X-Files S9E17: Releasing them from their obligations

Sestra Amateur: 

As we approach the end of the original X-Files run, we finally get some long overdue backstory and closure for Special Agent John Doggett, who joined the party in "Within" (Season 8, Episode 1). We first learned about his murdered son in "This is Not Happening" (S8E14), the episode that also introduced us to Special Agent Monica Reyes.

Doggett gets a tip and breaks into an abandoned building. He’s knocked down by an unknown assailant who, surprisingly, doesn’t stop running just because someone yells, “Hey!” Inside a room, John finds a newly plastered wall, which starts dripping red liquid when Doggett claws at it. Sounds like a nightmare, doesn’t it? Nope, it’s real, and it’s a female stabbing victim behind that wall. 

Special Agent Dana Scully gets to conduct the autopsy. Using it as a training experience for FBI cadets, she happens upon a savant named Rudolph Hayes who can profile with the best of them. Team Johnica later meets with Dana, who has identified the body-in-the-wall as Ellen Persich. Scully learns a similar murder happened two weeks earlier because it involved the same knife. John and Monica meet Cadet Hayes and learn he can “see things.” Rudolph easily corrects Doggett’s inaccurate profile of their suspected killer. Reyes seems dually annoyed and impressed by his abilities.

Later that night, Hayes, who clearly experiences some level of social awkwardness, returns to the comfort of his room, which he has wallpapered with gruesome crime scene photos. Some are from the unsolved murder of John’s son, Luke. Team Johnica locates suspect Nicholas Regali, who fits Rudolph’s profile description to a T. Their “interview” seems designed to poke the bear, but Nicky doesn’t take the bait, so our intrepid heroes leave the bar empty-handed. Doggett’s son is clearly on his mind while investigating this case. Back at home, John is thinking of Luke while staring at his box of cremated remains. (Luke was murdered back in 1993 when he was only 7 years old.) 

The following day in the X-files office, Doggett asks Hayes to look at his son’s case file and describes his son’s last day: Luke was bicycling around the block while his mom, Barbara, counted the laps. (In an interesting juxtaposition, the iPhone commercial which aired before this scene showed a boy running his smart phone’s video camera as he rode his bicycle around the block over and over again to demonstrate the phone battery’s long life.) When Luke doesn’t return, Mom goes looking and finds just the bicycle. After an extensive three-day search, Luke’s body is found in a field. With a devastated and desperate look in his eyes, John asks Rudolph for help finding his son’s killer. Regarding the previous day’s case, Hayes claims, “That is your son’s.”

Rudolph shows Doggett his wallpapered room of unsolved mystery photographs. Hayes claims the pictures tell him things and Luke, in particular, calls to him. (I’d love to know who at the FBI did Rudolph’s background and psychiatric evaluations during the application process. Maybe he’s a legacy.) John thinks Cadet Hayes might be nuts, but he’ll suspend that analysis for now. Rudolph reveals the original suspect, Bob Harvey, was Luke’s kidnapper but not his killer. Hayes says Harvey died in a car crash, which Doggett didn’t seem to know. Rudolph doesn’t answer with words when John asks if Regali killed Luke, but his body language is very telling. Doggett takes this new lead to Assistant Director Brad Follmer, who used to work organized crime cases in New York, the same FBI office that investigated Luke’s murder. Follmer denies hearing Bob Harvey’s name back then but agrees to “ask around” for information. John updates Monica, who doesn’t think Regali is a lead, just a desperate father’s hope for closure.

Doggett spontaneously visits his ex-wife in Woodbury, Long Island, but she’s also too emotionally destroyed to even hope John is right. Somehow he convinces Barbara to attend a lineup containing Regali, but she doesn’t recognize him from the neighborhood nine years earlier. Dana meets Barbara for the first time and learns the ex-Mrs. Doggett thinks John and Monica could have a relationship if he would let her in. Doggett, who had asked Scully to compare the physical evidence from the two recent stabbings to his son’s case, thinks the similarities are enough but Dana doesn’t agree; there are too many inconsistencies between the cases.

