Case 8.5, File 11: The Lying Game

 AKA: Oh Boy That Title Does Not Inspire Confidence

One of the core appeals to making a spinoff as opposed to an original show is that existing in the same universe as the show allows you to drag in characters and elements from the show you're spinning off from without having to introduce or establish them, making for fairly efficient storytelling, as well as cross-show appeal and easy marketing. It sure would suck then, if you went to all that effort and then the reviewer of this episode got completely distracted when talking about the episode by a personal tangent.

Our episode kicks off with a guy named Tony in a bar talking to some Russians, when he's approached by a weedy looking dude who seems to be about to blackmail him. They head off into the bathroom for money to exchange hands but then, dun dun dun, Skinner pops out, there's a shot, and the weedy looking dude is dead. In case you're wondering how this involves our heroes, the next day (after Jimmy's car is repossessed) Beyers shows up with the weedy dude's sister Carol, who says that the dead dude, Jeff, was her brother and wants them to investigate his death.

After some digging around, they find Jeff's glasses back at the scene of his death, and find that they have cameras in them. They track the video feed from the cameras back to his place and find that it's been wiped, but he has backup video capture. It turns out he was blackmailing dozens of people and was using the glasses to videotape it in case they get violent, which Carol says fits with his personality. But worse, they find the video from the night he died and discover that Skinner's face was one of the last things the camera saw.

While Skinner meets up with Tony and tells him he's not going to clean up after his messes anymore, the Gunmen debate the ethics of publishing that Skinner killed Jeff without being able to prove it, and they bring in Yves to look for more proof. After identifying Tony and the Russian mobsters in the glasses footage, the core trio go and tail Tony and Skinner to the park, but Skinner spots them immediately and Carol gets kidnapped by the Russian mobsters. They are distinctly not good at this.

It turns out Tony is an undercover FBI Agent trying to get some loose plutonium from the Russian mobsters, and also that Jeff is alive and when he tried to blackmail Tony (for having an online affair with his real wife, which is a cute detail) they faked his death to give him some cred. But, Beyers is extra worried about Carol getting captured, because Carol is a trans woman and her paperwork won't match up when the mobsters look her up. Oh and he gives Jeff shit for outing Carol to everyone, which let's be clear, is an incredibly shitty thing to do. I'll talk more about the Carol stuff later. Anyway, they stuff the Gunmen into a safehouse to keep them out of the way.

They don't talk enough about how the memory guy just grabs Jeff's glasses off the bathroom floor like they're Kissinger's.

Back at the ranch, Jimmy and Yves conclude that Skinner must have killed the Lone Gunmen and hatch a plan; When Tony goes to meet the Russians, Jimmy disguises himself as Skinner and tries to get them to incriminate themselves while also acting like...well like Jimmy, frankly. But he also blurts out the code for needing help, so the FBI descends and arrests the Russians. And so the episode ends with Carol and Jeff reuniting and the Gunmen using the money they got from the story to get Jimmy's car back. Aw that's sweet.

Okay, let's get the obvious out of the way; Yeah, this is an episode that prominently features a trans woman, and I'm a recently out trans woman (in fact, unless this review takes longer than I'm expecting, it should be posted on the one year anniversary of me coming out to someone for the first time). It's basically impossible for this to not effect my read on the episode, so rather than try to avoid that aspect, I thought it would be better to actually address how that effected me. This one is gonna be a bit personal.

Because I was so ready for it to go badly. Media about trans people from this era almost always seems to. This episode is named after The Crying Game, a movie where the main character vomits upon discovering that the girl he's been romancing is a trans woman, which was a pretty common trope in those days. Given that the scene where it's revealed she's trans has both Jeff and Beyers deadnaming and misgendering her (for those of you who don't know, deadnaming means calling her by her old name and misgendering means calling her by the incorrect pronouns on purpose), I was sucking air through my teeth preparing for the worst.

