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REVIEW
The Lone Gunmen: Worth a Shot
The Lone Gunmen
Premiere: Fox, Sunday, March 4, 9 to 10 p.m. ET
Special times: Sunday, March 11, and Sunday, March 18, 9 to 10 p.m. ET
Regular time: Fridays, 9 to 10 p.m. ET beginning March 16
By Len P. Feldman
They've helped FBI agents Mulder, Scully and Doggett solve mysterious cases on the The X-Files. But can the Lone Gunmen, that geeky trio of conspiracy theorists, make it on their own?
If the first couple of episodes of the X-Files spin-off series The Lone Gunmen are any indication, the answer is maybe. It all depends on whether X-Files devotees will welcome a lighter, decidedly comic alternative to their favorite weekly spook show when it goes on hiatus for three weeks beginning March 4.
Ever since their introduction to The X-Files in Episode 17 ("E.B.E.") in the show's first season, John Fitzgerald Byers (Bruce Harwood), Melvin Frohike (Tom Braidwood) and Richard "Ringo" Langly (Dean Haglund) — publishers of the conspiracy-busting newsletter "The Lone Gunman" — have provided recurring comic relief during the series' sinister eight-year government/alien conspiracy storyline.
In their own series, however, the Gunmen take their comic antics to a wacky new level as they combat corporate and government conspiracies on a weekly basis. They still garner satirical laughs from their wild headlines such as "Teletubbies = Mind Control?" But they also seem to have entered into the realm of slapstick.
Take the first episode, in which the short, portly, balding and bespectacled Frohike is lowered Tom Cruise-style into a sterile, white, vault-like room to steal a supercomputer chip. The winch that controls his descent fails, and he is bounced up and down like a doughy yo-yo. It's supposed to be a takeoff on Mission: Impossible, but it seems more like Mission: Ridiculous.
Later, Frohike falls in mud. In the second episode, he gets tackled by blind football players and Langly barfs in somebody's golf bag.
Though it sounds like "The Three Stooges vs. the Conpirators," the series does have a serious and exciting side. In the first episode, for example, Byers learns that his father has died and that a secret government faction may have murdered him. The trio then use all their computer-hacking skills and high-tech toys to solve the mystery. In the process, they stumble across a government plot to crash a passenger jet into the World Trade Center.
The fact that the Gunmen will contine to make appearances on the more serious X-Files and that X-Files characters such as FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) will occasionally cross over to The Lone Gunmen should also help keep the characters' dramatic integrity intact.
But X-Files and Lone Gunmen producer Chris Carter had better consider carefully just how much silliness viewers will endure. He pushes the credibility envelope with the introduction of a regular character named Jimmy Bond (Stephen Snedden) in the second episode. Bond — a simpleton jock who is assembling a blind football league — becomes the Gunmen's benefactor when he pays for a run of their papers. He also thinks "The Lone Gunmen" is a hunting and fishing magazine. This is a character the Gunmen really don't need in their arsenal. They are funny enough on their own.
Carter apparently knows what audiences want. After all, he's strung X-Fileers along for eight years. Here, he plays directly to computer nerds, programmers, gamers and techies. He's even incorporated a female character into the show who in no small way resembles Lara Croft from the video game Tomb Raider.
Slinky, stealthy and stacked, Yves Adele Harlow (Zuleikha Robinson) can fire two machine pistols at once with deadly accuracy. Harlow, who's apparently a mercenary specializing in corporate espionage, is always one step ahead of the Gunmen and aids them when it suits her. Who Harlow really is will be disclosed as the season unfolds. An obscure hint given in the first episode is that her name is an anagram for Lee Harvey Oswald, the lone gunman who is believed to have murdered John F. Kennedy.
If the series does succeed, it will be due in no small part to the remarkable chemistry among Harwood, Braidwood and Haglund, which is not unlike that of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis in the Ghostbusters films.
X-Files fans have come to know and love the Gunmen's eccentricities, sharp wit and technical prowess over the years. And as long as the series doesn't conspire against these characters by making them too absurd, The Lone Gunmen has a shot.
