Review Series: Bank by jerseygirl
Summary: My opinion, my take.....
Categories: Episode Commentary Characters: All the characters
Genres: General
Warnings: None
Challenges: None
Series: None
Chapters: 1 Completed: Yes Word count: 2025 Read: 2130 Published: 26/06/05 Updated: 26/06/05

1. Bank by jerseygirl

Bank by jerseygirl
Disclaimer & some personal notes:

Its TNT and/or NBC playground – I don’t really know which. They own the characters, dialogues, plots, quotes etc. These analysis are for pure entertainment only – mostly my own.

About the analysis:
Ok, this will NOT be an episode guide, though you will find plenty of spoilers! My analysis are purely subjective, my opinion, my take. Simply for the reason that I’m the one on the keyboard!

Disagree with me? Let it be heard! Give feedback and gimme hell if you want! Write a note or your own take!

Special Note:Don’t expect me to go into any length about the pretends, because I won’t. For me its only about the characters, their individual development in each episode and their interaction with each other. The central theme for me is the Centre-related story, and only when the pretends and the people Jarod meets along his travels, are important to his character development or the Centre-related-plot, I will pay attention. And more often than not you will wonder if the series’ main character might be Miss Parker and not Jarod. She of course is as important to the show as he is. Even when her scenes are only short in an ep., you might be surprised at the length I can go about it. It’s a personal thing. I was drawn into the series by her character, and I do regard her not only as very important but also as my favorite one. Go, and hate me for that. *grin*

Oh, and of course, obviously these have been written all AFTER I saw it all. So sometimes I can go ahead of the series – I will try to not do it too much though and try hard to not dwell on it a lot.

And take into account that these analysis are NOT betaed! My first language is German so please don’t mind the inevitable errors!


Review of ‘Bank’
Season 2
Ep. 220



What can I say? I loved this one! It sort of is the first part of a three-parter along with the following double episode ‘Bloodlines’.

Bank is probably the episode that people will vote as one of their favorites, no matter what in the series has drawn them into. There is lots of Centre stuff in there, secrets and lies, secrets revealed and lies uncovered and new lies told, Jarod in pretend-action and the hero at the end. Miss Parker showing her best kick-ass attitude, uttering some great one-liners, but in the same time showing her softer side. And there were shippery-moments and quite a few of them!

It starts out with Daddy P. visiting MP in her house, apparently for the first time in many years. He again tells her some lie, that MP has seemingly trouble to fully believe, but she nevertheless lets it go.

Jarod sends her some information to go to Dover Town Bank and along with this a letter by her mother. Of course this peaks her interest and she follows his lead. That Jarod himself shows up in the Bank, where she only expects another lead, is quite a surprise. After all it’s a first, and this close to the Centre, I started to think if he had gone nuts. But we soon see what or rather who it is that Jarod takes this sort of risk for.

Fenigor. The man who was Catherine’s friend, shows up in the Bank and both of them want some serious answers from him.

But of course it doesn’t work out that way. The bank gets robbed exactly that moment and the two robbers hold all the customers hostage. And it goes all downhill from here. A security officer tries to stop them and gets shot by Clave, one of the robbers.

Jarod quickly moves and wants to help but gets stopped. All the hostages are told to get down and stay put. Fenigor sees MP and is shocked by her appearance, the look in his eyes tells us that he wonders if she is a ghost from his past.

The events take up speed after Jarod manages to get close to Fenigor. He starts to bug him about his past about where he comes from. The old man can’t take it anymore and gets up to run away, only to get shot in the back by Clave. (This actually is something I purely blame on Jarod. In his relentless quest, he pesters the old guilt-loaded man so long that Fenigor tries to get away. Our genius should have shown more empathy and more patience – something he keeps asking from MP, but he couldn’t deliver himself here.)

Fighting for his life, Fenigor tells them, that if they could get him out of there, he would tell them both what he knew and he spills some words like ‘Prodigy’ and ‘Red Files’. Something neither of them can work with, but both hope to learn more about.

Determined to end this, MP takes the situation into her own hands and slams Jude and keeps him hostage, only to release him the moment Clave threatens to shoot the clerk in front of his daughters eyes.

The central theme in this ep. are lies, lies that Miss Parker was told by her father, lies that parents tell their children no matter how much they deserve better than that. Jarod wastes no time to rub it in, be it about those letters or be it about the other father-daughter relation that goes on throughout the ep in the bank. The bank clerk and his young daughter who had come here to talk to her father.

