If you know me even a little bit, you'll know that I am an X-File fan, and have been since I was in college many moons ago. I can't imagine a year going by without watching at least one episode of partners Mulder and Scully, aided by the ever-dependable yet conflicted and awesome Assistant Director Skinner, take on the dark side of monsters and aliens to uncover the truth. Over the past few months, I took a trip down memory lane with each episode of the nine seasons through Netflix, catching up just in time to hunker down with the cold weather and watch the first new episode in sixteen years to premiere tonight. Has it really been that long?

The magic that was this show just doesn't seem to be captured in any other series that walks the line of the spooky and mythical. Even shows like "Fringe," or "Lost," both of which I completely enjoyed, still can't quite match the exact fervor, intensity and cult-like fandom that The X-Files produced. Having watched many shows of the same genre, and over the past few years especially, and then by binge-watching all nine seasons of The X-Files reminded me of just that. There's just nothing like science-fiction, or fantasy fiction, or paranormal fiction, like The X-Files created.

While I'm a complete Mulder and Scully fan, I'm still sad they couldn't extend the show a few more years with Agents Doggett and Reyes. Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish really did those roles justice, without taking away anything from the original cast. They were honest to their own characters, finding the humility and goodness of their torn pasts to piece it together with each other, in a somewhat similar "maybe they'll get together" kind of hint to the fans.

Tonight will mark the show's return in a "hit-making" way, according to online rumors, but especially as even stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson have admitted needed to be done, because of the way the 2008 film didn't seem to fit with the overall flow and spirit of the show. This is expected to be an incredible two-night premiere (tonight and tomorrow) for the show's return to the small screen. I'm one of the millions of thrilled fans who will be watching and falling in love with the show all over again. I'm hoping that it will spark many returns for as long as it can last.

Are you watching tonight? I'm planning to live tweet, but I don't want to be distracted too much from tweeting to not focus on the show. Throughout the day today, I just couldn't sit still, so I even made (or, tried to make) a cake in honor of tonight's festivities. Don't laugh.

Just concluding its second season on the SyFy Channel, Haven has developed a strong and loyal group of fans who are transfixed each Friday to their TVs. Some are former X-Files fans who have been hopping around from show to show and finally feel they have something that is rockin' their paranormal socks off like Mulder and Scully did in the 1990s. While Haven is no X-Files, I proudly claim myself a fan. I've heard I might be missing out on Fringe or Eureka, but Haven is the odd, creepy, and humorous show that grabbed me from the start.

Audrey Parker is an FBI agent with a questionable past who arrives in Haven, a small town in New England, on a random case and comes across a photograph from twenty or thirty years before featuring an unnamed woman who looks a lot like her. Obviously it's the mother she's never known and Audrey decides to remain in town to uncover this mystery. She soon learns that the town has its own secret with "The Troubles," which are paranormal events that crop up every few years, tormenting those who are afflicted. With Nathan, the town cop, to Duke the shady criminal slowly getting away from his own past, and Vince and Dave, two crotchety old curmudgeons that seem to have a little bit of insight into everything, the town's "troubles" slowly come to light and become the very "thing" they have to battle. While other people may be affected by The Troubles, Audrey is the only one who isn't and it's this immunity that helps to fight and/or cure those who are afflicted.

The show is loosely based on Stephen King's short story, The Colorado Kid. And after finishing the story last night, loosely based is exactly how to describe its association with the TV show. In fact, I have no idea how that book led to the TV show at all. I'm glad it did, but I am scratching my head and still wondering how it all came about.

With The Colorado Kid, Stephen King's novella takes place in Moose Lookit Island off the coast of Maine. Steffi, a young intern who is spending the summer working at the town newspaper (run by Vince and Dave, who are the only two characters in the story that are on the show), is having lunch with them at The Grey Gull (okay, that's also in the show) along with a reporter from the Boston Globe. The Globe reporter is trying to get a series of feature stories to run in anticipation of the spooky Halloween season and is disappointed that the stories he hears from Vince and Dave are ones he's already heard before. But it's when he leaves that Steffi probes more with the two old guys and finally gets them to tell her a story that has, twenty-five years later, still haunted them.

A mystery it is, but a full story, it isn't. A dead guy on a beach, a Russian coin, and a pack of smokes is all that's on him. He's a John Doe for sixteen months before he gets identified but no one understands why this guy from Colorado is found dead in Maine. No business or personal reason brought him out there, nor do any financial transactions show how he got there. He's just dead on a beach and that's all there is to it.

However, let's face it, Stephen King is usually a pretty good storyteller and through the voices of Vince and Dave, he doesn't really fail on this one. I write really because some will definitely argue that there isn't a story with this one, and they might be right. If you're looking for that literary bow to tie this one all up and give you that a-ha moment, it's not going to happen. It's, as King writes it in his afterword, more about the fact that all of us enjoy a good mystery in life, whether we end up finding the answer or not. And isn't that true? No one really knows if UFOs are either piloted by little green men or if the military is having a good ole chuckle every time they test new spacecraft, but either way, we thrive off these "what ifs." We like to toss our theories around and see what feels right. That's what The Colorado Kid does. It's a simple reminder that sometimes we just like to be told a good story, even if the ending is whatever we make it out to be.

But if you're a Haven fan looking to see how the TV show came about, forget it. Save for two characters, a bar, and a closed off town to outsiders, there's really nothing to tie one to the other.