Case 8.5, File 12: The Cap'n Toby Show

AKA: Not Even Bottom Five Worst Children Entertainers Scandal

That The Lone Gunmen is more focused on being a comedy show than The X-Files is, I think, pretty self evident at this point. And this is a good way of covering for some shortfalls; No one complains that the plots of a later season of Seinfeld isn't perfectly tight, because if it makes you laugh, it's 80% of the way to being a good episode. But this critical lens is a double edged sword, because if an episode doesn't make you laugh, all of its flaws are much more obvious.

Our episode opens, after a brief monologue from Langly about how kids TV made his life bearable growing up, with the titular Cap'n Toby (one of the kids tv stars who made Langly's life bearable) getting arrested. We then cut to six days earlier where a blonde woman with ruby sunglasses is tailed by two guys in a mall and then immediately kills them both with a blow gun hidden in her watch. Which is really James Bond, so that's pretty cool.

Back with our heroes, they stumble across a news story about the two guys, from the same set technician union, dying of apparently heart attacks at the same mall on the same day and decide to dig into it. There a dude in a...hot dog suit, okay, directs Frohike and Jimmy to where the dudes bit it and they discover a dart from the blonde lady's blowgun. Meanwhile, Langly and Beyers go to the set where the two dead techs worked and find, surprise, that it's the Cap'n Toby show.

But it turns out a skeevy new producer named Gillnitz is retooling the show to appeal to today's youths, which seems to always involve a rap breakdown (I feel like that's been the hacky joke for decades). Back at the Gunmen's hideout, Yves shows up and identifies the poison as being something made by the Chinese. And Cap'n Toby is on the phone speaking Chinese! Oh and the two dead guys were undercover FBI. That might be more relevant, yeah.

The puppet dude who constantly talks through his puppet is fun, but pointless.

Anyway, Frohike, Beyers and Langly decide to go infiltrate the show, while Jimmy and Yves head back to the mall to find the blonde lady with the ruby sunglasses. And since a dude in a hot dog suit told them about her, Jimmy decides the best way to stalk her is to wear a hot dog suit. He ends up falling off a balcony and getting arrested by the blonde lady, so it does go very well. Anyway, she turns out to be a CIA agent named Blythe and after some pushing (and hinting she knows Yves real identity) she learns what Jimmy and Yves were there to investigate, and says that the two dead FBI guys were double agents.

Back at the set, our core trio discover that the producer who retooled the show is kind of a scuzzbag and he's arranging for the show to be broadcast in China and so they think he's responsible (and planning to have state secrets broadcast in secret during the show), but Frohike finds a note in Chinese in Toby's wardrobe and that seems to be enough for Blythe, who shows up on a tip from Jimmy and Yves, arresting Toby and shutting down the show.

Okay here's where things go wonky: So the skeevy producer brings in the Blythe and thinks that the only way they could have gotten messages out was some magic porthole thing, and she responds by killing him. Also it turns out Toby's wife is Chinese and the paper in Chinese was just a dumpling recipe so Yves and Jimmy go and check out the printing shop Blythe was at and she grabs them and shows them that the quartz sunglasses were to read hidden ink. So Yves beats her up and arrests her and also Toby does one last show to say goodbye during which they find the Producer's body. And then...his name is cleared and the episode is over I guess?

The Cap'n Toby Show is probably one of, if not the, weakest episodes of The Lone Gunmen's entire run. It's not that the story is bad (although it is, I'll get into more specifics in a moment), it's that the episode just isn't very funny. Eschewing direct parody or slapstick in favor of more character focused stuff is a decent idea, but when the comedy falls flat, the episode is dependent on the story to hold it up and that doesn't always work.

Guy in a hot dog suit? Always funny.

And it's weird, because the badness of this episode's story almost sneaks up on you. It seems to be mostly working until the final act when it all kind of just falls apart. There's some logic holes sure (how was Blythe sneaking her info in if everyone else was on the up and up) but that's not the issue. It's a symptom of the issue, namely that the third act is completely disconnected from the first two and almost feels like a new script jammed onto the back half of the episode.

The episode's plot SEEMS like it was intended to end with Toby getting arrested and a slightly dark coda about the fallibility of your heroes, which would be a pretty decent way to end the episode, but then bullrushes through a bunch more information in the final 5 minutes and it all feels like someone decided that script was too dark and just stapled a more optimistic ending on to it. I don't know if that's what happened (behind the scenes stuff on The Lone Gunmen is basically nonexistent, but there are some payoffs to setups in those final few minutes) but that's what it feels like watching it, so even if it's not, that's what we got.

What that means is we've got an incredibly lopsided script that can't decide how cynical it actually wants to be. The Lone Gunmen's aspirations of being a comedy have often meant that it undercuts how cynical it's willing to be with a bit of sentimentality but it really rankles here because it leaves the episode without a central theme. Langly thinks this dude is a great dude, turns out he is. Congrats, well done. Any thematic weight the episode has is thrown in the bin in service of a happy ending, and that just feels kinda disappointing.

It doesn't help that the episode just isn't very funny. It has some good bits (dudes in hot dog suits appear to be one of my comedy weaknesses) but overall it feels very lazy, swinging for low hanging fruit and not even hitting it that hard (I feel like I'm stretching that metaphor). The whole bit with the show getting retooled by making the set a nuclear sub and adding a rap version of the theme feels very hacky, and I don't think it's a coincidence that this is the episode where they decided Yves needed to have a catfight.

