Jump the Shark

Anyway, Morris is under the impression that people are trying to kill him. I wonder if he picked that up from the pirates who were trying to blow him to Kingdom Come. He thinks he needs protection, and he says he'll give them "the keys to the kingdom" in return. "Aliens, UFOs, the whole fifty-year cover-up. I was there for all of it." Doubtful, since Morris Fletcher is, like, fifty-five years old. Not ninety. Moronica stares off into the distance. Doggett wonders silently if Skinner remembered to drop off his blue shirt at the cleaners. They really don't care about that whole alien thing. Moronica pulls the water-logged blueprint of the space ship out of her bag, and dryly comments that it's "the Jupiter 2 from Lost in Space." Morris is like, yeah, but everything else I tell you is the truth! He was trying to cheat a random foreign billionaire with those! He just wanted to tool around the tropics for a while! "I would never give him the real thing," he insists, "that would be un-American." Moronica and Doggett glare, then get up to go. Morris keeps blathering about the need for protection. "Super soldiers!" he suggests. This gets Moronica and Doggett's attention. "What do you know about Supah Solijahs?" Doggett drawls. Morris thinks he can help get them one. A chick, no less. But don't worry about this part of the episode. No, really, don't. It's basically just a ruse. No answers to the Super Solider questions. You should probably just take a nap. We're just passing the time here until this thing is finally over. Just cashing the paychecks here at 1013. Cashing the paychecks and passing the bong.

Lone Gunmen HQ. Enter Doggett and Moronica. The Moronic One is not impressed by the Gunmen's less than fully loaded digs. "Did you get robbed?" she asks. The boys lie that they're waiting for all new equipment. Doggett intones that he needs their help, and with the assistance of Frohike and Byers recaps the entire Super Solider Story Arc for the benefit of the audience. Again, dudes? We know. Genetically engineered. Trying to kill Mulder. Got it. Moving on. Moronica tells the boys that they're trying to track down a woman, and then shows them a picture of Yves Adele "Fat Lips" Harlow. The Gunmen look shocked, to a man. Langly IDs her as a fellow hacker, and exposits that she disappeared a year ago. Doggett thinks she may have "become" a Super Solider. So you can just turn into one? Good to know. I'll add "checking for bumps on the back of my neck" to my morning routine, right between "brushing my teeth" and "taking my vitamin." The boys don't think Yves Collagen Face could possibly be a Super Solider.

"This is pointless. These boys couldn't find stink in an outhouse," Morris Fletcher announces from the doorway. Everyone rolls his or her eyes, and Frohike goes after Morris with a golf club. Doggett stops him with one hand. Langly, for his part, tries to leap on Morris to strangle him, but Moronica stops him. With one hand. Byers -- because he's a man of words, not violence -- says that Morris is "a professional con artist." Frohike sputters that Morris kidnapped Yves LippyMcLips last year. I can't believe that this episode is basically being used as a series finale for The Lone Gunmen when we've only got a limited amount of hours left to unravel the disaster that is The X-Files. We need to focus! Morris points out that because he was the one who kidnapped Yves Lipsalot, he knows what happened to her. And she was -- oh, you know what? Screw it. Yves des Lips Larges is not a Super Solider. I don't have time for red herrings this week, people. But for purposes of wrapping up Carter's stupid vanity show, Doggett and Moronica think it would be a good idea to track down Yves Fat Smackers because....I don't even know why. Obviously, this whole "I need a Super Solider as my own personal bodyguard" thing is totally crap, because as far as I understand it, they don't really work like that. Or do they? Do they want to talk to her about the whole Mulder thing? I don't know. I think this is just a way to bring Yves Lipsy Malone back into the picture. Whatever.

Hartwell College, Kearney, NJ. Speaking of Yves Mouthy McLipperpants, there she is, dressed like a hippie college student. She slinks into the office of a Professor Houghton. Yada yada yada, when Professor IHaveNoLines's colleague (played by the dude who was Peter, Amy's irritating older brother on Judging Amy which I recapped long, long ago) comes to fetch him for carpool, he finds the prof. dead on the floor with his heart ripped out of his chest. That has got to smart! Peter looks out the office window just in time to see Yves "The Mouth" running away.

