“Good plan. He was just about to swing on you until Goldilocks jumped in.”“I only feel one thing, why can’t Jane?”
“Damn! Did you do this all by yourself?”
“I knew it. You actually miss the guy.”
“I do not.”
“I don’t understand why these girls fall for these dangerous guys. I mean are they bored, hot and bothered or just stupid?”
“Why you asking me?”
“No reason.”
I can’t help but wonder if the show and the makers have contempt for all the TARZAN movies and TV shows that came before it, they use so few of the conventions of it. Yes, I liked last episode best but the truth is, they’ve yet to explain John at all: how was his raised in the jungle, by the apes (we saw maybe two? In ONE episode?). Almost all the other shows have had flashbacks or even whole episodes (Wolf) dedicated to Tarzan’s being brought up on the jungle. It might go miles in making us accept the total realism of the city stories they’re giving us. On the other hand, they also seem to have contempt for Tarzan because…this John seems to have powers that NO man could ever have as if he is Superman, giving those that feel the WB was just trying to find the next SMALLVILLE franchise. Had they gone with TARZAN in a small town that might have worked or even TARZAN IN NY that might have worked for a short time?
I also salute the show for at least trying to make it look as if John stalks, walks, runs, and jumps like a gorilla (an ape?). Yet, it makes for very uncomfortable and awkward visuals.
Onto ep5 (there are only eight in total):
“Previously on Tarzan…”
Kathy talks to John who is perched on the ledge (a nice visual). They talk about Jane, who John has not seen “in a while” and John tells her she feels sad when she is with him. Kathy tells him that people sometimes feel two things at once, even opposite things. “I only feel one thing, why can’t Jane?”
Jane stalks a criminal who gets the better of her and her gun falls. Her gaze searches the rooftop edges for John to come to her rescue but when he does not, she handles it herself and kicks the guy’s butt, a big guy in a violent confrontation, well staged TBH. Sam arrives and Jane asks where he’s been. Sam says, “Damn! Did you do this all by yourself?”
Sam and Jane talk. “I knew it. You actually miss the guy.”
“I do not.”
As they walk through the city and near a fountain (and it looks like Doc Oc is behind them near the fountain), Sam makes Jane promise to stay away from John. She does.
Richard calls Jane’s cell phone, somehow getting her number, and tells her he talks to Donald Ingram. He asks Jane to talk to him. They do. Great. More talk.
She explains she’s trying to protect John from other cops, prison, and from Richard himself. Richard thinks they can civilize John because he tried to save Det. Foster and that proves he has humanity. Richard does not want to blackmail John, he claims, “I’m impressed with you.” He thinks Jane and he are thinking alike now.
Richard claims he loves John and mistakes were made by him. He wants to help him be the man he was meant to be and wants Jane’s help. He gives Jane a necklace that he claims was John’s mother’s and John was wearing it when Richard and his men found John.
Nicki is worried about her friend, Darcy, a photographer. Jane incorrectly thought she was a painter. Darcy hasn’t been seen by Nicki for four days and is not answering her phone. Darcy is from Ohio and Nicki doesn’t even have her parent’s phone number. On an old push number phone, Jane accesses her messages with the voice mail code from the college and gets a message from a man named Gary. Gary sounds threatening and threatens to come over to Darcy. Jane has the office make up a MISSING poster about Darcy Walton.
A handsome officer (Jasbir Mann going by Jazz Man) at a computer calls Jane and Sam to look at Darcy’s email. Someone with the name RAPTOR wrote to Darcy about her pictures being beautiful and he could not wait to meet. That was a week ago last Tuesday and she hasn’t used her computer since. Sam asks for a trace on the computer guy RAPTOR.
Jane brings John the necklace and locket, telling John that underneath she thinks Richard might have deeper kinder feelings for John. She mentions to him that it is okay for him to come by and let her know he is okay sometimes. He asks, “Do you want me to stay here or not?” Sam interrupts them and Jane lies about where she is.
