Drinking Game Points:

• Gravity asserts its mastery over Frohike - In Mr. Stukas's cottage (1)
• Over any of the other Gunmen:
  1. Langly trips and falls on the bear trap (2)
  2. Jimmy collides with a tree and falls down (2)
• One of the gunmen should logically be dead by the end of the episode:
  1. Frohike wouldn't have escaped the cottage and would have been shot. (1)
  2. Langly would have had his foot caught in the bear trap, and he would have been shot (1)
  3. Since they were already arrested, they probably would have killed Byers. (1)
  4. Jimmy flatlined... that's pretty hard to come back from. (1)
• Meaningful glance between Yves and Jimmy
  1. When Yves first visits him in the hospital (1)
  2. When they are all in the hospital at the end (1)
• Jimmy and Yves act the couple - When Nurse Maralyn gets jealous (1)
• Jokes involving bodily fluids - Jimmy's insistence that the bedpan will really catch on in the civilian world (1)
• The Gunmen wear their all-black sneakster outfits (1)

Total Points: 14

The Lone Gunmen

Episode # 9 (1AEB08)
Diagnosis: Jimmy

First aired: April 20, 2001

High atop Mt. Redoubt, on the U.S./Canadian Border in Washington state, the snow is falling gently. From deep within one rather large drift, a little periscope peeks above the snow and surveils the mountainside. Inside, Langly is not a happy camper. You see, Langly has very thin blood, and his knowledge of attire begins and ends with the word t-shirt. So naturally, he puts on 42 T-shirts. Byers is not particularly sympathetic, because in 10 minutes they will have all the evidence they need to put away a poacher. Meanwhile, Frohike, in snow camoflage and snow shoes, is patrolling the slopes. He radios back to "Ice Station Zebra" to check in, using a heat sensor to detect the poacher as he heads past him on skis. Frohike alerts the boys that the poacher is on his way north, towards the Canadian border. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle comes together. Jimmy (codename: "Snowflake"), in a very conspicuous black sneakster costume, is in position and is staking out a couple of Asian dudes in very conspicuous hunter-orange jumpsuits that have arrived by snowmobile. Byers wants to make sure that Jimmy gets a shot of the merchandise changing hands, but as the skier passes by the meeting place, he just keeps going! Jimmy, perplexed, calls in that something's wrong, and the Gunmen think that Jimmy has been spotted and their cover blown. But Jimmy is positive he wasn't spotted, that there must have been something else--and so he takes off after the mysterious poacher/skier. Jimmy isn't too bad of a skier, and he tracks down the poacher to another meeting with another skier, the poacher unloads his backpack and begins to hand over the merchandise. Jimmy, still moving down the slope, snaps a couple of photos, but fails to realize that he is rapidly approaching a large, immovable object in the form of a tree. Needless to say, Jimmy goes splat, falls flat on his back, and is out cold. He remains conscious just long enough to see the "buyer" of the goods stop by, pick up his camera, pull out the film, and ski off. Jimmy is left in the snow, his leg at a very uncomfortable-looking angle.

Jimmy comes to in St. Jude's hospital in Bellingham, Washington. He's been a little touch-and-go, aparently not remembering that he'd been conscious in the hospital before. The doctor informs Jimmy that he's had a bad accident while skiing, and that he, Dr. Bromberg, did the ligament work on Jimmy's leg--which is in a very large cast suspended above his head as he speaks. Dr. Bromberg assures Jimmy that his leg will heal up fine, but in the meantime, he needs bed rest and observation for the next couple of days, since he suffered a concussion. The doctor then lets in the Gunmen, who have come to wish him well. They brought him to the hospital after the accident, and want to pick his brain about what, exactly, he saw on the slope. Unfortunately, that bump on the noggin actually struck some sort of vital area, and Jimmy can't remember. Byers tries to remind Jimmy that there is a poacher out on the slopes (editorial by Frohike: "Total anti-government nutjob" -- so they're colleagues?) by the name of Walter Stukas. This fellow is killing Grizzly Bears (an endangered species) for their gall bladders, which are worth a considerable sum on the Asian black market. If Jimmy remembers, it means the Gunmen get a great scoop, and the poacher can be arrested. Also, Byers seems particularly anxious that Jimmy remember. However, poor Jimmy, furrow his brows as he might, can't seem to recall the incidents that lead up to his unfortunate horicultural experience. And, it doesn't help that an attractive nurse interrupts the Byers-hypnosis session. As the Gunmen beat a hasty retreat from the attractive woman (knowing from experience that they are nothing but trouble!), Nurse Maralyn introduces herself to Jimmy and make some not-too-subtle hints that she thinks Jimmy is the hottest patient she ever had the possibility of sponge-bathing. As soon as she learns Jimmy doesn't have a girlfriend, she insists on giving him a pain injection in the rear end. Jimmy is a little too sleepy to get her advances, and when she asks him what she can get for him, he replies that he wants cotton balls--lots and lots of cotton balls.

