The central character is Jarod a genius kidnapped as a young boy by the people running The Centre [UK rather than US spelling] at Blue Cove, Delaware. Jarod's brother Kyle (row 2) was also trained as a Pretender. Jarod is being pursued by Miss Parker (whose first name is even more secret than Inspector Morse's). Her father (row 2) is a senior man at the Centre. Jarod was trained to become a Pretender by Sydney and Mr. Raines (row 2). The Centre's staff includes Broots, a geeky computer expert and Angelo (row 2), another Pretender. Miss Parker has a brother, Lyle and Brigitte (row 2) arrives in due course to twist her tail. (Brigitte starts off blonde then has black hair.)
+++ Season 1 (1996/97) +++
1. Pilot
The Centre has trained Jarod to be able to become anyone he wants to be, and do any job without the usual training. During a simulation exercise, Jarod can recreate a situation in his mind, such as the Kennedy assassination or some future scenario, and explain what happened or what will happen. After 30 years of being exploited and lied to, he has escaped to search of his parents and his origins.
Miss Parker, who thinks Jarod is a sociopath and an exhibitionist dedicated to getting even for the little guy, has the job of recapturing him, assisted by the Centre's 'sweepers' (stormtroopers). In the opening episode, Jarod becomes a doctor in Anchorage, discovers ice cream, and uncovers blackmail and malpractice at the hospital before making his escape as Miss Parker and her sweepers arrive.
2. Every Picture Tells A Story
Jarod has learned to swim and, as a Coast Guard, he investigates the death of Tom King, who was left in the sea to drown by the San Diego Search & Rescue unit. Rogues in the unit are running contraband and they crashed into King's boat in fog. So Jarod dumps the main bad guy in the drink while his accomplice tells all. Then he lets Miss Parker know that she's another of The Centre's experiments. Jarod discovers joke-shop novelties and Oreo cookies.
3. Flyer
Jarod becomes a test pilot for Skyvionics, which is trying to sell a new computer system to the US Department of Defense. Jarod's client is a pilot who crashed and the discovery of the day is silly putty. His ancient landlord is a 'black helicopters' nut. Tom Collins, the dead pilot, was labelled a boozer but Jarod learns that he was flying a plane with a computer chip with a 3% failure rate in the computer system, and it stopped Collins from ejecting. So Jarod puts the kybosh on the US Air Force buying the defective plane and get his landlord to spread with word about the Centre's sinister activities. The sinister, breathless Mr. Raines makes his first appearance.
4. Curious Jarod
Jarod blags a job as head of security at a casino in Las Vagas. His client is a showgirl, who is in hospital in a coma, and he befriends an Elvis impersonator who has reached his sell-by date. Someone with a distinctive watch bashed her, so Jarod frames him as a thief and has him beaten up by the casino owner's thugs. And when Miss Parker and Sydney arrive at the casino, Jarod is able to get them arrested while he makes his getaway.
5. The Paper Clock
Jarod, now a lawyer, discovers the Rubic Cube and acquires a black transvestite as his ally for the episode. Jarod has worked out that a low IQ caretaker was fitted up for murder by a millionnaire and the head of the law firm where Jarod is working. Jarod's client makes clocks out of paper, hence the episode title. Sydney agrees to send Jarod a picture of his Mom in return for the simulations, which Jarod took when he escaped from the Centre. Jarod puts the law firm boss in the dock, and then he evades a trap set by Miss Parker.
6. To Serve and Protect
Jarod becomes a motorcycle cop and he gets Miss Porter slung in gaol for carrying a concealed weapon. He discovers doughnuts while pursuing two bent cops, who'd killed an ex-marine security guard after he'd been reunited with his dad. Jarod was using a detective agency to search for information on his mother but Miss Parker tracks him down via material sent from the Centre. That information is lost forever because Miss Parker burns it.
7. A Virus Among Us
Jarod becomes an expert in disease control and he gives Miss Parker the flu! The gadget of the day is the roach motel, Jarod makes friends with an alleged musician who's tormenting his neighbours, and Sydney goes to church to confess his sins. A scientist who worked at an infectious disease laboratory has disappeared and Jarod finds that his boss, Garber, exposed the missing man to a Level 5 virus. So Jarod extorts a confession by making Garber think he has the virus, and then Jared superglues Miss Parker to the floor!
8. Not Even A Mouse
Jarod becomes a medical examiner and discovers fruit cake. Christmas George, who did things for other homeless peope, has been killed by a hit and run driver. Sydney gets an Xmas present from Miss Parker. The chief coroner did the autopsy on George on Xmas Eve, so Jarod decides that she ran George down. So Jarod feeds her some allegedly poisoned cake to force a confession out of her. There is no Merry Xmas with Daddy for Miss Parker and Sydney has a brother in hospital (Jacob) who's comatose.
9. Mirage
Jarod is a sky-diving instructor and investigating the death of a survivalist, who died on his annual trip into the desert. Jarod is also visited by Ernie Two Feathers, a man who may (or may not) be a spirit guide. Miss Parker receives a birthday present from Jarod which leads her to information about her mother.
10. The Better Part Of Valor
Jarod, now a fireman, discovers instant cheese in an aerosol can. The Centre has another Pretender (Angelo) who is being used to track Jarod down. Miss Parker gets very personal with an old friend. Jarod is investigating the death of a firewoman, he cures the station lieutenant's survivor guilt and he nails the captain for murder in the course of an insurance scam. Miss Parker's pal tries to lift Jarod at gunpoint; he's also working for the Centre; and Miss Parker gives him crushed nuts.
11. Potato Head Blues (a.k.a. Bomb Squad)
Jarod joins the Bomb Squad in Detroit and discovers Mr. Potato Head. A female photographer had been blinded by the Fax Bomber and the boss of the Centre intends to plug his leak of information by giving everyone polygraph tests. Raines also uses the Pretender Angelo to test Miss Parker, Broots and Sydney. Jarod gets a colleague to use computer software to age a picture of his Mom by 30 years and he puts the picture on the web. Jarod learns that another member of the Bomb Squad, who wants to be a hero, is planting the bombs. So Jarod puts him in a lift with a dummy bomb! Angelo, who is a real weirdo, picks out a suspect but he isn't the leak. And Broots is divorced and he has a daughter.
12. Prison Story
Jarod pretends to be a prison guard, who is into springs and Monopoly. His mission is to free a man who has been framed for murder by members of the prison staff, who are being paid to execute inmates belonging to a particular crime family. His client is scheduled for execution, so Jarod puts his prime suspect in the gas chamber to extract a confession. Meanwhile, Miss Parker gets very stressed out and over-emotional. Broots makes his first trip out of the Centre with Miss Parker and Sydney, and he has a girlfriend, whom he met on the Internet.
