AIR DATE:  November 16, 1997
Written by Vince Gilligan
Directed by Kim Manners

"It's Friday at 9. They're all home watching the X-Files."

				- A somewhat direct quote from Det. Munch
				  in response to why no one was
				  at the grand opening of his and his
				  partners new bar in a "Homicide"
				  episode.

	"Unusual Suspects" breaks the cycle of the post mythology episode
that felt awkward as Scully and Mulder go merrily on their way
investigating another monster of the week as if nothing happened. "D.P.O." 
and "3" both came after major mythology episodes and both suffer for it. 
The "Unusual Suspects" avoids this by taking place in 1989 and tells the
story of how the Lone Gunmen were born.  I was looking forward to "Unusual
Suspects" more than "Redux" and "Redux II" because it looked like it would
be a nice change of pace and wouldn't have all that baggage mythology
episodes have picked up over the years.  Needless to say "Unusual
Suspects" didn't disappoint.  It was funny and touched upon all cliches of
the classic girl in distress and a hero coming to her rescue type shows.
The only difference is it wasn't Mulder coming to her rescue, but Byers, a
geeky FCC public relations worker, who falls for Modeski's story and
decides to help her out, setting into motion the beginnings of the Lone
Gunmen and Mulder's investigations into suspicious government activity. 

	Once again Vince Gilligan proves why he is one of the better
X-Files writers with this episode.  Not only has he shown how well he
knows Scully's and Mulder's characters, but he shows here how well he
knows the Lone Gunmen characters.  Who would have known Byers was an old
romantic for women.  From what we have seen of Byers in other episodes he
always seemed to be the sturdy no-nonsense guy not to taking any chances,
but here we see him as a person who would help a woman in distress and
have the guts to demand answers from Mr.  X and his co-horts at great
risk.  It must have been the government employee in him.  Langly and
Frohike were rival electronic people who sell devices to subvert big
business and government though for them it was done as a fun way to get at
them whereas now it is done to find out what the government is doing to
its people.  Who would have guessed Frohike is a kick ass type of guy who
wanted to beat the information out of Modeski's "boyfriend".  It did fall
into his character even though he always appears to be a bit of a cad when
it comes to women and he is the one who respects them the most and who
came to see Scully in "One Breath".  Langly comes off the least known in
"Unusual Suspects", but we do get to see he is the one who has the
knowledge of how to get around government security.

	The ironic thing about this episode is that Byers doesn't get to
save the girl because she does get captured in the end by the bad guys. He
does get to save the world at least for a little while since we can gather
the test is not going to go on according to plan.  Also, we learn even way
back then Mulder was being protected when Mr. X wouldn't let his cohort
bag him.  "Unusual Suspect" was quite an interesting ride of seeing Byers
as a loyal government worker for the FCC who would never think of doing
anything against it or that it would do anything bad against its people,
and finding two like minded people who did what they did in this episode
to get at the truth.  Of course, just like Scully and Mulder they end up
with nothing, but LGM have a good story which is why Mr. X left them alive
at the warehouse because he knew no one would believe them.  We see why
Mulder is such a danger to the Consortium whereas any other agent would
have let it go once his boss tells him Modeski is no longer wanted by the
F.B.I., but Mulder doesn't which starts off his search for the truth. 

	Some miscellaneous comments on "Unusual Suspects":

- Byers being called a Narc by all the computer hackers at the convention
was too much because he does look like a cop trying to fit in, but not
quite pulling it off.

- MELVIN Frohike.  No wonder they call each other by their last name. 
Hey, we never did learn Langly's first name.  Also, I wonder how many
other kids were named after J.F.K., such as Byers, who were born the day
after J.F.K. was killed.  Lucky for me I was born a few months later or
who knows what my parents would have called me. 

- Modeski description of her boyfriend as "Dark and mysterious" could have
easily been describing Mulder for real.  Especially now. 

- Byers working pal, Ken, playing games the whole time at the convention. 
I'm glad to see my tax dollars at work.  Boy, where did the X-Files people
dig up that old game.

- Why would the government have put in their report about Modeski the
address of where they were storing the chemical?  Damn, government
bureauacy, it never knows when to stop.

- Even back in 1989 Mulder can't live without a cellular phone of some
kind though it was one big cellular phone.  Lucky for Mulder he wears a
trenchcoat with big pockets.  Glad to see Gilligan didn't forget who was
Mulder's boss back then.

- Great camera work of having us think Langly is playing poker with his
computer friends, only to find out he isn't betting on a poker hand but on
his next Dungeons and Dragons move.  This made me think of an old Homicide
episode where Bayliss is playing a game of Hearts for money with
Giardello. One of the fellow detectives goes he didn't know you could play
Hearts for money and someone else says you can play anything for money. 
Hmm, I wonder if Langly won the roll.

- I can see it right now.  A million X-Files fans freeze frame on Mulder's
bio file from the F.B.I..  Let's see he graduated from Quantico in 1986
and in 1989 worked for VIC.  Can't wait to see if this screws up the
current timeline for Mulder's past history. 

- Where did Modeski get that key to let herself into the hotel room the
Lone Gunmen were using.  Oh yeah, now every time I stay at a hotel I'm
going have to check every hotel Bible to make sure I'm not being monitored
by the big evil government.  Also, I loved the examples (Amtrak, Susan B. 
Anthony coin) the LGM used to disallow Modeski's assertion of a government
conspiracy against its people. 

- I kept expecting the man who wasn't dead when Mr. X's cohorts put him
into a body bag to say, "I'm not dead, yet.  I'm getting better." 

- Good touch of having Mr. X the one to give them their name of Lone
Gunmen when he says he heard the Kennedy assasination was done by a Lone
Gunmen. 

- Gilligan must watch Homicide since he had Munch use almost the same
exact line he used on a suspect in a Homicide episode.  In the Homicide
episode he says to a suspect, "Do I look like Montel Williams to you?"
instead of Geraldo.

- Modeski should have known not to trust the Military Industrial
Entertainment Complex when she went to the Baltimore Guardian - Newspaper
Group. 

- I haven't been to Baltimore for a few years, but somehow I don't
remember Baltimore having buses attached to electrical wires as we saw
they had in the background as the LGM talked with Modeski.

- The reappearance of Steven Williams as Mr. X showed how much his
menacing presence has been missed in the show, and how much Marita
Covarrubias hasn't replaced him.

- Favorite line was Mulder incredulously saying "What!" when the Lone
Gunmen started to explain how there is government conspiracy going on. 
Little did he know.

	The "Unusual Suspects" was an entertaining way to introduce us to
the Lone Gunmen and how three different people got hooked up together.  It
didn't hurt they had Richard Belzer come on as his Homicide's Detective
Munch character (too bad they couldn't have had the actor who played the
detective who had a conspiracy theory about everything).  This shows how
strong a show X-Files can be sometimes when it can do a show where one of
its main characters isn't even in it and the other is barely even in it.
The overall theme of the "Unusual Suspect" was the Lone Gunmen search for
the truth, a very common theme in the X-Files, and how hard it is to find
it. 


Claudia
E-mail:  Claudia.Cauchon@unh.edu

11/17/97