Case 8.5, File 01: Pilot

AKA: There's No Jokey AKA I Can Do Here That Isn't Way Too Dark

Spinoffs are, in the modern TV era, kind of in a weird spot. TV execs love them, and not just because they used to soft test new TV show concepts in other shows (seriously, look up how many spinoffs Happy Days had). It seems like a foolproof way to make a new show; Take an element people like from an existing show, and build a new show around it. In practice it's not that simple. Often times the element in question was only ever really functional as part of the larger ensemble and just because people like it, doesn't mean it's enough to anchor a full tv show.

This episode kicks off with our heroes (not our usual heroes, Byers, Langely and Frohike) infiltrating a tech company. Specifically, Langely joins a party and shouts angrily about the company violating people's privacy, while Byers and Frohike hit the vents to do the Mission Impossible thing. But whilst infiltrating, someone hacks into their winch (can they not do that analogue?) and takes the chip they're there to steal, kissing Frohike on their way out the door (it's cool, it turns out its a hot femme fatal named Yves). Oh and security catches them and cavity searches them.

Back at their home base, they find the bug that Yves planted and vow revenge, but before they can that ball rolling, Byers gets a call that his father has died and they have to head out to deal with that. At the funeral, we get a little exposition (Byers' dad, whose name I caught was Bertram, worked for the air force and fell out with Byers over him leaving the government to make the Lone Gunmen). But the funeral is barely over before a friend of his dad approaches him and tells him that his dad didn't die in accident, he was murdered. Dun dun-is that joke played? I feel like it's played.

Anyhoo, they're a little skeptical since he died in a car crash, and there's no indication another car was around, but they decide to investigate anyway. Turns out his carpet was recently cleaned, has blood splatter on it and his computer was wiped. They do find evidence there was a Department of Defense file on it before it was wiped though and decide to go looking for it. Specifically, Langely heads over to a shooting range to get help from a hacker friend (Kimmy the Geek, twin brother to the deceased Jimmy the Geek), and also briefly runs in Yves so he can yell at her for a minute and then leave, cause she can probably beat the shit out of him.

I feel like, even in 2001, Mission Impossible references were kind of played out.

Meanwhile Frohike and Byers are digging the cube that used to be Bertram's car out of a junkyard to find that there was remote control thing attached to the engine. They try to hack into the DoD to get their hands on the file Bertram had, but they get found out and have to bail so they don't get caught. Also we learn that Bertram's friend from the funeral is in on it. At this point, Byers realizes that his dad faked his death and is still alive. And before we can worry too much about how he figured that out, it turns out he's right, as he runs into his dad at his house. His dad's house, not Byers'.

Anyway, it turns out that Bertram found a DoD plan to bring down a commercial aircraft in the middle of Manhattan to drive up arms sales and he knows what flight it is. They tell Betram's friend that Betram is still alive to throw him off the scent and then the Lone Gunmen team up with him so Byers and Bertram can get on the plane to find the bomb. But after they don't find it, Langely and Frohike hack into the navigation and find that it's on a collision course with the World Trade Center (this episode aired in March 2001 incidentally). 

After some work, Frohike goes to Yves, tells her he knows her real name (her name is an anagram of Lee Harvey Oswald, because that's the sort of show this is) and she agrees to use the chip she stole to help them hack into the plane's navigation and save Byers and his dad. But, when they leave the plane, Bertram basically tells Byers he's gonna wuss out and not testify about what happened, because he trusts Byers to expose the truth (which seems like a cop out, but okay). And so, the episode ends with Frohike having stolen the chip from Yves and our heroes preparing to write about it.

I have a fascination with one season TV shows (insert obligatory plug for my podcast on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) because they're shows that never got to evolve or change; They remain eternal snapshots of their exact moment in TV history. But they're also shows that never got to grow old or complacent, never got to disappoint us; Firefly gets to live in the eternal What-If where the episodes can be as perfect as we want them to be, and don't have to deal with budget or script issues. The Lone Gunmen exists in both spaces, but even without those benefits, I still remember it being better than it had any right to be. I guess, over the next few months, we'll find out if I'm right.

I want to whine about the coincidence of Yves and Kimmy being at the same shooting range, but I'm more curious about the virtual range that uses real bullets?

One of the core problems the show had to overcome is also, theoretically, a pretty great strength; The characters' outsider status. Despite its strange plots, The X-Files still has model gorgeous heroes who work for the FBI, so a ton of problems can be solved by them flashing a badge or pulling a gun. The Lone Gunmen have none of those things going for them, so they have to find alternate solutions. And it's fun, watching them solve mysteries by taking apart cubed cars or finding bloodstains on carpets.

The other element that could work in their favor is that these characters are fun and have decent chemistry. At this point these three had carried two episodes on their own and had semi-recurring appearances for 8 seasons, they know how to bounce off each other. Even as early as the pilot they're already using the greater screen time available to let their scenes breathe, giving them an opportunity to just have amusing dialogue sequences or character building scenes. I can easily see why Fox executives would think that these characters could hold up a series, even if I think they probably wanted something more procedural.

Of course the episode can't help being a pilot, but it feels a little too Pilot-esque in its construction. Yves in particular might as well wear a sign that says "I'm going to be an important recurring character" in all of her scenes, and several of the dialogue scenes (like Bertram's funeral) seem tailor made to flesh out Byers in ways that a pilot would want. They even have Byers briefly despair over their lack of impact to give us more reason for them to go on their own adventures. The characters already had what amounted to a soft pilot nearly 2 years before this episode, they don't really need that much more characterization frontloaded into this episode.