The Gunmen are staking out Walter Stukas's shack in the North Cascades Mountains. Things are a little greener here, but Langly is still miserably cold (poor thing must have been positively frozen growing up--Nebraska winters can be pretty harsh). Frohike returns from a little surveilance, it seems that Stukas makes his own electricity, and has no phone. Just as Frohike is relaying the extent to which this man hates technology, Stukas himself comes out, carrying a grizzly hide, which he throws over the fence to air out. Byers becomes really, really pissed. He hopes that Jimmy can remember something useful before the poacher can strike again.

Meanwhile, Jimmy is kicking back, eating Jello and watching "America's Most Wanted." John Walsh is profiling a doctor by the name of Richard Milliken, an orthoscopic surgeon who killed 4 patients on his operating table during a period of 10 months in 1999. Nurse Maralyn wheels another patient in to the same room as Jimmy, who is still watching the show. However, just as the story gets good, the channel changes to Fox. Jimmy changes it back, but the new patient again changes it back. Jimmy protests loudly, but Nurse Maralyn comes around to tell him that she's just stuck a real jerk in the room with him, and that she wouldn't have done it she had any other place to put him. She's also found him his cotton balls, and makes another not-so-subtle hint about her affections for him, but he's just too dumb and loveable to pick up on it, then she gets beeped away. Jimmy is able to begin construction of his mountaintop mockette, and, discovering the man sharing the room snoring lightly, is able to turn the channel back to America's Most Wanted. Mr. Walsh is explaining that the doctor has probably altered his appearance since his disappearance, and that his identifying characteristic is his sweet tooth--he often has pockets filled with candy.

In the operating room, Dr. Bromberg is finishing up a latenight round of orthoscopic surgery, when his patient perks up and complains that he's starting to feel his knee, and that it hurts a little bit. He asks Greg--the anesthesiologist--if this is possible, but Greg shakes his head and assures the doctor everything is A-Ok. He finishes up, and asks the resident to close up for him. He leaves the O.R. to cleanup, and as he splashes water on his face he finds he must re-attach an eyebrow that's come loose. In the operating room, the patient is seizing, and the doctor goes to his locker and happily pops a lollipop in his mouth.

Back in his room, Jimmy has managed to construct quite an alpine scene, and takes his little snowmobiler for a test-drive. He's remembered that, 1) he was wearing all-black, and 2) there were snowmobiles in the situation. Nurse Maralyn comes in to check on him, and he's happy to report that he slept like a baby. Nurse Maralyn tries to offer him a sponge bath, but he waves her off. She grows alarmed when she learns no one checked on Jimmy at all the night before--it turns out that they were a little busy while someone was dying on the operating table. Mr. Dimsdale heard all about it--I guess nurses have a habit of gossiping in front of bedridden patients in this hospital. Nurse Maralyn tries to hush him up, but Dimsy raises a valid point: who the hell dies on the table during knee surgery? The use of the word Orthoscopic sets off bells in Jimmy's brain, but Nurse Maralyn plies him with promises of ice cream bars, and takes off. As she walks towards the Residents' lounge, she passes by a mysterious woman at the payphone... it's Yves! She's looking mighty dangerous in her red turtleneck sweater and white pants. She heads into Jimmy's room in order to check in on him. Nurse Maralyn watches her enter, and gets a very unhappy look on her face. Jimmy is very happy to see Yves--but he's confused that she came all the way out to Washington State to see him. She tries to beg off that she was concerned about him, but he was laboring under the impression she thought he was just a big dummy. But Yves, sensing another jealous female in the room, acts particularly affectionate towards Jimmy, prompting Nurse Maralyn to fly into a jealous rage and intentionally yank on the wires suspending Jimmy's hurt leg. Needless to say, Jimmy is not too happy about this, Maralyn excuses herself from the room, and Yves asks him about the little miniature mountain he's managed to construct. Jimmy explains that he doesn't remember much--he only remembers little, irrelevant details. As she learns this, she draws back and gives him a brusque good-bye, and checks out. Nurse Marylin walks in and gives him a very painful injection.

