Another week, another review. Read more for the spoilery goodness.

Cast

Bruce Harwood as John Fitzgerald Byers
Tom Braidwood as Melvin Frohike
Dean Haglund as Richard “Ringo” Langley
Steven Snedden as Jimmy Bond
Zuleikha Robinson as Yves Adele Harlowe
Shawn Batten as Nurse Marilyn
Richard Fitzpatrick as the poacher
Bill Macy as Dimsdale
Robin Mossley as Dr. Bellucci
Michael Puttonen as Dr. Bromberg

Crew

Written by John Shiban
Directed by Bryan Spicer

Original Airdate

Diagnosis: Jimmy originally aired Friday, April 20, 2001.

Synopsis

In the opening teaser, the boys are trying to catch a poacher in the
act of selling grizzley bear gall bladders to asian buyers. The
poacher passed the original buyers, and moved somewhere else, so Jimmy
went skiiing after him. (I guess they just cuoldn’t resist the urge
to put Jimmy Bond in a high speed chase while downhill skiing…) He
got photos of the poacher with the new buyer, and then skiied into a
tree. The new buyer found him, exposed the film in his camera, and left.

After the opening credits, Jimmy wakes up in a hospital bed, with no
recollection of the mission or the poacher. From this point, the
episode broke into two separate storylines, which I’ll summarize separately.

In the “Jimmy” storyline, Jimmy is stuck in the hospital with
injuries to his right leg and knee. His nurse, Marilyn, is obviously
very attracted to him, offering him sponge baths, or whatever else he
needs. (He asked for cotton balls.) His roommate, Dimsdale, was a
cranky old man who needed a hip replacement. Dimsdale even kept
switching the TV to FOX News, preventing Jimmy from watching an
episode of America’s Most Wanted about doctor Richard Millikan,
an orthroscopic surgeon with a sweet tooth who poisoned his patients
on the operating table.

Jimmy soon received his box of supplies from Marilyn, and used the
cotton balls, tongue depressers, glue, etc. to build a diarama of the
mountain side. His plan was to recreate the events leading up to his
accident, hoping that he could jog his memory about what happened.

Yves arrived at the hospital to check on Jimmy. The nurse, obviously
jealous, showed up to “check on Jimmy” and eavesdrop on the
conversation. While Yves pumped Jimmy for information about what he
remembered, the nurse rather creully pulled his leg up. After Yves
left, she administered an injection rather painfully in some tender tissue.

Shortly thereafter, Jimmy and Dimsdale were having another
conversation. Dimsdale antagonised Jimmy, daring him to come over and
fight, so Jimmy pushed his bed closer using a crutch, and tried to
pull back the curtain between them. Instead, he fell out of bed,
pulling down the curtain and destroying the diarama. When his
orthropedic surgeon came to help him back into bed, a sucker fell out
of his pocket.

Jimmy suspected this man was actually Dr. Millikan. He asked Yves to
“do that thing with the Internet” and dig up records about him.
Meanwhile, he snuck out of his room and checked his records. The man
appeared out of nowhere a little less than a year before. Dimsdale
was the next person scheduled to have an operation from him.

Jimmy told Dimsdale his fears, but met with little support. (Dimsdale
had already thrown his son out of the room, and pretended he had no
next of kin.) He followed Dimsdale out of the room when he was on the
way to the operating table, and made his accusations in public after
removing the doctor’s wig. Yves showed up a few seconds late, after
proving that this man wasn’t Dr. Millikan. He was bald because of a
disease, and had no records from the year before because he’d been
doing volunteer work in Africa. Embarrassed, Jimmy backed away toward
his room, but fell, doing enough damage to his leg to require
immediate surgery.

On her way out of the hospital, Yves heard an update about
Dr. Millikan. That doctor’s name had been cleared, since the poison
had been proven to come from the anasthetic.

Before surgery, Jimmy and Dimsdale talked about Dimsdale son, and
Dimsdale’s fear of dying alone. Dimsdale had a change of heart.
After the surgery, he met with his son again.

Jimmy was met by Langley, Byers, Frohike, and Yves after surgery.
Jimmy’s anasthesiologist was the killer, who had framed Millikan and
then killed him, just as he was planning to do with Jimmy’s doctor.
Yves had realized this, and saved Jimmy’s life. Jimmy also regained
his memory of the events before his accident. The four also told
Jimmy about the resolution of the other plotline, which I’ll summarize
now.

The three gunmen kept watching the poacher, trying to catch him making
a deal on film. The normal evidence gathering tactics couldn’t work,
since his house had no phone, no power, and a large chain link fence
around it. He also liked to wander around his property with a hunting
rifle.