But, after that (admittedly uncomfortable) the episode...actually becomes by and large pretty positive. It's very clumsy (it is a 20 year old episode made by dorks, about dorks and for dorks) but I was actually fairly impressed; For starters, she's not played by a cis man (which you think would be an easy bar to clear, but it's not, to this day). The fact that Jeff outed his sister is a plot point, and Beyers tells him to his face what a shitty thing to do that was. Langly and Frohike do come around fairly fast, which makes sense; The trio are all outsiders from the mainstream, why would they judge someone for being an outsider herself. Hell, the last we hear on the subject is that both Yves and Jimmy knew and didn't care. Having your smartest and nicest characters (respectively) say Trans Rights did a lot to paper over my initial discomfort.

Is it my imagination or does Yves seem just a tiny bit into Carol?

And honestly, thank god, because even before I came out, treating a trans person like shit was one of the easiest ways to get me to sour on a piece of media. A former roommate of mine loved South Park when we were living together, and the unrelenting awfulness of the Mrs. Garrison storyline made it so that I by the end of watching it with him, I hated the entire show. Not that I feel that that opinion has exactly aged poorly, but the contempt with which South Park treated the idea of a trans character meant that I hated it from the word go, even before I got up the courage to crack my egg, and only later was able to articulate a more coherent reason why I dislike it. I'd hate to be soured on The Lone Gunmen based on something similar, and their ability to treat a trans woman with basic dignity means that's not the case.

And what's odd about it is that, even in 2001, people had figured out that you could in fact treat trans women with a basic amount of respect, instead of the way we're usually relegated in media of the era (serial killers or sex workers). The biggest influence on The X-Files is still probably Twin Peaks and that show had a trans woman character  (played, as I'm sure you know, by David Duchovny) who is respected and valued by its main character, who still probably has one of the strongest moral cores of the entire show. She arrives, corrects Dale on his name use and pronouns and he just accepts it. It's not a huge element of the show, and she's only in a handful of episodes, but it goes so far to making trans viewers feel like the show isn't holding them in either pity or contempt, which can sour your view on even shows you love (never ask me how I feel about the Futurama episode Bend Her).

Hm? How's the rest of the episode? Oh it's pretty good. The core appeal is mostly built around the fact that Skinner's plotline is a fairly serious spy drama, and letting the Gunmen bumble their way in and screw everything up, and from that point of view, it's pretty amusing. It's fun to watch Jimmy angst while Yves just sort of raises her eyebrows at the whole thing, and the plot is the right mix of convoluted but overly simple, even if I figured out where it was going just a hair too early.

Mitch Pileggi doesn't get to do big broad comedy much, he seems to be having a good time.

The other major draw would be the presence of Mitch Pileggi as Skinner, and while it's obviously a crossover intended to goose The Lone Gunmen's ratings, it's still pretty solid. Skinner doesn't get a lot of fanfare, he just shows up doing his thing, and he mostly seems annoyed to be bothered by the Gunmen. Plus we get the amusing element where we get to see Pileggi playing Jimmy playing Skinner, and he seems to be having a blast at that. If the show had gone on longer, we might have had more opportunities like that (since the show has embraced Yves' Mission Impossible masks) but this one is still pretty good.

It's often said that representation matters, and while that is often framed as a way to make a minority less mysterious and more human to an uncaring majority, it's also important to help the minority see themselves in the media they consume, and that's doubly important when being a member of that minority means coming to terms with something about yourself. For my entire life, my favorite Twin Peaks character was Denise, even if I had trouble articulating why (I loved her becoming head of the FBI in The Return as well as Cole's comment on being bigoted toward her: "Fix your hearts or die."). The Lone Gunmen isn't a very queer show (more's the pity) but it didn't let me down here, when so many other media of this era (and to this day) does. And that means a lot.

