This Friday on The Lone Gunmen EP 4 : Like Water for Octane

The intro narration was great, it’s similar to what’s done on Family Guy and The Simpsons, and I think this one may have come first. Jimmy Bond and John Belushi got their historical knowledge from the same sources; I seem to recall a similar telling of the Chinese attack on Pearl Harbor from an SNL skit or maybe a Belushi film.
I loved Byers as a kid, I suspect the pleats on his corduroy leisure suit were probably gone by the end of the school year from being sat on and pushed around by his school mates. Reminded me of a commercial that used to be on a while ago, with kids saying what they wanted to grow up to be, I remember one commercial with a 7 or 8 year old saying he wanted to be an actuary for an insurance company, government bureaucrat had that one beat by a mile.
“Ringo” (Ringo??) Langley it seems had been born an ubber nerd. Frohike, a man of action at an early age in order to compensate for being vertically challenged.
Frohike delivers the best line of the episode at Langley’s expense, “yet you’re still a 32 year old virgin, the irony.”
What seemed like an inordinate amount of coincidences throughout the episode were very nicely all tied up and explained when we find out that Eve had suckered the boys into taking on the case.
Jimmy Bond became a bit of an enigma in this one, is he really that naïve and dense, or is it all an act? He seemed to be the only one who asked the right questions and examined the evidence of what was happening, and figured things out WAY before the boys did. Makes you wonder if he isn’t just playing possum.
The pace was kept up nicely, but it was rather contradictory when Eve tells Bond to stop searching for the boys because he was hammering concrete reinforced with hardened steel that could resist a nuclear blast, if that was the case, how come it was so easy to blow up the silos’ in the first place?
The episode completely falls apart at the end. The asinine logic and reasoning used to justify the destruction of the water car was just TOO much to take. And not ONE of these ubber nerds could see any the fundamental flaws in the reasoning?
I did learn one important life lesson from this episode; once in a while you have to grab the bull by the horns, other times it’s more expedient to yank on his scrotum.
It struck me as strange that the “water car” was stripped down to its essential elements; frame, wheels, engine, transmission, steering box, seat and……GAS TANK?
This one gets a 5 on the TLG scale, taken as a whole. A rating just for the ending would garner a zero on my scale.


"if it was any good they'd have made an American version by now." Hank Hill

I enjoyed the introduction with the scenes of the gunmen as kids. They were super nerds from the start. I also enjoyed the cinder block in the box. Although it is silly to think that Byers or Bond wouldn't have known from picking up the box. But well done anyway. Along with the shredder and video game stuff.
The water-car was a good theme for the conspiracy theory guys. It falls right into the stories of the oil companies/government/big 3 burying all of the great inventions like 100mpg carburetors, etc.
Being played by Yves seems to be becoming a common theme.
The bull-shot by Bond was quite funny. Also his lifting up/flipping of the micro-bus.
Some of the things I had a problem with:
(I'll give them the water-car on conspiracy theory)
The whole county shows up for a silo implosion?
The escape from the silo explosion was over the top.
JT Guthrie thought the car in the barn was 'junk'?! Think about that one; your best friend invents the water-car, winds up missing/dead, and you just happen to have a car chassis/engine in your barn.
f-ascaso's catch of the gas tank still being on the chassis is great. I also agree with f-ascaso that Bond seems to be quite nieve, yet smarter than the others at times.
I just figured out that Yves later played Llana in the last season of Lost.
I'll give this one a 6 for entertainment value but a little too unbelievable/not thought out at times.

Another good offering from Chris Carter and the boys. So far no klunckers in the bunch. f-ascaso good to have you back no reviews any better than you. Thus far i have found the show very charming and easy to watch, I'm starting to think it must have had a bad time slot or people were just tired of x-file stuff when it made it's appearance. Langly as a kid cracked me up as did all three and the frohike kid was so strange because as a youngster around 13 I too had a punch throwing argument about the Oldsmobile 442 compared to the Mazda Rx3...good times...good times.....The show moved on very well with all the humor we have come to expect. The Bond yanking the bulls donkey was priceless. f-ascaso brought up a point about the possibility of Bond knowing more than he is letting on, I do not believe this is the case yet. He seems to be a forerunner to the Chuck character of the first 2 seasons. The point about the silos was very funny and I could never decide if the entire thing was destroyed or just the tops. The Langly scene with the bull was hilarious, God take me now please...lol
Like f-ascaso i had a big problem with the ending, it was just too ridiculous to fathom. Al Gore wouldn't have even ended the story like that. There is no way that car would not have been brought forth if by no one else the farmer who had already sold the boys out for bucks just one scene earlier, and lest us not forget the bull only injured the oil guy not killed him, he certainly would have come back.
All in all a very easy watch but points of for the ending I give it a 5 on the TLG scale.

http://codenamestone.blogspot.com/

I found my way back as promised, no need to send any more lawyers, guns or money.

I watched the first episode and this one, so I'm almost up to speed. I found the far fetched explanations for the sequence of events similar in this episode to the first one. Population control and saving the environment by burning fossil fuels and saving the defense industry by destroying skyscrapers in NYC are both equally ridiculous.

These off the wall explanations may be thrown out there to show just how detached our heroes are from everyday reality? The other responses on here are very critical of the logic, BUT, there are people who believe this kind of tripe. Maybe the lesson being taught by the "Lone Gunmen" is that even seemingly intelligent people with diverse capabilities sometimes do have these fringe beliefs. Kind of like the agnostic who can do little more than shake his head in bewilderment by those who believe in the invisible man in the sky.

This was fun to watch, the comedic value was high and very clever at times. I'm sure I missed an inside joke or two by not having seen the previous 2 episodes.

The silo explosion...well, YES, the whole county would show up, there just ain't that much to do after the harvest and before plantin' season. I was just as baffled by the silo escape, silo escape hatches were no more than 60 feet from the main missile pod. Nice observation about the car being abandoned in he corner, barns do tend to get stuff forgotten in them (thus the term "barn find") but it's totally inconceivable that he wouldn't have known what it was for so long, then suddenly the light bulb goes off?

Chrmd-Seriously, dude, the RX3 & the 442? May as well compare the Space Shuttle to a 747, yeah, they both have wings but not much else to compare. Having owned an RX2 and a GTO, aside from the wheels being round there's nothing to compare. OK, I've scratched the line in the sand.

The rubble doesn't make any sense indeed, they usually have to bring fill in because the silos are just empty holes by the time they get around to symbolically blowing them up. The ambulance suggests the oil guy was severely injured, yet he or someone else would be back, exactly what/where did they expect they could hide the car?

If you find yourself in Tucson, AZ, you can visit a real Titan Missile Silo on the outskirts of the city in the desert.

I was mixed on this episode, I kind of flipped the reasoning part of the brain off to watch it, but was jolted to reality by the ending.

I'll give it a 5, compared to episode 1, which I'd give a 9 compared to this one.

Man without relatives is man without troubles. Charlie Chan

Lone Gunmen

I was a little disappointed with this one. The story was too predictable to me it’s becoming a little obvious how Eve uses the boys to do the dirty work. Don’t get me wrong there were some good scenes. I did enjoy seeing the beginning, seeing the boys when they were young and seeing how they grew and turned out. The whole explanation of why not to reveal the car I didn’t buy that for one moment. They would simple raise the price of water and tax the heck out of it and make their money that way. Hoping the show makes a rebound next week. This one gets a four on the Gunmen scale. Sorry for the delay virus got my laptop.