The Lone Gunmen
Episode # 4 (1AEB03)
Like Water for Octane
First aired: March 18, 2001
John Byers: Bruce Harwood
Ringo Langly: Dean Haglund
Melvin Frohike: Tom Braidwood
Jimmy Bond: Stephen Snedden
Yves Harlow: Zuleikha Robinson
Shelly Mizer: Shareen Mitchell
Henry Vast: Timothy Webber
Jason Guthrie: Mark Valley
FOI Clerk: Michael Eiclund
Young Ringo: Eric Pospisil
Young Melvin: Gordie Giroux
Young John: Matthew Munn
Langly's Dad: Billy Mitchell
Football Player: Jay Iorbi
Pigtail Girl: Lauren Kennedy
Freckle-Face Boy: Ben Libbiter
Snooty Girl: Katlyn Alexandra Ducharme
Towhead Boy: Danny McKinnon
The intro starts off with an inspirational monologue, delivered by Jimmy. Jimmy is espousing the virtues of heroes. We see pictures of General Patton, John F. Kennedy, Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Ghandi. Of course, Jimmy thinks that Winston Churchill was not only the President of England, but that he also (implicitly) single-handedly won the second World War. Not to mention the fact that Ghandi was in fact a Native American. But details don't really matter, because Jimmy thinks that the Gunmen are of the same heroic line as all of the aforementioned people, and to prove it, we segue into a full-color classroom of children in the bustling metropolis of Sterling Virginia, 1974. Child after child gets up before the class and explains about how when they grow up they want to be rich and famous. However, one little boy in a brown suit has a different idea. While "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" plays in the background, he explains that he wants to be a career bureaucrat with the Federal Government and work hard to spread democracy throughout the world. That little boy was none other than John Fitzgerald Byers, Idealist. Next, we see Saltsville Nebraska, in the year of our Lord 1982. A farmer passes by the milkin' cows to admonish his son Ringo for spending too much time on the computer. An awkward, gangly boy sits atop a haystack, plugging away at what looks to be an Apple IIe, or possibly an 8086. The man is upset because Ringo hasn't done his milking chores, and that the computer is taking up way too much time. Ringo gets up to defend his computer--as the future of the way that we live life as we know it. He then explains to his father how in the year 2000, cows will be unnecessary. Finally, in Pontiac Michigan, circa 1967, a the captain of the football team is tackled by a runty little kid who insists that he admits that the Cutlass 442 is faster than the Belvedere GTX. Rather than beat up the kid, the football player reminds the kid that he will always be a shrimp. But, the shrimp explains that he's able to see the big picture, and that some day, people will be hanging off his every word, because he's going to do big things, and then write about him. This man of action was none other than Melvin Frohike. Jimmy is convinced that these three heroes from separate paths, all joined together to make history.
Cut to the present day. The newsmobile pulls up and parks in front of the Federal File Depository in Owings Mills, Maryland. Byers is after some information, but the Freedom of Information clerk is sick of seeing him. This clerk is not a very helpful man, but it seems that Byers actually managed to secure some paperwork entitling him to some information! The clerk deposits a very heavy-looking box on the desk and Byers looks shocked. It's all his.
Back at the office, Frohike is teaching Jimmy the finer points of paper shredding, while Langly is hard at work at becoming King on a computer game he's been playing for the past two weeks. Byers returns, barely able to hold onto the huge box, which Jimmy deposits on his desk. Byers is so happy, he sees this as vindication for all the times the clerk blew him off. Byers imagines it's every file he's ever requested from the federal government. However, on actually opening the box, they find nothing in it but a cinderblock. As Jimmy readies the box and block for disposal, he finds a piece of paper stuck to the bottom of the block. Frohike dismisses the paper without viewing it, telling him to shred it. Langly finally makes king, and Jimmy heads over to the shredder. Before he drops the paper through the shredder, Jimmy laughs and comments on the name that hasn't been crossed out--"Stan Mizer." Frohike perks up, but it's too late, Jimmy has already set the shredder in motion. Frantically, Frohike leaps to unplug the shredder, but accidentally unplugs Langly's computer instead, causing much consternation.
Frohike is finishing up the long process of sorting out the little paper shreds in order to scan them and hopefully reconstruct the paper. Jimmy wants to know who Stan Mizer was. Now comes the part where we learn that he was the man who, in 1962, perfected a car that ran on water: A Studebaker Lark, sea-foam green, with no tail fins. The document is reconstructed, and there are only three things that have not been censored. Stan Mizer's name, the line "Pallet 62/67221," and the Initials "J.T." They figure the Pallet number is a shipping number, and Langly sets to work investigating where that pallet is. Byers imagines the paper was stuck to the cinderblock as a fluke, coincedence, but Frohike knows that it was something more... it was destiny.
