Total Recall: The Lone Gunmen “Three Men and a Smoking Diaper”
This week the Gunmen get into a slapstick adventure as they try to get a story about a Senator’s indiscretions which ends up with them taking care of a baby.
The episode kicks off with the guys hatching a scheme at a rally for Senator Richard Jefferson (a parody character of Bill Clinton), who is running for re-election but one of his campaign workers, Barbara Bonabo, has recently died under mysterious circumstances. Byers is in the crowd with a balloon transmitter that allows Langley to piggyback onto the transmission of a reporter’s earpiece and makes him parrot extremely hostile questions to the senator about the death Barbara. The reporter’s producer spots Byers fidgeting with the balloon and puts two and two together with his reporter’s odd behavior and sets out in pursuit of Byers. Jimmy tries to give a warning but is caught by the producer and weakly tries to suggest that he works for Geraldo Rivera. The producer abandons Jimmy and tries to find Byers but ends up finding Frohike and Langley in the guy’s van instead, with Langley still going on a tirade about the Senator. The duo spends the night in jail and their van is impounded.
Jimmy and Byers reunite with Frohike and Langley at the impound lot and they get a clue on their windshield. Someone has written a RX number on it and Langley is able to find out that it was a prescription for tranquilizers for Barbra Bonabo. The guys break into pairs for pretty much the rest of the episode as Jimmy and Byers try to infiltrate the Senator’s campaign to figure out who left them the clue while Frohike and Langley head to the doctor who wrote the prescription
Frohike and Langley are stopped from checking the doctor’s computer by an extremely stern nurse which forces Frohike to pretend he has a case of extremely painful gas. Langley is able to hack into the computer and get an address for Barbara Bonabo. The guys head over to find it’s an apartment and they find an abandoned baby, which they immediately deduce must be the love child of Barbara and the Senator, which would be a strong motive for getting rid of her.
Jimmy, meanwhile, is sent into the Senator’s campaign headquarters with a hand covered in forensic adhesive (from a “friend” in the FBI), in an attempt to get fingerprints from the workers inside. He manages to get a job licking envelopes but when he sits down to work, notices his adhesive is coming off his hand so he attempts to glue it back down but manages to cover his arm completely in glue and gets both arms and pants covered in envelopes and papers. He heads to the bathroom to clean up and overhears Senator Jefferson’s campaign managers, Brenda and Jock, angrily discussing the apartment and the cover up. The guys think Brenda might be the mole due to how upset she seems about everything.
Frohike and Langley attempt to take care of the baby but the Gunmen HQ isn’t exactly baby friendly, they attempt to use a rubber glove as a nipple on a bottle of Yoo-Hoo and duct tape a clean diaper on him. They eventually get desperate and call Yves, who immediately uses her womanly intuition to figure out that the baby is probably teething. She questions where the baby came from and Langley almost blows their story but Frohike covers by saying it’s his.
Jimmy and Byers head back to the Jefferson HQ and Jimmy is called upon to help Brenda and Jock sober up the Senator for a meeting with a Woman’s Auxiliary group. Later on, Jimmy approaches Brenda and lets on that he knows about the baby, which makes her and Jock decide to “take care” of Jimmy. This actually means though that they attempt to bribe Jimmy with a bonus check and a job, which Jimmy angrily rejects because he actually believed in the Senator’s message. Byers is exasperated that Jimmy ripped up the bribe check, which would have been a massive piece of evidence.
Back with the babysitters, Yves comes back to check on the guys and finds that they built an insane contraption that rocks the baby in the middle whirring arms carrying food and bottles. Yves is horrified and forces Frohike to go to a Mommy and Me class where he has to wear fake breasts to nurse. Frohike lets his guard down and accidentally reveals where the baby actually came from. Yves is surprisingly gung ho about helping the guys expose the Senator but they only have a little over 24 hours before the election begins and Jimmy destroyed their best evidence. To make up for it, Jimmy comes up with a plan to get fingerprints from everyone on the campaign by delivering coffee at the Senator’s big rally and getting the prints off the cups. Byers matches the prints to the windshield and the gang confronts Brenda backstage at the rally but she didn’t have the cup they though she did. It turns out Jock was the one who left the clue for the Gunmen, having become fed up with cleaning up the Senator’s messes. Jock reveals to the Senator, Brenda and the Gunmen that he tried to pay off Barbara to stay quiet until after the election but she became distraught, got a prescription of tranquilizers and got into a car accident. With all this revealed, the Senator decides to tell the truth at the rally.
Afterwards, the Senator arrives at the Gunmen’s HQ to collect his son, whom he names William Jefferson and Brenda arrives a short while later to gather up their baby supplies. Brenda sees a report on the news that the Senator is still in the election, despite his confession, which gets an excited cheer from everyone.