YMMV / Men in Black: The Series

• Accidental Innuendo: In "The Alpha Syndrome":
  Alpha: Let's you and me take the ultimate thrill-ride...
• Awesome Music: The intro music, composed by Jim Latham, which is a moody instrumental Hip-Hop piece verging on Trip Hop at points, is pretty well-known as being one of the better intros of the 90s. One YouTube comment put it this way:
  The theme song [...] strikes me as one of the most sublime musical themes ever. Flowing effortlessly from swaggy to urban to mundane to whimsical to trascendent and even mystical in a sci-fi sort of way, is a beautiful sonic masterpiece that faithfully transmits both the eerie and outcast nature of the MiB as an agency, without compromising the humanity and ingenuity of those who work in it. A theme for the ages, really.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Frank the Pug turning into a werewolf at the end of "The Jack O'Lantern Syndrome."
• Bizarro Episode: "The Black Christmas Syndrome" had alien children hire Drekk and a bunch of alien Yetis to kidnap Santa Claus. An odd enough story on its own, but what pushed it over the edge into this is the reveal that Santa is actually real and, despite employing aliens as Christmas Elves, is not an alien himself, but rather an outright magical being in a setting that was otherwise strictly Sci-Fi.
• Complete Monster:
  • Alpha was once the top agent for the Men in Black; however, after getting his hands on an alien device known as the Cosmic Integrator, he began his path of evil that leads him to become the monster he is in the present. Originally offering his partner, Agent Kay, a team up to use the Cosmic Integrator for immoral schemes, Alpha coldly gunned down his pupil when he refused Alpha's offer. Alpha went on to butcher aliens across the galaxy, ripping off or tearing out parts of their bodies that he would then fuse to his own biology via the Cosmic Integrator, with his most targeted part being the heads of aliens, attaching them to his torso while they stay conscious of their current state but unable to do anything of consequence to help themselves. Throughout the series, Alpha regularly mutilates aliens, nearly kills Agent Kay and his partner Jay in various sadistic ways, and murdered at least one human to steal his body parts. Trying numerous times to subjugate the Earth by way of mass murder, from using a Kill Sat to trying to flood half the planet, Alpha ultimately allies with the psychopathic Vangus to lead a full-scale assault on Earth, laying siege to numerous cities and causing countless amounts of destruction, all in his quest for total domination of first his own planet, then the galaxy. A sociopath with a lust for power above all else, Alpha was an arrogant, manipulative genius who used his intelligence for nothing but his own gain.
  • Vangus is the leader of the Ixion Federation, a race of planet-plundering aliens who value oil as an extremely valuable commodity and go from planet to planet draining them dry of their oil. Vangus sets his eyes on Earth and strikes up a deal with the traitorous MIB agent Alpha to invade Earth and steal its oil, leaving what remains of the Earth itself for Alpha to dictate. Vangus grows tired of waiting after Alpha postpones the invasion and, after a failed attempt to scout out oil fields which leads to his capture, Vangus breaks out in the series finale and teams up with Alpha to invade the Earth. Vangus sets his forces to obliterate both the UN and the Washington Monument before leading his forces in an all-out invasion on Earth, ravaging cities all across the world. Out of sheer impatience with the continued resistance, Vangus ultimately attempts to detonate a bomb to wipe out all life on Earth to make the planet's oil ooze to the crust, callously betraying Alpha and setting a torpedo en route to Earth with the assurance he'll come back and clean up whatever's left after the attack.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Treblor/Buzzard was surprisingly memorable despite appearing only in three episodes, in no small part thanks to his badass appearance, eerie disguise, and rivalry with K. Some people wish he had been featured more often for how cool he was.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The episode "The Neuralizer Syndrome", where K is accidentally neuralyzed, becomes a lot more unsettling after 9/11, due to the references to the World Trade Center (and one part of the episode being to avoid having an airship ram into the Twin Towers). It's also a major reason why the episode never re-aired after 9/11 in the USA. Here is the accidentally prophetic scene.
