We pan down a wall-sized Japanese rice-paper screen, and see an unconscious Japanese man tied to a chair. He slowly comes to, takes in his surroundings, and makes an "oh, shit" face. A shadow appears from behind the rice-paper screen door, then the door slides open to reveal yet another Japanese man. This rice-paper room is full of them. Well, there's two now. Anyway, it's supposed to be scary. They talk in Japanese -- uh doy. The tied-up guy is bewildered; the mobile, slowly circling guy is menacing. Do I have to recap this part? Oh, there're subtitles. Ding dang it. Just move your lips all funny as you read this. Then put your hands in the air and wave 'em all around like you just don't care. Anyway, the tied-up guy is like, "Where am I? I'm supposed to be in Towson, Maryland. Do you know who I am?" And the menacing guy is all like, "You're in Osaka now, and you're the guy I'm about to put out of the whaling business." Then he whips out a big giant knife, and the music kicks in. Wow, whales. I thought we were supposed to save those guys? Oh, right, this is a show about issues, and people caring about them. Three people, in particular. I wonder where they are right at this moment.
A voice -- speaking in Japanese -- booms out from behind the screen, all you're going down, ersatz-Yakuza dude, and then boom, it's Frohike. Then the music really kicks in (I was wrong about before), and they fight, Matrix style. It's pretty funny because Frohike looks like he couldn't even use chopsticks, let alone kick some Japanese guy's ass with the king fu and shit. During this whole fight sequence I was like, say it! Say it! SAY YOU KNOW KUNG FU! But I was not satisfied. So yeah, they fight, Frohike kicks major buttocks, then gets the whaling guy to say where his whaling fleet is hiding out to "stop the gang" from destroying it. As soon as the tied-up dude reveals the locations, we see Byers and Langly hiding with their laptops, giggling. The dude who just got his ass handed to him by Frohike pops up and gives them the thumbs up. Oh, clever boys. Frohike backs off, but somehow, magically, slapstick-ally, the dude has freed himself. Frohike tries to stall, and starts talking in gibberish as the boys behind the curtain frantically try to get him to really communicate with the whaling dude. It must be a faulty lingual-dental implant. The whaling dude stalks up to Frohike and fingers the wires that truly were the Matrix stuff. Then, a rice-paper wall crashes on top of them. The other two gunmen stare at them. Frohike then pops out his lingual retainer (ew!) and says, "Sayonara baby!" Mmm-hmm. Then, run! They all run. How sophisticated, but not as sophisticated as this: Frohike gets jammed up on his wires, and flies back ass-first to knock out the whaling dude. Frohike's ass knows kung fu, dude.
It's night. We zoom up on a fancy mansion, with a crested iron gate and a foreign car with diplomatic plates in the driveway. From a balcony, someone's knocking golf balls into the dewy, well-kept lawn. It's a kid, with tears on his cheeks. He looks like Langly. Inside, there's three laptops, formatting and downloading to beat the band. An evil dude walks in, sees the formatting is complete, screws a silencer onto a gun, and pokes his head out the window. The kid turns around and purses his lips, all like, go ahead and shoot me, ya bastard. Evil dude says "fore" and kills the kid. Bastard.
The three LGs roll up to their bunker in their VW van. Byers comes in, paperless -- the printer wouldn't give them the paper on credit. Yeah, paper doesn't grow onsorry. Frohike's like, we have to get that whaling story out to the public! Byers says they're out of money. Langly says he can solve all their problems by putting a girl in a bikini on the cover. Dude, that's a page three girl if I ever saw one. And why are these computer geeks so wedded to publishing on paper? There's this thing now, called the Internet? Some people publish on it exclusively and do pretty well? If Wing Chun would stop counting her millions for a second, she'd tell you about it. Langly starts harping on how his hacker brilliance is like pearls before swine to these idealistic hippies, and that Byers still cares about who shot JFK, and they should really set this to music if they're going to sing the song so much. Could I be getting ready to say "we get it" two episodes in? I think I could. But I'll hold off. Anyway, Byers says he won't stoop to porn to publish their paper, and then the buzzer rings.
It's Yves, looking -- what else? -- sultry and kittenish. She slinks in and busts on them for a bit, then tells them about the murdered kid, who was offed in Long Island. His name was Alex (shout-out? Nah, too soon) and he was a "hacker extraordinaire." I wonder what a mediocre hacker does? Tap into the boards of Mighty Big TV and get all the posters' info and send out stupid spam? It's happened. The three LGs geek out about a golf-related hacker stunt Alex did (made the Times Square Jumbotron flash "Tiger is God!" for twenty-six minutes -- Frohike says, "Classic hack!") then Yves is all like, maybe you should find out who wants to kill one of your own, unless you're more into publishing photos of bikini girls.
Road trip! The fake theme to Peter Gunn starts up as the LGs pile into their van, only to find they're out of gas. Dang.
They roll up in Long Island, so the caption says, and Langly is nauseous because he had to siphon gas. One gallon from ten cars, because Byers thinks, "Ethically, it seemed more defensible." Hee. Langly says, "You'll be sorry when I'm dead." Frohike gripes, "Prove it." Guys, where's the love?