13. Bazooka Jarod
Miss Parker is still agonizing about her mother while Jarod has joined the US Navy and he discovers bubblegum. The base at Long Beach, California, has a security officer who is a Miss Parker clone. Jarod sorts out her unhappy daughter while nailing the killer of a young sailor. He locks the bad guy in another gas chamber (aren't we getting a lot of lock-ins? Ed.) and the killer turns out to be an officer who didn't want his ship to be mothballed.
14. Ranger Jarod
Jarod becomes an amateur forest ranger. He discovered the Three Stooges and girls; an Argentinian lady who lets him sleep on her couch and wakes him up with her nightmares. Jarod remembers meeting Miss Porter at the Centre for the first time; his first female experience; and his host watches a Centre simulation disk showing Jarod reliving the Apollo 1 fire. A bloke missing in the mountains witness the sheriff kill the pilot of a crashed drug plane, so Mr. Sheriff ends up trapped in an old mine until he confesses.
15. Jaroldo!
Jarod becomes a TV cameraman in Seattle. His client is another cameraman, who was shot in a gang rumble. Meanwhile, Miss Parker and Sydney are mugged and they end up locked in a building wired up for demolition in the Bronx! The anchorman for the news channel set up a rumble between gang-bangers and his cameraman was shot and lost the use of his right arm. So Jarod puts the anchor in the middle of the gang-bangers to get a confession and he gets the one-armed guy his job back by giving him a high-tech camera which can be operated one-handed. Miss Parker isn't even slightly grateful when Broots saves her and Sydney, and Broots' on-line girlfriend is called Delilah.
16. Under The Reds
Jarod is a paramedic and he's working on a treatment (some sort of drug cocktail) for coma patients, like Sydney's brother, Jacob, and a guy in a local hospital. Another paramedic was being bribed to bring patients to that particular hospital as part of an insurance racket, so he and the doctor are exposed. Jarod's treatment lets Jacob wake up for long enough for him to tell Syd he should investigate 'SL 27' at the Centre and that the car crash that left Jacob in his coma wasn't Sydney's fault. Then Miss Parker pretends to kill Jacob, on Raines' orders, because the boss of the Centre wants him dead.
17. Keys
Jarod directs Miss Parker to a safe deposit box containing a wedding ring and a medical file on her battered Mom (who allegedly committed suicide). Miss Parker tells Daddy she wants another assignment - but there's no chance of that! Meanwhile, Jarod of the Florida Marine Patrol puts himself in the path of a hurricane to trap Efram Bartlett, a people smuggler, who was responsible for the deaths of a refugee's parent. Miss Parker turns up and both she and Jarod are trapped when Jarod's plan misfires. Miss Parker remembers it was 'Darth Vader' Raines who beat up her Mom on the Thanksgiving before Mom's death. In the end, Jarod saves a sick kid by nicking Sydney's helicopter and Bartlett goes to gaol.
18. Unhappy Landings
Jarod is a US Marshall into Spam, who is tracking a fugitive witness against Colombian drug dealers, who have connections with crooked marshalls. Miss Parker gets Broots to trace kids rescued by her Mom. Sydney gets some therapy over his rage against Raines. On the trail of a corrupt marshall, Jarod doesn't count on a crooked lawyer and he ends up in the middle of a plan to crash a plane carrying the witness while the bad guys escaped by parachute. A lot of the rescued kids, now grown up, have died in the last few months, Sydney is carrying a gun when he's around Raines and Jarod wasn't the only Pretender at the Centre; there was another one called Kyle..
19. Jarod's Honor
Jarod finds a dead hit-man, so he puts the body on ice and tooks over the job, having sent Sydney to a twins' convention at Minneapolis. Miss Parker tries hard to give up smoking but fails after Broots has a carton of cigarettes delivered to her hotel room as a joke. Jarod receives a photograph which puts him in touch with a dying private eye, whom his Mom had consulted in a search for him. Sydney meets twins, who mistake him for his brother, Jacob. The twins had seen Raines pull a gun on Jacob. Jarod saved the targets of the hit and the bad guy who bought the hit is duly busted. And it turns out that it wasn't Sydney who sent the photograph to Jarod. And Jarod didn't send Sydney to Minneapolis. Someone else is pulling their strings!
20. Baby Love
Jarod is hiding in a skip when someone dumps a baby in with him! Angelo, the Centre's Pretender, hacks his hair off as an expression of his individualism and Miss Parker, Sydney and Broots discover that 'SL-27' [the clue from Jacob in Episode #16] is a secret, burnt-out sub-level at the Centre [the fire was in the summer of 1982]. Files about Pretenders are hidden there and Jarod was stolen from his parents by Jacob, who was an 'expediter' for the Centre. Meanwhile, it was a cop who ditched the kid, whose mother had been having an affair with the DA, who was up for re-election. So Jarod made sure that didn't happen! And at the end, Angelo took charge of the files in SL-27.
21. The Dragon House (1)
Jarod becomes Agent Ness of the FBI to track down the psychopathic Kyle, who was at the Centre with him and who has also escaped. Miss Parker and Sydney get Angelo to go through Jarod's notebooks, trying to make him become Jarod so that they can capture him. Angelo tries to strangle Miss Parker and ends up in a strait jacket. Kyle is pursuing a woman, Harriet, and Jarod saw his Mom with Harriet in a video. Kyle was one of Raines' special projects. He stripped Kyle of his morality and made him into a sociopath. Kyle is receiving letters from ‘C.J.' at Blue Cove, Delaware, (home of the Centre). Broots hacks into Raines' computer after Kyle catches up with the woman he's chasing. Everyone ends up at the Dragon House in New Jersey, where Kyle is grabbed. And Harriet tells Jarod that Kyle is his brother as they're escaping!!! To be continued . . .
22. The Dragon House (2)
Harriet tells Jarod that he has a sister, Emily and Jarod works out that Angelo is C.J. because of his liking for Cracker Jacks. Meanwhile, Kyle is being interrogated at the Centre. Miss Parker wants to ask Kyle about her mother's death and Raines wants to lobotomize him without authority. Jarod rescues Kyle, despite Angelo's 'help'. Kyle says he went after Harriet only for information about their parents, who may be called Margaret and Charles. Jarod gets an opportunity to see his family but their van crashes while Jarod and Kyle are being chased by Raines' goons. Kyle, left behind with a broken leg, apparently goes up in smoke when the van catches fire - but no body was found. Everyone heads to Boston, Jarod sees his Mom and sister at a distance as more goons closed in. Raines goes up in flames when someone takes a shot at his oxygen tank and the mangled bullet doesn't reveal whose gun had fired it. And Mr. Lyle, making his first appearance, had Daddy escorted from his office by sweepers.
