Case 8.5, File 02: Bond, Jimmy Bond

AKA: There Are Just People With The Name "James Bond" Out There, Right?

One of the first things a spinoff has to do is get its own cast up and running. Leeching too heavily or too obviously off the main cast can cripple both shows, as you're pulling too much from the original's fabric and risking falling prey to existing cast dynamics. It's worth noting that one of the more successful spinoffs of the 21st century (Angel) only pulled one other main character, and a tertiary character a bit down the line. And even if The Lone Gunmen wanted to pull characters from The X-Files, it just plain doesn't have that many secondary characters it can spare. The writers have to create their own cast from scratch.

Our episode opens with a Japanese businessman having been kidnapped by ecoterrorists, only for Frohike to bust him and save him with kung fu. And in case that doesn't clue you in, the whole thing was a setup for the businessman to reveal which of his boats are whaling boats. After that, and a brief check in with some random hacker golfing off a balcony and then getting shot, we start our story proper...with the Lone Gunmen unable to pay the printers for their last issue. Kind of a step down, tension wise.

But we're right back when Yves shows up and tells them about a guy named Alex Goldsmith, who is the dude who got shot, apparently in a drug deal gone wrong. Yves thinks that's weird, since Goldsmith doesn't seem like the type, so the Gunmen head off to investigate. And after a few weird little sidebars (having to syphon gas, meeting Alex's mom and then Langley vomiting in Alex's autographed golf bag), they find a million dollar check for Alex from a group called POE.

So they dig into POE and find out that it's a charitable organization run by a guy named James Bond. Now that's obviously fake, so they follow the guy who looks like he's in charge and find...that POE is a charitable organization running a football team for the blind (just go with it or we'll be here all day). Oh and the guy in charge is just named Jimmy Bond. That's just his name. That's something right, that's a joke? Anyway, Langley decides to head back to POE's office on his own and when he gets caught by a mysterious eastern European guy finds him, he says that he's there to do Alex Goldsmith's old job and immediately gets kidnapped.

Believe it or not, this scene turns out to not be totally on the level.

But at this point Yves shows up and fills in Byers and Frohike on what's going on; POE is a front for a new country that broke off the USSR and is using POE and Jimmy as a front to get some money to buy nerve gas to put down a rebel faction, and is using Langley to hack the money they need. Their solution to this is to tell Jimmy and have him go up the country's embassy to yell at them. So...of course he immediately gets kidnapped too. That's good this time though, cause he did it to sneak some tech into Langley.

So Langley and Yves use the tech to make it look like Langley has stolen the money for them, while Jimmy just generally busts through doors and eventually gets Langley out by...jumping off a balcony. Well that's one way. Oh and Yves steals all the money from the country's banks, leaving the government broke. Good for her. Anyway, they return to the check to Goldsmith's mom and head back home, only to find that Jimmy has decided to be their financial benefactor. So that's nice, right?

Bond, Jimmy Bond isn't as good an episode as the Pilot, but it's a fun little conspiracy story which I guess is enough. But it's pretty clear that this episode is less concerned with being a fun standalone story and more concerned with doing a bit of series maintenance so they can just keep the show humming along. And I'm not totally against that, in concept, every show needs to do upkeep sometimes. It's just kind of disappointing given that I know we only have 13 episodes of The Lone Gunmen.

"Okay, probably shouldn't have picked up a beeping ball, that's on me."

The big new addition is Jimmy and he is, on the surface, intended to solve a problem that comes about from the shift from The X-Files. See, the Lone Gunmen's outsider status may give them a different perspective, but it also raises the question of how they afford to go on adventures, since they lack access to FBI salaries and expense reimbursement. True, a certain amount of handwaving is acceptable on a TV show (no, I don't need to know how Kramer affords his apartment) but it's the sort of thing you like to address. Enter, Jimmy Bond, benefactor.

And it works, because Jimmy is an entertaining character. He's a kind of character we don't really have a lot of in The X-Files' world, an overly sincere dork, and the actor sells it. The football for the blind thing is a little self consciously quirky, but his big dumb sincere belief in makes it work, especially bouncing off Frohike's completely cynical disdain for the concept. The condescension the Gunmen treat him with could sour the whole thing, but he's also clearly more successful and he's more conventionally handsome, so it feels less like they're making fun of someone dumber than them and more like snarking at someone higher on the totem pole.

The other thing I find interesting is that we can see some of the things that I think would cause the series issues going forward. The series is, let's be honest, occasionally very quirky and niche. The episode opens with a lengthy homage to bad 80s action movies and while I love that, I can see why it wouldn't appeal to everyone. The X-Files also overdosed, kind of badly, on quirky comedy episodes and was moving away from them in Season 8, so I'm not totally sure shunting off all the quirky, weird episodes (and all the humor in general) off into the spinoff was the best idea.

