Good news: This week’s episode spotlights the Lone Gunmen, so here's a CliffsNotes version of "The Unusual Suspects" (Season 5, Episode 3) to refresh your memory. (And a link to our blog from that show.) That ep showed the LG’s origin story back in 1989. It ended with a cliffhanger: Scientist/informant Susanne Modeski was forced into a limousine and never heard from again … until now. (Well, this episode aired in 1999 so it’s their “now.”) One would hope Frohike, Langly and (especially) Byers kept searching for her, but there was never a peep mentioned during other LG appearances.
Byers is the narrator this time around. I can’t say he does a better job (or gets better dialogue) than Mulder or Scully, but it’s not completely unnecessary. He describes his dream of living in optimistic times with wife Susanne in a house with a white picket fence, two daughters and a dog. And then it all goes away. Fast forward to Las Vegas Def-Con 1999. Grant Ellis, played by the late Charles Rocket, is hosting a private poker game in which Byers has gone undercover as a player/government employee, Frohike serves as waiter and Langly feeds Byers whatever information he needs. Too bad it’s not enough of the right info because Byers loses it all to Ellis and gets tossed, along with Frohike. But who is Grant Ellis? Moot point for now. Frohike knows Byers is still looking for Susanne, who is probably dead. Byers thinks he spotted her in the casino but she gets away.
Mulder wakes Scully and tells her to go assist the Lone Gunmen in Vegas. Actually, it’s Fox's computerized voice with Byers making the call. After all, Dana is way more low profile than Mulder, who was involved in that 1989 incident. (Maybe David Duchovny was sick or working on a project that week.) Langly tries to convince Byers it wasn’t Susanne by saying she’s not listed as a guest under her own name! So the government wouldn’t just give her a new name? Or she wouldn’t know not to use her name? Worst argument ever, Langs. Byers goes for ice and spots Ellis, who goes into Modeski's hotel room! The Lone Gunmen now know Ellis is employed for the Department of Defense in Whitestone, New Mexico, where Susanne used to work. Byers is convinced she's been brainwashed.The Lone Gunmen are banned from one high-security panel. They enlist one of their conspiracy theory friends, Jimmy Belmont, who enters via the air duct and videotapes Modeski and another friend, Timmy, inside. Too bad Jimmy gets caught and becomes the prophetic government patsy when he throws himself in front of a bus. We should be more concerned about this development, but I’m distracted by Langly’s Snoozonica shirt. (After an exhaustive two-minute search on the Internet, I learned it’s a lyric in a song called "Cowboy’s Orbit" by Girls Against Boys. Yep, it's on YouTube.)
Meanwhile, Frohike breaks into Susanne and Grant’s room and finds a video camera in the air vent. Modeski returns and is thisclose to finding Frohike when Byers knocks on her door. Susanne denies being brainwashed and claims Ellis is her fiancé. Does that mean she’s now OK with the government using people as guinea pigs to test her scientific creations?Scully performs Jimmy’s autopsy while Langly bolts from the room and retches. Just when Dana sees evidence that Belmont may have actually been injected with something, Timmy knocks her unconscious. When she wakes up, she’s clearly been drugged and refers to Langly as “Cutie.” He thinks it’s jet lag. Back in their hotel room, the Lone Gunmen watch the video of Susanne and Grant. She interrupts and asks to talk to Byers alone. Modeski admits she was kidnapped, tortured and rescued by Ellis, who allegedly subverts the government when he can. Timmy tricks Langly into going upstairs while Frohike finds a crocked Scully holding court in the bar. The best moment? When Morris Fletcher ("Dreamland" S6E4-5) offers her a cigarette … and she takes it!
Frohike takes Dana upstairs and not in a creepy, take-advantage-of-the-situation way. Susanne thinks the government has been spying on her and Grant, which affects their plans to expose everything to the public. Modeski realizes Scully has been drugged with anoetic histamine, which impedes higher brain functions and promotes suggestibility. Luckily, Susanne has an antidote. Unluckily, an unusually quiet Langly has returned. He’s been injected too. Timmy has given Langly a gun, access to Modeski and Ellis' panel and instructions to shoot his “target.” Dana's credentials aren’t enough to get her into the exclusive panel, where Langly (with his hair pulled back into a ponytail -- talk about warning signs) shoots Susanne three times in the chest. The paramedics (Byers and Frohike) arrive and take Modeski away. Timmy realizes Susanne wasn’t really shot. Scully and the Lone Gunmen let Susanne confront Grant, who admits she was no longer needed and he traded his life for hers. (Did Charles Rocket ever play the good guy?)