Sam and Jane are let into Gary Lange’s apartment. There, Darcy walks out. She explains she’s not like this but she fell in love after IMing and texting for weeks. Gary shows up and gives Jane and Sam vibes of an abuser. They leave and plan on finding Gary’s last girlfriend.
Sam says, “I don’t understand why these girls fall for these dangerous guys. I mean are they bored, hot and bothered or just stupid?”
“Why you asking me?”
“No reason.”
Jane calms down Nicki. Darcy is over 18 and there by choice. Jane tells Nicki she is working on it. Gary’s apartment is downtown.
The locket has a tracking device in it (no surprise there). Richard’s man (the character named Patrick Nash?) tells him that John spent seven consecutive hours on the East Side of Central Park: his sister’s house. Richard tells him to turn off the tracking device and stop tracking John (WHAT? WHY?). He says he has everything he needs to know.
When Sam and Jane turn up nothing on Gary’s name in records and Jane sees the name RAPTORS in the newspaper (that she pulls away from a colleague) connected to a Toronto basketball team, they figure Gary might be from Toronto. Or somewhere else in Canada.
In a hysterical scene, Nicki is listening to music on a Walkman (?) or headset while trying on Jane’s clothes in Jane’s room when John leaps onto the ledge of the window but Nicki’s screams lead him to fall out of the window backwards.
He comes back in and is fascinated with her Walkman and the loud music. He approaches her closely and knows she is worried. Nicki tells him the story and he offers to help her now. Nicki will go with him. Before she changes, she thanks him. He tries to put the Walkman on his head. But doesn’t. These two have instant rapport, too.
June 2002: Gary tried to lure a woman into a relationship. The woman was 20 and they met in an internet chat room. The woman tried to leave and later was found dead. There was insufficient evidence to file charges.
Nicki is with Darcy and talking. Darcy denies anything weird is going on. John watches from a building across the street. Gary is confrontational when he joins the girls, especially since Nicki called the police.
Inside, Gary starts to throw Darcy around, in anger. For some reason, John thinks that it’s needed for him to not only crash through the glass door but also to do a flip first before angrily removing Gary from Darcy, smashing him down into a table that collapses under him, swinging on a hanging plant to kick him, and generally beat him down. Wait? Wasn’t Nicki just outside that door?
Sam and Jane’s license plate is KNO-8633. They rush to the scene.
Sam gets Gary under arrest. Jane makes John back off. Nicki apologizes to John. Jane tells him he cannot go near Nicki. “I would never hurt Nicki.” Jane knows he wouldn’t but he can’t help himself, she says and stupidly brings up Michael and the night on the roof. John looks at her with disdain and hurt, Fimmel actually being pretty good here.
Darcy will not press charges, sees the pictures of the dead and beaten victim from Toronto and mentions Jane’s crazy friend. She sticks up for Gary and says Gary would never hurt her intentionally.
She will continue to see Gary!
Richard is let into Kathy’s by the maid and bursts upstairs to John’s forest room. Richard says he saved John long after Kathy gave up looking. Richard never told Kathy that John was alive. Kathy tells him that he just wants the control of the company.
John flips down to him and tells him to leave but Richard manipulates John using Jane and that John will never get to be with her living the way he does. Richard also uses John’s father and what John’s father would have wanted for him against John. Richard says, “I love you.”
John refuses to fall for it. “I see what you are and I hate you.”
Richard seems really hurt and leaves. He goes to a car where his man Patrick is. They have Donald Ingram in their place for “his protection.” Richard twists the words Donald told them to clarify that what he saw was a murder. Patrick knows Donald never mentioned it was murder.
When Gary is released, Jane goes after him on the street and confronts him, watched by John from a building. She brings up the girl he killed and pushes Gary who she claims has 60 pounds on her. Sarah is also great in this scene, pushing Gary to hit her. John appears between them. He could not understand what Jane was trying to do. Gary leaves, warning them both to stay away from him. Jane frustrates but understands.
When she rejoins Sam, who was watching, Sam says, “Good plan. He was just about to swing on you until Goldilocks jumped in.”