+++ Season 2 (1997/98) +++
23. Back From The Dead Again
New titles for a new season of The Pretender. Jarod mourns the death of his brother then he becomes an anatomy professor and the gimmick is the Day of the Dead/Halloween. Miss Parker's daddy has been replaced by the mysterious Mr. Lyle, and blonde Brigitte is also hunting Jarod and getting up Miss Parker's nose. Jarod is having nightmares about a period missing from the Centre's DSA records; the 3 weeks before his escape. Broots searches Raines' archives and finds video of Lyle and Raines conducting freezing experiments on Jarod. Jarod's target is a Dr. Fein, who buried someone alive on Halloween of the previous year when he found that Dr. Fein was experimenting on derelicts. So Jarod puts Dr. Fein in a coffin. And Miss P. has a friendly chat with the severely singed Dr. Raines about where her father is.
24. Scott Free
Having looted millions from the Centre, Jarod becomes a safe-cracker for a gang planning to liberate diamonds worth $20 million. The gimmick of the day is the Wheel-O toy. The head bad guy has kidnapped the son of one of the 'team' to force him to co-operate; which triggers memories in Jarod of his wanting a father as a child and Sydney refusing to accept that job. Mr. Lyle takes charge of the operation to trap Jarod at the target building and Brigitte pulled a gun on Miss Parker while trying to take over her Jarod-hunting job.. Meanwhile, Jarod makes the head bad guy release the kid and locks him (the bad guy) in the vault. Then he and the reluctant gang member make their escape, leaving Lyle with egg on his face.
25. Over The Edge
The Centre calls in Dr. Curtis, a behaviourist, to find out who shot up Raines' oxygen tank. Meanwhile, Jarod joins an Urban Search And Rescue outfit and fusses over Chris, a team member who is in hospital after an apparent suicide attempt. Chris has been looking for his Mom, who's a junkie and doesn't want to know him, so Jarod spends a lot of time thinking about his own Mom. Spiderman, watermelons and bungee cords are the gimmicks. Jarod targets Cain, the station bully. Dr. Curtis tells Raines anyone at the Centre could have tried to kill him but Jarod is pulling his strings. Jarod gets the report containing Curtis' real opinion and he tries to simulate closeness to his mother in a sensory deprivation tank.
26. Exposed
Jarod, in Miami, becomes a fashion photographer with an appropriate beard. He's hunting a dead model's stalker. He sends Miss Parker to Rock Cove, Maine to find out more about her Mom. She meets Ben Miller, whom she suspects is probably her biological father. Sydney is psychoanalyzing Broots. A stammering geek-type bloke at the agency helps Jarod to harass the stalker and he gets the geek a job as a photographer. Daddy turns up again at the Centre; just like that after a month's absence. Kyle also reappears; but only a distinctive burn on his hand is seen, not his face.
27. Nip and Tuck
Jarod becomes a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills and discovers Clay Dough (aka Play-Doh and Plasticine). Broots (whose daughter is called Debbie) is being followed, and someone is photographing him and Miss Parker. Angelo saves Broots when someone takes a shot at him and proves the blonde bimbo Brigitte tried to set up Miss Parker as the assassin. Jarod's client is a young woman with facial paralysis. The female head of the plastic surgery clinic harvested bone from her for a movie-star client and severed a facial nerve in the process. So Jarod tortures her; mainly because he didn't know what he looked like as a child until Sydney gave him a mirror; and he has her busted for malpractice. Then he convinces his client that she's stuck with her face and she might as well get on with her life. And lollypop-sucking Brigitte wasn't taking the photos, it was Kyle!
28. Past Sim
Jarod declares war on the Centre after Lyle uses one of his old simulations to kidnap a witness for a murder trial involving a Japanese yakuza gangster and kill a US agent in the process. Broots gets custody of his daughter, with Jarod's help, he refuses to help Sydney's spying operation but Jarod refuses to take 'no' for an answer. Miss Parker knows the son of the Japanese gangster, gets involved in the exchange of the witness for $10 million and helps to steal the cash. Raines is plotting against Lyle (and Miss Parker's daddy is also involved). Broots burgles Lyle's office. Jarod learns that another US agent was part of the kidnap plot and stages a grand finale at the court house, dropping the rogue agent in it with the gangsters. And then he strolls off with the $10 million with Sydney's help. The head sweeper Gar makes his first appearance.
29. Collateral Damage
Jarod joins the US Army as a camouflage expert and discovers Jell-O. His client's father was framed as a traitor in Vietnam in 1972 and she wants his name added to the war memorial in Washington. Meanwhile, Broots has to go to Miami and Miss Parker gets stuck with Debbie, his kid; which unlocked memories of the day Miss Parker's mom was killed. Jarod browbeats a Vietnamese man into helping him to expose the real traitor with the help of a landmine full of Jell-O. Broots gets back to the Centre to find that his kid had been transformed into a junior Miss Parker and Miss Parker gives her last present she received from her Mom, which remained unwrapped until Debbie got nosy about it.
30. Hazards
Jarod sees a bloke (Dan) jump in front of a bus in Oakland. Dan thinks he caused an accident at a hazardous waste plant and killed 3 workmates. So Jarod gets a job at the plant, proves Dan is innocent and discovers that a guy who is using hazardous waste containers to smuggle drugs staged the 'accident' to kill a blackmailer. Meanwhile, at the Centre, Sydney sees someone, goes in search of his gun and disappears. The mystery man is Dr. Werner Krieg, a Nazi doctor from Dachau, where Sydney's family ended up in the gas chambers. Miss Parker stops Sydney when he is about to shoot Kreig, but hands him a silencer when she knows the truth. But Sydney can't pull the trigger so Dr. Krieg ends up in Israel as a fate worse than death. Packets of Twinkies snack cakes and family are the themes of the day and Jarod discovers the song ‘99 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall'.
31. F/X
Jarod becomes a special effects coordinator to find out why a stuntman was seriously injured during the filming of a beer commercial, and discovers model cars. Back at the Centre, following clues left by Jarod, Miss Parker begins her search for a Dr. Fenigor and a boy named ‘Timmy' (which is Angelo's real name). Jarod has a diary belonging to Miss Parker's Mom, Catherine.
32. Indy Show
Jarod becomes an Indy car driver at Fontana, California. Jacob, Sydney's brother, wakes up. Raines wants him dead before he can talk, so Sydney busts Jacob out of the hospital. Jarod's client is a driver whose car was sabotaged, so Jarod adapts the radio-control system of a toy car to take over the bad guy's car and forces a confession out of him. Meanwhile Raines is busy torturing Broots and it was Sydney who shot Raines' oxygen tank. The virus which woke Jacob up finally kills him, but not before he contributes the name 'Gene' in relation to Jarod.
33. Gigolo Jarod
Jarod is a paid escort in this episode, which focuses on St. Valentine's Day, love and having a home. Jarod sends Miss Parker, Sydney and Broots to a sex shop, the owner of which has published a book by Jarod (The Saddest Little Valentine) about Miss Parker! He also repairs the marriage of a woman who thinks her husband no longer loves her, and convinces a female property developer in Detroit not to tear down the building where she grew up. That done, Jarod nails the bad guy in her organization, who sabotaged a fire escape and killed an 8-year-old who ventured onto it.