Case Notes:

• The opening shot is a pretty good visualization of how dull it is to be watching weird stuff like Mr. Memory in a bar, just kind of a snooze. Does mean the opening shot is kinda dull though.
• The bit with the guys in the bar and blackmail and skull duggery is fun, and makes me kind of want to watch a relentlessly serious spy movie. Is Tinker Tailor Solider Spy streaming anywhere?
• I like that Skinner just pops in without any buildup. And that the first line he says in the cold open is "You son of a bitch."
• Jimmy fumblingly talking about emotional walls with a metaphor of a football helmet is kinda sweet. Fun framing device.
• You forget that Jimmy is just straight up paying all the Gunmen's bills, which makes them condescending to him a little crueler.
• No one believes Beyers could be out with a girl, I love it.
• So wait, is Jimmy broke, or could he just not afford the car he had? I really like the shot of him standing there with the van pulling in behind him.
• Beyers just shows up with a girl telling them that they're gonna catch a murderer.
• Not sure how I feel about Langly and Frohike drooling over Carol, but I like that they reset when they realize that a friend of Beyers is the murder victim.
• I get sending an e-mail with a link to a website of who your killer is after your death is a good way for your killer not to get caught. Just send a letter, god.
• I was expecting the super memory guy to be a fake, but he actually remembers Jimmy and how he had the blind football team with him, I like that.
• I like that Skinner isn't aware the Gunmen are involved and just seems to be doing his own thing. Oh and I love him saying he's gonna take the dude's internet access cause he's a dog.
• I refuse to believe you could a camera in a pair of glasses in 2001, but I guess since we're getting to the reveal that Jeff was blackmailing people, I can allow it.
• It takes about 15 minutes for the Gunmen to realize Skinner is involved, which is longer than I was expecting.
• The Gunmen don't have much of a relationship with Skinner, but I guess it's enough of one that they can feel bad they might have to turn him in for murder.
• Wow, we don't usually get to see the rest of the Gunmen's hideout, it's huge, what are they paying in rent on that place?
• Hey, we got a zoom and enhance.
• I feel like the Gunmen are missing the obvious connection between Skinner and the Russian mobster, that Skinner is trying to take the guy down.
• At this point, I feel like I've basically figured out most of what's going on, so I'm just marking time to see if I'm right. EDIT: I was.
• There's a lot of setup involved in getting Langly showing a dog humping his leg on the camera, which is not a great joke, but I guess the actor plays it well enough.
• The Gunmen are following Mr. Rose and just get immediately caught by Skinner, I love it.
• I was genuinely expecting Carol to be better at this shit than the Gunmen, but she immediately gets caught by the mobsters.
• Jimmy calling their VW the "Mobile Command Post" while Yves calls it the Clown Car is simple but amusing.
• The FBI just executed a no-knock warrant on the Gunmen's hideout, not cool.
• I like that the episode remembers that Yves and Jimmy still think that Skinner is a bad guy, a lot of scripts just pretend everyone is back on the same page.
• Jimmy seems genuinely upset that he thinks the Gunmen are dead.
• I actually kind of dig the skull duggery with Jimmy (as Skinner) just wandering into it, Pileggi is having an absolute blast.
• The ending feels like the episode ran out of time and just needed to wrap up the plutonium plot, so they just grab the guys and the story ends with what's required, IE Jimmy-Skinner and Skinner interacting.
• Okay, I like that Jimmy and Yves both figured out Carol was trans and just didn't care, that seems positive.
• The Gunmen using the money they got from the Russian reprint of the story to buy back Jimmy's car is cute.
• As always these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Being trans is tough and expensive (I'm basically in the process of buying a whole new wardrobe) so check it out.

Future Celebrity Watch:

Tony Denison, who plays the undercover FBI Agent, has already done a lengthy run on a show called Crime Story but he was about to get a main cast role on The Closer in a few years. He also just did a long run on Major Crimes so I think people just like casting him in cop shows.

This is stretching a little bit too, but Peter Lucas who plays the Russian dude played Smithy in Inland Empire and since I spent so much of this review talking about how much Twin Peaks means to me, I felt obligated to mention it.

I would mention that Catherine Dent who plays Carol had a major role on The Shield but I already mentioned it when she appeared in The X-Files episode Trevor.