The Lone Gunmen
Review
by : Li
Rapkin 
Confessions of a Former X-Phile
First, I fully and freely admit that I used to be a huge
X-Files fan. If I didn’t admit it, I’m sure my grad-school
roommate would be happy to point it out (and if that was all
she mentioned, I’d be relieved and grateful). The two of us
were amazingly busy at the time, and we would occasionally
go an entire week without seeing each other. By Sunday night,
we were both exhausted from school, work, research, reading
in foreign tongues, and occasionally speaking in them. I looked
forward to Sunday nights as much for the opportunity to sit
in one place and speak English as for our weekly X-Files
fix. At that point, the world outside disappeared, and Cayte
and I would hunker down in front of the TV on her green-and-mauve
brocade garage sale sofa with a couple of refreshing adult
beverages.
It was
a good time for the series-Chris Carter was still deeply involved
in the production and writing, the episodes were well written,
and every once in a while, we’d get something totally bizarre,
as if Carter & Co. were trying to give themselves a break
from their own seriousness. One of those episodes introduced
the Lone Gunmen, Frohike, Byers, and Langley, a trio of dedicated
hackers and conspiracy-theorists who published their own underground
newspaper. Cayte and I decided they closely resembled a few
people we knew...or maybe a few too many people we knew. They
were the perfect foil for Mulder and Scully, and I thought
they were great characters from their first appearance. Apparently,
I wasn’t the only one, because they made several other appearances
over the years.
I stopped
watching The X-Files shortly after Cayte and I finished
school, and I moved to Indianapolis. Nobody else I knew was
very interested in the program, and half the fun was discussing
what was going on in the story. Also, Chris Carter had gone
on to work on Millennium, the show moved to production
from Vancouver to Los Angeles, and then the movie was in production.
I always meant to go and see the movie, but the show just
wasn’t what it had been, and I never bothered. The show had
been getting annoyingly dense, and worse, trendy. Gillian
Anderson and David Duchovny were busy shooting the film, and
the Lone Gunmen appeared in several other of episodes, most
of which I missed. The one episode that I went out of my way
to watch, Kill Switch, was co-written by William Gibson
(Neuromancer, Johnny Mnemonic--the short story,
not the film), for whom I have a soft spot, having spent the
early 1980's in Silicon Valley. Still, I more or less forgot
about the series after season five, and went on with my life.
Three
weeks ago, the Lone Gunmen finally got their own show. I decided
to check it out, just for old times’ sake. I wasn’t disappointed.
The Lone Gunmen has the wackiness of the occasional
bizarre early X-Files episodes that I loved, with a
more humorous take on the heavy-handed conspiracy theories
of the parent series. If you’ve never watched The X-Files,
you won’t feel cast adrift by The Lone Gunmen. The
characters are as well-written as ever, and while the situations
and technical setup may stretch credulity a bit, it’s actually
a lot more in tune with reality than The X-Files. In
episode two, the Gunmen inadvertently acquired a naively idealistic
jock sidekick, and I’m not sure I like him-but I get the feeling
that the Gunmen aren’t sure if they like him either, so I’m
anxious to see how things develop. In the mean time, Fox has
moved the series from Sunday to Friday, and I hope that the
network settles on a time slot soon. I’d hate to miss an episode.
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