34. Toy Surprise
On the anniversary of the murder of Miss Parker's mom, Jarod tells her someone is going to kill Daddy. Jarod, meanwhile, has taken on the job of rehabilitating a teenager, who had escaped from a car crash in which his best pal died. Broots tries to access a file containing information on the assassination plan and triggers a lockdown at the Centre. So he and Miss P have to clamber through the boiler system's tunnels as Raines runs out of oxygen. Jarod crashes a jeep and pretends to have a broken leg, forcing the kid to climb a mountain to get help. Meanwhile, Miss P has to climb 26 floors in a lift shaft after being shot in the arm by Brigitte. Angelo has discovered that there is a bomb in Daddy's helicopter. Finding Brigitte on the roof with a gadget to explode the bomb, Miss Parker beats her up. And she and Daddy ended up together at Mom's grave for the first time. And it was the young Miss Parker who first gave Angelo a box of Cracker Jacks.
35. A Stand Up Guy
Mr. Lyle is chasing Jarod, who has gone undercover with the New York Mob (posing as a counterfeiter) to investigate the death of another undercover FBI agent. A third FBI agent was framed for the murder. Lyle is working for Japanese yakuza gangsters, who have chopped one of his thumbs off, and he has stolen some genetic code information from the Centre. Miss Parker is reassigned to her old job of sweeper and put on Lyle's case. She shoot him and he falls into the Hudson river and disappears. Jarod locks all the bad guys in the freezer where the FBI agent died. A chewed-up body is hauled from the river, but is it Lyle's? Not very likely.
36. Amnesia (a.k.a. Unforgotten)
Hunting a hit and run drug money courier, Jarod is hit over the head and lost his memory. Cue a montage of his previous careers while Argyle, the con-merchant who finds him, discovers that Jarod has a whole bagful of identities and wonders how he can make some money out of Jarod. Meanwhile, Raines and Brigitte are interrogating Broots, Miss Parker and Sydney at the Centre, producing another catalogue of flash-back memories. All three are suspected of helping Jarod to remain at liberty. Argyle rings the Centre and sells Jarrod for $10K. Of course, Brigitte double-crosses him but Jarod outsmarts her.
37. Bulletproof
Jarod joins a SWAT team in Cincinnati to investigate the murder of the lieutenant. He sends a message to Sydney, and Miss Parker bullies Broots into finding out what it says. The dead cop had 2 orphaned kids. The Centre turned Jarod into an orphan (by depriving him of his parents). Sydney discovers that the Centre also forced the mother of his son (Michelle) to leave without telling him about the pregnancy to keep him focussed on the Pretender project. Jarod swats 3 members of the team, who are involved with the Russian Mafia, and Syd gets to meet his son without letting on that he's the bloke's real dad.
38. Silence
Jarod becomes a DEA child psychologist with the job of getting a silent child witness (who saw a DEA agent murdered) to talk while bad guys keep attacking the kid and his mom. Jarod discovers chocolate milk and the Centre's DSA disks show that he went through a silent period as a kid. Meanwhile, Raines is being investigated at the Centre (thanks to the efforts of Miss Parker) and he is attacked in the car park by 'Einnad' (Dannie backwards), whom Raines gave multiple personality disorder. So Sydney takes him over as a patient. And Jarod, of course, nails the rogue DEA agent.
39. Crash
Jarod gives up his seat for a flight to San Diego, the plane crashes and the guy who got his seat dies. So, full of guilt, Jarod investigates the crash as the man from the National Transportation Safety Board; and finds that one pilot is blaming the other, who has lost her memory. And the cockpit voice recorder has been erased. Meanwhile, Miss Parker is playing Broots' wife at a college reunion. She has been given the job of checking into Mr. Lyle's past and Jarod is supplying her with vital information. Lyle (real name Bobby Bowman) was raised in Townsend, Nebraska by adopted parents: ‘Mister' Lyle Bowman and Martha Bowman. He killed his best friend, mutilated the body and framed his adoptive father for his own murder. Jarod frightens his target into confessing by freezing the controls of his plane by remote control and Sydney realizes that Lyle has faked his own death once with another headless corpse, he probably did the same again after Miss Parker shot him in Episode #35.
40. Stolen
Jarod takes on the job of rescuing the kidnapped son of millionaire George Harper while thinking about his own kidnapping by the Centre. Harper's head of security rumbles Jarod but he talks him round. Then Miss Parker (who agrees with Raines that Sydney is becoming too attached to Jarod) and a pack of sweepers close in as Jarod is on the phone, arranging to pay the ransom. Jarod gets away and kidnaps one of the gang. Then he is kidnapped by the Centre's goons but he gets away, with Sydney's help, and zaps the head kidnapper.
41. Red Rock Jarod
Jarod is lured to a meeting in Dry River, Arizona, and finds himself under arrest; Lyle has kidnapped the sheriff's pregnant wife to get his help (and the deputy's son needed a heart transplant). Lyle wants to trade Jarod for his old job at the Centre. Meanwhile, someone leaves her mom's ID card for Miss Parker to find. Angelo deduces that Lyle is still alive; and so is Kyle, Jarod's brother! So lots of fun and games with Lyle taken prisoner and getting loose, and Miss Parker in and out of gaol. In the end, Kyle shoots Lyle (only wounding him) and takes a bullet meant for Jarod. The sheriff lets Jarod escape in the Centre's helicopter with Kyle's body, the deputy's kid gets Kyle's heart, and Lyle remains still alive and on the loose.
42. Bank
Jarod provides Miss Parker with letters to her from her Mom, which he acquired by burgling Daddy's home. The letters tell Miss Parker that her mother was planning to go Europe the day after she allegedly committed suicide, which suggests that she was was murdered. Jarod gets Miss Parker to meet him in a bank and they are caught up in a siege when robbers arrive! There is a teenage girl in the bank whose father is an employee and he lies to her, just as Miss Parker's daddy lies to her. Also in the bank is Mr. Fenigor (first mentioned in Episode #31), who is being paid $10K per month by Daddy, and he kidnapped Jarod as part of Project Prodigy. He tells Jarod the information he needs is in the 'red files'. The Centre finds out Jarod is trapped in the bank and there is a sweeper ready to shoot Jarod as he comes out of the bank after the siege is over. But Broots and SWAT take him down after he shoots Fenigor.
43. Bloodlines (1)
Jarod receives an anonymous letter telling him that the Centre is planning to create another Pretender out of a another boy-genius, and follows the trail from Fenigor to the NuGenesis clinic, where he was either created or adopted. Sydney is trying to repair Angelo and convert him back into Timmy. He creates a serum that will let Angelo become a normal person again if he takes all of the doses at the right time. Raines is packing up his office at the Centre. An old maintenance man at the NuGenesis clinic remembers Jarod's mother and Jarod finds film of himself and medical records. Broots burgles Raines (twice) to find DSA disks of Miss Parker's mother giving birth to twins. Daddy says her twin brother was stilborn but the second DSA shows him being taken away from the delivery room; to NuGenesis. Angelo does a runner and he and Jarod fail to prevent the sweeper Gar from kidnapping Davy, whom the Centre wants to turn into a Pretender. To be continued ...
