Case 8.5, File 09: Diagnosis: Jimmy

AKA: Prognosis Negative!

The core strength of the Lone Gunmen (the characters, not the show) is the same thing that I think makes it hard to base an entire show around them; Their group dynamic. While they can be quite an entertaining trio, bouncing off each other and bickering, the additions of two new characters will, definitionally, alter that dynamic. I would say the dynamic has been altered for the better, but I can imagine the writers, who were probably fans of the characters on The X-Files, might want to see the original dynamic play out a little bit.

Our story kicks off with our heroes in the snow mountains along the Canadian/Washington border, where they're looking to catch some pictures of a bear poacher. After some failed surveillance and an honest-to-god ski chase, Jimmy hits his head on a tree and gets a concussion. The next day in the hospital, the gang try to get some info out of him while his nurse thirsts over him, but Jimmy got hit too hard to remember much of anything.

Never ones to say die, the Gunmen head back out into the (suddenly snow-less) field to watch the poacher's compound. I was gonna say house, but it's a full compound, he's giving the unabomber a run for his money. Anyhoo, back at the hospital, Jimmy is trying to remember what happened via...bulding a model recreation with cotton balls? He gets distracted by Yves arriving for...some reason and his new roommate in the hospital being an old asshole who insults him all the time, but I'd like to see more of the cotton ball ski slope.

Oh hey, also worth mentioning is the fact that Jimmy sees an episode of America's Most Wanted about a murdering doctor who likes candy and that one of the other patients in the hospital dies. Jimmy, after seeing his doctor with a lollipop, decides that his doctor must be the killer doctor, and after some digging into the files, finds out his doctor has only been there a month. So, sure that his doctor is the killer, he confronts him...only to find out that his doctor isn't the killer. Turns out he was doing some incredibly noble charity work up until a month ago. And has alopecia. That part doesn't add much, but it's there.

A ski chase, this episode opens with an actual ski chase. God bless 'em.

Back with the Gunmen, they see the poacher get a message of where to meet the smugglers he's selling the...bear gallbladders to (just roll with it, we'll be here all day otherwise) and they decide they need to grab the message. Their plan involves Langly dressing up in a bear fur to lure him away while Frohike sneaks into the compound. Insanely enough this actually works, despite the interference of a bear trap and a snare (in the living room, no less) and they find out where to catch the dude.

Okay, home stretch: Back at the hospital, Jimmy is nearly poisoned by another dude in the hospital who it turns out was the real killer, but Yves catches it in time and saves him. Oh and when the Gunmen go to catch the poacher, Beyers gets caught and nearly killed by him, but the police show up just in time. It turns out Yves called them too, as she had been conducting a sting operation on the poacher this whole time. So I guess the moral of the story is, just let Yves handle everything, she's the actual competent one.

Diagnosis Jimmy is less a single cohesive whole episode and more two halves of two different episodes stapled together by a wrapup scene that claims they were connected the whole time. Neither of them are bad episodes though, just a little thin, and it feels like a demonstration of the kind of episodes we could have gotten if The Lone Gunmen had gotten six seasons and a movie. Not just in that it splits up our heroes, but in that it shows how they could eventually just have had parts of the gang split off into their own plotlines for an episode or so.

Jimmy and Yves seem to be intended to be the main story of this episode and I get why they'd want to pair them off. They decided pretty early on that Jimmy and Yves were gonna be our romantic pair, the Jim and Pam to the Lone Gunmen's Michael. I guess that makes broad sense, since they're both attractive and they have decent chemistry (I still want them to make Langly and Frohike canon, but I guess that'll just have to remain a dream). And they've been having them do a lot of stuff together lately, but Yves isn't in the episode a whole lot, she only really gets two or three scenes, so the plot is mostly centered around Jimmy.

Honestly, that's really impressive given he only had hospital supplies.

Jimmy's plot is kind of weird, but it's fun time. "Big dumb lug has to solve a problem without his smart friends" is a common enough plot setup, but it works here, especially since Jimmy doesn't actually solve anything. It feels like a solid Andy B-Story in Parks and Rec (God I'm making a lot of sitcom comparisons this review). The real villain turning out to be a secondary character who got referenced like, twice, is a little Scooby-Doo, but whatever, him yelling accusations is funny, and neither The Lone Gunmen nor The X-Files are that far above having a Scooby-Doo solution to its plotlines. Plus, let's be honest, watching shit like America's Most Wanted is one of the most accurate depictions of being laid up in a hospital.

The Lone Gunmen's plotline seems like it should be more substantial, since it theoretically is the reason everyone is even in Washington state in the first place but it lacks any real momentum until the last couple scenes. I do like those scenes though, especially the scene in the middle where they have to grab the message from the poacher. It's mostly just an extended excuse for slapstick but it's fun and funny and Langly has to leave his pants behind when they get caught in a beartrap and sometimes that's enough.