Another issue, both now and especially at the time, was that I think that for a 2nd episode it has too many threads from the pilot. The whole subplot with Yves relies on knowing the events of the pilot and I'm not sure that's the best idea. This may seem like an odd thing to be writing in 2020, where every TV show is trying to have a big interconnected plot, but this was 2001. Lost, the big gamechanger in this regard was still 3 years away and even nerd-aimed series with overarching plots like Buffy were still using the Monster of the Week format. You need to get Yves in somehow, but hanging that, and Langely's motivation, on a call back to a previous episode this early is...overconfident.

"Okay probably shouldn't have shown off my hacking skills to the bad guy, that's on me."

But now that I've complained for a bit, I'd like to say that, for my money, this is a pretty fun episode. It's got some story issues (even with the character work support from the previous episode, the entire 3rd act hangs on Langely doing something completely nonsensical) and its maybe a little rushed in spots, but I definitely enjoyed it. Much like the previous episode, it's leaning more into physical comedy than I expected, usually in the form of Frohike getting hurt. The quirky comedy tone consistently runs the risk of being annoying, but so far they managed to walk that line pretty well. Mostly, the whole bit with Langely vomiting in Goldsmith's golf bag is hacky.

I also really like that they put more emphasis on Frohike and Langely; My memories of the character focus in the show is fuzzy, but the previous episode plus Byers being more traditionally handsome made me worry that the show would become Byers and His Two Wacky Friends. But they actually give both of them a lot more to do this episode, and tie it back into their personalities pretty well; Langely is overconfident so he makes the decision to show off his hacking skills to bad guys and gets captured. And I like Frohike's interactions with Yves, they bounce off each other well, and Frohike's casual confidence makes him seem more badass that Langely's overconfidence ever could. I'm not surprised he got chosen to fake being into martial arts, he pulls it off. Even the running gag about them having to siphon gas works for the characters, even if the results are kinda hacky.

As I said in the previous review, the temptation to start autopsying a show that flopped even while I'm only a handful of episodes in is overwhelming. It's like solving a mystery, and every minor piece of evidence seems important. But I feel like that's unhelpful to taking each episode on its own; The Lone Gunmen might not have lasted very long, but I remember liking it, so rather than try to figure out why the show didn't last longer, I'm just going to try and engage with the series as is.

I feel like that promise will last approximately half a paragraph of the next review.

Case Notes:

• The cold opening feels like something out of a bad mid-80s action film and I mean that as a compliment.
• The guy playing the businessman looked familiar and it turns out I'm correct, he was in a couple of previous X-Files episodes, specifically Firewalker and Synchrony. He's in an upcoming episode too.
• Frohike walking through the door and then doing wire-fu is funny as hell, and it kind of tracks with me that he would speak Japanese. I know he doesn't, but still. Actor is rocking that gold kimono too.
• The cold open turning out to not be a dream but instead be a setup is a really really fun subversion, and it leads to some fun physical comedy.
• The post-opening-credits scene (lukewarm open?) is a neat little scene. I like the restrained way the assassin kills the dude hitting the gold balls, and how annoyed he looks that the guy deleted his hard drive.
• I like that their solution to erasing the autographs on the golf bag is to just write out the names themselves though.
• Not sure why Alex's mother's screams are a very obvious stock sound effect. We don't need a Sheryl Lee shriek, can we not just get the actress to scream?
• I feel like if my son got shot to death, I might want to note that he get a million dollar check a few days before.
• I get why they're skeptical, but there have to be people actually named James Bond, right?
• It took me way too long to figure out that the loud beeping at the football game was diegetic.
• Langley's next step for the investigation is just to walk into the POE offices and sit down at someone's computer and then when he gets caught, his decision is to show off his hacking skills. Not surprised he got caught.
• Jimmy just gives Byers and Frohike a full tank of gas. I like Jimmy a lot.
• I feel like the attempt to make Langely going back to POE about how far he'll go for the truth was a mistake, or at least needed one more scene to set up.
• Yves teaming up with Byers and Frohike is fun,
• Jimmy's reaction to finding out POE is fake is a lot of fun, he's so achingly sincere about blind football. And him thinking the Lone Gunmen is a hunting and fishing magazine is a good running gag.
• Jimmy's plan to escape is just to break down a door and jump out a window, love it. The blitheness with which Jimmy says "I jumped, it's not that far," is just excellent.
• Wait, can Alex's mom actually use the check? I guess so? Oh well.
• As always these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out so that you can  become the Jimmy Bond to my Lone Gunmen. Oh shit, should I make a patron tier called Jimmy Bond?