44. Bloodlines (2)
Angelo can play the piano for Jarod, thanks to Sydney's treatments. Raines is trying to turn the kidnapped Davy into a Pretender and Sydney & Co. trying to find him by questioning Fenigor, who seems to have survived being shot outside the bank in Episode #42. Miss Parker confronts Daddy about having a twin. Jarod and Angelo unkidnap Davy then Jarod brews up a counter-treatment at NuGenesis, where Gar shoots the old maintenance man. Miss Parker crashes into Jarod's hideout; to learn that Jarod is not her brother but Angelo or Lyle is; and she helps to break Jarod's test-tube of treatment. So Angelo gives up his last dose of Sydney's brew and slumped back into his black fog after telling Miss Parker that Fenigor knows who shot her mom. Gar finds Jarod and Sydney plants a bomb with a 12 hour clock on SL 27 at the Centre. Jarod escapes with Davy in the Centre's plane and gives the kid to foster parents. Fenigor tells Miss Parker that Jarod's dad killed her mom. And everyone, but everyone, just happens to be in confrontation on SL 27 when Sydney's bomb went off.
+++ Season 3 (1998/99) +++
45. Crazy
Jarod becomes a patient at the Pleasant Wood Institite in Marylyand to help an inmate, who is being fed drugs by a doctor who killed her friend, Erica, another patient who is missing presumed escaped. Sydney, now blind due to guilt after the explosion on SL 27 (which everyone seems to have survived except Gar, who wasn't even there), is being 're-educated' at the Centre. Lyle is back at the Centre. Miss Parker takes blood samples from Angelo and Lyle to find out which is her brother. Jarod finds a car containing Erica's body in a lake and the doctor ends up in the car, submerging. Daddy has got Mr. Lyle reinstated at the Center, so it comes as no surprise that he's Miss Parker's twin brother.
46. Hope and Prey
Jarod travels to Injun country and meets an American Indian activist, who has a photo of himself with Jarod's dad, Major Charles. Bounty hunters (this is Jarod's pretend) are after the Indian and someone is trying to kill him rather than capture him. Fenigor is supposed to be dead but Miss Parker and Broots meet him at the Centre; he's been mind-wiped and he doesn't know them. Sydney gets over his hysterical blindness. Angelo directed Miss Parker to a Centre archive box (CA543) containing the gun that shot her mother. The handle bears a 'circle of fire' symbol, which has something to do with Jarod's dad. Jarod loots a crooked land agent's bank account and shoots him up to get him to confess to trying to murder Jarod's Indian pal. Finally, Jarod goes on a Dream Quest. He is told to 'follow the circle', which is what Angelo tells Miss Parker after handling the gun.
47. Once in a Blue Moon
Jarod becomes a criminal behaviourist to investigate a kidnapper/killer, who is using the M.O. of Willard, the Blue Moon Killer, whom Jarod helped to catch 23 years before (but not before Willard killed his victim). Sydney is busy deflecting Miss Parker and Broots. The current kidnapper turns out to be a former prison guard, who is being controlled by Willard, but Jarod finds a way to outsmart Willard without polluting his own mind by becoming him. Miss Parker and Broots turn too late to capture him and Jarod savs the kidnapped girl. He also finds the body of Annie, the previous victim, who father is Mr. Raines.
48. Someone to Trust
Jarod pretends to be an arsonist, who blows up the sheriff's boat to prove his credentials to a corrupt laywer with a philanthropist wife. Miss Parker finds Lyle blubbing over the DSA disk of their mom giving birth. Jarod's client goes up in flames in a fire at his home and Jarod soon finds himself in the frame for the murder. Meanwhile, Jarod sends Miss Parker a picture of a mail-order bride; Lyle's wife; who was murdered. Daddy and Lyle both assured Miss Parker that Lyle didn't do it. The widow thinks she's blown up Jarod and the sheriff (who really killed her husband) but it's all a trick and she ends up busted. Then Jarod phones Miss Parker to tell her that she knows only what the Centre wants her to know about the death of her mom, and reminds her of something her mother once said: "Trust can kill you, or set you free."
49. Betrayal
Data is leaking from the Centre, so Miss Parker sends Broots to the Centre's data annex; the destination of the leak. A masked gunman shoots the place up and Broots finds himself on the run with Jarod because Lyle has set the Centre's assassins after him. Miss Parker takes Debbie, Broots' daughter, into protective custody. Jarod has been manipulated by the former Centre operative Damon (the killer) in the past and he escaped from the Centre 3 weeks after Damon murdered one of the staff of the Centre (a friend of Jarod's) right in front of him. Damon has been using Jarod's sims to kill people. Jarod gets himself shot (slightly) by Damon but he gets to blow Damon away in the end.
50. Parole
Jarod gives himself a criminal record and his parole officer gives him a blonde! His 'client' is the widow of an ex-con, who was killed on the orders of the parole officer (who organizes home-invasion robberies using ex-cons). Meanwhile, Jarod tells Sydney that the step-father of his son, Nicholas, is dying. Syd tries to tell a whinging Nicholas about his origins. The blonde has a brother in a convalescent home so Jarod gives her lots of cash. Then he invades the parole officer's home to get a confession before a final chat with Syd about families.
51. Homefront
Jarod steals $60M from the Centre and became an arms dealer, demonstrating a missile on Lyle's car, which he has also stolen despite its elaborate security devices. Jarod's client for SAM missiles is Desmond, who lives in Venezuela, and his real client is Wendy, Desmond's wife. Desmond has 2 kids and he's told them their mother is dead, as Sydney told Jarod (falsely) that his parents had been killed in a car crash. Broots tracks the missing money. Jarod gets the kids' nanny to help out, he gets Desmond's men to detain Miss Parker & Lyle, and he sabotages the truck carrying the missiles. Wendy gets the kids and a big bundle of cash. Desmond gets busted.
52. Flesh and Blood
Sydney's son and some other teachers are kidnapped by an Appalachian militia so Jarod joins the ATF agency as an expert tracker and goes after them. The bad guys want $1M as reparations and they do a mock shooting of Nicholas off-camera on a satellite TV broadcast. Miss Parker says she'll pay the ransom out of Centre funds, Sydney goes after the bad guys and Miss Parker joins in. The militiamen turn up dead; because Lyle has kidnapped the prisoners to trap Jarod. Sydney knocks Jarod out and goes on ahead to free Nicholas but Jarod frees everyone and gives Lyle the mock-execution treatment.