Over in Secaucus, New Jersey, a sporty BMW Roadster pulls onto a highway embankment and Yves steps out to meet with her current employer. He insisted on a face-to-face meeting to ask her if she's made any progress on an unknown mission. She doesn't have any information for him, but he waylays her, reminding her that he works for the oil companies, and that they're nasty people when they need to be.
The Gunmen are staked out in front of Mizer's place. Since the family name is still out front, Frohike believes that his daughter, Shelly, still lives there. It is then that Frohike admits that he has gone after Mizer's water-powered car before--and that he and Shelly don't really get along. His hopes that she doesn't remember him, however, don't bear themselves out. Paranoid by the postman, Frohike makes a lunge inside the house, and Shelly remembers him all too well. Frohike convinces her not to call the police, and she allows them to look around her father's workshop.
Meanwhile, Langly is not having any luck tracking down pallet number 62/67221. He's gone through every online database he can think to get his hands on to no avail, and Jimmy's "helpful suggestions" are about to push him over the edge. However, Jimmy is a little confused at how it is that something that meant so much to Frohike "just happened" to wind up in their office. Langly grabs the copy of the paper and looks at it, only to realize that there's no FOI stamp on the paper--that it was a plant.
Speaking of FOI, Yves just happens to be there right that moment, chatting it up with the unhelpful clerk. She gives him a kiss and takes off, and then big, scary oil company guy walks in. He wants to know what Yves and the FOI clerk were talking about, but the FOI clerk isn't particularly forthcoming. So, oil company guy gets kind of upset, and he appears to have anger-management issues, because when Langly and Jimmy arrive to talk with FOI guy, he's been strangled in his paper-stamper.
Down in Mizer's basement, Frohike and Byers are trying to figure out where the junk collection ends and the files begin. Before they can get started, Langly calls to let Byers know that the FOI clerk has been murdered, and that the last person to sign in the log book was Leroy W. DeShevala -- that treacherous, anagram-using vixen! So the onus for the murder is placed squarely on Yves. Frohike doesn't think it was Yves, but he does think that he was right to be paranoid all along. Just then, he discovers a painting that Shelly had done when she was a little girl. Frohike recognizes the paper she drew on as photo paper. On removing the painting from the frame, they find a photograph of Stan Mizer and a military man named Mr. Guthrie--Mizer's best friend. Mr. "J.T." Guthrie.
They regroup and head down Highway 14, keeping a careful lookout for those who would follow them. On the way, Frohike explains how, as a kid, he was fascinated by cars. Then, one day, at a diner outside of Pontiac, little Melvin Frohike met Stan Mizer and his fantastic automobile of dreams. When Frohike saw him fill up his carbeurator with a glass of drinking water and take him for a drive, his obsession was born. But, Frohike's reverie is broken by a sharp crack, and the van swerves off the road. Frohike thinks someone is shooting at them, but it is nothing more than a flat tire. Unfortunately, they don't have a jack. But Jimmy, taking some initiative, explains that since the van is on the side of the road and leaning a little bit, the center of gravity has shifted to one side of the van, and that he should be able to lift it on his own. When he lifts the van, all Byer's has to do is stick a log under the axel, and the van is propped up and ready for a tire change (provided they remembered the tire). They get all ready, and Jimmy strains with all his might and... tips the van over into the ditch.
Thanks to Drake's towing, the van is rescued and the boys are dropped off at the nearest farm. Frohike, Shelly, and Byers all go out to have a look around and maybe find a phone, leaving Langly and Jimmy in front of a barn, wherefrom the ominous sound of lowing cows emanates. Langly is not too happy at being thrust back into his childhood hell, but when a farmer comes out and asks them if they're here to see "J.T," Langly perks up a little, and assents. But Jimmy is confused--perhaps on a jag after discovering the phony document plant. As Jimmy tries to get more information out of the farmer, the farmer becomes more and more irritated, and Langly, fearing that their chance to discover who J.T. is may be fast escaping, eagerly assents to everything the man says... that he is an expert from the State Extension Office, and before he knows it, he's lied himself right into giving a bovine rectal palpation (in English, he has to stick his arm up a bull's ass). Needless to say, Langly has just entered his own personal ninth ring of hell. Caught in this compromising position, the farmer pulls a shotgun out and demands to know who Langly and Jimmy really are--but just when things couldn't look any worse for Langly, in walks Byers, Frohike, and Shelly just in time to see him with his hand deep inside a bull's nether-region. Fortunately for Langly, Shelly knows the farmer, she recognizes him as Jason Gurthrie -- J.T's son.
