So next topic will be budget. Scroll down to the first post if you have no idea what I’m doing.

Does tP have a big budget?
Do they need a big budget?
The answer to both questions is “no”.
And by big budget I mean BIG budget. Of course they had some money, a lot of regular characters, quite a few sets, boats, helicopters and what not and plenty of outdoor scenes- in my mind outdoor scenes are more expensive than indoor. (Maybe it’s just my bad memory or vivid imagination, but I think the outdoor scenes and large boats and such were les frequent later on in the series when they were struggling not get canceled).

Maybe tP doesn’t have a huge budget, but it doesn’t mean that everything look like crap. Take the Centre for example. You could easily believe that making the Centre look freighting would cost a lot of money. But this is solved in a rather cheap and still striking way:

• Several outdoor views of a large sewage treatment facility that doesn’t like the part one bit- the sewage treatment part that is. So you know that the Centre is big.
• The weird extras. Instead of just having the major characters they add freaky extras with no other purpose than setting the mood. So not only is the Centre big, it’s also full of all kinds of strange projects.
• Broots referring to weird co-workers, Syd and Miss Parker talking a lot about Centre business. This adds more details and structure to the Centre but costs nothing
• Interior, lightning and such are consistent throughout the seasons. If a character refers to a place at the Centre you never get to see, it is still very easy to imagine how it would look like.

So, the Centre could easily look like the office at an insurance company (a mean one) of course) but instead it looks like something you never seen before. For the show to work out the Centre must look scary, and it does, you don’t have to pretend it’s scary. In short, well done!

Costly things like explosions, car chases, carefully choreographed and lengthy fighting scenes are rarely seen. The Centre, and what’s associated with it, is so out of the ordinary but the world look like you’re used to. This is one of the things I like with tP, they show that it is possible to do a sci-fi/mystery, or whatever you should call it, without using lasers, space ships, a masked super hero in very fast car and tight leather outfit... Overall I don’t see any need of more money for special effects.

The props aren’t that spectacular, small inexpensive stuff like red notebooks, PEZ, dsa’s etc. Still, those simple props are a lot better than having a zillion props that are consistently changed. Again tP don’t spend much but make it look really good anyways.

Then there’s of course the question, would more money result in better wardrobe and make-up. Is it lack of money that force Miss Parker to sometimes wear a make up and clothes that make her look cheap? Or would Brigitte not have to wear that old jester outfit they found laying around?
“We need her to wear something colourful, colourful I say!”
“Look what I found, something they used for the circus horror movie they shot yesterday ”
“Yes! It’s perfect because it’s colourful!”
“However, she will look like an idiot…”
“Doesn’t matter, it’s colourful and cost us nothing”

Sadly I think the wardrobe people just have very bad taste and we should all be very happy that they didn’t get more money.

Conclusion: tP doesn’t have a BIG budget, and don’t need one. The money they have is spent wisely.

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So, here we go with topic number one: Synopsis, how the plot develops and script.
Not the most interesting topic and much have been said before, but not by me.

Synopsis
If one accepts two very important facts;
-There are people with certain gifts like empaths or pretenders.
And
-It is possible for a large cooperation to stand above the law, to exploit humans without ever feeling guilty or get caught.

Then the pretender actually has a good synopsis. There’s a lot of shows where the main character does something new every week, but unlike many of those shows tP it’s not that far out, instead there’s some logic to it (yes, - logic - in tP, who could see that one coming?).

Since Jarod is a pretender and a genius it’s nothing strange with him being a pilot in one episode and a doctor in the next.

The “solve the mystery and help people” in every episode also makes sense. The result of Jarod’s sims has caused the death of a large number of people, he feels guilty and tries to make amends. Even if it at first sounds a little constructed it works, like I do stuff every day that harms the environment, to feel better about myself I recycle. It’s just a drop in the ocean but many drops makes up a river, as the old saying goes that I just partly made up.
Those who think my example and saying sucks make your own and feel smarter than me. It’s always fun to feel smarter than someone else.

So why does Jarod change jobs and location every week? Because a ruthless cooperation is after him and they want to lock him up for the rest of his life forcing him to do sims that will in the end hurt people- can’t blame him for keep moving. The new job every week makes sense.

Why does the Centre hunt Jarod? Well he is valuable. Does the Centre ever consider that what they do is wrong, nope because they’re evil. Makes perfect sense (this isn’t as sarcastic as it may sound reading it). Another good thing is that those working for the Centre plays a major part in the show, and the people themselves aren’t 100% evil, in fact they are all very human (even Mr Raines but I’ll come back to that one later).

See, the synopsis makes sense and is actually quite elegant in it’s simplicity.

Plot
On to the plot then. How well does the plot develop, bizarre is the first word that springs to mind and not always bizarre in a good way. Every single character can shrug of the most amazing discoveries; other seemingly less important events take on gigantic proportions.
Amazing discoveries shrugged off, a great example is Jarod and cloning and can be summarized with: The cloned me! *shock* Oh well shit happens.
Less important events that are oh SO important: the death of Catherine Parker. Ok that Miss Parker thinks it’s a big deal, but everyone else? It’s so important that the poor woman had to die more than once just to show how important it was.

What’s a major plot twist in one episode can be forgotten and never brought up again. The consistency isn’t consistent; a re-run of old episodes can be a rather surprising event.

Script
The script. Ah, the script. It does suck from time to time. Miss Parker gets the majority of the good lines and leave very little to Jarod. He has to struggle with lines that could have been written by me when drunk on red wine and feeling sentimental.

Conclusion: the basic concept is good, the plot bizarre and the script wonky. Overall the synopsis and plot do strikes a certain interest but are alone not enough to make the show great.

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A blog on the PretenderPedia, I had no idea what I would write about until I came up with this. I’ll explain why I enjoyed a show that got little attention and later on got canceled only to be followed up by two horrible movies. Since I’m not writing a thesis on the subject there will a lot of personal opinions and very little of an objective view.

Of course, can’t have a whole blog about this, but it’s a start. Would anyone be interested in reading this, well I don’t know. On the other hand I’m not forcing anyone to read so I figure I can write whatever I want.

First I tried to figure out what makes a show good. Came up with the following topics.

-Synopsis, how the plot develops and script.

-Budget. A large budget won’t save a lousy show but a small budget can make a good show look bad.

-Casting and acting. A great actor badly cast is no good, neither is an actor that looks like the part but can’t act.

-Breaking new ground. Make something that has never been done before can make a show more interesting if it’s done in a good way.

-Moral values. This could be crammed in into several different categories but I choose to treat it separately because it’s easier – for me. For those who wonder why moral values are so important, just look at a 7 th heaven episode. Regardless if the moral of that series made you sigh, roll your eyes and laugh at the wrong moments or you just loved everything about it, you realize that how a show deals with moral issues is actually quite important.

-What’s unique for the show. The reason why this is separated from breaking new grounds is that taking ordinary concepts and mix them up doesn’t necessarily need to be groundbreaking, it can however result in something unique. For example, a ruthless killer who collects pink porcelain cats - not groundbreaking but unique.

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