53. Murder 101
Jarod takes over a criminal psychology class and discusses how to committing a flawless murder while looking for the missing professor, who's supposed to have run off with his mistress. Meanwhile, Miss Parker's daddy is seeing his doctor and changing his will. The professor's body turns up with plane tickets, a photograph of the alleged mistress and $40K in cash. Miss Parker is shocked to learn that daddy is getting engaged and taking Viagra! A pushy student called Claire Jarod's prime suspect and he remembers screwing up the Centre's security system as a boy when he got bored. Jarod tells his class the police reckon the professor was murdered. Claire tries to shop Matthew, one of her accomplices, but Jarod intercepts the evidence. Then he tells Claire and her other accomplice, Grady, that Matthew has committed suicide subjecting them to mock executions. Miss Parker is appalled to learn that daddy is marrying Brigitte, who now has black instead of blonde hair, and Jarod has a good gloat at her expense!
54. Mr. Lee
Mr. Lee, a sinister blind Chinaman, is hunting Jarod via people he's helped, so cue a lot of recapping from the blind photographer (#11), the doctor from the Halloween episode (#23), the info on Jarod's mother being destroyed (#6) and the Elvis impersonator (#4) as Mr. Lee built up a personality profile Broots discovers that Mr. Lee has phoned Miss Parker's daddy' office. Lee's lady helper slugs Lyle and kidnaps him for interrogation. So a recap of Kyle's death and the sheriff's kid who got the heart transplant (#41). Broots then finds that Lee was contacting Brigitte at daddy's office so Miss Parker & Co. crash the Jarod capture party and Jarod bugs out in the Centre's helicopter with Lee's assistant, who is grateful to him for helping her nephew.
55. The Assassin
Jarod is gambling at a bus station when he sees a woman being harassed, but she's not glad to be rescued. At the Centre, Brigitte is flaunting the wedding to Miss Parker's daddy. The children of Rachel, Jarod's client, have been kidnapped by the CIA. She is a former member of M2, a CIA department which performed simulations like the ones that Jarod used to do for the Centre. Renfrew, the head of the department faked his own death to avoid an FBI investigation. The other members (and their families) definitely are dead after performing political assassinations. Miss Parker is pursued by Thomas Gates, an ex-smoker, so she gets Broots to check the guy out; to Brigitte's amusement. Rachel has to assassinate a US senator to get her family back. Jarod talks her out of it and bluffs Renfrew into handing over the kids. Then Jarod turns Renfrew in to the FBI and phones Miss Parker to tell her not to let the Center take away her happiness and the new bloke in her life.
56. Unsinkable
Heading for the bottom of the sea off Atlantic City in chains, Jarod remembers being lured there 2 days earlier by Argyle (episode #36), who owes $5K to the top loan shark, Fattas. He wants to take his dying dad to Rome to see the Pope. Only dad isn't dying, Fattas ripped off a delivery of cash to the number 2 loan shark, The Cuban (who has a terrible Irish accent), and Fattas wants to set up Argyle to take the blame. Jarod has to pretend to be Argyle's friend to help him and he films Fattas chucking him, chained, into the sea. Of course, Jarod escapes, he turns Fattas & the Cuban over to the cops and dad gets to meet the Pope. Meanwhile, Miss Parker is stuck with Sydney & Broots in the Centre jet, circling in a storm and thinking about Thomas, who has found Catherine Parker's studio walled up in Miss Parker's home. She tells Thomas to rebuild the wall but he puts a door in it. And Miss Parker tells him she can't go into the room alone.
57. Pool
Jarod, in New Orleans, stops Billie from shooting Fontenot, a pool shark who killed her adoptive father. So Jarod learns how to play pool to hustle the hustler. At the Centre, Daddy wants to hold a party at Miss Parker's place and meet Thomas, and Brigitte has told him she can't have children; which is a lie, as Miss Parker discovers from Brigitte's doctored medical records. Marvin, a black pool player, wasn't Billie's adoptive father, he was her real father. He said he'd adopted her to protect the daughter of a white mother and a black father. Worse, Billie's mom was Fontenot's fiancée until Marvin stole her away, and Fontenot's daddy was in the KKK so the theme of this episode is racial tension. Eventually, Billie starts shooting, Fontenot confesses all and goes down for murder, and Miss Parker keeps quiet about Brigitte at the wedding.
58. At the Hour of Our Death
Miss Parker receives her mom's rosary from Jarod just before she keels over with a perforated ulcer. Jarod, meanwhile, is busy crashing a float-plane in the mountains. They both remember (as children at the Centre) looking for the coffin containing Miss Parker's mom and, with Timmy (Angelo), finding a girl in a tent; Faith who was dying. Jarod, out in the open, had to survive an incoming cold front and the attentions of a white wolf. Meanwhile, Miss Parker goes Code Blue and has to be revived with the electric shock machine. Miss Parker gave the rosary to Faith just before she died, and she turned out to be Miss Parker's sister. Daddy tells Miss Parker in the hospital that Catherine, her mother, adopted Faith and the Centre failed to cure her leukemia, although it did come up with an effective treatment later. Jarod is rescue and he gets to meet Father Moore, who helped Catherine Parker to adopt Faith.
59. Countdown
Jarod was driving a school bus in San Diego when the mom of one of his customers drove her car into the path of a truck. The kid needed a kidney transplant and he was a rare tissue type. So Jarod became a lab technician to help out and discovered that the kid's dad isn't his biological father; drug-dealer Luther is; so off Jarod went to a Mexican gaol. At the Centre, Mr. Raines accused Miss Parker of becoming unfocussed. She missed Jarod in San Diego but checked his trash and headed for Mexico. The female prison governor let Jarod stage a gaol break; just as Miss Parker arrived. Of course, Luther slugged Jarod and decamped, heading back to San Diego for his $10 million and revenge on Ray, who grassed him up. So Jarod tricked Luther, extracted one of his kidneys for the kid and sent him back to his gaol cell in Mexico.
60. P.T.B.
Jarod hears Neil, the presenter of a Chicago radio talk show, and his secret studio being shot up and blown up. Jarod takes over the show while looking for Neil and he tells the Centre's story to his listeners. Meanwhile, Thomas has bought a house in Oregon and he wants Miss Parker to go with him. Sydney thinks it's a good idea but Daddy says he can't manage without her. Neil is giving money to Patty, a 19 year old girl with a degenerative disease. While testing vaccines for the US military, he was forced to use Patty's pregnant mother as a subject. The man hunting Neil is his old CO, Colonel Spence, who thinks he's one of the Powers That Be. Jarod traps Spence and tricks a confession out of him. Neil tells the truth to Patty on air and Miss Parker tells her truth to Thomas.
