The Pretender ‘Curious Jarod’: Business As Usual

Every show has its clunkers, and unfortunately, ‘Curious Jarod’ is one of those for The Pretender. By putting The Centre on the sideline for most of the episode, ‘Curious Jarod’ leaves out the most interesting parts of the show – the search for his family, the mysteries of the Centre – in a favor of a poorly-constructed Las Vegas plot about showgirl murders and faded rock impersanators. It had a few interesting connections (including a very weird DSA), but for the most part, this is a forgettable episode of the show.

The biggest issues are in the casino plot, which somehow manages to top the obtuse antagonist of  ‘Flyer’ with a bad guy whose so bad, we can’t even understand his motives. Paul Morgan apparently is just a woman-beating president of a casino, who does nothing else but laugh about making money the few scenes he’s on-screen. Even in the big ‘reveal’ moment of the episode (the casino tape Jarod gets from Ginny, Paul’s wife) doesn’t reveal any kind of motive or emotion attached to his fetish for putting showgirls into comas: the video features him dancing around with Maggie Blair – this week’s victim – and all of a sudden grabbing her face, and pulling her off-camera for a deathly beating.

It’s all very melodramatic, feeling less like the show it would eventually become, and more like one of those throwaway Lifetime movies about bad men who abuse women. And to top it all off, how does Jarod exact vengence for her? He runs a scam on the casino under Paul’s name, and sets him up to get the shit beaten out of HIM by the casino’s pissed off CEO – who I don’t think would sit in a casino office and order an illegal assault on an employee. Not only is it a disturbing stunt on Jarod’s part, but it doesn’t make any sense for him to go through all that trouble with a slam-shut murder conviction in his hands… Jarod’s known to be a little cruel in his ways of getting the truth before, but not only does he not get a confession from Paul here, but he steps over into sadistic territory by setting up a man to get the shit beaten out of him.

The fringes of the casino plot are also mostly throwaway: there’s an Elvis impersonator who’s given the boot after 24 years, and it never becomes clear how Jarod is supposed to help him, except by using him to set up the casino employee. It might be some kind of karmic justice in Jarod’s eyes, but it doesn’t help the old guy who’s given his entire working career and good years to hide behind a wig and a mask for a dirt paycheck. I wish ‘Curious Jarod’ would’ve delved a little deeper into Bernie Baxley and the mid-life despair he was going through, but he’s really only around to eat up screen time, and be the kooky character of the week he included in his latest set-up.

Outside the casino, the show greatly improved, although we’re only talking about eight or nine minutes of episode for this stuff. Jarod teasing Sydney and Miss Parker with the different books is always fun to watch, with moments like Sydney and Broots staring at the plastic monkey suspended in a cage (an obvious parallel to Jarod’s life in The Centre). There isn’t any development on the larger stories at hand this week, but the show does pause to make a nice connection to Jarod’s obsession with Curious George and the man in the yellow hat, and why figuring out who that guy is (is he a father? A captor? A friend?) is so important to Jarod.

The DSA of the episode was also an interesting one, although the parallels it appeared to draw in Jarod’s mind were amazingly thin, at best. The DSA is dated 10/12/67, and is another video replicating a famous historical event: this time being the most famous ‘showgirl’ of them all, Marilyn Monroe. Jarod is trying to pretend to be her murderer (if there was one?), not being able to either grasp the concept or the feeling of her dying alone. I love how The Pretender always suggests at the big conspiracies of the last 50 years (did JFK get assassinated? Did Monroe kill herself?), but never really tries to attempt an answer – except in the pilot, of course.

But overall, ‘Curious Jarod’ is an amazingly thin episode of the show, a poorly-constructed hour that felt rushed in both its conception and execution. One of the reasons the show gets so great later on is because it removes most of these annoying Hero Fights the Rich Evils of the World story lines, and focuses on the more important character stories on the show (like Syndey’s fantastic episode in season 2).

Grade: C-

Other thoughts/observations:

– Miss Parker’s zinger this week comes early on, when reading off titles of mathematics books: ” I think I’ll wait for a movie on that epic.”

– Pretends for Jarod this week: auto crusher employee, gambler, casino security head, Las Vegas police officer, and person who frees animals into the wild. That’s quite a busy week.

– anytime Jarod says “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” it’s usually bad news.

What did you think of ‘Curious Jarod’? Feel free to leave your thoughts/comments on the episode or my review below (please make a note for spoilers so I can review and remove if they are too spoiler-y), and stop by next week to talk about ‘The Paper Clock’, where Jarod gets the first clue about his family.