Cadet Hayes is back in his bedroom, listening to the voices of murdered victims. And John realizes Regali never got convicted for serious crimes because he probably bribed his way to freedom. Team Johnica confronts Follmer, who Monica witnessed take money from a mobster three years earlier. That was her main reason for breaking off their relationship but she didn’t report him to the bureau because she cared about him. Brad claims he was paying a confidential informant. Reyes doesn’t believe him but she also doesn’t have any proof. (That’s an annoying pattern with Team Johnica in this episode.) 

Follmer does have information on “Rudolph Hayes,” who died in a car accident in 1978. His real name is Stuart Mimms, a paranoid schizophrenic who checked himself out of a psychiatric facility. Follmer also claims Stuart was in New York the year Luke was murdered. The feds take Mimms into custody without incident, but all of the crime scene photographs are gone. Brad later meets with Nicky, who denies involvement with Luke’s murder. We also learn the leverage he has over Follmer; Regali has a videotape of him taking a bribe to lose an indictment. Team Johnica hit the nail on the head earlier, they just don’t know it.

Barbara Doggett attends another lineup, this time with Mimms, and she clearly recognizes him. During an interrogation, Agent Scully confronts Mimms with the fraud and stolen identity case. He denies killing Luke, claiming he studied the case obsessively. Stuart says he is still trying to help John and admits to sending the tip which led Doggett to Ellen Persich’s body (and to almost catching Regali). Mimms has nothing more to say and wants to return to the institute. In the bar, John confronts Nicky, who gives a hypothetical answer to the question Doggett has been asking for nine years: Sexual predator Bob Harvey grabbed Luke, who unfortunately saw "businessman" Regali’s face, so Regali had to do something about it. John (not Agent Doggett, if you get my meaning) unholsters his gun to go kill Nicky, but Follmer beats him to it, shooting Regali right in the eye! That’s one way out of your blackmail situation, Brad.

On a beautiful day, at a picturesque beach, John and Barbara Doggett finally scatter their son’s ashes. (When you go swimming in the ocean, do you ever think about the level of human remains floating around you? No wonder we need to shower so quickly afterward.) Barbara leaves and John seeks a comforting hug from Monica. If this was a movie, Team Johnica would live happily ever after. But nope, there are still a couple of episodes left, just enough for Chris Carter and company to deny them the happy ending they clearly deserve.

Sestra Professional: 

So much to unpack, so little time. As Sestra Am mentioned, finally a measure of resolution for John Doggett. Not to mention that they finally made some good use of Cary Elwes. They had a movie star with appeal to spare under contract the whole season, but not until this episode did we get to have any sense of what he could do for the long-standing show. And now it's too little, too late.

The tip: So we're introduced to a cadet who is sharper at sifting through evidence for clues that even our intrepid heroine Agent Scully doesn't pick up on. On top of that, he can shoot down FBI profiles provided by Team Johnica with the slightest of head shakes.

We've seen over the course of a couple of seasons that it takes a lot for Doggett to admit he doesn't have all the facts. And when he does, we know he doesn't just run around asking mediums what they see when it comes to Luke's disappearance and murder. We haven't even seen him take his limited information to the experts in the bureau.

Because of that, this winds up being a very powerful episode for Robert Patrick as an actor, perhaps his most dynamic performance over his run with the show. He shows us so much with his eyes. Through them, we see and feel John's most intense pain, and for the first time, his desire to believe in something that's not quantifiable. This time, for this case, he must believe.

Ashes: That emotion is amplified when Robert gets to play scenes with his real-life wife, Barbara Patrick. Every scene has that much more power. In a season when we didn't always connect to the past, Robert and Barbara bring their personal history to the screen. That kind of makes up for the fact that we didn't spend a lot of time with Luke's story in the past two years. We knew it was there, and the Patricks are able to tap into that well of emotion very quickly for us. It helps, it really adds an impassioned element that might not have otherwise been there for this crucial episode.

