The Lone Gunmen: The Cap'n Toby Show
August 26, 2020 6:21 PM - Season 1, Episode 12 - Subscribe
Cap'n Toby, the host of a long-running children's show and Langly's childhood hero, is accused of spying for the Chinese. The gang investigates the so-called Rose-Colored Glasses Lady, a dangerous operative who may know more.
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This was 2001. 'Barney the Dinosaur' was wildly ascendant, and had a run that spanned 1992 to 2010. 'Death to Smoochy' (Robin Williams [Rainbow Randolph], Edward Norton) was 2002. Topical and prescient, I guess.
The Mall that the episode occurs within is a composite of a bunch (at least a couple) of different locations.
Still written by 12yos. "Red Chinese"* is telling; written by white boys who grew up to be older white boys, who were privileged enough to produce/ write television in 2001.
In 2001, Yves should probably have referred to the 'Tewu' (the Western name for CCP foreign espionage at the time, but that only (literally) means "spy" 特务 - only because of a lack of information; nowadays, there are reports that identify 'PLA Unit 61398' and they've only been implicated in cyber operations implying the plausible existence of other 'Units.'
Rose-Colored Glasses Lady seriously shows how out of touch the writers/ producers were.
The "hiding stuff in plain sight in video" is based on the idea of 'steganography' (which is interesting) but is totally dumb (as written).
* "Red" as in communist as opposed to KMT (Kuomintang) Chinese who escaped to Taiwan
posted by porpoise at 11:30 AM on August 28, 2020