If I'd written this as soon as I'd finished watching this episode I'd have marked it 10 out of 10 – it was gripping, it held my attention so thoroughly and it was exciting. As I'm writing several hours later, unfortunately several things have sunk in – the episode is what in the UK would be called "fan-wank" – if you don't know it means an episode gratuitously designed to thrill fans with little consideration for the casual viewer. I didn't watch any of the Lone Gunmen series, so I wasn't really up to speed on who was who and what was going on, but that didn't actually detract from my enjoyment, so all well and good. Like they did with Millennium, this can be seen as an episode – the final episode of the lone gunmen – their swan song. I found the story exciting enough, but their deaths were so needless – they could have trapped the baddie and escaped themselves – they didn't make any attempt to duck under the closing door, it was so pointless, so it robbed their noble act of most of the nobility it deserved. Also, the white out at the end of what should have been their death scene left me dissatisfied and it seemed clumsy and dissipated my growing tension and emotion. I was surprised our agent heroes hadn't rushed in at the end to witness their demise. Oh, and Scully's token appearance was a few seconds at the graveside when she delivers another unrealistic and over-sentimental and totally insincere line of purple prose. And just for the record, love, you didn't like them at all! That's SO unrealistic! All these complaints aside I'm still giving the episode 9 out of 10, because most of it was just thoroughly enjoyable.
Review of Jump the Shark