Can I just say that I am stunned at how unimportant this episode is as far as the overarching plot of The X-files goes, especially considering that it culminates in the death of three rather well-loved secondary characters? Ooops, I didn't just give that away, did I? I also wonder what the writing staff is doing at the 1013 production office instead of, you know, figuring out how to end this thing. It must be like:

Frank Spotnitz: Okay, so we have some time to fill before David comes back. What are we going to do with those episodes? I don't know if we even have four hours worth of things to talk about anymore...
Chris Carter: Dude! Scully and Reyes go undercover as exotic pole-dancers!
Vince Gilligan: No.
Carter: Maybe someone could kidnap that red-haired lady.
Gilligan: Scully?
Carter: That short little redhead.
Spotnitz: Chris, that's Scully. You were just talking about her.
Gilligan: No.
Carter: Okay, how about if Mulder and his sister go on a road trip to Mexico where they meet --
Gilligan: Mulder is gone!
Spotnitz (simultaneously): Samantha is dead!
Carter: Then who's that guy?
Gilligan: What guy?
Spotnitz: Doggett?
Carter: Who's Doggett?
Gilligan: The new guy!
Carter: We have a new guy?
Spotnitz: I told you this yesterday.
Gilligan: Oh my God.

In the Lone Gunpound, Langly hacks away, wearing a "Joey Lives" Ramones tee shirt. Morris flips though back issues of The Lone Gunman and makes fun first of the content, then of the fact that they haven't published a new issue in over a year. Langly sighs that he can't find Yves Mouth of the Month anywhere in the...database thingy he's searching. Don't ask me what that is, or why she'd be there. Morris is all, no shit. "So, who's Joey?" he asks. Langly shirtily informs him that Joey is only the leader of the greatest punk rock band in history. Morris rolls his eyes. "What are you? Thirty-four? Thirty-five? Why don't you cut your hair and grow up already?" he asks. Byers and Frohike exchange nervous glances over Langly's head, as Langly hisses that Doggett and Moronica aren't around to "save" Morris now. "Get yourself a real hero, anyway. Not some dead teenybopper," Morris drawls. This, of course, pushes Langly right over the edge and he leaps out of his seat and stomps over to get all in Morris's face. "You want to know why Joey Ramone's my hero?" he asks. "Because people like you never managed to grind him down. They never stole his spirit. He never gave in, never gave up, never sold out." Unlike some people I could mention. "Right to his last breath. And he's not dead. Guys like that? They live forever." Make a note of that. No, make a note. Seriously, write it down. You don't want to forget that line. No, really. No, really. Really. Do you get it? Are you sure that you understand where this is going? You're sure you're sure? Okay. If you're totally sure. Byers advises Langly to just ignore Morris, but Morris pipes up that he thinks he can help them find Yves McLippyLips. Because, see, he knows her real name: Lois Runtz. Byers laughs at this, but Morris insists that it's true. At this moment, there's a knock on the Gunmen's "secret door." Byers opens it to find Jimmy, passed out in a pile. The seventeen people who watched The Lone Gunmen are all, "Jimmy!" The rest of us are all, "Huh. I wonder where I could get some Cheetos."

Jimmy comes to on a sofa with a wet washcloth draped over his forehead. "Oh right, your old errand boy. The guy who used to intern for you losers," Morris narrates for the rest of us. Where has he been? All over, he says, looking for Yves McMoutherson. "It's been a real geology lesson," Jimmy malaprops. The boys exchange glances. He says that he traced her to a small college in NJ and he thinks she killed a guy. Yeah, we know that.

Cut to Yves MouthyFatLips dressed in what I hear is her customary black catsuit, down in the basement of...somewhere. She places an oxygen mask on her face, all Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet, and then throws Professor PlotPoint's heart into the incinerator. Please note that she's got this fancy-ass mask on, but she's not wearing gloves. "One down," she mumbles around her ginormous lips.

College of I Can't Believe We're Wasting This Hour on a Monster of the Week Episode When The Lone Gunmen Totally Could Have Died in a Mytharc Episode That Was Not Only Moving, But Also Tied Some Shit Up, Dude. Moronica and Doggett are showing Amy's brother Peter a photo of Yves de Lipschild. Can I tell you that while I remember almost nothing about recapping Judging Amy, I will never forget a scene in which Peter played the guitar and sang "Jumping Jack Flash" while Amy danced around? That was scarier than this entire season of The X-Files. Peter thinks Yves Mouthy Liperstein is the killer, but he's not totally sure. He exposits that Dead Professor DeadGuy worked at the college as an immunologist, researching the superior immune system of the shark to try to figure out how to improve the immune system of us humans. "He was going to save the world," Peter mumbles.

