Bond, Jimmy Bond

"Bond, Jimmy Bond" is the second episode of the first season of The Lone Gunmen.
==Synopsis==
While searching for the killer of an infamous hacker, the three Lone Gunmen find... a fourth.
==Summary==
A Japanese businessman finds himself tied up in a room with paper screen windows. A young Japanese man enters and the businessman asks him about the room; as far as he knew, he was in Towson, Maryland. The young thug tells him in Japanese that he has been sleeping a long time and that they are now in Osaka. He tells him that he's trying to put the man out of the whaling business and implies to be part of some larger organization.
As he threatens to take off one of the man's fingers, arrives speaking very gruff sounding Japanese. The thug and Frohike have an impressive looking martial arts battle that ends with the punk thrown through one of the paper screen windows. He flees.
Frohike explains to the businessman that he is a special investigator tracking some eco-terrorists and that he needs the names of the whaling ships to protect the vessels. Reluctantly the businessman gives the names and Frohike is told by earpiece that they check out. He tells the man that others will be here shortly to free him but he must go and warn the vessels right now.
The businessman horrifies Frohike when he reveals he has freed himself already. Frohike attempts to placate the man but the Japanese he speaks is now gibberish. The businessman walks over and touches the wires that aided his “savior” Frohike in the karate battle. Pulling the wires brings down one of the walls of the sound stage. Onto the two men. Breaking through the paper wall, they turn to see John Byers, , and their ally the Japanese “thug.” They rush out of the building but Frohike is still on wires so as he runs, he becomes airborne and hurtles backwards at the victim of their deception. The poor man just sees a butt sailing towards his face.
At a mansion enclosed by iron bars, a young man weeps while chipping golf balls at the cars below the balcony. He has been working on something at three laptops inside. A vicious looking man with dark black eyes like a shark enters that room and checks on the computers; he does not like what he has found. He goes to the window and leans out on the frame to watch the golfing man. As a last act of defiance, the crying man hits one more ball that soars through the air and breaks the windshield of one of the cars.
The vicious looking man smiles at this and says, “Fore.” Then he shoots the golfer in the chest three times and watches him tumble over the railing.
Byers arrives with the bad news from the printers: they won't give them their latest issue on credit. They spent every dollar they had on getting the whaling story and now they can't publish it. Langly suggests a way to fix their money woes by increasing the number of subscribers to their newspaper through a new feature, “Lone Gunwoman of the Week.” Frohike likes the idea at first but Byers’ glare pushes him to say she doesn't belong on the cover of any legitimate publication. Langly questions how far Byers is willing to go to get the stories they write published. Byers gestures at the Lone Gunwoman and answers, “Not that far.”
Their news for the day gets worse (or better) as they find Yves Adele Harlow at their front door. She politely explains that she isn't there to kill them over the Octium IV chip snafu that cost her a fortune. (They returned the chip after running their expose on it.) She recounts the news of the death of Alex Goldsmith (alias Double Bogey), golf nut and legendary hacker. She suggests that the three men look into the murder of this man given his identity and the bullets in his body being the kind used by intelligence operatives.
After gearing up and loading their van, they drive off only to find it is out of gas after thirty feet.
Arriving at the home of Alex Goldsmith's mother in Staten Island, New York, an extremely sick Langly bellyaches about having to siphon gas and swallowing some of it.
They meet with the grieving mother of Alex Goldsmith but she has no clue what her son might have been involved with. She takes them upstairs and leaves them with her son's computer. Langly throws up in the late Goldsmith's most prized possession while Byers and Frohike start checking out the computer. Langly takes the golf bag with the autographs of most major golfers including Tiger Woods and cleans it too well. The computer has been reformatted and offers nothing. Langly returns with the bag's signatures ruined so they try and write some names back on before Goldsmith's mother returns with some food. They excuse themselves in rush before she can notice what they have done (at least until they get outside). Byers shows them a check he found for Goldsmith. A one million dollar check!
“Guys. I’m not sure Alex was the Saint his mother thinks he was.”
Having tracked the check to the charity that cut it, Philanthropic Outreach Enterprises, they speculate that it is a fake charity and probably killed Goldsmith. It's CEO is one, James Bond, which surely must be a fake name. Following “James Bond” in his car, they find a football field with lots of beeping noises. As a football is kicked over towards them, Frohike picks up the beeping football only to be tackled. Langly roars at the players.