Jared Poe's the other key piece to this puzzle. Someone like Cadet Hayes/Stuart Mimms would usually get a season or at least an arc of several episodes to reveal himself. His portrayer's off-screen journey was equally interesting. Poe was a writing intern for the show. And even though he didn't have on-screen experience, he reportedly asked executive producer Frank Spotnitz if he could audition and beat out 30 other actors for the part.

Hayes/Mimms' story certainly wasn't wrapped up in a tidy bow. It was something of a misdirect when the FBI tagged and bagged him, blaming his history of paranoid schizophrenia. But does that really preclude him being able to tap into crimes the way he did or was he better at it because of his affliction? Like he said, that's what schizophrenics do, they obsess. It's an avenue Fox Mulder would have been interested in, were he on the canvas to do so.

A message: So things haven't improved too much at the FBI since the Mulder conspiracy days, have they? They have mentally challenged cadets running around. And we've certainly seen our fair share of compromised assistant directors before. 

The Patricks just break my heart with the denouement of the episode. We do feel for Luke and for them, even though the only one we really had any attachment to before the episode was John. It's a triumph that "Release" enables us to empathize to this degree. The hug between Doggett and Reyes winds up having more power and more substance as a result. Maybe in the future when they have those will-they-or-won't-they moments we've seen in episodes like "4-D" (S9E4) and "Audrey Pauley" (S9E11), neither of them will back away. 

"We never really got the chance to because we ended the show, but I think Monica would have definitely gone further with their relationship," Annabeth Gish said to back up that assertion in The Complete X-Files.

Guest star of the week: The truncated nature of wrapping up Doggett's backstory meant we didn't get more time with Jared Poe. That's a shame, because there was a wealth of potential in Cadet Hayes' intelligence and the questions about Mimms' intriguing abilities.

X-Files S9E16: Scarred for life

Sestra Amateur: 

Have you healed from last week’s brutal ending to the Lone Gunmen saga? Hope so, because there’s not a lot of downtime this week. Based on this episode’s title, the heartbreak continues, although “heartbreak” may depend on your perspective. A childless couple have adopted William. Yes, Special Agent Dana Scully’s baby boy. I hope the adoption agency was required to provide full disclosure, like when you buy a house. After all, can’t that kid move things with his mind?!

Flash back to one week earlier: Dana still has the best parking spot of anyone in her apartment building as she removes William from his car seat. And Special Agent John Doggett gets viciously attacked by a man who was searching the X-files office. Doggett catches up to him and learns the man’s face is severely burned. John and Special Agent Monica Reyes call in Agent Scully because the burglar claims he will only talk to her. The man –- played by Chris Owens, which is either inspired stunt casting or a major spoiler -- claims his name is Daniel Miller. Despite his disfigured face, he does look familiar to us. He says Fox Mulder gave him a card key to get into the FBI building. He also says his burns are part of a government conspiracy. Miller, who was stealing files related to Samantha Mulder, lets Scully inspect his scars. She confirms they aren’t chemical burns. He claims to have been injected with something that burned his body from the inside out.

Doggett is trying to confirm Miller’s identity and thinks Daniel is actually Fox. Scully knows he’s not Mulder (maybe she’s too embarrassed to admit she confirmed that during the physical inspection), but seems irked when this unknown stranger mentions her abduction. Miller claims people at the FBI would kill him –- and Mulder -– if they knew Miller was there. They let him continue to root through the X-files filing cabinet, but he isn’t finding what he wants. That’s because Dana hid a stash of files in her bedroom closet. Clearly, by “trusting” this lying stranger, she’s violating Mulder’s mantra: Trust No One. Maybe she’d rather prove she’s right to Doggett; after all, she and Fox agreed to conceal those files. But Dana changes her mind and her demeanor when Miller checks on a crying William. Now she’s a mother who is royally pissed at her baby’s absentee father. Miller claims Mulder is in pain and she cannot help. Scully actually lets this stranger hold William, who remains calm in this weepy man’s arms.