As Langly proceeds to cauterize his arm, Jason explains that he named his bull in honor of his father who passed away two months prior. Anything with J.T's initials on it and a pallete number would be found on the Biznot Airforce Base up the road, J.T. was the quartermaster for the missile command program. The Gunmen figure that there's only one man who could pass as a soldier, and so they get Jimmy dressed up in uniform and send him in. While Jimmy is busy rifling through the files, another soldier comes upon him, just as he's matched up the FOI document with an uncensored version. In the resulting struggle, he discovers that the soldier boy is none other than Yves... in drag! She manages to secure half the document for herself.
Jimmy hauls Yves back to Jason's farm, and they discuss what's to be done. Frohike examines the document, it was an Airforce Material Invoice dated April 4, 1962, for a pallet weighing 2,981 lbs. But, with Yves holding the other end of the document, they don't know where it was. She doesn't plan on giving it back, but then Langly threatens to call the cops and have her arrested for murder. Yves is surprised to learn about the death of the FOI clerk, assuming that the man who hired her (who she identifies as Henry Vast) must have grown impatient. Byers then puts two and two together and realizes that it was Yves who planted the document in Byers's box, so that the Gunmen would do all the work in finding the car, and then she could show up at the last minute to grab the prize. However, Yves allows them to view the rest of the document, figuring there would be enough money to go around, and hinting that she doesn't mind them sticking their necks out for her. Frohike learns that the pallet is being kept in Storage Room 4, Silo C. Jason figures that the Silo is likely the ICBM silo on Biznot.
At four minutes after midnight, there is another clandestine meeting, all's quiet on the Guthrie farm, but inside the barn, Jason is meeting with Mr. Vast, who exchanges a substantial check for the information on the car, enough to save the farm.
Daybreak. Frohike pulls the van around to the front of the house and begins to beep the horn frantically. As the other Gunmen scurry out (once again, Jimmy seems to be having difficulty with his pants), Frohike displays that morning's paper--if they don't hurry and get the car out of the silo, it's going to be blown to smithereens as the Air Force base does away with the cold war relics. At 11:42 that morning, the grandstand is full and the local high school marching band is belting out Sousa with all its might. Orange-clad explosives experts hang out in the field, while Jimmy and Yves watch from the bleachers. Inside one of the silos, our four heros rapell down explosives-lined walls. Yves reminds via collar-mic that time is not a luxury in this case, as the engineers seem to be finishing up. Without too much searching, they come upon Storage Room 4. However, just as they get inside, the air horn blows, alerting the engineers to clear the field and ready for the fireworks. Yves looks over to where a flat-bed truck is pulling away from the base, hauling what appears to be a Studebaker underneath a canvas tarp. Yves instructs them to get out of the silo, that Vast has the car, but they can't hear, they are too deep into the silo and the signal isn't getting through. The boys come across the crate, not knowing that the second airhorn has sounded, and the people in the bleachers are now counting down to the explosion that will certianly doom the boys to a firey death. Meanwhile, they have jimmied open the crate, only to discover a lone cinderblock inside. Yves is trying desperately to get through, and Jimmy joins in, and finally the message gets through, but--to the dismay of Yves and Jimmy, the countdown has been reached, and the silos are blown up.
It's now after dark, and Jimmy is trying to dig through the rubble that used to be the silo. Yves tries to talk him out of it, explaining that the concrete is nine feet thick, and reinforced with hardened steel, and was designed with the idea that it could withstand a nuclear blast. Jimmy is not going to be dissuaded, though, because, as he waxes so eloquently, he "Loves those guys." However, as Yves looks away, she sees three figures appearing from the mist, it's the Gunmen! they're all right! They managed to escape through a ventillation shaft, which emerged a half-mile away under a porta-potty. Yves doesn't know where Vast took the car to, which is the only reason she was hanging around with Jimmy. Frohike is left to wonder how Vast found out where the car was.
Jason fesses up at the kitchen table, he didn't cash the check, he gives it to Shelly instead. Shelly then explains that the car was never stored in the silo, that the car was on the Guthrie farm the whole time. It's had the body removed, but it's been sitting under a tarp in the barn, Shelly found it that morning when she was looking around. Frohike is filled with childlike glee, but Shelly then explains that the next task at hand is the destruction of the car. Byers, understandably, is confused. A cheap, pollution-free alternative to gas-guzzling vehicles would send the global economy through the roof. But, as Shelly points out, the ensuing development boom would mean that more people would be driving cars, more wilderness would be cut down so that people would have places to drive those cars, and there would be more consumption than ever before. Just as her point is being taken, Vast shows up, miffed that his purloined Studebaker isn't water-powered. He reminds them that the world is running out of oil, and that something needs to be done before that happens--he wants to mass-produce the car and make billions. But first, he has to kill everyone in the barn, because they know too much. He draws a gun and points it at Yves. Jimmy thinks quickly and dives for J.D's dick, giving it a good, hard yank. J.D. then sends out a mighty kick, knocking Vast through the barn wall. Everyone is safe, and Langly looks really troubled.
