The Lone Gunmen origin story! YES! And some somewhat confusing misdirection, but that's OK, because despite nothing really being resolved by the end, we see the formation of the Lone Gunmen and get some interesting back story on the three of them.
1989 in the biggest caption ever to appear on this show. It's not just 1989 a little bit, it's 1989!
And there's a big computer an electronics show that by pure coincidence, Byers, Langly and Frohike are all attending, though Byers is unknown to the other two at the time, but they sure don't like that he works for the FCC. (WHAT.) I guess that background explains the suit. I really didn't expect to see him with a federal government job, pretty much ever.
Frohike and Langly clearly know each other and are pretty competitive as entrepreneurial hackers with their own devices that may or may not catch fire.
When Susanne first arrived, it was obvious something was up, because she was acting all shifty. I was pretty sure the 'boyfriend' would turn out to be Mulder, and I initially thought he really had been her boyfriend and maybe did father a child with her, but I just couldn't see someone like Mulder kidnapping a child like she claimed. Something was fishy about her story.
And by fishy, I mean completely fabricated. But fabricated by whom is the question. Obviously there are a lot of layers of lies going on, and given that Mr Coverup himself, Mr X, shows up, we'll probably never find out the whole story.
I could believe that in this universe, the government and a private corporation would be willing to test this chemical product on an unsuspecting populace, as we've seen before in episodes like 'Blood' and 'Wetwired'. But I also considered the idea that Susanne was actually doing her job - that is, she was supposed to be leading these people into the warehouse as part of the experiment. After all, she's known to tell lies, so why not lie entirely about her motives?
I think that turned out not to be the case, unless X's pickup at the end was all part of her coverup, but I don't think so, especially since she did talk to a newspaper. I do think it's more likely that, while not explicitly stated in this episode, the story was one of the first published by The Lone Gunmen. After all, they believed it and realised there was a story to tell. Not that anyone would believe them, either, but hey, it's a start.
I'm a little confused as to why X let the Lone Gunmen go, though. They had clearly seen enough to potentially expose the conspiracy, but I guess he just figured they were laughably incompetent. I was kind of hoping we'd get some indication in that scene of who X was, but no one addressed him by name or title. In fact, I don't think he even interacted with any of the other cleaners on the scene. He just sort of slipped in, did what he needed to do, and slipped away again.
This episode explores paranoia, like a lot of episodes in the series, and ever since it was indicated in Susanne's file that she was prone to paranoia, it was hard to take anything she said seriously. I figured she was under the influence of the chemical she had helped develop, and it was making her act this way. But the dental implant pretty much confirmed that at least part of her story was true.
And then the ending. The case is mysteriously closed, which certainly intrigues Mulder, who doesn't yet seem to be working on the X-Files, but is just another FBI agent. I wonder if this was intended to be as much his origin story as it was the Lone Gunmen. After all, discovering that there's a surprise government conspiracy to keep certain cases from being investigated is exactly the sort of thing Mulder would be looking for. It might help lead him to his sister.
Also, why would they print out the encoded document? What purpose could that possibly serve? Isn't it better to transfer it electronically and try to decrypt it some other way than by hand?
Also also, Dig Dug. Yes.
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