John meets with Assistant Director Walter Skinner, who plays the common-sense role by pointing out the physical discrepancies between Mulder and Miller. (Thank you, Walter!) Then the lab calls back with rushed PCR test results. (Boy, does that have a different meaning in this day and age.) When Dana confronts Miller, he claims Scully was used to create and raise William, who is part alien. Reyes interrupts the interrogation and kicks Miller out of the room. Doggett claims the DNA test confirms it is Fox Mulder. Dana still refuses to believe it. Miller chooses that time to leave, running away in a very non-Mulderesque fashion. (It reminded me of Phoebe running with Rachel through the park on Friends. Yep, that bad.)

John runs Miller down and claims they will protect him. Scully and Team Johnica give Miller medication and put him to sleep, then awkwardly wait for him to wake up. Miller creeps back into William’s bedroom, takes the kid’s pacifier and puts an unknown substance on the baby’s lips. He injects him with something, which causes William to cry. Dana and Monica rush the baby to the emergency room while John interrogates Miller. Doggett searches the bedroom and finds the syringe under the mattress. The doctor finishes examining William but finds nothing more than an elevated iron level. Scully realizes she’s been played yet again.

Back at FBI headquarters, everyone learns the truth: Miller is the presumed-dead Jeffrey Spender, who was shot by his own father, the Cigarette-Smoking Man, way back in "One Son" (Season 6, Episode 12.) I guess this confirms he and Mulder really were half-brothers, although in 2002, would their DNA have been considered that close a match? Dana learns he intentionally tried to win their trust so he could get close to William and inject him with something. Spender claims it’s a form of magnetite that makes William useless to the aliens for colonization.

Scully does a 180 and almost seems grateful to Jeffrey. Unfortunately, Spender claims she’ll never able to truly protect William, who may end up just like him someday. (In retrospect, the reboot reveal of William’s parentage really does make this seem like a revenge plan Jeffrey could appreciate even more if he knew the truth.) Why wouldn’t Dana consider witness protection for both of them so she could stay with her son? It’s not like she’s expecting Fox to show up at her door, nor would she be bound by contract since the series would end the following month.

Since Jeffrey wasn’t really in contact with Mulder, we still have no legit reason why Fox is still hiding from Dana and did not attend the Lone Gunmen’s funeral. I wrote a whole paragraph griping about how David Duchovny was available to not only co-write but direct this episode, yet didn't put in an appearance in the previous one in which Mulder’s presence should have been mandatory. And to show I’m not always about the negative when it comes to The X-Files, good for them putting Chris Owens’ name in the credits at the end of the show to protect that reveal. And William’s UFO onesie is just adorable too.

Sestra Professional: 

I'm deeming this the beginning of the "Be Careful What You Wish For" series. It doesn't see us just through the regular run of the show but everything up to the current point on The X-Files landscape.

This dubious distinction starts off with the aforementioned return of David Duchovny to the fold, not as Mulder, but co-writer of the story for "William" with creator Chris Carter and executive producer Frank Spotnitz. Since Duchovny hasn't been with us all season, he obviously can't do much to further the transformation of the show and the advancement of John Doggett and Monica Reyes' characters. So we're back to plot largely sidelined in Season 9 -- which, in my mind, was for the greater good. We've hardly mentioned Mulder this year. I wasn't bothered by that, and I knew Sestra Am 100 percent wasn't either.

After literally fading out on The Lone Gunmen last week, we open with Scully giving up the precious bundle of joy that we've spent a couple seasons toting around. It feels like the worst kind of fire sale. Even if you didn't read sci-fi publications or watch Entertainment Tonight, you could tell in the span of these two eps (and next week's "Release") that the proverbial house seemed to be being boarded up by snowbirds heading to Florida for the winter.