So with all that out of the way, how is the episode as an hour (well 40 minutes) of TV? Well it's pretty damned good. It basically amounts to a fun little thriller, with a good understanding of its characters and a solid script. One thing I really like is the third act reveal that the conspiracy, which will kill hundreds of people, has no greater purpose than to make some already rich people richer. Even if the stakes are high for our characters (Byers might die in the actual plane crash) the world states are low and petty, which is not only realistic, but fits with the low key Lone Gunmen tone.

"What do you mean this plotline is gonna age really badly?"

Most of the remaining stuff worth discussing is ancillary stuff, and not really the purview of this review series. Yes, it is weird in retrospect that the plot in this episode is so close to the actual 9/11 attacks, but that's not that surprising; The World Trade Center was the center of a lot of people's thoughts prior to its collapse, from Phillipe Petit to King Kong, and it had already been attacked once before. Plus given how much weird conspiracy nonsense has infected modern American thinking (the number of people who think a Covid vaccine will contain a microchip baffles me), I don't really wanna give conspiracies any more oxygen.

It's going to be hard, over the next few months, to not instantly go into autopsy mode when it comes to The Lone Gunmen. Explaining why a show with The Lone Gunmen's pedigree fell flat on its face feels like it should be the focus of these reviews but I don't think that's really necessary. My goal here is just to explore The X-Files, all of The X-Files, and examine what it means to me and why. So while I'll try to figure out what went with these 13 episodes (that I remembered liking a lot, the exactly one time I watched them) I can't promise I'll find an answer.

Case Notes:

• A note on chronology: When I decided that I was going to do The Lone Gunmen, I had to decide when to include the series, and my original idea of including it at the end of Season 8 just didn't gel with me. So after some though, I decided to include the episodes alongside Season 8, in the order both series released their episodes.
• The so-cheesy-its-actually-amazing guitar riff that plays when we see the Lone Gunmen on top of the roof is a good summary of the show's tone.
• I love that Langley is undercover but he can't even pretend to not have contempt for them.
• A gigaflop sounds like made up TV hacker lingo, but it's a real thing. I will say, it's very amusing hearing the lady brag about her supercomputer doing 6.8 gigaflops, when modern supercomputers are running more at petaflops these days (that's 1 million gigaflops).
• Conspiracy minded folks aren't people I like these days, but Frohike's rant about how awful the corporation does appeal to me.
• Frohike doing the Mission Impossible bit is pretty great. Honestly, the whole plan is pretty fun, even if Yves just randomly hacking into the winch is a pretty cheap way for it to go wrong.
• Not sure why Yves decides to kiss Frohike when she grabs the chip.
• I actually kind of like that they already know Yves and know it's her, rather than spending the episode figuring out who took it from them.
• One element of Langely's character that I like, that made it to this show is how he overestimates his own badassness.
• Byers' dad dying suddenly could be a major tone shift but I like the Lone Gunmen being kind of inappropriate at the funeral.
• The music that plays during the funeral sounds weirdly like Laura's theme in Twin Peaks.
• Byers' and his dad having fallen out over him hanging out with the Lone Gunmen is a good character beat, and it tracks with what we know about his pre-Lone Gunmen life.
• I love Langely randomly attacking that dude at the funeral.
• The location where they put Byers' dad's death is cool looking, and the explosion is obviously expensive.
• Byers and Frohike running to save the car from getting smashed, only to have it already smashed, is a solid enough gag.
• I feel like this show could probably do more with the idea that Langely could be rich if he went into the tech sector. Maybe they do later, I don't remember.
• Yves just being at the virtual gun range (but with real bullets?) is a little too much of a coincidence but I like her a lot, and her complete disdain for the Lone Gunmen is fun.
• Not sure Jimmy the Geek was a good enough character to warrant a twin.
• Byers' dad turning out to still be alive and having faked his own death is a fun twist and it comes out of nowhere enough to be surprising. Also, not gonna lie, the fact that it hinges on the assassin slipping on freshly shampooed carpet is funny.
• Byers' dad smacking him the moment he sees Byers is funny.
• I dunno if I'd bring up calling in the FBI if I were this show, especially in the "We can't trust anyone in the government" angle, given that there's one FBI Agent they do know they can trust. Two when Mulder gets back.
• Yves and the chip coming back in the final few minutes is solid enough writing, and Frohike gets to act pretty cool for a few minutes there.
• The climax of the episode is actually pretty well realized, not gonna lie, even if the ending is a little too obviously setup to let the series continue. 
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out so I don't have to start my own conspiracy newspaper to make ends meet.

Future Celebrity Watch:

Zuleikha Robinson, who playes Yves, has had a series of recurring and main character roles on a variety of TV shows in the 2010s, starting with Lost, before moving on to stuff like The Exorcist, The Following and Homeland. She's currently on Law and Order: SVU, none of which I've ever watched, so I have no idea how big her roles are.

Next up, George Coe, who plays Byers' dad, had an incredibly long and varied career, but most people my age probably know him as the voice of Archer's valet Woodhouse on Archer.

Last one here: The pilot on the plane (yes, really) is played by David Kaye, an INCREDIBLY prolific voice actor, with over 300 credits to his name, everything from Duckworth on Ducktales to the narrator on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. His most famous main role however is as Clank in the Ratchet and Clank series.

Audio Observations:

According to IMDB the song played in cold open is Cross the Line by a band called Cuba. I'll be honest, it sounds pretty bad.