Three Of A Kind
The Lone
Gunmen enlist Scully's help to infiltrate a government conference, and
encounter Suzanne Modeski once again.
This felt a little like a test-run for the Lone Gunmen spin-off series which is always being talked about. Personally, I've always liked the Lone Gunmen as an amusing diversion, and I don't really count TLG focussed episodes amongst my all-time favourites. Which isn't to say I don't enjoy them.
It was interesting to flesh out Byers a bit, from discovering his middle name (Fitzgerald J) to observing his feelings for Suzanne. Byers' dream of how his life would have been different if Kennedy had never been assassinated was poignant, but then I always fall for "what if…" questions and the related possibilities. But I think it's fair to say that the Lone Gunmen have always been portrayed comically in the past, and to suddenly turn Byers into a tragic character didn't quite work, at least not for me. I know he's the least comic of the three, but he has always been written more or less as a caricature, which made it hard to take him seriously. I realise that, in reality, nobody is simply a stereotypical caricature, and the writers no doubt wanted to prove this was true of Byers, but if that was what they set out to do I think it would have been more effectively achieved gradually. Perhaps the Lone Gunmen could have been given their own arc rather than their own episode. But then that might have flopped miserably. I just had a problem with Byers as a serious character.
There were, however, a lot of things I liked in this episode. Langly, Byers and Frohike's repeated attempts to gain information were entertaining, starting with the bugged poker game. Byer's attempt to maintain his poker face at the mention of AE135 was great, and involving enough to make me root for our anti-heroes. The irony of Jimmy and Timmy being even more geeky, paranoid and obsessive than the Lone Gunmen themselves made me smile, and the way in which they managed to reduce matters of national security and worldwide conspiracy to petty rivalry was hilarious. I especially liked Jimmy's line to Langly, "Go brush your hair, Michael Bolton."
"Mulder's" phone call to Scully was good, allowing the viewer to pick up that there was something not quite right with Mulder's voice before revealing that Frohike, Byers and Langly were rigging the call. Scully's resigned "OK" was perfect and I loved Frohike's assertion that "she's going to kick our ass." Of course that made me love Scully's declaration at the end that "I am gonna kick their asses" as she called Mulder and found he had no idea what she was talking about.
The shot from inside the ice chest as Byers stuck his head in was very striking, and the idea of drowning yourself in an ice bucket amuses me more than it should.
Jimmy's autopsy was hugely entertaining. It was a great idea to have squeamish Langly in on it - his increasingly horrified reactions were fantastic, as was the way Scully "innocently" teased him over them. It was really well shot, not showing very much of the actual autopsy but allowing us to hear plenty and to see the body reflected in Scully's safety glasses, reminding us that it was x times worse for Langly. And I love the verb "to pancake oneself." J
"Drunk" Scully was also pretty funny, and it was good to see Gillian Anderson getting to play Scully in a fun way for once. Her complete lack of medical knowledge and solemnity at the end of the autopsy was more amusing than it was worrying, and hearing her call Langly "Cutie" cracks me up every time. Seeing her as a flirt and a bimbo was cringeworthy, but in a good way, and I laughed out loud at her smacking the other agent's backside. Very un-Scully, but very funny.
I probably should have realised early on that Timmy was a government agent, but I didn't, and I liked the twist. I did spot, and probably so did everybody else watching, that Suzanne would get back to her room before Frohike got out. Hardly innovative.
The bluff and double bluff over Langly's drugging and Suzanne's shooting were good - I didn't really think Langly would shoot her, but they certainly managed to make it look like he would. Suzanne was very trusting to let Langly shoot her and just hope he hit the blood packets.
In case there's anyone reading this who's planning to do a Grant and get their partner killed, can I just say that "It wasn't my idea" is the lamest justification you could possibly come up with? That line just annoyed me. But then Suzanne had a pretty bad one too: "It was like drowning every day. Underwater." As opposed to drowning every day in air, I suppose J.
I didn't much like Byers' "manly" talk at the end. For much of the episode, his unabated ten-year-old lust had come across as bordering on the pathetic, and his talks with Suzanne as sickly. I felt that the final speech was delivered a little woodenly and was full of clichés - and then I realised that that was, of course, the point. Byers is not good at expressing himself or his feelings, so he talks in clichés from romantic movies to explain how he feels. And at least he seemed to accept the way things finally turned out. The very end, with Byers, Langly and Frohike re-established as a triad, was very sweet.
So all in all, an average episode with some great highlights. If this is the kind of episode a Lone Gunmen series would produce every week, it would be a watchable, though not unmissable, show.
Best Lines
Jimmy: CIA! Freeze!
Langly: That just keeps getting funnier.
Langly: Scully? What killed him?
Scully: My medical opinion? Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. (Claps hands.)
Langly: I'm going to go play a little D&D in memoriam.
Frohike: That's touching man.
Frohike: Agent Scully Golightly.
It is
not my intention to infringe on any copyrights on any part of my website. If I
am doing so, please e-mail me and I will take the appropriate action.