Following the opening teaser, we see -- or rather hear -- Scully reprising her fondness for singing "Joy to the World" for William. You might recall Dana first warbled that tune in "Detour" (S5E4). It's the kind of light moment we've come to expect from Duchovny since the non-fat tofutti rice dreamsicle scene in his directorial debut, "The Unnatural" (S619).

What is true and what we want to be true isn't always the same: So in Duchovny and company's hands, Doggett takes the kind of beating that used to be reserved for Alex Krycek. Not sure how John was able to recover enough to then apprehend the intruder, that's some super-soldier-like bounce-back ability he's got there. Then again, since Doggett so doggedly insists a shorter, lighter dude is Mulder, maybe he did suffer one blow too many.

Actually this part of the story does work, and even more importantly, it gives Gillian Anderson the meatiest material she's gotten all season. Unlike, say, "Trust No 1" (S9E6), in which Scully and the unseen Mulder were turned into revolting Hallmark movie versions of themselves. (That would have worked in the hands of Vince Gilligan, by the way.) So if we have to delve back into what was, I don't really mind the wee wedge put between our main characters by the mysterious scarred man -- who more closely resembles Chris Owens in his first X-Files incarnation as the Great Mutato in "The Post-Modern Prometheus" (S5E5).

You are as false as your face: In fact, Scully is written as strongly here as she has been in quite some time, and I'm not just talking about Season 9. Dana's complete confidence that the mystery man -- for all his similarities to Fox -- is not Mulder is heartening. The same holds true for Skinner. But at the same time, on some level, we can get behind Doggett's doubt. John's character isn't tarnished by a theory that we might have believed to be true if we did not have Scully and Skinner's leads to follow.

It takes Dana the requisite amount of time to put all the pieces together -- and by pieces, yes, I mean all the scaly bits of Jeffrey's visage. Welcome back, Scully! It's so good to see you again. I didn't know how much I missed you until the moment when you confronted Spender in the interrogation room.

And yet it's come to this. After following Dana through her pregnancy ... and all its various scares ... the birth ... and its inherent danger ... and avenging angels masking as nannies and right thinkers, now Scully gives him up. Can I just add that the use of "Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore" seems overly aggrandizing? Perhaps the same singers voicing "Joy to the World" might have put a better bow on the William story.

As Sestra Am alluded to, if you're scoring at home, that's two major exits Mulder missed out on. We can feel his return nearing -- this show has given us all supernatural powers!! -- and it feels like a supreme letdown that these moments were lost to pivotal characters, and us by extension.

Guest star of the week: I would say Chris Owens qualifies for these kudos, since he wasn't part of the cast for a few years. And because I do feel bad for being one of those who did Jeffrey Spender dirty since he started mucking up the works in Season 5. In addition to the mythology refresher course Owens provides, he gets to do a lot of Mulderesque quipping in this one, guess it's just in the jeans.

X-Files S9E15: A strange brand of Lone justice indeed

Sestra Amateur: 

Are there any pop-culture enthusiasts who do not know the origin of the phrase “Jump the Shark?” It always amuses me how it evolved from a literal act into a figurative one. I’m interested to know where most X-Philes think the show passed that infamous milestone.

There are familiar faces in this amusing episode, which feels more like one from The Lone Gunmen’s spinoff series than The OG X-Files. I’m sure we can all use a break after seeing Monica Reyes in excruciating pain while she imagined monsters crawling around inside her stomach in the last episode. Now we get a return appearance from Michael McKean as Morris Fletcher, the man who briefly swapped bodies with Fox Mulder back in the "Dreamland" two-parter (Season 6, Episodes 4-5). I guess he didn’t get his marriage back on track because he’s in the middle of the Bahamian ocean with a beautiful blonde who is not his wife. Thugs in a speedboat threaten Morris, kidnap the woman and blow up the boat. Luckily, he and his UFO blueprints seem to survive the explosion. 