61. Ties That Bind
In a dream, Miss Parker captures Jarod and finds she still can't leave the Centre. Jarod catches a kid, Dillon Hale, when he tries to rob a store in Jacksonville, takes him to the marina and sees a boat blow up, apparently with dad aboard. The kid takes a powder when Winston, head of security at his lawyer dad's firm, shows up. Meanwhile, Miss Parker is skiving! Jarod goes to the law firm as an IRS auditor and discovers that Dillon's dad, Peter, was getting evidence for an FBI agent, now dead, as Winston has killed a witness against a drug dealer. Jarod burgles Winston's office and uses his security system to tape a confession. Miss Parker tells Daddy she's leaving! Peter Hale is still alive. Mr. Parker gives Thomas a blank cheque to get lost but Thomas rips it up. Winston walks right into Jarod's trap and the old lady who owns the store wins the lottery!
62. Wake Up
Miss Parker dreams about her Mom and Thomas is shot dead at her house. A garbage man calls 911 and the cops try to fit up Miss Parker as her gun is missing. Jarod tells her to look at the people around her. The police arrest a suspect, Dawson, with Miss P's gun and pictures of her and Thomas romping; and he dies of a drug overdose in custody. Jarod meet Miss Parker while she is having a wake. Miss Parker turns over Dawson's place and finds medical grade morphine. The cop investigating Thomas's murder is killed; his brake line was cut. Lester, the garbage man, was paid to make the 911 call and deliver drugs to Dawson. Miss P asks Daddy for half a million bucks to buy information from Lester, but he turns up gassed in the boot of his car. Lyle, Daddy & Brigitte arrive at the scene. Knowing what they have done, Miss Parker tells Jarod she will strike back when the others believe everything has blown over.
63. End Game
Jarod the cop does a Dirty Harry act and bluffs a murder confession out of a junkie cop. Then a boy, Bryce, is kidnapped by his internet chess buddy. At the Centre, Brigitte, now blonde, has gone all wobbly. Daddy wants Miss Parker to have a girl-to-girl chat with her. Jarod deduces that Bryce was kidnapped because he's a chess prodigy. The kidnapper gives Bryce the Ipcress treatment to convince him his name is Joshua. The FBI's top profiler is brought in as eight other boys with overbearing fathers have been kidnapped. Six turned up dead and the last was held for three days before being killed.
Miss Parker find Brigitte blonde again and apparently a weeping junkie and Broots catches her cavorting with Kyle. Jarod tracks down a kidnapper and the profiler lady thinks there are two of them; both called Joshua and both kidnapped earlier. Brigitte has been taking fertility drugs and she is in the club! The profiler tries to do a number on Jarod because he identifies too much with Joshua. Jarod breaks down Joshua, finds the Ipcress chamber and then 'Father' with Bryce, who is about to be killed for refusing to become another Joshua. 'Father' is a child psychologist whose son has died.
64. Qallupilluit
A webcam broadcast from Angelo tells Jarod that Major Charles, his father, has compromised the Centre's Alpha Project at an Arctic research station. The weather closes in after Jarod arrives as a climatologist. Sydney is experimenting with twins back at the Centre, but Miss Parker drags him away to hunt Major Charles, who is supposed to have killed her mom.
Someone kills the radio operator and sets fire to his equipment at the Arctic base. The doctor lies about the cause of death and he is the next to go (apparently) then the engineer. The station psychologist recognizes Jarod's picture of Major Charles; an older version visited the base and contacted the man in charge, the Captain. A case of dynamite disappears and the doctor is exposed as the killer.
Major Charles wants to expose the Centre's research project at the base then rejoin his family (i.e. Jarod). The Centre has cracked the human genome using Jarod's DNA, the Captain tells Jarod after the doctor shoots him. And then the dynamite goes off, blowing the base to bits.
65. Donoterase (1)
Miss Parker finds the Ellesmere Island research station blown to bits as Jarod heads off to meet his dad, and the Centre speeds up Project Gemini. Broots finds a memo from Catherine Parker saying she opposed Gemini. Jarod reaches an airfield in time to see Major Charles' plane crash, thanks to Brigitte, but someone else is flying it. He passes on the bits and pieces left by the Captain to his daughter. Sydney asks for control of Project Gemini. Jarod finds Gemini symbols all over a lab at Pakor Frozen Foods; and meet his dad, who doesn't deny killing Catherine Parker, and tells him he saw Mom and Emily 2 years ago.
Miss Parker finds embryos of all species at Pakor. Jarod and his dad find pairs of twin animals at an underground lab at Donoterase, and they run into everyone from the Centre plus a 14-year-old Jarod clone. The Centre put Jarod's DNA into eggs taken from his mother at the NuGenesis fertility clinic. Jarod asks Sydney for help in freeing the clone. Miss Parker is appalled at what Raines has done, and she and Broots find a lab full of failed clones. Her father tells Sydney to do a performance comparison between Jarod and the clone. To be continued . . .
66. Donoterase (2)
Jarod plans to rescue the clone, and Broots discovered that Raines made 289 cloning attempts before he got one right. Raines found the women who provided the host wombs and they all disappeared. Miss Parker visits Jarod 2 in his cell and finds a crying boy who is 'there to serve', according to Raines. Sydney pretends to go along with Raines but he sends a coded clue to Jarod about the transfer of the clone to Africa. Miss Parker arrives at the ambush, Jarod escapes with the clone but his dad is captured.
M'tumbo of the Triumvirate, a stroppy African, takes charge at the Centre and gives Major Charles to Brigitte. Sydney tells Miss Parker to have it out with Major Charles and everyone else be damned. Raines has told the clone that Jarod killed his parents. Jarod tells him he never had any and shows him the Centre's DSA recordings of himself. Major Charles tells Miss Parker that Raines shot him and took his gun on the day of her mother's death; and she was to have been rescued with Jarod if her mother had not been murdered.
The clone gets ice cream for breakfast. Jarod turns up at the Centre to trade Miss Parker's dad for his dad. The boss puts Raines in charge of a double-cross, and he wants Mr. Parker killed. At an airfield, Miss Parker takes the bullet intended for her dad, Major Charles and the clone fly away and Jarod ends up a prisoner of the Centre again.
+++ Season 4 (1999/2000) +++
67. The World's Changing
At the start of a new season, Lyle is in charge of torturing his prisoner, Jarod; Miss Parker is in a looney bin (on her brother's orders); their dad has been scared off and Lyle has his job; and Raines is also missing. Angelo finds Jarod for Sydney as he is about to be flown to M'tumbo in Africa with Mr. White a mysterious albino. White has the job of killing the Nash family. The husband and wife are nuclear researchers who blew the whistle on energy research being used for military purposes. They are affecting the Centre's Project Silence. Jarod, who faked being totally subdued, takes over the plane and lands/crashes it. Raines, now a God-botherer, returns to the Centre to catch Jarod and Miss Parker is too disgusted to shoot him.
Mr. Nash and his daughter are in Federal protection, his wife went underground after an assassination attempt. White plans to kill them when they are reunited. Timson, one of the Nashs' protection team, is working for the Centre. Jarod confronts White, who tells him he is a finder. Jarod choses to save information on his sister, Emily, from a furnace and White gets away. Jarod then disarms White's bomb and used it to trick Timson. And at the end, Jarod misses his sister at a hotel by one day.