Lone Gunpound. Some weird dorky guy whose name I gather is Kimmy is working on the computer. Apparently, he's "a hacking genius," and the Lone Gunmen have asked him to try to trace Yves Lippyberg's car (which they've identified through a series of unlikely breaks) as it drives toward DC.

Langly, Byers, and Frohike leave Jimmy and Kimmy (groan) alone in the office with Morris. I guess they're out to get Yves McMouthFace. I'm glad they're so concerned about someone who is -- to most of the people watching this episode -- practically a total stranger. Especially considering the fact that we never heard any of them ever say anything about Mulder. And I mean for the past two years, they've never said anything about Mulder. They're running all over the universe to find Yves de Mouthy Lipsalot, but did we ever see them even boot up the laptop to help Scully locate the father of her child? No. And why? Because the cardinal rule at 1013 over the last two years seems to have been "show all the interesting stuff off-screen and forget Duchovny ever existed."

Doggett and Moronica are visiting a Medical Examiner who is not Scully. Is Gillian Anderson not in this episode at all? "Maybe she was also kidnapped," the Mulder action figure suggests from his perch on my knee, where he's tracing the events of the evening before the Scully was kidnapped. He told me yesterday that he's closing in on a suspect, but he didn't want to jinx anything. Then I caught him dropping pieces of red fabric into a tiny test tube made from half of a circle of bubble wrap. I have no idea what that's all about. Anyway, the ME is all blah blah blah, heart ripped out post-mortem, blah blah blah weird radioactive shit going on in the professor's blood. "Bioluminescence," the ME clarifies. He tells Doggett and Moronica that he found a piece of shark cartilage grafted into the professor's chest cavity. Doggett handles the cartilage. "It held something. Something that's now missing," he says. Maybe it was the narrative arc of this show?

Over at the Lone Gunman's place, Morris explains that he has no idea what's up with the weird cartilage thing, or the professor or any of that crap and he doesn't have any idea what Yves Lipsterberg was up to when she killed the dude. He's continuing in this vein when Kimmy interrupts by beating the hell out of the computer, bitching that it's a piece of crap. "I knew the guys were broke, but this is pathetic," he says. Moronica acts surprised to hear of the Gunmen's sad slide into poverty, even though the past season and a half have made it very clear that they're low on cash. They've even asked to borrow money, both from her and Doggett. So, put two and two together, Moronica. Jimmy explains sadly that the boys spent their last dime trying to find Yves O'Lipsey. "They're loyal to their friends," he says, even though the teaser tried to tell us that Yves Les Lips was their "nemesis."

Frohike, Byers, and Langly are at a hotel, spying on Yves von Lipserberg, who is spying on a bald guy. This would be interesting if I were invested in Lipsy at all...oh, wait. No, it really wouldn't be. I'll say it again: if the folks at 1013 wanted to kill off the Gunmen, they very easily could have done so in an episode that was, like, about something. They could have sacrificed themselves for William, for Scully, to save Mulder from being captured by....you know, whomever it is that's allegedly after him. And that would have had some meaning for me. As it stands, I can barely bring myself to even sketch out the most rudimentary plot points of this episode, because it's basically forty minutes of wasting time, and then five minutes of people dying. I guess I should be glad that the Lone Gunmen didn't die off-screen, though, right? Anyway. Yves Lipsery follows the bald dude into his room. The boys follow her.

This entire scene with Yves Mouthy Lipsypants and the bald guy is totally unimportant. All you need to know is that the guy knocks her out and escapes. When she comes to, the Lone Gunmen, Jimmy, and the Feds are all staring at her. And what do we learn in this scene? Nothing that anyone cares about. She's not a Super Soldier. Like, no shit. And unless they all let her finish what she started, "innocent people will die." Also, she'd like to know who put them on her trail.

