Case 8.5, File 04: Like Water For Octane

AKA: Oh Shit, I Just Realized I've Never Seen Like Water For Chocolate

One of the core issues The X-Files (and by extension, The Lone Gunmen) has to work around is that the heroes can't actually win, which is a bigger problem than you might think. Mulder and Scully (or Doggett or Reyes) can't actually get proof of aliens or monster, and the Lone Gunmen can't get real proof of their various conspiracies, or the world will change in ways the show isn't willing to deal with, so the series has to walk the line of having a satisfying story, while still maintaining the status quo, which is hard to maintain.

Our episode kicks off with a bunch of flashbacks to the Gunmen's childhood (Langly was a computer nerd, Frohike an overconfident dork and Byers so square that you could use him to measure right angles) while Jimmy monologues about heroes and also fails to remember history. We then move to the present with Byers heading down to the Freedom of Information Office to check on the status of all of his FOIA requests. And against all the odds, he actually got a box from them!

Which turns out to contain a brick. With a single piece of paper under it. But after a brief interlude where Jimmy accidentally shreds it, they discover that the piece of paper refers to a guy named Mizer who Frohike knew when he was a kid. Oh and who invented a water powered car. Probably should have led with that. Anyhoo, they decide that they must have received the paper on purpose and decide to go looking for the car. And an oil company guy has hired Yves to find the car too, that's important.

So Frohike and Byers go and see Mizer's daughter (who once threw Frohike out and called the cops, and is on the verge of doing it again) and she eventually agrees to let them see Mizer's notes and they eventually discover a picture of Mizer with their former next door neighbor, which is their next clue. Meanwhile, Yves goes and visits the FOI guy and then later Langly and Jimmy go and visit him too (they think the paper might be a fake) and find him murdered. And they think Yves did because they find another Lee Harvey Oswald on the sign in book (that's a weird character element right? That she can't help herself there?)

Anyway, they end up tracking down the neighbor to a farm out in the middle of nowhere, and after some comedy bits that work (like them accidentally wrecking and then flipping their van) and some that don't (an extended bit involving Langly doing a rectal exam on a bull) they track down the son of the neighbor and he eventually points them to the fact that their paper has pallet number that could be tracked down via the nearby military base. So naturally their only recourse is to have Jimmy disguise himself and sneak onto the base.

Byers has been a massive square since he was a literal child and here's the photographic proof.

And despite it being Jimmy, it's going pretty well until Jimmy gets confronted by a solider...who turns out to be Yves in disguise. I guess that means that it went entirely well. She steals half the paper they're looking for, but then just kind of gives it to the Gunmen, so why bother having that exchange? Anyway, it turns out the water powered car is in a nuclear missile silo, which is scheduled for demolition the next day, because uh...I guess they wouldn't have a climax otherwise? Oh and the Oil Guy finds that out because the neighbor's son is working for him.

So the Gunmen sneak into the silo to find the car, but it's already been gotten by the Oil Guy (if he got a name, I missed it) and the Gunmen have the crawl out via a vent to escape. But, twist, it turns out that the one in the silo was a decoy and the neighbors kid had it on his farm the whole time! The Oil Guy shows up to steal it, but he gets dispatched immediately and Mizer's daughter convinces them that the water powered car is bad because...I honestly don't know, her logic was pretty shaky, but the Gunmen buy it and the episode ends with Jimmy monologuing about how they're heroes for not sharing the knowledge.

Like Water For Octane is a reasonably decent little episode, but it gets let down by a weak ending and a plot that just doesn't have enough momentum to keep itself running and therefore has to stop every so often to spin its wheels in comedy beats. There's a lot to like here, so long as you enjoy spending time with the Gunmen, and it's still early enough in the show's run that I'm willing to be generous with how the show spends its time, but there's issues in here that can't be entirely overlooked by "Well it made me laugh regularly."

I don't have much of a caption here, I just love how uncomfortable Jimmy looks.

The biggest of which is that, if the show is going to be comedy focused, it had better be consistently funny and The Lone Gunmen isn't quite there, although it's getting there. Honestly, I'd say the big issue is that the show doesn't entirely know what to do with Langly, comedy wise. His flashback at the start is easily the weakest (Byers having always been a massive square who just wants to help people is a good bit, and I like Frohike bullying the jock, but Langly's flashback is mostly just a build to a joke about how he figured the future would be different) and the extended bit with the cow is just annoying, and not knowing what to do with one of their core characters is a problem. The solution they seem to be focusing on is bouncing him off Jimmy, which isn't a bad idea; Jimmy is still a major asset to the show and he and Langly have a solid back and forth, but they still need to get an idea of what to do with Langly.

On the other hand, the rest of the cast gets utilized really well; Byers remains an absolutely excellent straight man to the rest of the group, and Frohike strikes the right notes of ridiculous and sincere depending on the scene (I especially like the bit where he's convinced that the mailman is an assassin) and even Yves is consistently entertaining. Seriously, I'm gonna try to stop bringing this up in my reviews, but Yves plays every scene like she's pissed off that other people are breathing in her presence, it's great.

The other major problem however is that the episode is not very tightly plotted. It's a fun storyline, even if it feels like a cut-rate National Treasure (which was still several years out), but it doesn't have enough plot or character beats to fill its runtime, leading to long stretches where it feels like it's just wandering around killing time with random comedy bits, and even inside the plot movements, there's lots of minor moments that make it feel flabbier than it should. They make a big deal out of Yves getting half the paper they were at the army base looking for but then she just...goes with Jimmy and gives them her half of the paper. It's not a massive issue, but it does make it feel like the script could have used another draft.