This is an interesting development, because in their little family a lot of things seem to be wrong and MP picks up on it. Listening in, wondering, and finally stepping in for the girl. At one point she comes down on the father with open hostility and we are wondering how much of her resentment against that man is actually meant for her own father.

Jarod of course sees all of it and tells her so. She is hurt by it, but more because she knows that it is true and not because Jarod is taunting her with it. That she cannot really admit it, is her way of holding on to something. NO matter what, she refuses to blame her father for real – it’s more easy to project anger and accusations at someone else.

The two of them share truckloads of good moments together, though most of them are not friendly exchanges. Together they try to help the shot Fenigor, together they try to get their respective answers, sometimes it seems like a race: who gets the answer first. And they fight and accuse each other of being wrong. The arguments between these two are always frustrating. They act like wounded children sometimes, so very alike, yet with differences that seem determined to keep them apart. But let it be said: the chemistry, the chemistry!!

Jarod is challenging her, her trust in her father to an extend that seems almost hurtful. But I don’t really think he wants to hurt her, that much seems obvious. He wants her to open her eyes and to put some trust and faith into him. That she is so reluctant, brings him down to a rather low level, but with some reason.

The other characters have good moments here as well. Syd and Broots work from outside to help their friends inside the bank and take up quite some risk. Especially our quivery Broots shows some serious chutzpah when he takes the gun and goes for the assassin himself. I simply loved him for it.

Sydney has great moments as well. He wants to help both of them and shows it. His ‘escape’ from Gar is a great move and I applaud him for that.

In the end Fenigor gets shot, though not fatally, by the order of the Centre. Raines ‘takes care of him’ and Daddy P. tells Raines that he ‘would take care of his daughter’.

In the commotion of freed hostages and the shooting, Jarod manages to get away, Miss Parker is left behind – yet again – with nothing: no answers and no pretender.

When her father shows up he shows no interest in her well being, he is only accusing her of another failure. This feels like a cut with a knife into her guts, we can see that. Sydney approaches her with the opposite agenda. The doctor wants to know if she is alright. Though that is not what she wants to hear from Syd, that much is obvious.

The final scene is a great moment, because it shows the character development of Miss Parker. Daddy P. shows up in her house to apologize for his earlier behavior. But at that moment she is simply not fully convinced by his motives. Miss Parker herself lies to him about her knowledge of the shot man and she doesn’t tell him about the letters she got from Jarod. ‘Like father, like daughter’ she says to Jarod later on the phone, obviously hurt by it.

But she still is a long way from actually challenging Daddy P. She rather sends him away with a lie than openly accuse him of knowing things she deserves to hear. It is her eternal fight, the thread that runs throughout her life, but it is believable. You don’t throw away all your habits, all your love and trust in one moment – especially not when you still cling on the last straw of hope, her hope that he did it for a higher reason. And that reason is that he just wants to protect her. She wants to believe it so badly that she cant see clearly. We all want to believe in our parents in the people we love, no matter what they do wrong, we need that hope as much as we need air.

Jarod in that respect is not so much different – though he asks more questions about his parent’s reasons. He still clings to the hope that his parents loved him and he was taken, rather than to believe he was given away.

It is a rare thing for them to have a talk without venom without anger, but they do here. Both were left with too many questions and too few answers, and they are both hurt by it. In a desperate and desolate voice she tells him that they ‘were so close to finding the truth’, and Jarod – disappointed himself – tries to reassure her that one day they’d find it.

Fenigor had given him a letter with a hint to his past. It’s a glimmer of hope for him and Jarod intends to pursue it.

Their last exchange is open to quite some interpretation, especially for shippers. Before he hangs up he says: ‘The question is, what becomes of us when we have all our answers?’
I am sure that the shipper-brigade almost OD’d on the ‘us’, because it is a too welcome hint to them together in this whole game. But of course it could also be a simple ‘us’ that only means that he as well as her will eventually find their answers but still be on different sites.


This is a 5 point episode, period. It has simply no dull moment, the story evolves well paced and throws quite some bones to us to ponder about. Minor flaws can be easily overlooked, for they are not that many and simply don’t ruin the episode as the stand out episode of the season.

One of the flaws for me was Jarod’s too quick recovery from the terrible loss he had faced only (what I assume) days before. One line about losing Kyle would have been enough, just something that shows us that he still mourns, that he didn’t forget. But alas…
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