“What the hell! You guys blind or what?”
Yes. Yes they are. As the sports doctor checks Frohike for a concussion, James Bond introduces himself as Jimmy Bond and explains that he has started a blind football league. Using sonar helmets and beeping footballs, he has given blind men the chance to play football.
They admit to being reporters and press Jimmy Bond for information about who funds all of this but Bond has no idea since his benefactors remain entirely anonymous.
Returning to the tapped out VW van, Langly leaves the others to do the siphoning this time and goes on foot back to POE headquarters. He breaks in and sits down at a computer terminal. Valet, the vicious looking man, appears and Langly explains he is the best hacker in the world so he could replace Alex Goldsmith for them. After Langly impresses the man by hacking into the Pentagon, the Jet Propulsion Lab and the Queen's Bank of Georgetown, Cayman Islands, he gets the job. As the duct tape is put over his mouth, he regrets having wowed them at the job interview.
Yves Adele Harlow calls to inform Byers and Frohike of Langly's abduction.
Later, watching the embassy for Belamisk, they realize how hard it will be to get Langly back out of there. Frohike and Byers realize that Langly is showing just how far he is willing to go to get the story. Harlow relates to them that Belamisk has a rebel faction to deal with and they figure nerve gas will deal with them. So they have set up POE as a shell company to make the arms deal through but its not known why they need a hacker for the deal. An irate Frohike confronts Yves, she knows much more than she is telling them and that she must have an angle in all this. Byers figures she must be profiting from this somehow.
Inside the compound, Langly learns that his job is to set up a fake corporation, access the account debiting protocols and transact a fifty share purchase at ten dollars a share on every east stock account. Langly figures that is about one hundred thousand people so $50 million in value. He believes the US government, which monitors for fraud, will notice this. Valet and his associates insist that Langly get it done and leave him to his task.
Byers and Frohike go to the gullible Jimmy Bond and explain that there is no league, that POE is a front, and that Bond is being set up as the fall guy for everything since he is the only name on record. They tell Bond about the murder of Alex Goldsmith and he gets angry at himself since he felt everything sounded suspicious. He talks about how he believes in people who have the courage to fight the lost causes, be it blind football players or whoever. Bond is upset and they point him to where he can find the man who set him up.Jimmy Bond confronts them at the embassy only to be knocked out by a golf club wielded by Valet.
Bond wakes up on the floor and finds Langly peering out from under a nearby door. He punches through the door and hands over the hardware Langly needed to talk to the other Lone Gunmen outside in the van.
Langly recounts what the Belamisk thugs want him to do and with their purpose (buying nerve gas to use on the rebels) known to the others, it becomes clear they are stealing the money they are using to make the deal so they can hide the purchase from the world at large. Langly doesn't want to help them kill people but refusing will make him end up like Alex Goldsmith. Yves Adele Harlow tells him to do what they want him to do; she has a plan.
Langly shows them that he has accomplished the job. As Valet puts the silencer on, one of his men comes in and yells in their language. They abandon him in the room.
Outside, Harlow has gotten what she was after so she says goodbye to the van's confused occupant, Byers. Frohike is busy at work opening the iron gate of the compound.
Langly goes out onto the balcony and, after much cajoling from Bond, jumps down expecting to be caught. Distracted by the arrival of Frohike, Bond fails to catch Langly. Frohike helps Bond drag the dazed Langly away as Belamisk embassy guards open fire on them.
Escaping in the van, Byers explains that they never transferred the money and that Harlow used the situation to steal the funds of the Belamisk government, enriching herself and greatly wounding their regime. Langly only thought he had transferred the 50 million dollars.
Langly gives the one million dollar check to Goldsmith's mother and is forgiven for what happened with the golf bag.
Out of gas again, they push their van back to headquarters. The Lone Gunmen find Jimmy Bond waiting there with their last week's issues all bought and paid for.
“You guys fight the lost causes. I wanna help.”
As they think this over, the van continues to roll past them until crashing loudly.
==Background Information==
===Introductory Details===
*This is the first episode to feature Jimmy Bond, a series regular.