Fletcher requests a meeting with FBI Special Agents John Doggett and Monica Reyes, but they are unimpressed with him at the outset. Monica reveals his female companion is fine and his UFO blueprints are bogus. Team Johnica are leaving when Morris admits he knows about super soldiers. Doggett and Reyes ask Frohike, Byers and Langly to help them track down a female super soldier named Yves Adele Harlow, played by Zuleikha Robinson. (Wow, this really is a Lone Gunmen ep!) They take umbrage to Fletcher’s presence and involvement. Meanwhile, Yves kills college professor Douglas Houghton by shooting him in the chest. Sort of.

Langly unsuccessfully searches for Yves in an airline database. Morris claims her real name is Lois Runce, but the guys don’t believe him. They get a surprise visit from former intern Jimmy Bond, who promptly loses consciousness. When he wakes up, Jimbo confirms Yves’ true name and is upset because she may have committed murder. Meanwhile, Yves burns her victim’s heart in a furnace. (OK, this isn’t as light-hearted as I expected it to be. No pun intended.)

Team Johnica learns Yves’ victim was an immunologist who studied sharks and other marine life. Langly, Frohike and Byers seek assistance with tracking Yves from Kimmy the Geek while Doggett and Reyes meet with the coroner who performed Houghton’s autopsy. They learn the chest wound contains bioluminescence and cartilage. Kimbo reveals to Team Johnica and Fletcher that the Lone Gunmen are broke and no longer publishing their newspaper. Fortunately, the boys have located Yves in a D.C. hotel and prevent her from murdering another person. Unfortunately, they apparently screwed things up for her because they don’t understand. (None of us do yet, sweetie.)

John and Monica arrive at the hotel room. They learn Morris lied about Yves being a super soldier and set everything up since the boat incident in the Bahamas. His plan for the Lone Gunmen to locate Yves worked. It turns out, the man Fletcher works for is a billionaire terrorist … and Yves’ father. Harlow killed Douglas Houghton because he was also a terrorist. In doing so, she destroyed the virus located inside Houghton’s chest. The second man she tried to stop has the same virus inside his chest.

Back at Lone Gunmen HQ, Kimbo and Langly are trying to locate the human timebomb while Morris continues to verbally abuse Frohike and Byers. Team Johnica locate and secure the man but he’s clean. Guess he was the decoy, but now Doggett isn’t too trusting of Yves. The true human timebomb has entered a conference hall filled with people and easily passed through security. Our non-FBI heroes find the terrorist and try to talk their way into the conference, but a security guard refuses to let them enter the conference hall. 

Jimbo spooks the virus bomber, John Gillnitz, by calling out his name, just like Riggs tricks villain Jack Travis into leaving a packed hockey arena in Lethal Weapon 3. Gillnitz bolts while Jimbo head butts the security guard to chase after him. They corner him with only one minute and 40 seconds left before detonation. Then our heroes do something amazing: They trap themselves with Gillnitz by pulling the fire alarm. Jimbo and Yves find them but can’t save them. They have a bittersweet farewell as Gillnitz starts leaking bioluminescence, infecting everyone in the room. At least we don’t have to watch them suffer.

It’s a beautiful day at Arlington National Cemetery, not a cloud in the sky. Byers, Langly and Frohike are laid to rest side by side by side. So much for being a light-hearted amusing episode. They didn’t even get to take Dana Scully along on their last adventure. A 60-second cameo appearance isn’t enough. And no Mulder at the funeral? Unless he was in Morris Fletcher’s body again, I’m pretty sure that’s where they jumped the shark.

Sestra Professional: 

In spite of -- or maybe even because of -- the funerals at Arlington, it was an unceremonious end for the Lone Gunmen. Let's face it, they had been trending downward for a while, possibly since the Vancouver years. When the trio came on the scene, its members were distinctively quirky but intelligent naysayers. Somewhere along the line, they turned into bumbling do-gooders. Even on their largely overlooked spinoff series, they were shadows of their former selves, and resolution tended to come in spite of their actions. This episode's opening montage bears that out. Yet they still deserved better than this.