The show doesn't seem to agree however, and both plotlines stab at some greater depth, neither of which add too much. The Lone Gunmen's stab at depth is just a single monologue from Beyers about how much stopping the poacher means to him. It's mostly just to convince the other Gunmen to stick around, but it's an okay monologue and the actor sells it. Jimmy's is a weird little subplot about him trying to teach life lessons to the jerk who is in the next bed in the hospital. It's a mixed bag; The dude is a genuine asshole and Jimmy's innate goodness does seem like it could get through to him, but the subplot doesn't get a lot of screentime and honestly, his dislike of his stock market broker son makes perfect sense for a union man. Class solidarity.

"No, I've never heard of The Wicker Man, what happens next?"

The real tragedy of The Lone Gunmen only getting 13 episodes was we didn't get to see them figure out ways to stretch the base formula in ways that could have been interesting. With five main characters and various levels of affection and antagonism (and a mix of the two) between them, there were a lot of comedic combinations they could have explored. Instead we only get to see some vague hints here and there of the show that could have been.

Case Notes:

• I'm not gonna lie, whenever someone brings up the US Canadian border in Washington, I hope we're about to visit Twin Peaks.
• There is something kinda funny about Langly and Beyers bothering to disguise their van while Jimmy and Frohike are basically just hanging out in plain sight.
• If the Lone Gunmen says that someone is an anti-government nutjob, odds are he's at unabomber levels.
• I gotta say, the Lone Gunmen's plans are usually pretty silly but I'm really on their side for this one. Save the bears.
• The nurse in the hospital is incredibly thirsty for Jimmy which made me realize, A, This is the first time the fact that Jimmy is very handsome has been a plot point like this and B, this is a level of thirst not usually seen in The X-Files universe.
• It went from dead of winter to like, mid-fall in between shots. I wonder if the episode doesn't want us to notice.
• The episode spends WAY too long on the America's Most Wanted and the other patient in Jimmy's room stuff for them not to be plot points.
• I like the back and forth of Jimmy trying to explain his thinking to the nurse while she stands there eye-fucking him.
• They gives us our hint that Jimmy's doctor is the killer way earlier than I expected, I thought they'd drag it out a bit more.
• I'm sorry to keep bringing it up but I think Nurse Marilyn brought up the horny levels of the entire goddamn franchise by at least a notch.
• The degree to which they have to keep dragging Yves in for no real reason has basically become a running gag at this point.
• Jimmy saying that he has a good sense for when women dig him while the nurse who was practically undressing in front of him stands 3 feet away is solid.
• There's a lot of stuff with very little actual movement in the middle here, but I like the Gunmen immediately assuming the hunter dude is shooting at them and diving out of the van.
• Having to get your letters delivered directly to your off-the-grid cabin via name-changed FedEx makes them way more likely to be noticed than if you just got normal mail, you weirdo.
• Jimmy trying to push his bed across the room during his argument with the old guy is a great sight gag.
• Jimmy holding up the lollipop and saying he has it, only for Beyers to remind him they're on the phone is a great beat.
• I like that Jimmy tries to save the jackass old man, his innate goodness is part of what makes him endearing.
• They should probably stop playing up how cold it is if they weren't going to commit to it looking like winter.
• Beyers' story about why he wants to save the bears doesn't make a lot of logical sense, but it does make a kind of emotional sense. And I admit, there is something powerful about seeing something like a bear or a moose in the wild.
• Yves gets roped into Jimmy's plotline cause she ain't doing anything else and they ain't doing an episode without her.
• They're putting more effort into the old man's backstory than they probably need to.
• Where did they get a bear fur that quickly?
• Langly getting his pants caught in a bear trap and just leaving his pants behind is a very silly solution to a very silly problem. That's not a complaint.
• It's equally silly that Frohike walks into a rope trap in the house but then has to swing out of view while the dude walks in. Again, not a complaint.
• The old dude hating his son because he's a union man and his son is a stockbroker is what we in the biz call "Direct Action."
• I feel like the scene where Beyers confronts the poachers lacks tension. We know they're not going to kill any of the Gunmen, so the tension works better when the question is "Will they catch their guy" not "Will they survive."
• As always these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out so I can afford to go hunt grizzly bear poachers.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Jimmy's old asshole roomate is played by Bill Macy, a veteran actor best known for playing Walter Findlay on Maude. I've never watched it, but he was in over 140 episodes of it, so I guess it must be a big role.

Less big still is Nurse Marilyn, played by Shawn Batten, who just got done with a 243 episode run on a soap called Sunset Beach and would soon be playing the lead in another soap called Spyder Games. Neither of those are very big, but I mentioned an actor who was briefly in Uncle Buck in my last review, so I guess that counts.

And of course we have Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto and America's Most Wanted host John Walsh playing themselves in the jobs they actually do. This is probably cross promotion and not really interesting enough to dwell on.