by an Angel episodes were emotional and tense but uplifting. I’d laugh. I’d cry. I’d sigh.

Having said that, of these two shows—The X Files and Touched by an Angel—Touched by an Angel is the one that ever gave me a nightmare. Now let me tell you why.

While watching The X Files, I expected to be unnerved, scared, grossed out and/or shocked. I was waiting for that. I was braced for it. Conversely, I never expected to be unnerved or scared by Touched by an Angel. I wasn’t waiting for something like that nor was I braced for it.

Then came the episode with the devil.

In that episode, Monica the angel is assigned to a young man (I think.) who lives in a very small town. She’s standing on the sidewalk in the middle of the night, outside of a store in the dark in this small town with no lights anywhere near her.

So we’re clear that it’s dark, right?

The young man she’s been assigned to help gets into a car with a friend. We see the young man and we see his friend. Through the rear window, we see the silhouette of a third person we had not originally seen in the car.

As though the unknown being in the backseat feels Monica watching him, he turns and locks eyes with her. He’s still a silhouette—but his eyes are glowing red. I remember jumping. Monica gasped. I may have gasped, too. I had not seen that coming. And I loved that.

NO SPOILERS.

It gave me a similar—though not the same—jolt to those story elements in The Sixth Sense or Red Notice. Things I didn’t see coming.

Readers, could you share the title of a book, movie or TV show that left an especially strong impression on you because of an unexpected plot twist or story element?

NOTE: No spoilers, please!

33 thoughts on “Didn’t See that Coming…”

  1. I’ve never had the guts to watch the X Files. Gotta tell you, though, the new Matlock is chock full of plot twists and surprises that have caught me completely by surprise.

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    3. Jen, I’ve never seen The Sixth Sense–just clips here and there. Unfortunately, the whole world let me know about the twist, so it was completely ruined for me before I had a chance to see it.

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  3. Fun post, Patricia! There are lots of books and movies with great twists, but the one that first sprang to mind when I read this was JJ Abrams’ first “Star Trek” movie reboot, back in 2009. It was brilliant.

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  5. Jen beat me to it!
    I didn’t see the ending of The Sixth Sense coming at all and I loved how looking back you could absolutely see all the clues laid out. I generally don’t like creepy, spooky or violent movies and that one was none of the above. It was just a perfectly laid out movie

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  7. I was a huge X-Files fan! I liked being scared but I hate gore. So I often had to close my eyes lol. What I really liked were the alien conspiracy episodes. I definitely preferred them to the monster of the week episodes. My favorite show of all time is the original Twilight Zone with Rod Serling. The show often had brilliant twists that I never saw coming! I still will watch an episode when I run across one. And I remember watching a TV movie in junior high (not dating myself at all ha ha) starring Linda Blair called Summer of Fear. She was the star of it, playing a teen girl whose cousin comes to live with her family after the girl’s parents die. Strange things ensue. My brother, sister, and I were watching on a stormy night, which ratcheted up the scare factor. At one point, all 3 of us literally jumped at a scary moment! All 3 of us remember it vividly!

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    1. Sue! Hilarious that you all jumped at the same time and still remember that moment. Ha! I much preferred the alien conspiracy theory episodes, too. I didn’t like when they veered off to the monsters. There was one episode in which a monster crawled out of a portable toilet. Because of that episode, I avoided those mobile units for years. Years!

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  8. I always thought Warehouse 13 did some great reveals. And the new Matlock is very inventive with every seemingly innocent, random act being part of the bigger picture.

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  10. Of course, saying a book or movie had an unusual or surprising twist can be a spoiler. I’ve guessed some twists correctly just by being told there was a big twist. Made one roommate mad by doing that. 🙂

    I’d say that Scream 4 had a pretty good twist to it. One, I unfortunately, had been completely spoiled for before I watched it back in 2011 when it was in the theaters.

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    1. Mark, your ability to guess spoilers makes me giggle. Ha! You also reminded me of the time my husband and I followed a woman out of a movie theater after enjoying a wickedly great movie. There was a long line waiting to see that movie. The woman in front of us saw her friend, hurried over to her and blurted out, “She dies at the end!” I sometimes wonder whether that woman made it safely back to her car…

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  11. Patricia, your post is super fun! (Love the graphics, ha.) I can name one TV series I couldn’t stand watching–but I tuned in anyway. It scared the living daylights out of me. Twin Peaks. (I get scared if anyone even says, “That’s a damned good cup of coffee” or hear a certain childhood song.

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  12. Lisa!!! I’m screaming with laughter! Ha!!! I could not watch Twin Peaks. I found it too unsettling. I sometimes wonder if I should have given it another chance.

    And thank you so very much for your kind words about my post. xoxoxo

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  13. I never watched the X Files but there’s definitely a lesson in here, which is that expectations are everything! I do love a good plot twist though. One time I wrote one where I even surprised myself because I hadn’t seen it coming! 😂

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  15. Oh, there are a lot of books that have twists and turns that I don’t see them coming.. Among them, there are two books that really gave me quite an impression:

    1. The Sweetness of Forgetting by Kristin Harmel – you’ve got to read it to know it!

    2. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (this is Book 1 of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books)

    Emily

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  16. Ooh, I LOVED X-Files and Twin Peaks!

    I’m so happy to hear everyone talking about the power of The Sixth Sense because I just put that on the syllabus for a class next semester and was sort of unsure about keeping it there…but now I will.

    Great post, Patricia!

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