Some might maintain that three men who railed against the government for years might not want to be buried on hallowed grounds. I'm not sure I agree with that hypothesis. By this time, they might have been proud to rest in the same vicinity as John F. Kennedy, Jr., and brother Robert, or at the very least, Abner Doubleday.

That's really a moot point because the fact they had to be laid to rest at all is the true problem. When this show jumps the shark, it realllly jumps the shark. (Although, harkening back to Sestra Am's original inquiry, I know I can come up with jump-the-shark spotters for every single season since the production moved to Hollywood.)

Three more unlikely heroes there never were: But I digress, because with the series coming to an end, this episode -- first and foremost -- is an attempt to wrap up Byers, Frohike and Langly's story with recurring Morris Fletcher and sexy-villain-turned-ally Yves St. Laurent. (Yeah, I know that last one's not right. But the show's apathy is wearing off on me.)

I still think there was something to the concept of a Gunmen series. The chemistry between the trio was always strong, and there were enough differences between the characters to be able to delve into different stories. I wasn't watching the spinoff at the time, but years later, I did binge it. And ... it's not bad. 

Both shows got mileage out of Michael McKean's presence as former Man in Black Morris Fletcher. So bringing Morris into Doggett and Reyes' orbit isn't a bad first step. But when John and Monica walk into the empty Lone Gunmen bunker, we start down the irrevocable road to ruin. Kind of reminds of another bad move, attempting to wrap up the Millennium story within the confines of one X-Files episode in the fourth episode of the seventh season. Should we feel grateful that we didn't have a Harsh Realm terminus as well? (I still say that show might have worked with Nicholas Lea (Krycek) in the lead. Chris Carter, you couldn't have bent to fan pressure on that one, like you folded like a house of cards on the Sculder personal relationship front?)

Guys like that, they live forever: I really used to enjoy the Gunmen doing their thing. But over time that concept got worn down to the nub, and their penchant for snappy dialogue apparently went along with it. Morris provides the cringeworthy image of watching those guys trying to find their butts with both hands, which hasn't been much fun for us either. As with the aforementioned "Millennium" episode, The Lone Gunmen square peg doesn't quite fit in The X-Files' round hole. 

Morris crying "super soldier" is the most thin of threads to knit the two together and it's all down hill from there. It did look promising when John and Monica used all due diligence but ultimately boxed in the wrong dude. The Lone Gunmen don't have those kind of resources at their disposal upon smoking out the real one. They can't even talk their way into a conference room with the end of the world at stake. And so they wind up where they do, conveniently spawning what Byers had talked about just minutes earlier. They went out on their own terms.

As Sestra Am said, this dismal turn of events is made worse by the fact that neither Scully nor Mulder are involved in the denouement. Kimmy's bilingual gravesite reaction doesn't really register. Still not sure what to make of Walter Skinner's deed, but it was an attempt at some kind of amends. And as far as Scully wondering whether the Gunmen knew how much they meant to her, I'm not sure they did. I didn't get that read and I've been watching closely the whole time. Fox's absence for the trio's series wrap didn't help in the slightest. So this ep winds up at the bottom of most X-Philes' lists, whether or not we believe this is where the series actually jumped the shark.

Although Bruce Harwood (Byers) said in The Complete X-Files that he was glad the Gunmen were killed off in the end, it remained a thorn in co-writer Vince Gilligan's paw. "To this day, I still think we made the wrong choice on that one," he said in the show's comprehensive guide.

Guest star of the week: While Zuleikha Robinson (Yves) and Stephen Snedden (Jimmy) slip seamlessly back into their spinoff characters, Michael McKean once again gives an ep any life it has. He's gotten kudos in this spot twice, but the veteran actor easily could be a four-time winner. Maybe Morris Fletcher should have been the focus for a sister show.