Plot Summary by
Erynn
Our story opens with one Alex
Goldsmith, hacker extraordinaire (also known as Double Bogey or
DB), whacking golf balls from a balcony in the middle of the
night, tears running down his cheeks. He whacks one ball into
the windshield of an expensive black car, just before he's shot
and killed.
The Gunmen can't afford to pick
up this week's issue on the illegal Japanese whaling fleet
because their printer won't give them the issue on credit.
Langly suggests that their solution is to resort to Bodacious
Babes on the front cover, but this meets with Byers'
disapproval, backed, unwillingly, by Frohike. At this point,
Yves appears at the Gunmen's office, announcing DB's death, and
send the boys off to find out why he was assassinated.
They go to visit Mrs.Goldsmith,
to ask about Alex's activities. She paints him as a saint, but
Byers suspects otherwise. Langly, in the meantime is sick as a
dog from not knowing how to siphon gas without sucking the pipe.
We get the obligatory vomit joke, as Langly pukes his guts into
Alex's golf bag, signed by all the players at that year's US
Open, but in the ensuing scuffle to fake the washed off
signatures, Byers finds a check for one million dollars made out
to Alex from a source they're not familiar with. As the Gunmen
make their break, Mrs. Goldsmith screams as she discovers her
son's violated treasure.
Our Heroes meet one James Bond,
the coach of a blind football team and the head of a charity
called POE -- the organization that issued the check -- who has
been set up as the patsy in an international arms deal incident,
involving the shipping of toxic gas to the former Soviet
republic of Belamirsk for use in its civil war. Langly, showing
that he'll give his all for a story, demonstrates his Superior
Hacking Manliness to the POE thug, and is kidnapped to replace
the dead super-hacker. During the process of this hack, the
time tick for the episode is revealed: Langly is grabbed on the
afternoon of July 9th, 1999.
Yves reveals to Byers and Frohike
(during a rather... slashy phone conversation) that Langly has
been kidnapped, and meets them at the scene where our hapless
Blondie has been taken. Upon debate about the best ways to enter
the barred and walled consulate, Byers hits upon the idea of
sending a familiar face up the walkway... Jimmy Bond.
Once they get Mr. Bond to the
site, he storms up to the gate and starts shouting to be let in,
to see his "anonymous benefactors." After spilling a
good bit of information about the Gunmen, Jimmy gets whacked
with Alex's driver, and dragged into the compound. He is, very
conveniently, tossed into the room next door to Langly -- which
apparently was all part of their plan. After smashing
through a door panel, Jimmy passes Langly a "ghost
modem" so that he can contact his compadres,
undetected. As Langly is checking out the device (which
apparently includes some sort of camera), the Evil Creep shows
up to check on Langly.
Evil Creep wants Langly to hack
into broker accounts and run a sort of "pump and
dump" scheme to drain millions from the stock market and
put it into a Belamirsk government account. Langly plans to
refuse, but Yves tells him to go with it, in part, at least, to
stall the Belamirsk diplomats until they can effect a rescue.
Langly goes for the hack, and
produces the results the diplomat wants. Now, it's time for
Langly to get paid -- with a bullet! Fortunately for us,
Langly's blonde butt is saved by a phone call from the Belamirsk
Minister of Finance, who's all hot under the collar because the
ruling party's bank account is empty. Yes, the slippery Yves has
swiped the cash, faked Langly's hack, smooched Byers on the
cheek and wished him luck, then vamoosed while the bad guys
argue.
Jimmy gets himself out of the
room and down onto the ground, one story below. He tries
to persuade Langly to jump from the balcony. Unfortunately, it
was demonstrated rather earlier in the episode that he's
somewhat easily distractable. And, true to form, Frohike
distracts him the moment poor Langly jumps, and Blondie hits the
dirt. Frohike and Bond heft him up and drag him to the gate with
the angry Belamirskians hot on their tail, flinging lead.
Langly, in a fit of doing the
right thing, returns the million dollar check to Mrs. Goldsmith,
who is overjoyed. As Langly observes, "a million dollars
forgives a lot." Unfortunately, they're still out of gas,
and have no money for this issue, much less to rescue last
week's issue.
When they arrive home in Maryland
(I assume they did more than a little gas siphoning on the way
-- I doubt they pushed the van home from Long Island), they're
astonished to find Our Boy Bond sitting on their warehouse steps
with last week's press run just waiting for mailing. Looks like
Jimmy Bond has found his very own Lost Cause at last.
Guest Stars:
Alexander Kalugin
Hiro Kanagawa - old XF alum
Kevan Ohtsji
Christina Jastrzembska
Edward Hart
Oleg Palme
Shawn Stewart
Demord Dunn
- Guest starring as the
martial arts expert Toshiro is the Vancouver actor Kevin
Ohtsji (oht-SOO-jee). Unfortunately, we only get to see him
in the teaser.
- According to the interview
in SciFi magazine for April, 2001, Dean Haglund notes that
Jimmy Bond is the Gunmen's "sugar daddy," while
Yves Adele Harlow is more like their "Moriarty."
- The Lone Gunmen's van
plates are of Maryland registry, TSD 596
- This episode took place on
and around July 9, 1999, according to one computer screen.
- Hiro Kanagawa, the whaling
fleet owner, was Dr. Yonechi from the X Files episode Synchrony,
and Peter Tanaka, a vulcanology student, in the episode Firewalker.
Thanks Sean!
Ratings
-- From Inside.com
Sunday's Lone Gunmen managed a 4.3 rating, 10 share among adults 18-49 and a 5.4/8 in households, according to preliminary ''fast affiliate'' Nielsens. That was good enough for second place in the 9-10 p.m. hour among adults 18-49, behind only ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (preliminary 4.8/11 in 18-49, 12.0/18 in homes). But The Lone Gunmen embarrassed Fox by finishing just a 10th of a rating point ahead of CBS's older-skewing competition, the Roma Downey-Tim Matheson TV movie Second Honeymoon (preliminary 4.2/10 in 18-49, 9.5/15 in homes).