Timmy arrives and guns Ellis down. He claims to be CIA and is about to shoot the Gunmen when Byers injects him with the formula. (You’d think the CIA would use more subtle surveillance equipment than a hand-held video camera in the air duct.) They frame Timothy Landau -- Landau? Nice homage -- for the murders of Ellis and Modeski. And Scully finally realizes the guys tricked her into going to Vegas. Byers gives Susanne her freedom and a new identity. In return, she gives J.F.B. a wedding ring. Since we never see Susanne again, I hope there’s some fanfic that gave these two the happy ending from Byers’ dream.
Sestra Professional:
We haven't seen a lot of the Lone Gunmen this season -- three episodes to be exact ("Triangle" (E3), "Dreamland II" (E5) and "One Son" (E12)) -- so it's kind of nice to check in with the guys. Byers starts it off by keeping the sixth season's unofficial dream theme going with visions of a happy home and country.
Go brush your hair, Michael Bolton: It's kind of sad that the Gunmen seem to fail more than they succeed these days, mainly appearing to provide comic relief. When they were first introduced, the trio was eccentric but relatively smart about everything they knew or thought they know. Now they're referred to as "The Three Stooges" and have to bring other "experts" in to help them out. But maybe they always were a wee bit lacking in the department and I'm just remembering the earlier appearances as the glory days. It's still all for one and three for all, though. Byers and Frohike have a heartfelt talk about Susanne Modeski, but it's a wee bit strange that the subject hasn't come up before over the past decade if she's on his mind so much. (It's not like we needed to see any of that, it merely could have been covered with a mere "Her again?" from Frohike.)
I just can't decide who lights my fire: The lack of Mulder here was due to David Duchovny's preproduction on "The Unnatural," which aired before "Three of a Kind," but was filmed after it. That leaves Scully to handle the heavy lifting and she gets to have one of those Mulder-esque moments in which she figures out the cause of Jimmy's death relatively early, only to be subjected to the same inopportune injection that renders her unable to do anything but be hilarious.It's funny to consider Gillian Anderson stealing scenes when she's one of the leads of the show, but she totally does here. We get another taste of her infectious laughter as she provides the comic relief and the Gunmen largely serve as her straight men (Langly's autopsy reactions aside). The mere sight of her trying to move a locked-down gurney is worth all the rest, not to mention her description of why Jimmy died -- "In my medical opinion, beeeeeep" followed by a sharp hand clap.
Good work, party girl: On top of that we get the reappearance of Michael McKean's Morris Fletcher, the unforgettable sight of Dana pulling a cigarette out of a pack with her teeth and a callback to the butt slap Fletcher gave Scully in "Dreamland." And after all, why wouldn't Agent Scully Golightly (nice Breakfast at Tiffany's reference there) be the center of attention at a bar in Las Vegas?The denouement is a bit haphazard. Although we're in on the fact that Langly's been injected, we haven't gotten the hint that the rest of the crew also knows that and has administered the antidote. So they're able to set up Susanne's shooting as a mini-shock, but it quickly becomes common knowledge she's alive in the next couple of scenes. That seems to be contrary to the point, but at least it's easily hoovered up with a shooting and another injection.
"Three of a Kind" would have been a nice jumping-off spot for the trio's self-titled series, but that wouldn't happen for another season. According to the cast commentary from the penultimate The Lone Gunmen episode "All About Yves," the dailies from this show actually implanted the idea of the spinoff. It's too bad, they might have had more of a fighting chance around this time.Meta mainframe: The sci-fi geeks probably got a kick out of the mention of the malfunctioning AE-135 unit during the poker scene. HAL-9000 warns of the impending malfunction of the AE-135 in 2001. ... Haglund enjoyed his dramatic Manchurian Candidate-like moment, but said in The Complete X-Files, he was a bit dismayed that people found it so funny. "And I'm thinking, 'Am I really that crappy a dramatic actor?'" Haglund bemoaned. ... "Three of a Kind" marked one of those rare instances in which the show filmed in the setting of the episode. ... According to the official episode guide, a bidding war broke out between Vegas hotels to provide the filming location and accommodations for the cast and crew. The Monte Carlo won. ... Def-Con is an actual convention in Vegas, but for computer hackers, not defense contractors.
Guest star of the week: By all rights, Michael McKean should have three such honors this season, but for the second time, I'm handing off his kudos to someone else. (After all, he was only on screen for a couple of minutes -- precious, though they are.) Meanwhile, Signy Coleman was picture-perfect again as the Mata Hari who attracted Byers and then remained just out of his reach. And poor Charles Rocket took on another thankless part, but I'll offer up that playing Bruce Willis' ne 'er-do-well brother in Moonlighting wasn't totally a bad-guy role.
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