Okay, other than the cliché plot of an abusive guy/boyfriend, and even that works with the actor playing Gary being particularly good, everything so far about this episode, is pretty good. It’s engaging in a way that even last week wasn’t. AND yes there is MORE talk talk talk but it’s not really boring, to be honest.
With only nine minutes to go, I can kind of see where it is going but let’s find out if I’m right…
I also find the writing pretty strong to match the acting or the other way around. This is NOT a bad show. Is it TARZAN? Probably not, though.
When Jane tells Sam that John would never hurt her, Sam says, “You know who you sound like---Darcy.” And walks away. This leaves Jane to wonder if he is right.
Nicki answers the door without looking who it is and it is Gary who attacks her. He has a gun on her. Gary somehow gets her down to his car (using the gun) and reveals to her that Darcy didn’t come back to him last night due to the “lies” they all told about him. He wants Nicki to talk to Darcy to get her to go back home with him! While he’s talking, Nicki opens her flip cell phone (antiquated now) and calls Jane.
There’s a car chase that happens. Sam and Jane direct it. Sam mentions north on the west side and changing cell zones fast as they trace the call. He heads north on Riverdale. John is on the bridge and jumps down to confront the car? He also jumps up onto the hood and grabs the steering wheel.
NOTE: I don’t get John’s plan. If he was following Gary the whole time, why didn’t he stop him earlier, before he even got into Nicki’s apartment (Jane’s) or the car? How did he track a car that was going that fast? What was his plan to save Nicki? To stop Gary? Cause the car to crash?
Though it makes little sense, all the stunts John does here look wonderful. I seriously do not think there were any special effects used to do these but actual stunts, which boggles as to how they did some of these? Wires? And a lot of it looks just like Travis, too. On the hood as it goes, it is not him but everything else looks like him, even if it is not.
John ends up falling off the hood when the car stops. How did it stop? Did Gary stop the car to get John off the wheel?
In the stand off, I’m not sure Gary sees John but John seems to be sneaking up on Gary who has Nicki. Sam seems to shoot Gary. Gary shoots at Jane who falls back and looks as if she was shot but she’s not. Nicki and Gary go off the bridge but John dives in after Nicki and saves her.
Sam and John over Jane cradling Nicki, share a look and Sam shakes his head yes, perhaps Sam appreciating John for the first time really.
Richard will not let Donald go home unless Donald lies about what he saw. Pushing Donald into new phobias unless he does that, Richard gets him to say that what he saw on the roof that night was murder. He tells Patrick to get Donald out of his sight.
Jane walks into John’s jungle rooms at Kathy’s. She sees John from behind naked under a waterfall, bathing. He turns around. She moves away, turning but turns into him. Naked. She turns away but he puts his pants on. She says, “John, you gave me my sister back. I would give up everything for that.” She says there’s a part of him that’s very gentle and very kind that she sees. She thinks others do not. “And I’m glad that I do.” She cries and he wipes her tear to her mouth. Travis sort of plays this sexual instead of emotional and I’m not sure that was the right way to play it but it does give John this animal sexuality power where this scene might have been more about the warmer relationship between them on a more spiritual level? Not sure.
Either way, despite the few lapses in logic (see above in Tarzan’s superpowers and his ability to follow the car AND his whole plan; Gary’s plan to abduct Nicki?, Darcy just turning back to her dorm instead of going back to Gary like she said she was going to?), this is another entertaining episode and not bad at all. It’s probably the second in a row that’s the best of the series so far.
On the other hand, Richard’s playing a long game (arc game) that makes almost no sense either. What can he gain by what he’s doing other than to get exposed as a criminal that he WASN’T instead of the criminal that he was?
I do think with a bit of tweaking this show could have been okay. It never seems, however, that it could have been TARZAN.
SONGS:
"Give It Up" by Fefe Dobson
"Supermoves" by Overseer
"Breathe In" by Paloalto
"Ghosts" by Sleeping At Last
