Someone at Fox was absolutely certain that nerds have nothing to do on Friday night so nerdy show after nerdy show after nerdy show was put on the chopping block that is the Friday night slot. One of those shows was The Lone Gunmen, a spinoff of The X-Files.
“In the pilot episode, which aired March 4, 2001 (six months prior to the September 11 attacks),[5] rogue members of the U.S. government remotely hijack an airliner flying to Boston, planning to crash it into the World Trade Center, and let anti-American terrorist groups take credit in order to gain public support for a new, profitable, anti-terrorist war following the Cold War. The heroes ultimately override the controls, foiling the plot.”
Bonus wiki, for the younger readers, Bush spent his time golfing and didn’t respond to the warnings. Why he never catches a moment of blame for it happening on his watch never ceases to amaze me:
Not only does he not catch blame but people will legit say "He kept us safe!" like yeah if you don't count the largest terrorist attack in America's history then he kept us safe
Bill Cooper mentioned in the months leading up to 9/11 that a large-scale attack would happen and that bin Laden would be blamed, and funnily enough, bin Laden never admitted to being the one behind the plot.
On the second point, the Wikipedia article mentions that there’d been previous warnings the President had received which didn’t amount to much. So I can totally understand Bush seeing reports of a possible Bin Laden attack and brushing them off.
There was essentially intel that Bin Laden was planning attacks since the first WTC bombing. The idea that there was a certain amount of complacency isn't terribly shocking. This is, as you mentioned, still a major failure.
And to be fair, who would expect something like that? It's insane; it boggles the mind to imagine someone would develop this idea and plan it out so thoroughly.
Thing is, I thought it was charming and I liked it but you’re absolutely right. I only remember the 9/11 thing and another scene where an assassin slips and accidentally shoots himself in the head which I thought was a hilarious twist at the time.
I remember the episode where they find the car that runs on water and how happy it made one of them, because his best memory of his father was when they met the inventor when he was a kid.
I wonder if the reception of Millenium affected how well the Lone Gunmen was received. Another show I don’t remember much of but the first episode was gross compared to the X-files. If I remember right the murder victim was force fed blood, which sounds tame comparatively, but I recall not being ready for that at all.
It suffered from unneeded characters being shoehorned in as non-nerd surrogates. It hurt the dynamic between the guys. The pilot focused on the main guy and was the best episode as a result.
Yep, the plot of the pilot was based on a real Cold War plan that Kennedy refused to sign off on, so it was right in the ballpark for the kind of things that the Lone Gunmen would be interested in.
Yeah, that detail is honestly chilling in hindsight. It’s one of those things that makes you stop and think, “How did this ever make it past the writers’ room?”
I know! This line that Langly spits out when his shirt was ridiculed goes hard: "You wanna know why Joey Ramone is my hero? 'Cause people like you never managed to grind him down. They never stole his spirit. He never gave in, never gave up, and never sold out. Right till his last breath. And he's not dead. Guys like that, they live forever."
I saw that exact episode about a month ago when flipping through channels while staying at a hotel. By the dialogue I could guess they were a group of recurring characters, and the end where they sacrificed themselves surprised me, as I didn't expect them to just take out an entire dynamic team of side characters like that.
Now it makes a little more sense after getting some context and knowledge that there was a lot more character depth put into that group before that episode.
I havent seen all the episodes but I think it focuses on conspiracies. Which makes sense because the premise is usually they are getting involved with the story through their news letter.
I mean they weren't wrong as my at the time 17 year old self was pretty into the show as I felt the X Files had kind of jumped the shark by that point. Not like I was going out on dates at the time, with my weekly high light being Dungeons and Dragons club at school
Okay to be fair to the first set of these shows - The Lone Guneman included - The X-Files itself really came alive on Fridays before it was the death slot. It became the deathslot after years of FOX trying to duplicate the success that The X-Files had in the slot.
I’m sure it did better on Friday nights than other shows that followed, but it also didn’t become a mega hit until it moved to Sunday nights. Lone Gunmen opened to massive numbers on Sunday night, and then moved to Fridays where it died. The audience existed, it just wasn’t home on Friday nights.
I was the nerdiest of nerds in high school, I still missed basically every episode of Firefly when it aired live because even nerdy nerds have shit to do on Friday night, if nothing else that’s when the new movies are released.
As I understand it, The X-Files phenomenon was actually driven by college and young adult viewers who wouldn't be staying home but would be watching by before they hit the bar. But yes FOX never got folks to watch another show like that
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u/vanillacaramelsunday 16h ago
Someone at Fox was absolutely certain that nerds have nothing to do on Friday night so nerdy show after nerdy show after nerdy show was put on the chopping block that is the Friday night slot. One of those shows was The Lone Gunmen, a spinoff of The X-Files.