Reception
While not being nominated for any of his work alone on The X-Files, William B. Davis and several other cast members were nominated in the category "Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series" by the Screen Actors Guild Awards in 1997, 1998 and 1999 but did not win. The character was regularly voted "The Nastiest Villain" on television polls during the 90s. TV Guide listed Cigarette Smoking Man 20th in their "25 Greatest TV Villains" list. According to the portraying actor, the character had garnered protest from "pro-smokers". Entertainment Weekly writer Jennifer Armstrong cited the character as an example of the old tradition of having only "bad guys" smoking on television.
Davis was included in Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Biggest Emmy Snubs, the list's author saying that the presence of the "Cigarette Smoking Man" was as important as "black oil, alien implants, and Scully's skepticism". The Malaysian newspaper the New Straits Times called the Smoking Man one of the most "intriguing" character of the show. However, Christianity Today said that the mystery behind the Smoking Man had evaporated by the late season episodes. Likewise, Ken Tucker from Entertainment Weekly felt that "the monotonous evil of Cancer Man" had "become actively annoying" in later seasons of the show, being that his lurking presence did not seem as mysterious anymore. Salon reviewer Jeff Stark felt the show was at its best when you "didn't exactly know the motivations of the Smoking Man".
Read more about this topic: The Smoking Man
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)