Crossover: "Homicide","Law And Order: Special Victims Unit", "The Lone Gunmen" and "The X-Files"

Homicide: Life On The Street, Law And Order: Special Victims Unit, The Lone Gunmen and The X-Files

Homicide: Life On The Street (1993-1999)
Law And Order: Special Victims Unit (1999- )
The Lone Gunmen (2001)
The X-Files (1993-2002)
Type: Crossover
Group 2

This is where crossovers get messy. You get a character on one show who goes and does a guest spot on another show. Fine. But then the same character goes and gets a NEW show. Now in terms of keeping track, its sort of a double crossover. For example, Cheers Frasier Crane did a guest spot over on Wings. Okay, that's a Cheers/Wings Crossover. But then after that Frasier gets his own show. So now, isn't that Wings thing also a Frasier/Wings crossover. Only someone as hopelessly mired in TV nonsense as myself would sit and ponder such things and thus damage my fragile brain. Oh well. On to the case at hand.

Or should I say the file at hand. Appropriately enough an X-File. During the 1997-1998 season of the X-Files, the producers of the show ran into a problem. While working on the show, they were also making an X-File feature film. Such a busy schedule for the stars of the show meant it would really help production of both the show and the film if an episode could be made that did not center around its main characters Agents Mulder and Scully.

The solution was to right an episode about the supporting character of The Lone Gunmen: a trio of conspiracy theorists who often aid Agents Mulder and Scully on their quest for the truth. The episode was about how these three misfits first found each other and featured only a cameo role for David Duchovny as Agent Mulder. It also featured another more unusual cameo in the form of Richard Belzer playing his character of Detective Munch from NBC's Homicide: Life On The Street. The story starts with the Lone Gunmen arrested and in a Baltimore area jail. They are being questioned by the ubiquitous Detective Munch about something clearly suspicious that has happened. This leads into a flashback of the main story of how they got thrown into jail and how they first met. This was the first official full blown crossover between shows on different networks. Very cool. Apparently the X-File guys just realized that the story happened to be centered in an area near Baltimore, someone got the wild idea for the crossover and the rest is history. As it turns out, Richard Belzer is quite the conspiracy theorist himself and a huge fan of the X-Files so he was thrilled at the chance to do the show.

Now, back where I started this summary. After having done this crossover, Homicide was cancelled. The next season NBC started a new series called Law And Order: Special Victims Unit, a spin off of the very successful Law And Order. Richard Belzer's Detective Munch moved from Baltimore to New York and joined this new show as a regular character. Then 2001 brought the X-File spin off series The Lone Gunmen (of which this episode seems almost a pilot). Given these facts, even though at the time the show was originally intended as a Homide/X-Files crossover, it is now actually a Homicide/Law And Order: Special Victims Unit/The Lone Gunmen/X-Files crossover. And as a note to the folks at called Law And Order: Special Victims Unit: shorten your frickin' title! It's a bitch to type over and over again!

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