Yves takes off, without the car, because the Gunmen are tuning it up to run again. In the final, triumphant scene, while Jimmy forgets that the Atom Bomb wasn't necessarily mankind's most selfless invention, Frohike drives the car around the Guthrie farm.
Hardware: There's very little technology in this episode, but we do see Langly huddling up against some very nice-looking flat-screen monitors it would appear he was using a Linux system of some sorts, as the keyboard would indicate a PC keyboard. There are several miscellaneous CPU's in the background, but no actual brand names, not even the scanner. The document reconstruction software appeared to be of Linux extraction. In fact, every identifiable desktop screen shot in the office indicates a Gnome interface. In the van, when Langly is using the GPS system to track their progress to the Guthrie farm, he is using an older Macintosh Powerbook (of unknown make and model), even though once again, the screen shot would appear to be Linux. When Frohike is using the zoom lense to get a gander at the Mizer household, the silver-colored SLR viewfinder would indicate that it was a Pentax K-1000, but I can't identify the brand of the telephoto lense.
Media: The song "455 Rocket" by Kathy Mattea is heard in this episode.
Pop-Culture Points: The title of this episode is a nod to the 1992 Alfonso Arau movie Like Water for Chocolate, which was based on a book by Laura Esquivel. The movie and book have nothing to do with water-powered vehicles. Speaking of which, there are two rumors of substance with regard to water-powered vehicles, and Stan Mizer certianly wouldn't have been the first to have created one. There is a popular conspiracy theory that two fellows in Perth (Western Australia) managed to perfect a water-powered car out of a 1977 Ford Fairlaine. One was bought out, and the other was bumped off when he refused to "keep quiet" about his invention. Also, there is an actual patent for a water-powered car that was invented in 1935 by a fellow named Charles H. Garrett from Dallas, Texas. You can check out the patent for yourself at the U.S. Deparartment of Commerce's Patent Database, the patent number is 2,006,676. (Requires the Quicktime Image Viewer)
In the scene where Jason confesses that he told Vast where the car was located, bright sunshine is streaming through the window behind him, but in the next shot, it's after dark (as it should be).
One can't help but wonder how they managed to blow up a missile silo with conventional explosives when the thing was designed to withstand a nuclear blast--and if such a powerful blast was able to do the thing in, why were spectators allowed to watch not 200 feet away?
One would hope that ICBM silos are pretty high-security things--if the boys were able to locate a ventillation shaft, it wouldn't have led to some indeteminate place where someone just happened to build a porta-john.
The silos were blown up around noon. When the boys finally stumble bleary-eyed out of the mist, it's well after dark. Presuming this took place in the dead of winter, with the shortest amount of available sunlight, it would still have taken them about six hours to have arrived back. Even crawling through a tight ventillation shaft, it would not have taken them over six hours to crawl half a mile.
While it was funny seeing Langly freak out over losing power--I am not convinced that he wouldn't have had a UPS Back-up attached to his system.
Idealist
Computer God
Man of Action
Three Little Heroes
Three Big Heroes
Frohike ponders destiny
Frohike informs Jimmy he is not to say a word
Reconstructing the document
Langly in distress
Save the paper!
King Langly
The Shredder Sensei
Byers alarmed at size of box
Yves's clandestine meeting
"She probably doesn't remember..."
Even Byers begins to suspect that Frohike is bit too paranoid...
"Yes, I even tried the Internet...!"
...And Byers is left holding the log...
Langly is really, really horrified at where his arm is right now...
"Hey... that doesn't look like a Studebaker..."
"Um, I think we need to get out of here..."
Frohike, on the road again...
Yves can't believe he just did that...
"Aw shucks, anyone would have just grabbed the bull's dick..."
Jimmy in distress
Byers:
"It's called the Freedom of Information Office, so why isn't the information Free?" (96K)
"In the year 2000..." (193K)
"I've spent two solid weeks creating this civilization from the ground up." [Frohike] "and yet you're still a 32-year-old virgin..." (154K)
"Busted you Byzantine hack!" (45K)
"What? Why do I have to babysit Gigantor?" (109K)
"Oh sweet Lord take me now!" (49K)
Jimmy gives Langly some hacking advice. (413K)
"I'm watching you..." (40K)
"This is a bit dramatic..." (32K)