Near the little cottage by the woods, Byers alerts Langly and Frohike that there's movement at the cottage, it seems Walter is packing heat, aiming a gun squarely at the microbus, he takes aim and fires. However, he wasn't shooting at the Gunmen, he was target-practicing with cans. As they huddle behind the van, they watch as a Transcontinental Express van pulls up to the gate and hands a letter through the fence to Stukas. Byers wants to know what's in that letter.

Jimmy is dictating his important memory work. 56 hours ago, he was midway down the slope--but everytime he tries to get something onto tape, Mr. Dimsdale interrupts with an insult, calling Jimmy, among other things, a shaved ape. Jimmy snaps, and decides that he has no other choice but to go over and beat up a crippled old man. Grabbing his crutch, he attempts to make his way over to Dimsdale's bed, but fails spectacularly, and ends up on the floor. To make matters worse, it appears to Nurse Maralyn and Dr. Bromsberg that Dimsdale actually cleaned Jimmy's clock. As Dr. Bromsberg stoops down to help Jimmy up, a lollipop falls out of his front pocket and onto Jimmy's chest. Remembering Mr. Walsh's ominous words, Jimmy becomes suspicious--and says he's sorry that his patient died last night, looking for a reaction from the good doctor.

The Gunmen have hacked Transcontinental Express's delivery database, discovering that the package sent to Rout 3 Union Trail, N. Diablo, Washington USA 99007 (phone: (564)555-0156) originated from the Shiny Health Medical Group, 10131 Shaoguan Blvd., E. Shanghai, Shanghai, China, 200231 (phone 096-21-5559192). Byers figures the letter can only be the location of the next meeting--and he knows that they are required to see if they can steal a look at the letter. However, his thought process is interrupted by a phonecall--it's Jimmy! He's got a lead on a new story--the Doctor of Death! However, even the Gunmen aren't convinced that Jimmy has a solid lead based on the evidence of a sucker. So, at 11:42 P.M., Jimmy takes matters into his own hands, clambering out of bed and dragging himself into a wheelchair for a little reconoiter. He carefully wheels himself around, and into the nurse's station where gets his hands on the schedules of tomorrow's surgery. Mr. Dimsdale is the next on on Bromsberg's table.

Mr. Dimsdale isn't happy about filling out paperwork, and Jimmy explains that he thinks Dr. Bromsberg is really Dr. Milliken from Denver. Of course, Dimsdale is a little skeptical, but Jimmy shows him the sucker, and then explains that he snuck in to have a look at Bromsberg's records, and it turns out that Bromsberg started working at the hospital only a year ago--which fits perfectly with the time that Milliken left the hospital in Denver. Unfortunately, Jimmy can't really go to the cops with such circumstantial evidence.

Back at Ice Station Zebra (cleverly disguised in camoflage netting), Byers is trying to figure out how to get into the house to have a look at the letter. Frohike and Langly are a little more realistic, realizing that the gun-toting nutjob never goes 20 feet beyond the house. They suggest packing it in for a while, but Byers is staying. Langly and Frohike want to know what's so important about bears that Byers risks being blown to smithereens by a convicted murderer. Now, the story of Byers's beard can be told:

Byers really, really liked Gentle Ben. He wanted Gentle Ben as a pet. When he was 12, Byers went camping with his parents and saw a rogue male turn over a trash dumpster. Realizing that this vandal was obviously a threat to trash-loving societies everywhere, the authorities had to put the bear down, and Byers realized that extinction is forever.

Frohike has a plan about how to get into the house.

Yves is trying to figure out if Jimmy's story about the Doctor of Death is a result of medication or just stupidity. Jimmy wants Yves to hack out a conviction for Bromsberg, but Dimsdale is convinced Jimmy is a big dumb clunk. Just then, Nurse Maralyn enters the scene and announces that Mr. Dimsdale has a visitor... a son! Mr. Dimsdale doesn't invite his son in and shouts at him to go away.

