Underneath the conspiracy and corruption of the Centre an the various case-of-the-week bad guys, The Pretender is a show about family, a topic that runs through every thread of ‘Every Picture Tells A Story’, from Jarod’s weekly pretend – as it normally does – right down to the unveiling of Miss Parker’s own origin story, something only alluded to in the pilot. There isn’t a character on this show who isn’t from a severely broken home and/or personal life, and its that search for attachment and drive for love and acceptance that really makes The Pretender more than a cheesy 90s procedural, and a poignant emotional drama.
For all intensive purposes, the Coast Guard search-and-rescue plot line is flat as a board, full of uninteresting, cardboard characters and plot devices. In a nutshell, two members of the Coast Guard have been shuttling unknown cargo from Mexico, and when their boat crashes into a co-worker, they leave him to die to continue their profits. The man has a daughter, and a mom who now has to work all the time (but we never talk to once)… It’s all done without much nuance, from the Latino child who breaks down when Jarod presses him, to the weird B-plot within the story of the pregnant pilot who couldn’t get ahead in the world because she worked with sexist, corrupt men. But hey, there is an appearance of William Sanderson (Sherriff Bud Dearborne from True Blood) as some guy who sits around in his boat for awhile, until Jarod convinces him to come to shore with classical music (yes, what the fuck, I know).
But the rest of the episode begins to peel away the first, super thin layer of The Pretender‘s mythological onion, bringing the very important murder of Miss Parker’s mother into the fold. We’re light years away from learning all about those events, but the DSR Jarod mails to her reveals a multitude of things about the Virginia Slim 400 (seriously, those things are long as hell) Ice Queen. Many of these are only alluded to (some adding a small layer to what we learned in the pilot): Jarod and Miss Parker definitely knew each other as kids, and both were in the Centre when Miss Parker’s mother died. Like Jarod, she’s missing a piece of her family, and by association, a piece of herself, that she can’t ever recover. Is that what drives her, makes her the cold woman she is? Like she said in ‘Pilot’, she is tough where her mother is weak.
It also brings the parallels of Miss Parker and Jarod into a clearer light; she’s now motivated to find the truth as much as she did, on her own journey to find the truth and fill the hole in her life that defines her. Without spoiling anything, it’s safe for the viewer to infer by the video Parker watches at the end that her death plays into all of this somehow, maybe not directly with Jarod’s supposed abduction, but into some other aspect of what’s going on with the shadowy figures at the top of the organization. For now, we’re left without an answer, but a number of important things are learned, just in those last few scenes: Parker’s as vulnerable as the rest of us, and her mother didn’t just die in an elevator.
For the most part, I’m going to stay away from getting too in-deep with Jarod’s weekly pretend, because there really isn’t a whole lot going on there. I’ll touch on thematic similarities here and there, but the only scenes I really find interesting are the ones in the end, where Jarod is acting out his vengeance fantasies on the bad guys of the episode (who are hardly ever drawn with any other color than ‘Ignorant, Over-Confident Corrupter Red’), and seeing how far he will push people.
On some level, Jarod’s trying to force bad people to go through the torture he went through – as we see in this episode, he’s had to spend long periods of time in stressful isolation, whether its underwater or in a big plastic tube. He’s not just trying to avenge some silly good-guy-gets-killed hero character; he’s a truly dark guy who’s been tortured his whole life, and really only knows how to reciprocate that one feeling over and over again (and thanks to the weird affections of Sydney, he barely comprehends the idea of affection or love).
Overall, ‘Every Picture Tells A Story’ is what the typical episode of The Pretender is: a lot of strong sequences with Miss Parker, Syndey and Broots (first appearance!) digging into the weirdness of the Centre, with Jarod teasing them while he takes care of some lame, shallow mission of vengeance and redemption. But even though they can be painful on a script level, the latter segments are always saved by Weiss’s performance, which manages to capture the balance between innocent, naive child and hardened, angry man who doesn’t even know his real name.
Grade: B+
Other thoughts/observations:
– the presence of twins through the Center scenes was another interesting parallel: two things hat look exactly the same side by side, but are inherently different when closely examined. Just like the murder of Mommy Parker, just like imitation dog shit, and just like the search patterns those Coast Guarders searched.
– love how Jarod’s honesty is always mistaken for humor when he tells people he learned to swim at the Y, or forged his transfer papers.
– three Pretends in this episode: atomic engineer (which we don’t see), Coast Guard member, and F-1 driver. Not a bad week.
– Vogner’s Dutchman and the idea of ‘searching for love’ is a masterful use of music, although its shoved in one of the most pointless side plots ever.
– Broots might be favorite character, and he gets a great introduction here: “I can do it in 24 hours (you have 12)… well, I can do it in 8.” The nerdy laugh exchanged between him and Sydney is always worth a chuckle, too.
– simulations mentioned this week: just one 4/13/70. I can’t figure out what the simulation is replicating, but the importance of the date is obvious; it was the day that changed (and defined) Miss Parker’s life.
– “It’s ok, I was a midwife once.” Of course, who hasn’t, am I right?
What did you think of ‘Every Picture Tells A Story’? I wanted to do two this week, but nobody wants to read 2000 words at once in 2012. I’ll probably post the review of ‘Flyer’ tomorrow or early next week.