Cheers,
The Lone Gunmen: Worth a Shot
The Lone Gunmen
Premiere: Fox, Sunday, March 4, 9 to 10 p.m. ET
Special times: Sunday, March 11, and Sunday, March 18, 9 to 10 p.m. ET
Regular time: Fridays, 9 to 10 p.m. ET beginning March 16
By Len P. Feldman
They've helped FBI agents Mulder, Scully and Doggett solve mysterious cases on the The X-Files. But can the Lone Gunmen, that geeky trio of conspiracy theorists, make it on their own?
If the first couple of episodes of the X-Files spin-off series The Lone Gunmen are any indication, the answer is maybe. It all depends on whether X-Files devotees will welcome a lighter, decidedly comic alternative to their favorite weekly spook show when it goes on hiatus for three weeks beginning March 4.
Ever since their introduction to The X-Files in Episode 17 ("E.B.E.") in the show's first season, John Fitzgerald Byers (Bruce Harwood), Melvin Frohike (Tom Braidwood) and Richard "Ringo" Langly (Dean Haglund) — publishers of the conspiracy-busting newsletter "The Lone Gunman" — have provided recurring comic relief during the series' sinister eight-year government/alien conspiracy storyline.
In their own series, however, the Gunmen take their comic antics to a wacky new level as they combat corporate and government conspiracies on a weekly basis. They still garner satirical laughs from their wild headlines such as "Teletubbies = Mind Control?" But they also seem to have entered into the realm of slapstick.
Take the first episode, in which the short, portly, balding and bespectacled Frohike is lowered Tom Cruise-style into a sterile, white, vault-like room to steal a supercomputer chip. The winch that controls his descent fails, and he is bounced up and down like a doughy yo-yo. It's supposed to be a takeoff on Mission: Impossible, but it seems more like Mission: Ridiculous.
Later, Frohike falls in mud. In the second episode, he gets tackled by blind football players and Langly barfs in somebody's golf bag.
Though it sounds like "The Three Stooges vs. the Conpirators," the series does have a serious and exciting side. In the first episode, for example, Byers learns that his father has died and that a secret government faction may have murdered him. The trio then use all their computer-hacking skills and high-tech toys to solve the mystery. In the process, they stumble across a government plot to crash a passenger jet into the World Trade Center.
The fact that the Gunmen will contine to make appearances on the more serious X-Files and that X-Files characters such as FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) will occasionally cross over to The Lone Gunmen should also help keep the characters' dramatic integrity intact.
But X-Files and Lone Gunmen producer Chris Carter had better consider carefully just how much silliness viewers will endure. He pushes the credibility envelope with the introduction of a regular character named Jimmy Bond (Stephen Snedden) in the second episode. Bond — a simpleton jock who is assembling a blind football league — becomes the Gunmen's benefactor when he pays for a run of their papers. He also thinks "The Lone Gunmen" is a hunting and fishing magazine. This is a character the Gunmen really don't need in their arsenal. They are funny enough on their own.
Carter apparently knows what audiences want. After all, he's strung X-Fileers along for eight years. Here, he plays directly to computer nerds, programmers, gamers and techies. He's even incorporated a female character into the show who in no small way resembles Lara Croft from the video game Tomb Raider.
Slinky, stealthy and stacked, Yves Adele Harlow (Zuleikha Robinson) can fire two machine pistols at once with deadly accuracy. Harlow, who's apparently a mercenary specializing in corporate espionage, is always one step ahead of the Gunmen and aids them when it suits her. Who Harlow really is will be disclosed as the season unfolds. An obscure hint given in the first episode is that her name is an anagram for Lee Harvey Oswald, the lone gunman who is believed to have murdered John F. Kennedy.
If the series does succeed, it will be due in no small part to the remarkable chemistry among Harwood, Braidwood and Haglund, which is not unlike that of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis in the Ghostbusters films.
X-Files fans have come to know and love the Gunmen's eccentricities, sharp wit and technical prowess over the years. And as long as the series doesn't conspire against these characters by making them too absurd, The Lone Gunmen has a shot.
Cheers,
