Jump the Shark (The X Files)

Events

The episode begins with Morris Fletcher (Michael McKean) on a boat in the Bahamas, where he is accosted by armed men and his vessel is blown up. When he is rescued and detained, he approaches FBI agents Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish) and John Doggett (Robert Patrick) with information related to the super-soldiers in exchange for his release. Doggett and Reyes turn to The Lone Gunmen when Fletcher provides an alleged photo of the super soldier, which The Lone Gunmen recognize as being Yves Adele Harlow (Zuleikha Robinson), a fellow hacker who went missing a year ago. The Gunmen refuse to believe the evidence, especially when they find that Fletcher provided it, although the agents continue to pursue the trail.

Meanwhile, Harlow murders a biology professor, cuts out an organ and disposes of it in a furnace. After the Gunmen capture her, she reveals that he had been experimenting with the immune system of sharks and had been grafting pieces of shark onto his body in order to become a living host to a biological weapon. His research had been funded by Yves's arms dealing father, who had commissioned Fletcher to find her and prevent her from stopping his biological terrorism plot. She further informs them that there is another host, whom she is trying to identify and locate before he can unleash his deadly payload.

Once Fletcher realizes that he has been used by Harlow's father, he teams with the Gunmen to help Harlow find the second bioterrorist. After a few false starts and chases, the Lone Gunmen corner the bioterrorist with only a few minutes before his virus is due to be released. They realize that they lack the time to destroy his virus-filled organ and therefore pull a fire alarm, causing large emergency doors to seal shut, simultaneously containing the virus and entrapping them with it. Their sacrifice earns them a final resting place in Arlington National Cemetery, where Fletcher, Doggett, Reyes, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), Harlow and Jimmy Bond (Stephen Snedden) pay their respects to them.

Retcon

In the comic book adaptation of the series The X-Files Season 10—which takes place after the events of The X-Files: I Want to Believe—it is revealed that the Lone Gunmen are alive and well, having faked their deaths during the events of "Jump the Shark". The group was aided by the FBI and have since been working underground, aiding the US government; for instance, Langly mentions that he was responsible for the Stuxnet virus in 2010.

Mulder later makes reference to The Lone Gunmen's survival in the tenth season episode, "Babylon".

Production

"Jump the Shark" was written by Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, and Frank Spotnitz; it was directed by Cliff Bole. The episode proved difficult to make. After the cancellation of The Lone Gunmen television series, which aired in 2001, Fox reportedly "hated [the] characters". Executive producer and co-writer Frank Spotnitz had to fight to get the episode made; the studio informed Spotnitz that they did not want to bring the characters back in any capacity in the ninth season. Actor Bruce Harwood later explained that "I think if the studio objected to anything, it was wasting time on our characters long enough to kill us off." Co-writer Gilligan later recalled "The Lone Gunmen was still kind of an open wound for me." Thus, the episode was crafted as a way to wrap up the series. Due to the nature of the episode—which effectively works as a tie-in—various long-term characters from both The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen make cameo appearances.

The episode title is a humorous reference to the phrase "jumping the shark", coined when Fonzie did a water ski jump of a shark pen on Happy Days, which is used to describe shows that have made a desperate attempt to regain viewership after they have reached their peak and started to decline in quality. Executive producer Chris Carter said that the title was tongue-in-cheek, and further stated that it was their "way of lowering the boom on anybody who thought that it did". He further stated that the series was "good" until the end, even after the departure of David Duchovny as Fox Mulder. According to IGN, the episode's title was a homage to the popular website Jump the Shark. In fact, during the commentary for "Jump the Shark", Vince Gilligan makes a direct reference to the website.

Various plotlines leaked before the episode's release, the most notable being the death of the Lone Gunmen. The choice to kill off the trio was controversial; Gilligan himself later admitted that "I still think we made the wrong choice on that one." Spotnitz later said, "I can't say I regret killing them off, as you know, no one really dies in The X-Files [...] But I do feel tonally it was a mistake to end the episode on such a somber note. I wish we'd ended it on a laugh or smile." The actors who played The Lone Gunmen complimented the script. Harwood admitted that the episode would have either featured the trio's death or would have featured them "walk[ing] off into the sunset without hobo bags over our shoulders." Ultimately, he concluded that "I was glad we were killed off in the end". Dean Haglund said that he "liked the way we were sent off", and called the ending "cool".

Reception

"Jump the Shark" first aired on the Fox network in the United States on April 21, 2002. The episode later aired in the United Kingdom on Sky One and later on BBC One on 23 February 2003. The episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 5.1, meaning that it was seen by 5.1% of the nation's estimated households and was viewed by 5.38 million households, and 8.6 million viewers. "Jump the Shark" was the 58th most watched episode of television that aired during the week ending April 21.

The episode received mixed to negative reviews from television critics. Aaron Kinney from Salon magazine said that the episode title showed that the creators at least still had a sense of humor, but that the episode demonstrated some of the flaws that caused the series to jump the shark in the first place: "cheesy melodrama, deathly slow pacing, and a lack of coherence". John Keegan from Critical Myth was also negative about the episode and awarded it a 4 out of 10. He called it "one of the worst episodes of the season", and hoped that it was no indication of what the series finale was going to be like. Furthermore, Keegan criticized the fact that David Duchovny did not make a cameo appearance "either full frame or in the distance", given his history with the Lone Gunmen. Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode one star out of five, and noted that "there's nothing celebratory" about the entry. The two were highly critical of the episode's conclusion, calling it "such a bland way of dying that for a moment, you feel you must have missed the point". Shearman and Pearson, furthermore, argued that "The Lone Gunmen deserved better. No, worse than that—we deserved better." M.A. Crang, in his book Denying the Truth: Revisiting The X-Files after 9/11, criticized the "goofy tone" of the episode, saying it felt "very out of place" within the context of the series.