“Absolutely. I think you should go right in there and tell him that some barefooted, wild man who’s supposed to be dead jumped off the roof and whispered it in your ear.”“I hurt a bad man and you don’t stop me.”
“It’s hard for me to tell you to stop following me when you do really helpful things like catching that guy.”
“Detective Jane Porter had everything she ever wanted but one night a mysterious stranger changed her world. John Clayton, a man raised in the jungle, then brutally abducted by his uncle, finds himself thrown into a battle for the Greystoke empire. Falsely accused of murder, he and Jane form a bond of mutual protection to rise up against those that might harm them, protect those in need, and secure a future neither could have foreseen. Previously on TARZAN…”
Kathy, thinking John might be hungry, brings him a tray of food into the room with the forestry. John drops down, scares her by accident and she drops the tray. He eats off it off the floor. “Glad you like it.” She shows him a spoon and fork. She got him shirts. He wears a blue shirt with the sleeves torn off. “I guess you didn’t like those shirts I got you, huh?”
“I do now,” he responds.
She buttons his shirt and tells him when winter comes he will have to get used to wearing a lot more than that. She asks about if he remembers winter and his parents but he claims too many questions and tries to flee. He climbs down to another roof.
While on the rooftops, he hears a woman resisting being robbed. The man takes her pocket book and downs her but she escapes after someone shoots the man down…but not before John has dropped down to confront him. John looks up and sees no one. Someone shot the robber.
Jane and her sister. Usual banter. Morning. Nicki does not want Jane’s lists any longer. Jane is making a set of guidelines and organizing the apartment. It is making her feel better after the last few weeks. Jane also asks Nicki what kind of person she is to have feelings for John after Michael just died. Nicki tells her human. NOTE: Jane seemed to have these feelings BEFOR Michael died. Sam calls Jane in: there’s been another sniper attack.
In the alley, banter between Jane and Sam reveals that they have met like this two nights in a row. The newest victim is Damon Flicker, 21 year old college student.
Jane has a look around and spots John on a roof nearby. She goes there and meets him.
He touches her and she holds his hand and away from her. She wants to set up rules with him, the first one about touching. She says she does not like it when he says he likes it. He says, “Yes, you do,” when she says she does not like it. She feels it is wrong. When she tries to leave, he stops her from behind and hugs her but his open hand reveals one of the sniper bullets.
Jane tells Sam who is irate that he cannot have her back if she is going off to talk to John. She tells him John saw the entire thing. The first victim, Lancaster, was a total criminal and dirtbag. A record as long as Sam’s arm. They have to move to another room to talk.
The import of the rifle that is being used has been banned 1998.
Scott Conner goes through some of the details of the sniper attacks. Gene doesn’t want this to come first place above Mike’s murder investigation. Scott tells him they have no evidence, “But we got squat right now, okay.”
Love Sam. He has the best lines. He tells Jane she owes him more than one. She has info on the first victim, Lancaster. He beat his girlfriend to death with a nine iron. I can’t tell from the video but it looks like his rap sheet says his first name is Samuel. WHY?
Someone botched the Miranda warning so Lancaster walked.
The girlfriend’s family is clean but when Lancaster holed up in his apartment a SWAT team was called in and Howard Reinhart was the sharpshooter on that team. He owns a gun like the one used in the rifle attacks. Jane checked the gun registration. The man is retired.
John is in his father’s rooms where he used to live, too. Kathy comes in and tells John, who asks questions, that John’s father was 12 years older than she was but, “I adored him.” He used to run her up and down the stairs on his shoulders. She tells John, who asks, he was nothing like his uncle. When Kathy responds that John’s father loved John’s mother, John asks if he had rules about loving her. Kathy doesn’t know what he means. She has some of his clothes in the house but most of his stuff is in storage. She asks if John would like to see the clothes now.
Sam and Jane go to Howard’s house and meet his wife and son. Howard went on a hunting trip in Canada. He left Thursday, which, when they leave the door step, Jane relates is when the shooting started. A vigilante cop idea is not going to make Jane popular, Sam says, around the coffee machine.
John tries on his father’s suit jacket. It fits perfectly. Kathy never knew what happened to the plane and, a teenager when he died, she had a bad case of big brother hero worship.
A song.
Jane, home at night, is readying to take off her top when John jumps through the window, all happy. He scares her by accident.
John thinks it is good that the sniper only hurts bad men. Jane explains it is against the law which makes it her job to stop him.
“I hurt a bad man and you don’t stop me.”
NOTE: at this point in the episode, which is something I’m not hating on, that maybe this show is a hidden gem. There’s a sense of genuine character interplay and development, engaging sympathetic scenes, and a tight sniper mystery going on. Jane and John have a romantic tension going and there are multiple story arcs going on that aren’t bad or boring. So far, the ep is NOT off the rails. It’s actually engaging and making me want to watch the rest. I hope that continues. So far, I’m finding this the least flawed episode. Lawless and Fimmel actually seem to have a good rapport. So do Callies and Nunez Jr (Sam).
Sam arrives with bad news: the tip line he’s always checking about Mike’s “murder” has someone claiming to be a witness that saw a blond man and a brunette woman on the roof, too. “That’s it, Jane. I think you’re busted.”
Jane goes to the witness’s apartment 723. Donald has dog sounds on recording to scare away intruders or crooks. When she identifies herself to him, he recognizes her and closes the door. He is a germ phobic man, too. Inside, he explains what happened on the roof the night Mike was killed. He never leaves his apartment.
On the streets, Sam vs Jane over bringing in Donald and/or John.
