Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
"Pilot," "Bond, Jimmy Bond," "Eine Kleine Frohike," "Like Water for Octane," "Three Men and a Smoking Diaper," "Madam, I'm Adam," "Planet of the Frohikes," "Maximum Byers," "Diagnosis: Jimmy," "Tango De Los Pistoleros," "The Lying Game," "The "Cap'n Toby" Show," "All About Yves"
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover To paraphrase your high school guidance counsellor: respect for yourself is essential for respect from your audience. Let's say you have a show called "The Lone Gunmen". It's a spin-off from the successful (and successfully self-serious) "The X Files", which took somewhat far-fetched material and sold it, most of the time, with a straight face and a stern look. It deals with much the same subject matter but features nerdy misfits John Byers (Bruce Harwood), Melvin Frohike (Tom Braidwood), and Richard Langly (Dean Haglund), to whom you're somehow unwilling to commit total sympathy. So you make excuses by mocking them, as if apologizing for their unworthiness of the attention–which raises the question of why you're bothering in the first place. Complete self-deprecation usually results in discomfort, shunning, and, in this case, premature cancellation.
There was potential in this exploration of "The X Files"' favourite recurring characters. The appeal of their respective geek types–unthreatening beard-wearer (Byers), live-wire punk (Langly), awkward troll (Frohike)–is that they could be triumphant heroes for all those who don't fit the perfect body/perfect teeth pod-person profile dominating screens big and small. And their underground publication's mission–to seek out the secrets obscured by the cover of normalcy–is the ideal metaphor for a pariah looking for his own cynical face under the mask of conformity. But the producers don't trust the valour and poignancy of these characters, viewing them instead as buffoons. Or rather, they don't trust anyone else to view them as anything other than buffoons: like some weak-willed high-schooler caught between the cool kids and the nerds, they suck up to the former by sabotaging the latter.
Thus the gunmen–nothing "lone" about them, really–wind up humiliating themselves in almost every episode. Frohike receives the brunt of the abuse, his non-classic looks signing him up for hanging-wire disasters and pratfalls in the mud. Langly, meanwhile, sputters hyperactively and undercuts himself with misplaced aggression, and Byers, despite being the voice of reason, gets embarrassed by association, trapped in a geek cage never to be let out. Things are not improved by the fact that their benefactor is a failed jock and intellectual lightweight named James "Jimmy" Bond (Stephen Snedden). Contrary to the importance of the Lone Gunmen's mission[s], the writers do their damnedest to trivialize their heroes–making their victories seem like afterthoughts on a pile of smaller failures.
Worse, those missions are calculated to suggest comical irrelevances. No gimmick is too cheap for "The Lone Gunmen", including midget wrestlers, intelligent chimpanzees, blind football players (a little enterprise of Bond's), tango dancing, and the inevitable appearance of Frohike in lederhosen. Whatever the sinister implications of the evildoers (from Nazi war criminals to assorted government monsters), they're immediately diluted by the ridiculous goings-on surrounding them. The coup de grâce comes in the form of Yves Adele Harlow (Zuleikha Robinson), an absurdly hot free agent whose function is to save the heroes' bacon and steal their credit. Although the incursion of a nerd-boy's wet dream is hilariously apropos, the show keeps positing her, Benny Hill-style, as something the lone gunmen can't have. Did it not occur to the writers that someone might actually like these people? Is there no possibility of a female conspiracy geek?
It's really too bad, because "The Lone Gunmen"'s moment was just around the corner from its cancellation. The pilot episode, from March of 2001, deals with the once "out-there" idea of terrorists flying a plane into the World Trade Center to ensure a post-Cold War market for military aggression; as this is almost word-for-word what real conspiracy theorists are now proposing, the role of a trio of skeptics battling government lies had the chance to become a beacon in the forced-patriotic darkness that enveloped America. Though someone would certainly have neutered the show after 9/11, as it aired they'd hardly have had to bother. The series goes out of its way to dismiss the dissidents it's supposed to be following, discounting mountains of evidence to pronounce them kooks. Any theories on who shot "The Lone Gunmen"?
THE DVD
For 13 episodes crammed onto three flipper discs, "The Lone Gunmen" looks surprisingly good on DVD. The 1.78:1, 16×9-enhanced image is supremely lustrous in its deep dark hues and during blue-tinged daylight scenes, and though there's a slight stickiness to the darkest colours, it's not enough to detract. The Dolby 2.0 surround sound is likewise excellent; if the audio sides more with fullness than with sharpness, that at least befits the show's murky underground milieu.
As for extras, commentary tracks grace the pilot, "Bond, Jimmy Bond," "Tango de los Pistoleros," and "All About Yves," as well as the bonus episode of "The X Files", "Jump the Shark." The first three yakkers feature creators Frank Spotnitz, Vince Gilligan, and John Shiban, while the last two reunite the five permanent cast members. Predictably, the production team is more informative, especially when explicating the series set-up in the pilot episode; though they soon degenerate into this-guy-was-so-great-to-work-with-isms, fans will appreciate the scattered nuggets of trivia. The actors' segments are somewhat less interesting (mostly in-joke humour and pointless reminiscing), but a few good laughs are had and the "Tango" episode offers a few decent bits of backstory.
On board the final platter is a retrospective documentary (39 mins.) that goes into heavy detail about the show's origins. Cast and crew discuss the development of the characters on "The X-Files" and how they fulfilled the transition to their own series; highlight episodes are examined at length, including the eerie 9/11 prediction of the premiere. It's an informative featurette that shows "The Lone Gunmen"'s fanbase supreme respect and never condescends or stoops to group-hug shallowness. Four TV spots round out the package.
43 minutes/episode; NR; 1.78:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, Spanish Dolby Surround; CC; English, Spanish subtitles; 2 DVD-10s; Region One; Fox