So they totally take her word for everything and take her to see Morris at the Gunpound. Morris immediately confirms that The Mouth is no Super Solider, at which point The Aforesaid Mouth earns her keep by ripping off his Band-Aid to reveal a tracking device. Which is never really explained to my satisfaction, but whatever. Doggett spits that Morris has been "running a scam" right from the get-go. Morris is all, "Yeah, and it worked." Morris has been working for "an international arms dealer," Yves exposits. "A billionaire. And scum of the earth." Her father, CGB Spender! Okay, she doesn't say it's CSM. And I'm sure it's not. Because that might have been interesting. Everyone looks shocked that LipLipsALot comes from terrorist stock. And she tells them that she "hates everything [her] father stands for," and that the man she killed was a terrorist, a "zealot whose research was funded by [her] father for its potential as a weapons system." Apparently, the shark cartilage acts as a container for a deadly virus, keeping the human carrier safe from the virus until the cartilage decomposes and the virus is exposed to everyone within a six-mile radius of the carrier. Or something. It's really not important, and we all know it. We're just wasting some time before the pointless dying starts. The beauty of this plan is that the carrier can take the virus wherever he wants, since it won't be detected by law enforcement. And the bald dude was the last guy left with the virus inside him. Yves A. Lipsface says that the cartilage decays in "a clock-like fashion," and they only have an hour to save the world. Okay, to save a six-mile radius of people.

Then Frohike and Byers scamper into the corner and have a brief discussion, the upshot of which is that no matter how bad things get, they can never give up. "We never gave up. We never gave in. If, in the end, that's the best they can say about us, it'll do," Byers says. I hope you get it, because the point here is very, very oblique.

Meanwhile, Doggett and Moronica have tracked down the bald guy, but I'm going to save us all some time and agony and tell you guys that Baldy is just a decoy. The real second-time bomb man is Peter, a fact that Yves immediately figures out. Seriously, she's like, "It must be someone hiding in plain sight! I know! Peter!" It was literally that easy. And I just skipped, like, six scenes. This episode feels like it was written at the red lights between Chris Carter's place in Malibu and the 1013 offices.

So, eventually, the Lone Gunmen track Peter to a hotel where some random conference is being held. Don't ask me why they went after him and not the law enforcement employees who also have access to a sophisticated HazMat team, but whatever. Peter runs; everyone runs after him.

Jimmy, The Lips, and the boys chase Peter into the basement of the hotel, where they split up, Jimmy and Mouthalicious going one way, Byers, Frohike, and Langly going the other. Yves WordForMouthIHaven'tUsedYet tells the boys that if they find Peter, to hold him and she'll do the rest. "You mean, cut him open?" Frohike asks. Yves reminds everyone that if she doesn't, people will die. Die! "Whatever it takes," she says seriously. WHATEVER IT TAKES!

So, naturally, the Lone Gunmen are the ones to find Peter, but also naturally, they find him too late to get Yves. Peter boasts that he doesn't even want to run away anymore, since he's about to blow. They've got two minutes. "Not much time for surgery," he brats. Frohike looks at Byers and Langly. "Guys?" he asks. Everyone stares. "Whatever it takes," Byers recites. And so Frohike pulls the fire alarm, which makes two (I presume airtight) doors come clanging down, locking them in with Peter. Which makes no sense, because that means if there was actually a fire, whomever pulled the alarm would also doom him or herself to burn alive. That's total nonsense. Also, why does the basement of the hotel have a fire system set up like the hold of the Titanic, instead of with, like, sprinklers? This is the most contrived way to kill off anyone on any TV show ever made, ever. They couldn't have been blown up trying to save Scully? No. Instead they lock themselves in a room with a guy who's drooling radioactive goo and just stare at each other. Also, couldn't two of them have bolted and just one of them pulled the alarm and then rolled under the door? My God. At the very least, why didn't Yves outfit all of them with one of those mask things she was wearing when she threw the heart in the fire? My God, if you're going to kill someone off, at the very least make it come from some sort of logical reason. Anyway.

Just as the doors bang down and seal the boys' fate, Jimmy and The Girl With The Pouty Lips come running up. Jimmy looks horrified. Yves looks bee stung. Jimmy tries frantically to open the air-tight door, but the boys are all, "Nah, don't bother." "Jimmy. Don't," Whatshername With the Mouth finally says, explaining that it's too late: the boys have been exposed already. Wow, those are some fancy doors that keep airborne viruses contained. I'd like one of those for my apartment. Also, how did Frohike know that pulling the fire alarm would do what it did? Because it's a pretty unusual system. "No, guys!" Jimmy cries. He places his hand on the glass. The Gunmen place their own hands over it. This is it? This is IT? Man. Frohike looks at Jimmy, and tells him to "fight the good fight. Both of you." Byers looks glum. "Never give up," he says blankly. THIS IS IT? And it is, because we fade to white. I cannot believe the Lone Gunmen died for this. At the very least, they could have been killed fighting to protect William, instead of like this. I feel nothing, and I cry at everything. Whirlpool commercials, kittens, the Los Angeles Times ads they run before the movie starts. This? My eyes have never been drier.