Meanwhile, back at the gun-toting-nut retreat, Stukas is sharpening a bowie knife when a loud growling comes from the bushes. He looks out and sees the head of a grizzly bear poking through the brush, then move away. Grabbing his rifle, Stukas heads out for the kill. But-- it's not really a grizzly bear. It seems one of the Gunmen nabbed the bearskin he left to air out and now Langly is wearing it, luring Walter away from his cottage. As soon as Stukas leaves, Frohike breaks in. Langly, running for dear life, trips over a bear trap and finds his pantleg caught, and Walter is closing in fast!

Frohike, not realizing that we catch a glimpse of Walter's correspondence sticking out of his back pocket, has broken in to the cottage. Discovering the envelope empty, he begins the search. Meanwhile, Stukas has discovered the bear hide, realizing that it's already dead and he's been had, he lifts up the hide to discover Langly's pants left behind. Picking them up, he gives them a good sniff and begins to track our pantsless hacker down. Langly, not only in a conspicuous red hat, but also in some very conspicuous red longjohns, tries to put a large dead stump between himself and the poacher. Meanwhile, in the cottage, Frohike has managed to land himself in a booby trap, and is now swinging upside down from the ceiling. Langly, peeking out at the poacher's backside from behind the stump, realizes that the reason they're in this mess is sticking out of the man's back pocket. And, in one of those moments where you know Langly has more balls than most people give him credit for, he reaches out to grab the letter. Byers informs Frohike that Stukas is headed back for the cottage, and so Frohike starts himself a-swingin'. Stukas re-enters his apartment, and Frohike is hanging onto the antlers of a mounted deer's head for dear life. Of course, the antlers aren't really that strong, but fortunately for Frohike, by the time they break and he is sent crashing down to the floor, Stukas has realized the letter is missing and goes out to search for it.

As Mr. Dimsdale is wheeled out for hip surgery, Jimmy freaks out, grabs a crutch, and confronts Dr. Bromsberg, shouting from across the hall "Richard Milliken!" Of course, Dr. Bromsberg, who always answers to other people's names, turns to look at Jimmy, who believes he has the good doctor cornered. Accusing Dr. Bromberg of really being the Denver Doctor of Death, Jimmy hops over to the befuddled doctor and grabs the man's hair, lifting it clean off his completely bald head. Jimmy, thinking he had scored a serious victory, goes on to point out his other two pieces of evidence, that Dr. Bromberg has a sweet tooth, and that he's only been there a year. In his finest moment, Yves walks up, and Jimmy asks her to put the final nail in the coffin with the proof, but Yves... doesn't have any proof. A little chagrinned, Jimmy hands the man's wig back to him, and Dr. Bromberg explains that he suffers from alapica, and that last year he was doing volunteer surgical work in Africa, and that he does indeed have a sweet tooth. Jimmy, sufficiently embarassed, begins to back off, but instead falls flat on his butt and manages to mess up his knee again. Dr. Bromberg examines the patient, then asks Rick if he had any dinner plans. Rick says no, and they escort Jimmy to the O.R. Greg heads into the locker room and opens up his locker, tossing out a little vial of unknown substance he's been keeping in there.

The Gunmen break into a wearhouse in Vancouver, Canada. Byers decides they need to set up a vantage point from which to record the deal. Langly, not having kept the letter for fear that it might raise suspicions (see plot holes) tells them that they have 2 hours--the deal will go down at six-o'clock.

Jimmy is feeling pretty stupid. Yves reassures him, telling him she has an appointment and has to be somewhere, and wonders if he'll make it alone. Jimmy reassures her yes. They wheel Jimmy into the same room as Dimsdale, and Jimmy has a heart-to-heart with Dimsdale, who turns out to be an old softy. Jimmy convinces Dimsdale that it's better to reconcile with his son than to die alone. Meanwhile, on her way out of the hospital, Yves is waylayed by the evening news, discussing the details of the Milliken case--it turns out that the original Doctor of Death was not the one they suspected--the one originally suspected had been poisoned by the real Doctor of Death, who then assumed his identity. The murderer is still at large!