  • "The Breaking News Syndrome" might also count, since the World Trade Center is also the location of that episode's fight scene.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A viewer unaware that the series kicked off in 1997, three whole years before Pitch Black, might think that Buzzard is an alien Expy of Richard B. Riddick. He not only wears a similar black strap attire and perennial goggles (his harness even features a combat knife, just like the Devious Daggers trait of Vin Diesel's character) but also has a natural crouched posture that resembles Riddick's typical stalking poses. His role is also an inversion of Riddick's, who has a bounty on him, while Buzzard is a bounty hunter.
• Magnificent Bastard: Alpha, the devious, deadpan Big Bad of the series, used to be the head of the Men in Black (MiB) themselves, until his greed and ambition grew too great and he betrayed them for his own ends. A Machiavellian genius with an aptitude for alien technology that he exploits repeatedly, Alpha is constantly modifying and improving on his own body with stolen alien body parts, becoming more terrifying with each appearance. Rarely ever at a true loss, Alpha sees through an elaborate fake retirement plan Agent Kay sets up to bait him out, and even when he's rendered immobile in the most secure cell the MiB has, Alpha manipulates Agent Jay through a game of digital chess that he proceeds to hack in order to break out of and restore his body. Alpha makes a deal with the alien invader Vangus in exchange for the prospect of ruling Earth, but when his bloodthirsty partner elects to ignore Alpha's suggestions of Pragmatic Villainy to instead destroy the Earth, Alpha teams up with the MiB, unwilling to rule a torched cinder. Taking even his final defeat with nothing but mild disappointment, Alpha proves every episode he's in why he's the most brilliant enemy the MiB ever fought.
• Moral Event Horizon: Vangus, the oil-plundering Ixion, is a pretty generic villain in his first episode. Come his alliance with Alpha in the two-part finale and his graduation to Final Boss, Vangus steadily becomes worse and worse until he manages to make Alpha come off as saner by comparison. When their attempt to conquer Earth in the finale doesn't go so swimmingly, Vangus decides to cut the knot and wipe out all life on the planet just to get to the planet's oil reserves, simultaneously betraying Alpha in the process as well. He's officially over the line when he responds to Alpha's attempts to reason with him thusly:
  Alpha: An annihilated Earth would leave no populace. No one for me to rule.
  Vangus: Can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
• The Scrappy:
  • Many fans feel this way about the Worms, mainly because they are often very rude, their obsession with coffee often causes a lot of unnecessary trouble, and they rarely get punished for their mischievous actions. Not to mention they also get a disproportionate amount of focus in later seasons.
  • Agent X was not very well received due to being such a Jerkass to all the human characters and essentially being forced onto the main cast.
• Stoic Woobie: Agent K turns out to be one when we learn some of his backstory, what with his estranged father he hasn't seen for thirty-odd years (he's his only known living relative, but due to being part of the MIB, he's forbidden from any contact with old family and friends). And of course, Kay was very upset by the betrayal of his former mentor/partner/friend Alpha.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The theme for the series carries the first few beats of Will Smith's eponymous "Men in Black" song as part of its main theme, but ditches the rest of the song in favor of an instrumental hip-hop composition.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Edmund Clark Moffat from "The Head Trip Syndrome" could have been an interesting and potentially complex recurring antagonist, as his whole thing was being an entirely normal human who had discovered the Masquerade and, convinced that Earth would be better off without aliens, stole alien technology for use against them (good or bad) and the MIB. His story was thoroughly wrapped-up in his only appearance, though, and the show never really touched upon any similar themes again, with the only other human villains being Alpha and Agent C.
• Ugly Cute: The Worms are a quartet of small, weird-looking, yet fairly friendly Amusing Aliens.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The series contained lushfully drawn Everett Peck-designed alien monstrosities (Body Horror aplenty) and heroes who constantly killed enemies in all of its The '90s glory. It would be pretty shocking today to learn that this was technically a children's show.
• The Woobie: Agent J, mostly because he has to suffer a lot of humiliating crap throughout the series. It's no wonder why Jay comes off as being so insecure and desperate to prove himself to his peers.