X-Files--"The Unusual Suspects"

We have reached the halfway point of my reviews for The X-Files, more or less. There are 201 episodes. ‘The Unusual Suspects” comes in at 100. I am calling it the halfway point just to have a nice, round number for the occasion. It would certainly be more poetic for a key episodes like “Redux, Part II” to have been the 100th, but thanks to the main cast being off in California filming Fight the Future, an installment without them had to be filmed before any others in order to fill the network episode order. So we get the Lone Gunmen origin story as we hit the triple digits.

The Lone Gunmen are generally a fan favorite, but not a big part of what makes The X-Files enjoyable for me. I appreciate the characters as occasional comic relief best experienced in small doses. Witness the failure of their 2001 absurdly slapstick spin off as evidence I am not alone in my thinking. I will allow they have had some high points--becoming field agents in “Momento Mori”, for instance--but outide of comic relief, they serve as a too convenient source of info to guide Mulder in the right direction when the script cannot logically progress any other way. A further detriment is there is generally no explanation how they have earned such specialized knowledge about conspiracies.

I do not want to sound like I am too down on the characters. The occasional epide centered on them counts as an enjoyable small dose. “The Unusual Suspects” also reminds me of the old Secret Origins DC comics used to publish featuring the “untold” origins of it characters. Issues were usually done by brand new, fill in type creators whose origin stories were generally dismissed by the regular creative teams of the characters. The lack of respect the comic got was amusing, much like what the Lone Gunmen suffer.

“The Unusual Suspects” is set in 1989 and tells the story of how they formed and hooked up with Mulder. Byers falls for a woman named Suzanne Modeski at an electronics trade show in Baltimore. She is clearly manipulating him, but you know how nerds are about a pretty girl batting her eyelashes. She claims her abusive husband has kidnapped her daughter and needs Byers’ hacking skills to find her. Her abusive former husband? Fox Mulder, of course.

Byers recruits two electronics salesmen, Langley and Forhike, for their better hacking skills. They discover Mulder is an FBI agent hunting Modeski because she allegedly stole materials from a weapons facility in New Mexico, killing four people in the process. She denies this as a frame up. In reality, she has uncovered a plot to use an experimental gas on the population of Baltimore which will heighten the peoples’ sense of paranoia.

What is the point to that, by the way? If the government really wanted to control minds, why do so by increasing one’s paranoia? That would make people distrustful and afraid. People who are distrustful and afraid are harder to control. All the government would really wind up doing is creating enemies. I cannot discount the idea Modeski is not correct that control is the government’s intention. However, when Mulder is gassed, he very clearly exhibit’s a paralyzing fear the government agents surrounding him are aliens. So the stuff works exactly as advertised. It is left up to you to draw your own conclusion as to what is really going on.

Mr. x arrives to clean up the mess once everyone runs into each other at the warehouse where the gas is being stored. Mulder gets a face full, so he is taken out of it all. The experience, and Modeski’s sudden kidnapping by Mr. X, prompts the Lone Gunmen to dedicate themselves to uncovering government conspiracies. They form a working relationship with Mulder when they fill in the gaps on what happened while he was off in paranoid la la alien land.

“The Unusual Suspects” is a fun, but frivolous episode not to be taken too seriously. The confusing motives of the government plan to gas Baltimore ought to be enough to convince you of that. The episode feels like a lot of personal indulgence. The Lone Gunmen get to clown around, David Duchovny insisted on wearing his wedding ring to show off his recent nuptials to Tea Leoni, and Richard Belzer got to play an exaggerated version of his famous det. John Munch. He became the first actor in television history to play the same character on three different shows in one week: Law & Order, Homicide, and The X-Files. That is about the only thing one can remember the episode for.

Rating: *** (out of 5)