The poacher arrives to make the deal, and the boys are scoping the scene out from their birds-eye view up in the rafters. The buyers arrive to make the switch, and Byers, frustrated by the lack of clarity on Langly's hand-held camcorder, takes off for the floor. Unfortunately for Byers, he's discovered pretty quickly, and brought before the vengefull poacher. He tries to fake them out by telling them that the police are outside, but they're not buying his bluff. Byers gets the bowie knife put to his face, but just then, Frohike detects another heat source, and the police burst in on the scene to arrest the poachers and save Byers's hide while they're at it.

Back in the O.R., Greg Ballucci introduces himself to Jimmy, and asks how the knockout drugs are working, then says something no one on the operating table wants to hear--Greg was the Doctor of Death! Jimmy blacks out, and the sound of a flatline is heard.

Jimmy comes to with Yves hovering over him. He now remembers everything... like the fact that Yves was the one who grabbed his film out of the camera on the slope after he collided with the tree. Of course, the Gunmen already knew this little detail, Yves was the one who tipped off the Mounties as to the nefarious designs of Mr. Stukas, and she has this thing against working in cooperation with the boys, so Byers nearly got a really close shave for nothing. But, all is well with the world. She saved Jimmy's life--figuring out that Greg Ballucci was really the Doctor of Death. Ballucci is now in custody, and Mr. Dimsdale has reunited with his son. Jimmy's feelin' good about himself.

Hardware: Actually, there isn't a lot of hardware in this episode. I can only assume that the laptop Langly is using to track the poachers down the mountain is running a Unix OS, but I have no proof of this. Likewise, while the hospital was running some really cool flatscreen monitors, there was no proof of an OS or software package running on them.

Media: "Frenzy" by Midas Touch.

Pop-Culture Points: The title is a spoof of the CBS program "Diagnosis: Murder" starring Dick Van Dyke. The reference to "The Doctor of Death" is probably a reference to Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a former pathologist who has admitted helping 130 people end their lives with his "suicide machine." Kevorkian is currently serving a 10-25 year sentence in a Michigan Prison. The "You like me, you really, really like me" line is a pretty famous quote from Susan Lucci, who exclaimed that very phrase when she finally won an Emmy award after losing 18 times. The show Gentle Ben, which aired in 1967 (adapted from a book by Walt Morey) was about the friendship between a boy and a bear in Alaska.

How the hell did they get the microbus on the side of that ski slope? On an alpine slope, winter sets in pretty early, so it's not like they could have gotten there before the first snowfall--unless they wanted to forego publishing a paper for a couple of months. Likewise, even provided that there was an overnight snow and the ground was clean before then, any meeting that relied on snowmobiles and downhill skies to happen would have been cancelled anyway.

I find it highly unlikely that Jimmy could have found a way of looking up Bromsberg's records--without knowledge of a computer. Hospitals will not necessarily carry a doctor's background check on file--and even if they did, Jimmy wouldn't have had enough time to locate Bromsberg's file before the nurse came back and discovered him.

The hospitals would have known better than to suspect the doctor of poisoning his own patients on the operating table. You see, surgeons don't actually administer any kind of medication or sedative during surgery. This is always handled by the anesthesiologist. If a patient dies on the operating table, the autopsy would find the lydacane in the bloodstream, and the natural finger of blame would point to this person--not the surgeon.

We're going to forget the fact that Langly is not stupid enough to pretend to be a bear and have a gun-toting lunatic track him down. It's very likely that Langly would have lost his foot in that bear trap--if it closed in such a way as to catch his pantleg, that means he didn't accidentally kick it into snapping shut, that means he stepped in it somehow. Bear traps have all of the spring-loaded action of a mouse-trap, but on a bear-sized level--and that amount of force, and those sharp teeth, would have meant Langly would be looking into the Krycek Prosthetic Limb Replacement Clinic.

When the deer antlers Frohike is holding onto break off, he is sent crashing down to the floor. It makes no sense, seeing as how he was being so securely held above the floor to begin with. Basically, as soon as they broke off, he would have been in the same situation he started from, dangling upside down in the poacher's living room.

The final trade would have been cancelled, or at any rate, the poacher wouldn't have shown up. Simply put, the man is paranoid enough to live in a shack in the woods. The day of the next deal, he is lured away from his shack, only to discover that someone had set up a decoy. While he is out, someone breaks into his apartment, evident by the tripped trap and broken deer head. Finally, he discovers that his letter is missing--and while we can only assume that Langly left it in the forest, those are still way too many factors to take into account when one is supposedly arranging a secret meeting with which to exchange contraband.