The poacher received overnight mail, which presumably held the
location of the next meeting. The gunmen decided to read the contents
of that mail.

To do so, they had to lure him away from the cottage. Langley dressed
himself in a bear pelt the poacher had lying outside, and lured him
into the woods, while Frohike broke into his cabin to read the mail.

Langley tried running away, but his pants got caught in a bear trap.
He left the pelt and the pants in the trap, escaping in his coat, his
long underwear, his touque and his 42 T-shirts. He was hiding behind
a tree stump when the poacher arrived, and he noticed the mail in the
poacher’s back pocket. Langley eventually managed to take it from him
and get away.

Frohike was not so lucky. Just as he was giving up on finding the
letter, he was caught in a snare in the poacher’s living romm, and
hung from the ceiling. He managed to go unnoticed when the poacher
got home by swinging back and forth until he could catch hold of the
antlers on a stuffed deer head, and hang near the ceiling. After to
poacher went back out to the woods looking for the mail (which he must
have assumed had fallen out of his pocket,) the antlers broke, and
Frohike fell again.

The Gunmen arrived in the Vancouver warehouse two hours before the
poacher, and set up to videotape the exchange and turn him in to the
police. The buyers came, but they couldn’t get a clear photo of their
faces to use as evidence, so Byers moved closer, and was caught. When
asked if he was alone, he claimed that the entire warehouse was wired
for sound and surrounded by police. The poacher decided he was alone,
and was going to slash his throat when police dropped from the rafters
and came in through all doors.

It turned out that the sting was organized by Yves, who was the second
buyer in the teaser. This also explains why she came to visit Jimmy
and pump him for information; she was afraid he’d remember her (which
he did after it was all over.)

High Point

Once again, the high point is a scene with Jimmy. The writers have an
easier time writing comedy for him, and Snedden has great comic
timing. In this case, I found the funniest part of the episode to be
the scene with Yves’ first hospital visit to Jimmy, and Marilyn’s
subsequent torture of Jimmy.

Low Point

The low point, in my opinion, had to be Byers’ entire “Gentle Ben”
speech. That has a horrible way to set up his desire to save an
endangered species. I just didn’t buy it, probably because Bruce
Harwood didn’t seem to believe it.

The Review

This episode had some original moments. Some were not so
original, such as Frohike hiding on the ceiling. (Doesn’t anybody
ever look up?) I give it 4 out of 6.

The effects in this episode were few and far between, as
they often are in comedies. There were some make-up effects involved
with the bald doctor, the pratfalls we’ve all seen before, and that’s
about it. There should have been make-up effects to make Langley,
Byers, and Frohike as cold as they were supposed to be. I give the
effects 3 out of 6.

The storyline involving Jimmy was well done, but the
other storyline was not. If this guy was paranoid enough to put a
snare in his living room, don’t you think he’d check it after finding
out that a “bear” by his remote property was actually a person who
hadn’t been found? Don’t you think a bear poacher would look at
Langley’s footprints in the snow and find him anyway? I give the
story 3 out of 6.

The acting, on the other hand, was above average for most
of the episode. Langley never seemed cold to me. (I live in Canada,
and I’ve seen a lot of cold people.) You can act as cold as you want,
but it doesn’t work without the right make-up effects on the face and
ears. I give this episode’s acting 4 out of 6.

This episode is another that failed to provoke an emotional
response in me. There just wasn’t a moment that got to me. I
give it 2 out of 6.

The production quality was very high this week, especially the
final scene in the warehouse. The directing was well timed, and kept
the storylines moving and interesting. I give it 5 out of 6.

Overall, this episode was better than the sum of its
parts. It had bumps along the way, but it got there in the end. I
give it 5 out of 6.

Totalling it al up, I see that Diagnosis: Jimmy has a
score of 26 out of 42.

Next Week

On Sunday, The X-Files will air the episode Empedocles.
Next Friday, The Lone Gunmen will demonstrate the Tango de Los Pistoleros.

The Official Website

The official site has
greatly improved this week. The episode guide is far easier to
navigate, and a non-flash site is on the way.

Also, some of you might have noticed that Langley often waers a
Ramones T-shirt. The website has had a Ramones poster on the wall of
their HQ for a while. When highlighted, it popped up a text box that
said “Joey man get better.” Since Joey Ramones unfortunate death
last weekend, it has read something along the lines of “We’ll miss
you Joey.” I found that to be a very nice touch.

Has 1013 noticed us?

I doubt this is the case, but I felt I must mention this. Langley
mentioned that he was wearing 42 T-shirts this week. Does this mean
the 1013 Productions noticed this website, and gave us the nod of
approval? Or, does it simply mean that they are also fans of Douglas
Adams’ “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy?” What do you think?