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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 'To Serve and Protect'
Season 1
Ep. 106



Some folks are spittin' mad over this one. How dare her shooting at him! How dare her burning this so important clue to his past! How dare Miss Parker to be so hypocritical! (She herself clings to ever little connection to her own mother, though mostly in later eps.)

You get the idea.

But you know what? I don't care. I liked it.

Don’t get me wrong! I liked to get upset by it. It WAS a mean thing to do, but also an interesting move.

Strictly speaking, it’s only the 6th episode, and this early in the show Miss Parker was still portrayed as the evil in personification. Driven, cold, mean and nothing seemed to be sacred for her. The short moments of emotional display she was allowed, were brief, it was a time in the series when she was not supposed to be a ‘likable’ character.
But let’s have a look at it from the beginning, shall we?

Jarod pretends to be a cop, on his quest to find out what really happened to a young security guard who got shot by a cop, apparently in ‘self defense’. Jarod has trouble to believe that the security guard tried to rob his employee and took a shot at the police officer. The young man just had recently been reunited with his father after many years of searching. For Jarod this story hits quite close to home, that’s why he was drawn into this case.

It’s a quite emotional ride for our pretender. Along the line he also looks up for Susan Granger, the woman responsible for the family-reunion, a specialist in finding lost loved ones. And our hero attends one of those self-help groups, where people who had lost a family member try to cope with their loss by talking about it.

The pretend is interesting, but not really the main plot. Jarod’s search is the central focus. What he would be ready to do in order to find his family. So lets get more into that:

Susan Granger is immediately interested in helping him. But she needs him to provide more information, maybe even a picture to look for his mother. Jarod ponders long about this, it’s a risk, but one he ultimately is prepared to take. He contacts the Centre, and offers a deal. The DSA’s for information on his parents. It’s quite a leap of faith he takes here, and he pays a big price for it. Sydney presents this deal to the Tower, the Centre agrees – against the will of Miss Parker!

MP gets outvoted at first, but pulls the strings in the back. When Syd goes to Florida with the information in his briefcase, MP shows up and takes over.

In a great scene MP and her team rush into the office of Susan Granger hunting for Jarod who barely makes his escape out the window and up a fire-escape. But not before he grabs for the envelope with the information.

And then it happens. MP shoots at him. Well not really AT him, but close enough. Miraculously the bullet hits the very spot between Jarods fingers and the envelope, so that he looses hold of it. It comes down right into her hands, where after stopping her hunt – only sending her sweepers after him – she lights up her zippo and burns the whole envelope in front of Sydney’s eyes. Jarod watches on in disbelieve and pure desperation.

It really is a mean thing, but as said, interesting. Precisely because I asked myself, why did she stop? Why didn’t this professional marks(wo)man shoot him in the leg? Why was she more interested in salvaging the information than catching the pretender?

Sydney asks her about it and her answer is simple: ‘I missed, nothing more, nothing less.’ But its her face again that raises more questions at her motives. The look in her eyes makes us wonder. Is she disappointed at her failure? Afraid of what she has to face in her father’s office or afraid of what she had almost done?

Lots of unanswered questions. And lots of stuff to bang a head about.

Jarod is again left behind with nothing. And its painful to watch. He was so close, and yet again it was ripped away from him. He is left to wonder if the information in the envelope really entailed some important truths about his mother, or it was merely another game.

A grown up man so desperate for some family-ties, it is displayed throughout the episode (if not the whole series) and in this episode it really works well. The pretend and the situations Jarod gets himself into make it so real.


The viewer also is left wondering. Why did Miss Parker really burn it? Because she knew it was useless material. Wouldn’t she herself be curious about it? Or did she know from the beginning what was in it?

Consider it a great emotional episode for Jarod and one of many eps that raises more questions than it answers. 4 points out of 5









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