Ten Thirteen’s fourth series, The Lone Gunmen, first premiered 25 years ago, six months before 9/11/2001 — with that now infamous pilot episode that involves a false flag operation from the US military-industrial complex to fly a plane into the World Trade Center and increase arms sales in the aftermath. The series would go on to be much more humorous after that pilot, with a type of humor that was not to everybody’s taste, more like some season 6 episodes than Darin Morgan episodes, but the photography and the Vancouver setting were unmistakable Ten Thirteen. It premiered during The X-Files’ season 8 and lasted half a season with 13 episodes. It was not picked up for a season 2 and the series would be given a finale with the controversial “Jump The Shark” in TXF’s season 9.
The Television Academy has an interview with show co-creators Vince Gilligan and Frank Spotnitz (the third member of the John Gilnitz trio, John Shiban, is missing!) to reflect on the show. Here are a few highlights:
Spotnitz: I actually think we wanted to do The Lone Gunmen [earlier] and it was delayed by Harsh Realm.
Spotnitz: I also think, looking back on it, it was season eight of The X-Files — we had already hit our peak, and we were already on the way down in terms of the mania for The X-Files. It was probably two or three seasons too late to do that spinoff. If we had done it in season four or five [during The X-Files’ run], we might have had a different reception. 9/11, in my view, really killed The X-Files. The mood of the country was no longer government conspiracy and all that.
[Entirely agreed that the spin-off came too late. The Lone Gunmen-focused episodes of TXF were during seasons 5 and 6, and this is when a spin-off should have started.]
[One thing that neither of them mention is that TXF season 8 was given a break between airing “This Is Not Happening” and “DeadAlive” in order to accommodate the first episodes of TLG. To introduce a break during what was perhaps TXF’s peak emotional moment and have viewers follow a humorous spin-off was not the producers’ best decision, and probably hurt viewership too. Of course all of these are past considerations, things would have gone very differently with today’s streaming format, and TLG is the kind of niche show that might have found its audience eventually.]
[I think this is the first time we hear that it was delayed because of “Harsh Realm”. As good as that one was, we can now blame it for first cancelling “Millennium” season 4, and for postponing “The Lone Gunmen” further into an untimely period.]
Spotnitz: There’s a story I’ve never told, but I feel like I can tell it now that it’s been 25 years and Fox has been sold to Disney. The deal that Tom and Dean and Bruce made — Fox screwed up. They paid them way more money than they meant to pay them. So, when the show got canceled, Vince, John, and I wanted to have a sendoff for them. We wanted to write “Jump the Shark.” Fox did not want to bring them back. They really tried to stop us; they were so mad. In their mind, they’d overpaid them for The Lone Gunmen. They were absolutely against it. And we just said, “We’re doing it, so you’ll have nothing to broadcast if we force their hand.”
Spotnitz: I do regret that that episode didn’t end with a laugh — it just ends with sadness. That was a mistake. If you’re going to do that, then you’ve got to bring back the joy that the characters represented, and we didn’t.
[Spotnitz said in the “Jump the Shark” DVD commentary that Fox was very difficult an only gave them the greenlight to do the episode when they decided to have the Lone Gunmen die. It was a heroic death all right, but this gives a whole another vengeful layer to this: the Lone Gunmen died because of some clerical error!]
Gilligan: I’ve said this a lot: You don’t know if it’s going to be hit. You don’t know if it’s going to be a failure. That’s what keeps it interesting and keeps your guts churning.
Gilligan: You don’t learn anything from success. And I’m not being funny, I’m being 100% serious. When something’s a success, you try to say, “It was because of this, it was because of that.” But you’re always wrong. There’s nothing I would call a mistake about The Lone Gunmen — not even time slots or any of that. You just do your best, and everybody did their best. I’m as proud as I can be of The Lone Gunmen, and to this day, I’d love for people to [read] this and say, “What show are they talking about?” And then look it up online and buy it. We put out DVDs.
Gilligan: We were lucky to get 13 [episodes]. Nowadays, it’d be six. I just couldn’t be more proud of it.
[I personally don’t think “The Lone Gunmen” was a very strong show, especially because of the way it handled its humor, and I’ve always thought it would have been a stronger show if it had half-hour instead of full-hour episodes. Given the quality work that Gilligan became famous for, it’s interesting that he still defends “The Lone Gunmen” so earnestly. It is undeniable that that show had a lot of heart, both in front of the camera and behind it. It is true that the popular success of a show relies on many factors that are conjunctural and difficult to pin down or purposefully recreate. Let us think about that when we consider the successes and failures also of TXF’s revival seasons, or the potential success or failure of the proposed TXF reboot.]
Let Gilligan have the final words about “The Lone Gunmen” and its heroes:
Gilligan: It’s just timely 25 years later. We need The Lone Gunmen more than ever. Three guys who, trying to save democracy, save the rule of law. God bless them. I want to think they’re still out there somewhere.