"Look I'm a simple guy, I'm just gonna shoot people until this problem resolves itself."

Another draft might have gotten them to come up with a better ending too. I know that they can't actually get the Water Powered Car, but the speech Mizer's daughter gives to convince them not to publish the existence of the car makes no goddamn sense. It's a shame because the back half of this episode has a lot of fun bits, but the nonsensical ending dominates my thinking on the episode. It might actually be another argument for the show to have been a half hour sitcom; If my love of Seinfeld is any indicator, I'm much more forgiving of plots that just trail off into nothing into sitcoms, and a shorter format might have led to some tighter plotting.

Like Water For Octane was the last episode before The Lone Gunman saw a massive ratings dip that it never really recovered from, so I went in wondering if there would be something in the episode that drove audiences away but there's nothing like that in there, it's just an okay, if not great, episode of a pretty good show (which honestly has a better batting average right now than The X-Files Season 8). I don't know if my exploration of The Lone Gunmen will ever yield an answer to why it failed (part of it might just be unrealistic expectations of the time; The Lone Gunmen got better ratings than The X-Files season 11) so maybe the answer is just to enjoy it for what it is.

Case Notes:

• Jimmy giving a deeply ignorant speech about heroes over newsreel footage is walking right up to the line between funny and annoying but doesn't quite fall over it.
• Wait, Langly's first name is Ringo?
• Langly predicting that the year 2000 will be like Star Trek is literally just pulling a joke from The Simpsons.
• Frohike's flashback is the best one, because he gets to bully a jock and he basically got to do what he wanted.
• I like that Byers is well known for filing FOIA requests, it's a good character beat.
• Langly appears to be playing Age of Empires, which is very in character.
• The FOI office having given Byers a brick with his one piece of paper he got is mildly amusing.
• Not sure why everyone is mad at Jimmy for shredding the piece of paper, they told him to do it and he didn't know the guy's name was important. Byers even points it out a second later.
• It is nowhere near far fetched enough that Oil Companies would kill a dude who invented a car that ran without oil.
• The cops telling Mizer's daughter to hold when she says she wants to report a B&E is funny.
• I feel like Frohike comparing Mizer to Prometheus should prompt someone to point out that Prometheus wound up getting his liver pecked out, repeatedly.
• I really dig Jimmy's dynamic with the group in general and Langly in particular, IE that he's unpretentious enough to come up with simple solutions, or at least draw the group to simple solutions (like that the paper is missing the FOI stamp).
• I don't really like Yves using her Feminine Wiles to get info from the FOI guy but I guess she wouldn't be a spy and look like she does without knowing how to play into that.
• I like the dual responses to finding the FOI guy dead; Somehow Langly running to vomit is funnier with Jimmy underreacting, and vice versa.
• Frohike telling the story about getting a ride from Mizer doesn't seem like it's building to a punchline, so the bit where it immediately segues into the tire blowing out is genuinely funny.
• I like Jimmy being A, smart enough to know how to improvise a jack from a log, B, strong enough to actually lift the van and C, dumb enough to roll it into the ditch.
• Byers just dropping the log is a solid button.
• I feel like the show could do more with Langly having grown up on a farm and hated it.
• Again, I like Jimmy figuring that something is screwy with the farmer because he's a straightforward thinker
• The farmer is pretty eager to hand over info to some people he was pointing a shotgun at minutes ago.
• Jimmy having to be the one who sneaks onto the Air Force base is much better, since he looks so damned uncomfortable.
• Jimmy being badass enough to fight off a solider is good, especially since he stops the minute he realizes it's Yves.
• Yves using the Gunmen to follow leads and then tailing them to pick up information feels very in  character.
• The farmer taking money from Yves' employer is good, and it's a nice payoff to him mentioning collection agencies briefly. Solid screenwriting there.
• I absolutely refuse to believe they have crowds and marching bands when they demolish nuclear missile silos.
• Yves just randomly spotting the guy who hired her with the car is some nonsense, but I'll accept it since we've got 8 minutes left in the episode.
• Jimmy looks really sincerely happy to see the Gunmen made it out of the silo explosion, but I also like that Yves actually looks relieved too.
• The Gunmen are distinct enough to recognize them via silhouettes.
• The water powered car actually being at the farm is a deus ex machina of the highest order, but whatever, I can roll with it.
• The oil guy not wanting to destroy the war is a novel twist I guess.
• No, Jimmy grabbing the bull by the balls so he kicks the oil guy doesn't redeem that sequence.
• The Jimmy wrapup is...well it's no Mulder wrapup, but it'll do I guess.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out cause I am not smart enough to either make or steal a water powered car.

Future Celebrity Watch:

Actually got some decent hits here: Timothy Webber, who plays Jason, has played regular roles in Cedar Cove and Arctic Air and is currently a regular on Loudermilk. No I've not heard any of those either, but I'm sure they're fine.

Next up is Mark Valley, who plays the Oil Guy, has had regular appearances on a lot of shows, but his biggest role was a main role on Boston Legal. I've never watched Boston Legal, but I at least know it exists.

Last up we have Michael Ecklund, who played a store clerk, who played one of the main villains on Wynonna Earp and a secondary role on Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Those might not normally be enough to get you named here, but I had to because I've seen these shows and the symmetry was too good pass up.

Audio Observations:

The final montage in this episode is set to 455 Rocket by Kathy Mattea which is not a song I've ever heard before because I'm not a huge country fan. It's okay.