Original air date: December 11, 1999

Written by: Joel Metzger

Directed by: Michael J. Klick

Jarod encounters painful memories from his childhood when he tries to rescue a newly found ‘wild child’ whom research scientists have secretly used for their own experiments in the past.

Jarod’s Discoveries: Fishing

Jarod’s Occupations: Psychologist

Jarod’s Aliases: Jarod Bell

Behind the scenes insights and the Creator’s Take

Official Synopsis

Jarod rescues a “wild child” from a research scientist who uses the young girl for an experiment.

On a fishing trip in the Utah wilderness, Jarod stumbles upon a terrifying scene.  He watches as a police officer drags a hissing, creature-like young girl into a cruiser.  Jarod picks up a tattered doll the girl dropped and hands it to the officer.  It turns out that a hunter found the girl living alone in the wilderness, scouring for food around a garbage can.  Jarod follows the girl to Wolverine Research Annex, a research lab headed by a Dr. George Wolverton.  Wolverton wrote a controversial book on the effects of isolation and deprivation on the human psyche.  Inside the facility, in an isolation cell, Dr. Anne Sulvane bandages the struggling girl’s battered ankle.  A flower–shaped pin on Anne’s lab coat entrances the girl.  Jarod, posing as a psychiatrist, observes the girl recoil at the sight of Wolverton and Bennett, who watch from an observation window.  Meanwhile, it is revealed that Miss Parker and her father are the apparent targets of an assassin.  The only lead rests in a “picture taking freak” who sends Miss Parker surveillance photos.

Back at the research center, Jarod complains to an unsympathetic Bennett about the insensitive treatment afforded the girl.  He finds an ally in Dr. Sulvane, who expresses concern over the girl’s deteriorating condition.  Wolverton and Bennett, however, see this “specimen” as the research opportunity of a lifetime.  Outside the research facility, Bennett and Wolverton field questions from eager reporters.  One especially vigilant reporter, Leslie Twain, keeps pressing for an evaluation of the girl’s emotional health.  Later, Twain slips into the facility and watches the young girl through the observation window.  Twain wants to get the girl’s picture on the press wires to see if her identity can be determined.  Unfortunately, Dr. Bennett appears and squashes a conversation between Jarod and Twain.  Suddenly, a crash from the observation room reveals the “wild child” has escaped.

With the tattered doll in hand, Jarod searches the research facility grounds on his own.  He finds the young girl in a tall tree and talks her out of the branches by using the doll.  Dr. Sulvane checks the girl’s physical condition and finds improvement.  Against Wolverton’s wishes, Jarod gives the “wild child” the name “Violet.”  As Jarod and Dr. Sulvane observe, Violet eats flowers and mouths her first distinguishable word: “Dahmah.”  Violet, hugging her doll, suddenly falls into a seizure.  Later, with Violet stable, Dr. Sulvane cannot explain how the girl contracted a strong strain of the flu inside her sterile room.  On a hunch, Jarod takes Sulvane to the lab to examine the tattered doll under a microscope.  Sulvane uncovers a cocktail of ten cold and flu strains on the doll.  Jarod and Sulvane deduce that someone intentionally contaminated the doll to make Violet sick.  Jarod knows they must get Violet out of the building.

Jarod, Violet, and Dr. Sulvane escape in a jeep and head up a mountain road.  Using a map, and his Pretender instincts, Jarod locates Violet’s “wilderness home.” Violet runs into the brush and up to a fissure carved into the rock.  Inside, Jarod finds battered suitcases and a photograph of a young couple with a two-year old girl holding a new doll.  Jarod shows Violet the family photo.  Violet smiles and says “DahMah.” Violet leads Jarod and Dr. Sulvane through the thick underbrush to rusted plane wreckage with two skeletons locked in a death embrace.  Violet puts her hand on one skeleton and says, “Dah,” and her hand on the other skeleton and says “Mah.” Cross necklaces adorn each skeleton’s neck.  Violet arranges her flowers in a cross shape and then puts her arms around Jarod for comfort.  Unfortunately, Jarod makes an another alarming discovery: cables for video equipment that wind to a carefully camouflaged dugout.

Inside the dugout, Jarod finds an old newspaper article about a family of three who disappeared during a plane flight.  He also finds crude sketches of Violet, and an envelope containing telephoto shots of Violet in the wilderness.  Again, Violet’s ordeal resurrects painful childhood memories for Jarod.

In an abandoned part of the Centre, Broots and Miss Parker plan to leave their collection of surveillance photos for Cox.  Parker believes Cox is behind the strange delivery of the photos and the intended “hit” on her father.  As Broots tries to open an ominous steel door, Cox opens the door from the other side.  Broots and Parker learn that Cox is a Centre assassin hired by Parker’s brother, Lyle.  Subsequently, Parker confronts her brother.  Lyle denies any such conspiracy.  Instead, Lyle counters that he met with their father, who told him to take the surveillance photos and leak them to the Triumvirate as a way of establishing Miss Parker’s alibi.  The mystery:  Why does Parker need an alibi?

Jarod returns to the research center and finds Twain still following Violet’s story.  Jarod tells Twain all the details regarding Violet’s odyssey in the wilderness.  Jarod feels Twain will do Violet’s story justice in the press.  One piece of the puzzle remains: evidence implicating Wolverton as the culprit.  Jarod shows Sulvane and Twain the evidence they need in videotapes he found in Wolverton’s office.  The video reveals a hooded Wolverton releasing Violet from an animal trap he himself had set.  Now, Jarod sets a trap for Wolverton.  Back at Jarod’s lair, Wolverton observes an unsuspecting Violet rolling in the grass in the backyard.  He approaches her, wearing latex gloves, and extends the ragged doll, now moldy from being infected with germs.  As Violet reaches for the doll, Jarod shoots Wolverton with a tranquilizer dart.  Wolverton awakens in the wilderness gorge, dirty, shoeless, and nearly naked.  Jarod prods a confession from Dr. Wolverton by threatening to abandon him in the wilderness.  Wolverton states that his renown scientific research stemmed from studying a terrified, orphaned Violet in the wilderness.  Twain waits with a Sheriff as a “wild man,” Dr. Wolverton, stumbles out of the woods.  Twain’s photograph of Wolverton’s snarling image hits the front page with the headline “Doctor Arrested For Abuse of Missing Girl.”

Having lost her own young son tragically, Dr. Sulvane enthusiastically signs court papers to become Violet’s legal guardian.  Jarod tearfully says his good-byes to Violet as she offers him a flower.