*In The Lone Gunmen series, this episode is the first of six whose titles include the name of an individual main character from the series. The others are "Eine Kleine Frohike", "Planet of the Frohikes", "Maximum Byers", "Diagnosis: Jimmy" and "All About Yves".
===Cultural References===
*The episode's title is a reference to the James Bond series of movies, in which the main character often famously introduces himself as "Bond, James Bond".
*The teaser of this episode includes visual references to the 1999 film The Matrix, to the martial arts fight scene between Morpheus and Neo in a Japanese dojo. The teaser's climax goes as far as to refer to the means with which The Matrix's special effects were achieved, with Frohike wearing a harness and a wire to achieve his stunts.
===Notes===
*Tom Braidwood (who plays ) hurt his ribs on the last take of the opening sequence of this episode.  He did his own stunts and so doing the wirework hurt him in that kung fu sequence.  (Audio commentary from Bond, Jimmy Bond)
*Teresa Page posed for the picture of the Lone Gunwoman of the week (see above).  She was director Bryan Spicer's girlfriend.  (Audio commentary from Bond, Jimmy Bond)
===Continuity===
Upon Yves' first meeting with the Lone Gunmen in this episode, the group refers to events that take place in the pilot episode; Yves mentions that the Gunmen cost her "a tidy profit" when they stole her Octium IV chip, although Langly argues that the chip was theirs. Detailing events between both episodes, Byers tells Yves that the Gunmen - after having published their expose of the technology - returned the chip to "its rightful owner", indirectly referencing E-Com-Con Computer Corp. from the previous episode.
===Cast and Characters===
*After looking at the pilot, the series' writers realized that they needed one more character because the Lone Gunmen, even though the writers had staked out different positions for all three of them, were essentially very alike and had similar knowledge so they needed someone to explain their knowledge to, because having this interaction on-screen would simultaneously help relate to the audience what the Lone Gunmen knew and what was happening in each episode. Hence, the writers created Jimmy Bond, a character who would not only serve this function but also be different from the Lone Gunmen in that he was classically good-looking, an attribute that would also allow him to serve as a potential love interest for Yves Adele Harlow. The potential of this relationship was also unlikely for the three Lone Gunmen, additionally helping to differ the new character from the series' already created protagonists.
*Actor Stephen Snedden was subsequently cast in the role. He was at first unsure of what reactions his work on the character would invoke, because the role was slightly absurd, but he nevertheless went ahead with filming this episode, accepting the situation and hoping that everyone would like his performance.
*Even though he knew he would return in other episodes, many members of the production crew were under the erroneous impression that he was only a guest star in this single episode. Consequently, even after this episode was filmed, the actor was approached by several of the crew who voiced their appreciation of his character but were acting like it wold be unlikely that they would see him again, since they believed it would be.
*Christina Jastrzembska (Mrs. Goldsmith) previously played Mrs. Wheatley in the Millennium episode "The Sound of Snow".
*Kevan Ohtsji (Toshiro) previously played Hotel Clerk in the Millennium episode "Bardo Thodol".
*Hiro Kanagawa (Business Man) previously played Peter Tanaka in episode "Firewalker", Yung in the Millennium episode "522666", Dr. Yonechi in "Synchrony" and Team Member Lewis in "The Time is Now", Detective Rondell in "Human Essence" and Shopkeeper in "Bardo Thodol".
==Cast==
Starring
*Bruce Harwood as 
*Tom Braidwood as 
*Dean Haglund as 
*Stephen Snedden as Jimmy Bond
*Zuleikha Robinson as Yves Adele Harlow
Guest Starring
*Alexander Kalugin as Russian Guy
Co-Starring
*Christina Jastrzembska as Mrs. Goldsmith
*Kevan Ohtsji as Toshiro
*Hiro Kanagawa as Business Man
Featuring
*Edward Hart as Alex Goldsmith
*Oleg Palme as Valet
*Shawn Stewart as Linebacker
*Demord Dann as Team Medic
==References==
SEMICOLON-SEPARATED LIST OF ITEMS/LOCATIONS REFERENCED IN EPISODE (BUT NOT LINKED TO IF ALREADY LINKED IN SUMMARY OR GUEST STARS SECTIONS)
Category:The Lone Gunmen episodes