Sam thinks he did something so brilliant he just had to tell somebody. He wasn’t speaking to Jane for a bit. NOTE: LOVE SAM and his lines. He’s genuinely funny.
On the old fashioned big backed computers, Sam found all the SWAT team deployments that included Howard. He also pulled all the cases that weren’t prosecuted for some reason or were dropped or released on a technicality. 27 cases came up.
Thomas Flicker mugged and killed an old lady. His baby brother Damon squealed on him and because he was a juvenile his records were sealed. Thomas is doing 25 years to life.
Steven Bolinsky is next on the list. He sexually assaulted an 11 year old kid and walked when the lab lost the evidence. Jane wonders if it is worth tracking him down. Sam says, “Yeah, it’s worth a shot. Sorry, bad choice of words. Let’s go.”
More later but I must say I am really digging this episode. It’s like LAW AND ORDER?
Sam and Jane leave, watched by John from the roofs. John follows. Sam and Jane arrive to talk to Steven at a shipyard where he is working (on a yacht?) but he runs when they present themselves.
John stops Steven. A sniper is targeting Jane and Sam. Jane talks to John in the ship’s cockpit.
Jane tells him that it’s not always clear to tell the good guys from the bad guys but he says, “I can tell.”
Jane says, “I wish I can see things as clearly as you do.” John says, “So do I.”
Just before the sniper shoots through a glass window on the ship, John senses it about to happen or sees it. John checks her and for a bit it seems as if she is dead but her vest saved her and she springs out of it. John dives through a ship window that the sniper shot through.
In a spectacular series of shots, John runs and jumps, flips across the ship to catch the man before he gets in the car but the man gets in the car so John dives off the ship into the water, headfirst.
It is all for nothing as the man gets away in the car as John emerges from the water.
At the precinct, Scott tells Jane and Sam that Howard Reinhart is turning himself in. He lets them go as it is their collar.
Sam hears noise in an alley and sees it is John hopping a fence into the alley, “Man, this dude is relentless.” John knows that Howard is not the man who tried to kill Jane.
Sam tries to calm him down. John says a boy was driving the car.
“Look, I don’t know what he’s talking about, what he smells or whatever. We gotta get him out of here before he kills someone.”
John almost attacks Sam but Jane is in between them. Jane is told by John that her rules are lies when she tells him they need a warrant.
The son is the one who was driving and is the sniper. That’s very predictable.
Sam and Jane question Howard who signed a confession.
Jane has proof that Howard was in Canada at the time of the shootings. Howard says soon Sam will be the bad cop and Jane the good. “Oh, you don’t want me to be the bad cop,” Sam says. He gets the best lines.
Justin flunked out of the police academy and has always been a little off. Jane wants to pick him up but he’s already flown the coop. Howard, Jane figures, talked about how the system failed honest people and Justin justs wants to make his father proud.
Jane tells Sam that John might be able to help them. Sam says, “A vigilante to catch a vigilante.” Jane doesn’t think of John as a vigilante. He never lies and Jane thinks he might be right: her rules are lies.
Two men report to Richard about Jane visiting Donald. He thinks they should tell.
An hour Jane is at a flea market in the West End (I could not hear exactly where but possibly Greenwich). From the office, Sam asks her, “I want you stop and pick me up one of them big ass cookies. Chocolate chip.”
Jane finds the kid’s green car. He followed her. Sam, on the phone, tells her to get the hell out of there right now. Jane tells Sam she has to draw him away from the crowd of people she is in. Jane looks up just before Sam tells her to not look up. She told him she was wearing her vest but tells Sam she is not. I think Sam is either saying Janey or snapping orders to Davey at the office to get units rolling on the address.
Jane runs and shots are fired. The crowd panics.
Jane is under a stone bench when we come back from commercials. Her phone is not and it rings just outside of her bench cover. She tries to get it but Justin blasts it apart. Jane rolls out and runs for it and Justin cannot get her. He moves to leave and sees John standing on a higher rooftop.
Justin scrambles for his rifle but John stops him and as Justin pleads that they are the same, John threatens to throw him off the roof, ready to kill him. Jane and Sam arrives and Jane asks John not to. Sam arrests Justin and warns John that there are two dozen cops behind him on the steps.
John leaves the roof his way, jumping down?
He seems hurt by Jane.
Richard has Donald brought to him to tell him what he saw the night Mike was killed.
Jane goes to Kathy’s. Kathy is getting stuff from John’s father out of storage because she thought John might be interested in looking at it.
Jane goes up to see John who is shirtless and jumps down to her. She tells him that she relies on rules when things get confusing but lately she found herself making up rules she does not believe in and breaking rules that she does. She realizes she’s been trying to explain right and wrong to him but she thinks maybe he knows the difference. Maybe?
She starts to leave. He holds her hand, kisses it and wants to kiss her but she says she cannot. He seems to leave. She cries.
A song.
Okay, so this was probably the most entertaining episode so far and yet…it has lots of talking. That is what is needed to establish characters, background, emotions, and more but…this is not LAW AND ORDER. This is TARZAN. Supposedly. And it has a wild haired, barefoot man who runs, jumps and does marvelous stunts (seemingly inhuman and more like Superman). It’s faster paced than the other episodes until…it’s not. The end scene with John and Jane is a bit…well, Jane is still penned up due to Michael’s death.
As noted, Sam livens things up with his delivery and dialog, getting all the funniest lines and he is genuinely a likeable character. Even Fimmel seems to emote more here and the acting is pretty good from everyone.
It’s just …this is a cop show.
Songs used:
"If You Asked" by Longview
"Hollow" by Casey Stratton
"New York City" by The Peter Malick Group featuring Norah Jones
