The Lone Gunmen—
The Complete Series DVD

The short-lived adventures of four lovable conspiracy geeks and the woman who tolerates them

	The Lone Gunmen—The Complete Series DVD
	Starring Dean Haglund, Tom Braidwood, Bruce Harwood, Stephen Snedden and Zuleikha Robinson
	Fox Home Entertainment
	Three-disc set
	MSRP: $39.98

By Adam-Troy Castro

ntroduced on The X-Files, the Lone Gunmen were a band of geeky conspiracy theorists publishing a paranoid newsletter from inside a cramped, poorly lit warehouse. Their inside information and expertise at hacking computer systems were often tapped by that show's heroes, agents Scully and Mulder. Their short-lived spinoff series, collected here, turns out to have been a distinctive mix of slapstick and whimsy, powered by the odd mix of technical wizardry and wildly uncertain skill at espionage that consistently allowed the Gunmen to ride the fence that separates formidable protagonists from inept ones.

The pilot for the series, which aired in early 2001, involved a grim plot to seize control of a passenger jet taking off from Boston and fly it into the World Trade Center. The Gunmen succeed in foiling this fictional scheme, similar to others already posited by European spy agencies, and scenarios envisioned by wannabe presidential assassin Sam Byck, and novelists Tom Clancy and Stephen King, which Condoleezza Rice would later assure Congress nobody "ever" could have imagined. Seen today, the episode is spooky and sobering, with extra added resonance we all could have done without. (The episode commentary, by director Rob Bowman and the small mob of screenwriters, not surprisingly reveals everybody involved to still feel taken aback by the resonance the pilot was to take on six months later.)

Following the uncharacteristically dark pilot, the tone of the series grows lighter, sometimes even farcical. The core group of Lone Gunmen, Melvin Frohicke (Braidwood), Richard Langly (Haglund) and John Byers (Harwood), bumble their way in and out of the wild stories they investigate with a daring that frequently exceeds their actual skill. Along the way they frequently find themselves in conflict with Yves Adele Harlow (Robinson), a mysterious, supercompetent femme fatale who repeatedly exploits them, calls them names, tells them that they're in over their heads and keeps coming back to rescue them. They also take on an idealistic but exceptionally dim intern, Jimmy Bond (Sneddon), who drives them crazy with his over-the-top enthusiasm but who once or twice surprises everybody by solving mysteries that Yves and the Gunmen cannot. He's dumb, but he has empathy that compensates.

As the series draws to a close, and is concluded within an episode of its parent series, The X-Files, the tone abruptly turns dark again. The Gunmen run out of money and stop publishing. Yves Harlow seems to become a murderer. Another terrorist plot, aimed at thousands, emerges, and the Gunmen, sacrificing their lives, go out as tragic heroes.

Whimsy and slapstick rule

Viewers of the time who found the pilot episode dark and charmless (if later sadly prescient) gave up too soon, as the show itself was great fun and enlivened by abundant chemistry among its unconventional leads. There is no real arc here, unless you include the team's ongoing frustration with Jimmy and adversarial relationship with Yves; all the stories but the closing two-parter are stand-alone, with whimsy and character interaction taking the place of any real sense of danger. The fun lies in watching the Gunmen repeatedly get in over their collective heads.

Some fans didn't like that either, complaining that the show didn't take the Gunmen "seriously" enough and that the addition of the two new, more conventionally photogenic characters, the hero-worshipping Jimmy and mysterious Yves, functioned only as an obvious sop to audiences who didn't consider the core three sexy enough. They were wrong in both cases. The Gunmen are taken seriously, in that they're always treated as committed idealists, wholly admirable in their dedication to ferreting out the truth, even as their social limitations play hell with their sense of dignity. And Jimmy and Yves are more than eye candy, in that (aside from the genuinely compelling nature of both characters) Jimmy's special form of dumbness gives the Gunmen something to play off other than each other, and Yves' supercompetence serves to keep the marginal status of their enterprises in sharp relief.

It's more important that the scripts eschewed the obvious. "Like Water for Octane," scripted by Colin Friesen, posited an evil oil company exec chasing down a car capable of running on water, but his motives are far from the expected ones, and the car is anything but a cure-all for the world's environmental ills. Also worth special note: the stunning, brilliant tactic Jimmy uses to save the day, which may be a series highlight.

In "Three Men and a Smoking Diaper," written by Chris Carter, the Gunmen go after a randy senator reminiscent of Bill Clinton. It turns out that he's a much better man than they give him credit for. Frohike finds himself taking care of a baby and—convincingly against his will—driven by his paternal (AND maternal) instincts.

In "Planet of the Frohikes," written by Vince Gilligan, the Gunmen find themselves saddled with a superintelligent chimpanzee, voiced by Edward Woodward. He doesn't have a very high opinion of them, but he needs them to fulfill his rather primal agenda.

In "Diagnosis: Jimmy," by John Shiban, the Gunmen go after a bear poacher, but the real focus is Jimmy, laid up in the hospital after a serious injury and trying to remember what has happened to him. The episode derives much comedy from Jimmy, who claims to be able to tell when women are attracted to him but completely fails to spot his nurse's increasingly blatant come-ons.

"Tango De Los Pistoleros," written by Thomas Schnauz, brings the Lone Gunmen to Miami, a city Frohike turns out to have fled for the unlikeliest of reasons. "All About Yves," written by Vince Gilligan, John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz, tears a rift in the closely knit Gunmen and saddles the core three with "Man in Black" Morris Fletcher, who spends much of the episode showering them with a barrage of cruel (but no less funny) mockery. The same writers are responsible for "Jump the Shark," the X-Files episode that wraps up the whole thing and which is not nearly as fun as everything that precedes it; it moves in fits and starts, is too plot-driven to provide much in the way of amusing verbal byplay and strains hard to place the Gunmen in the heart-rending predicament that wraps up their screen careers. That scene is, however, unexpectedly powerful. By the time we get to it, we love these guys and have reason to mourn them. It's hard to listen to the commentary track, by Gilligan, Shiban and Spotnitz, and not hear the regrets of storytellers who know they gave their characters a powerful sendoff—but whose hearts break a little at watching what they've done.