X-rated X-files

Well, I am embarrassed.  I have just finished watching four episodes of The X-Files, which, as you may or may not know, was a big favorite of mine, back in the days when it was on the air.  I used to watch it every week, with the group of friends I had then, and argue the possibility or impossibility of the things that happened.  I chatted about it online, in the old fashioned alt-rec way we did then.  And now, to find out that they were basically soft-core porn!  Very soft soft-core, of course, no body parts, but a great deal of attention to David Duchovney's lips and breath, and the lips and breath of any female person -- or even male person, thinking of Skinner and Krychek -- with whom he exchanged any sort of conversation, and lots of dramatic light and darkness and extreme attention paid to the way light fell across a person's face.  David Duchoveny gazes soulfully at everyone who catches his attention, making grown-up me cringe.  Why didn't it make me cringe back then?