Okay this was cute, they should do more shit like this.

If there's a saving grace, it's that this episode actually manages to do some character work on Langly. Langly has pretty much gotten the short end of the stick in terms of characterization during this spinoff; Beyers and Frohike both got decent amounts of focus and even Jimmy got an episode or two mostly devoted to him, but Langly sorta wound in the lurch. This episode doesn't do a whole lot, but it does emphasize how lonely his childhood was, and we get a really excellent version of what an adult meeting their equivalent of Mr. Rogers would look like.

The Lone Gunman's short 13 episode run is disappointing because very few TV shows have their shit together enough to deliver A material in the first 13 episodes. But it's also disappointing because I don't think the Gunmen ever got a chance to really show off their really bad episodes either. Most of their episodes were good, but none of them were really off the charts good or bad. There was, to put it in an X-Files analogy (from their first 13 episodes) no Space, sure, but there also wasn't a Beyond the Sea. And a series that never really got a chance to be great or terrible is just kind of disappointing.

Case Notes:

• Hey, the show remembered Langly grew up on a farm.
• There's something kind of inherently bleak about Langly talking about how his only escape as a kid was the TV.
• Like the blonde lady ducking the dude who was tailing her only to discover there's someone in the elevator with her, nice twist here, especially since the dude instantly gets murdered.
• I like the lady's wristwatch blowdart. It's ridiculous but it feels like something a real spy would actually have/need.
• Jimmy doing the cooking makes a weird amount of sense, but it does make me wonder how the Gunmen survived without him.
• I like that the Gunmen find this week's plot by reading between the lines on the papers...and also that the two dudes who died were officially part of a Stage Technicians Union.
• The episode recognizes the inherent comedy of a dude in a hot dog suit.
• How did Langly and Beyers get on the stage of the show they're investigating without knowing what show it is? And how are they allowed to just wander onto a live set?
• Okay the "Mistaken For Gay/Sucking out the poison" thing is QUITE hacky, even in 2001.
• Yves just walks in and they don't even pretend to have a reason. Just make her an official member already guys.
• I dunno how I feel about calling the poison "Red Chinese," but I guess it's necessary to implicate Toby when he starts talking Chinese on the phone.
• I feel like if you want a pair of agents to go undercover you probably should make it so that some rando hackers can find it out.
• I like the puppeteer who can't seem to stop talking as his puppet, he seems fun.
• Frohike walking into the room with the kid and the kid just randomly starting to scream got me my most solid laugh of the episode so far.
• Second most solid laugh is Jimmy in the hot dog costume.
• If Toby is is the spy and he's leaving random Chinese documents lying around, he's a very bad spy.
• If I were a spy I simply wouldn't have a signature piece of clothing that people could identify me by.
• Random blonde lady being a federal agent too makes things feel very odd.
• I like that the blonde lady (CIA Agent Blythe, I guess) recognizes that Jimmy will start talking while Yves is immediately trying to BS her way out.
• So wait, the FBI guys were double agents while the CIA lady is good? I'm confused.
• Blythe knowing who Yves is feels random, but it's a nice stakes raising moment.
• The producer being the spy is a pretty easy solution but I like that it looks like they're not going that direction. Hiding info in a children's show is pretty neat though.
• The episode really starts losing control after Toby gets arrested. So the paper was a recipe for potstickers and the CIA lady was the double agent but the producer is still innocent? Okay.
• I feel like spies don't get bail, but the plot needs Toby to get out so whatever.
• There's something kind of dark and weird about Toby putting on one last show but I feel like the show isn't willing to make it as dark as it would need to be to ride that vibe.
• The rose colored sunglasses coming back as a way to read the messages is pretty neat.
• Heh, Jimmy's rib injury came back to save him from the poison too.
• That was a very sudden wrapup. I like the final credits appearing on the porthole though, that was fun.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. I got fired from my job on Cap'n Toby so donate so I can afford to eat. And live.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Tom Poston, who plays Captain Toby, had already had several well known tv and film roles at this point, including main character roles on both Mork & Mindy and Newhart. He won an Emmy for his role in The Steve Allen Show.

Future Celebrity Watch:

Ben Bass, who played the skeevy producer, had already had solid sized roles in shows that didn't do so great, but would eventually go on to have a major role in Rookie Blue.

Brian Drummond. who plays one of the two agents, had already had a lot of secondary roles (including an uncredited role in The Pine Bluff Variant) but he's probably better known as a voice actor with over 300 credits. Seriously, if I even started to list them, I'd be here all day.

Michael Ecklund, who plays the dude in the hot dog suit, would later go on to a main villain role in Wynonna Earp as Bobo Del Ray. That's not that big a role, but that's one I've actually seen.

And finally Jodelle Ferland who plays a little girl I cut out of the plot summary cause she's pointless, was a pretty top tier creepy kid actress for a while including in movies I've actually seen like Silent Hill and Tideland.

Audio Observations:

The ending contains a cover of Bob Dylan's Forever Young by a band called...The Band. No, not the song you're thinking of, that's a song by the synthpop band Alphaville which has the same name.