68. Survival
Lyle and Miss Parker find themselves locked in a container, and having to survive, while it is shipped somewhere from Texas. Meanwhile, Jarod is in the US Army CID investigating the 'suicide' of Rion, a soldier, during PoW survival training. Jarod put in the container, evidence that Lyle killed his mail-order bride for Miss Parker to find. Catherine Parker's watch is also in there; her daughter used it to survive almost drowning at 12.
Jarod and a lady lieutenant survive a car bomb. Captain Saunders was sexually harassing the lady and Rion intervened. Saunders is involved in Project Abyss, developing drugs for PoW interrogation, and Rion carved 'Abyss' on is body before hanging himself as the hallucinogenic drug took effect. The container arrives at the Centre and the way to open it turns out to be a lever inside labelled 'do not pull'. And Jarod gives Saunders the drug and dumps him in The Hole to extract a confession.
69. Angel's Flight
Jarod pretends to be a cop and goes looking for a missing girl with a thing about angels after seeing her father putting up posters. A devil symbol postcard in the girl's room sends him to the Gates of Hell club where a magician is pretending to know his victims' innermost secrets while writing luminous names on them. Jarod sends Miss Parker a faceless wax head then the elements of a face, and Lyle is expecting a mystery visitor.
The missing girl's mother jumped off a building, Jarod discovers. Then he finds the girl barely alive and talks a gun away from the magician's accomplice. Miss Parker, Syd and Broots travel to a wax museum in San Francisco, and when Miss P adds Jarod's head to his exhibit, a guillotine chops the heads off models of them!
The magician, who tossed the girl's mom off the roof, is bamboozling cash and jewellery from his victims and persuading them they can fly. So Jarod gives the suckers print-outs of their files from the magician's computer and takes away his safety rope, and when the magician jumps off the building anyway, there are floodlights on the ground to light up his air-bag.
At the Centre, the Triumvirate has added a one-man Internal Affairs Department and Lyle's mystery visitor, Mr. Cox, looks just like the fully assembled waxwork from Jarod. And based on what happened at the wax museum, Miss Parker concludes that Cox is the Grim Reaper.
70. Risque Business
The Sci-Fi Channel didn't show this episode, possibly on taste grounds. According to TVTome:
Jarod pretends to be a sex therapist to investigate a brutal assault on a doctor. Meanwhile, Broots tries to summon up the courage to reveal his feelings to Miss Parker.
NOTES: Daronex is not actually a real drug. Jarod's last name: Kinsey (referencing Dr. Alfred Kinsey, sex therapist and author).
71. Road Trip
Jarod hooks up with Zoe, who says she's running from a cop boyfriend (Vince) while Miss Parker, Sydney and Broots follow the Yellow Brick Road laid out for them by Jarod. Stuck in a maze, each finds a significant item from their childhood: Broots' G.I. Joe doll, a 78 record which Sydney and his brother found in the wreckage of their home in 1945, and a thimble to remind Miss Parker of a family evening of Monopoly.
Zoe has $27,000 and she's wanted for armed robbery. She is arrested but Jarod plays a cop to free her just before Vince arrives. Zoe takes Jarod on a road trip (getting very friendly with him) to meet her grandma and members of her family, from whom she is estranged. Her twin sister, Katie, is dead and Zoe isn't taking her chemotherapy as she thinks the treatment is worse than the cancer.
Vince shows up again as Zoe is about to go off on her own. Jarod sorts Vince out and follows Zoe to the cliff where Katie died as a child. He sends Zoe back to her family and leaves a message for the people at the Centre telling them if they value their families, then he's entitled to look for his without interference.
72. Extreme
Jarod plays doctor again as his client, Tony, is in a coma, the victim of a failed bungee cord. Jarod joins a group of boy (and girl) motorbike racers, who are into X-treme sports. He also sends three big boxes to the Centre and gets Miss Parker & Co. following a game-show trail, which leads them to a Chinese waitress and then to Lyle eventually. Zed, the leader of the gang, tests his recruits until he's sure they're ready to join in a spectacular robbery. Jarod has to do an underwater escape from a swimming pool to prove himself.
Tony was looking for his father, Zed said he could help him knowing that Dad was dead and Kerry, Tony's sister is in the gang undercover. Jarod is shot slightly rescuing Kerry from an X-treme burglary. He has to repeat his underwater escape when Zed rumbles him.
Miss Parker & Co. find that Lyle has a woodshed in his apartment, like the one in which he was tortured as a child. And he brings Asian women there to torture them. Meanwhile, Zed and Co. raid a money laundering centre and walk into Jarod's trap. Zed confesses before going for an involuntary ride with an old bungee cord. And at the end, Jarod tells Miss Parker that one of them has to stop Lyle.
73. Wild Child
Someone has been photographing Miss Parker and there's a Centre contract out on Daddy. Jarod's client is Violet, a girl who has been living rough in the woods. The experts want to treat her like a laboratory animal and she has no resistance to common ailments, so one of the experts contaminates her doll with a dozen viruses. Jarod recruits Ann, another doctor, to rescue the girl. Ann has lost a child of the same age.
Miss Parker trails Mr. Cox, her suspected assassin, and watches him collect road kill! But he turns out to use his lab on sub-level 16 for taxidermy. Violet was the only survivor of a plane crash which killed her parents and one of the experts set up a video system to observe her for 10 years instead of helping her. Lyle says Daddy told him to photograph his sister and send the pictures to the Triumvirate to establish her alibi as something big is going down. Jarod arranges some wilderness training for the expert who was observing Violet and Ann adopts the kid at the end.
74. Rules of Engagement
Miss Parker meets Daddy at a derelicts' camp; he's on the run with Brigitte and he wants a strongbox of cash from SL 22. She is not too thrilled to see an ultrasound picture of Brigitte's unborn baby. Meanwhile, Jarod becomes a hostage negotiator after 2 good old boys take over a hospital ward containing their father. Jarod builds a radio-controlled spy device from bits from an electronics store while the trigger-happy sheriff is doing his best to blow away the brothers.
Jarod extracts a hostage then goes back as a doctor when the real doctor refuses to put himself in danger. He revives the hostage-takers' dad, who needs heart by-pass surgery but was denied it by the hospital. Jarod's target becomes the doctor who is lining his pockets at the patients' expense and he gives the doctor a pretend heart attack to extract a confession. Miss Parker, who is 'unobtainable' for most of the episode, gets the cash to her dad and she sees hospital records in the box but she doesn't get to look at them.
75. ‘Til Death Do Us Part
It's a year since Thomas was murdered, Miss Parker keeps seeing him and Jarod intends to find out who killed him. Meanwhile, M'Tumbo has been murdered (and had his eyes gouged out) and Daddy Parker is the prime suspect. Daddy tells Miss Parker he didn't do it and he has a come-back plan. Jarod puts Broots on to a Centre phone tap record; a conversation between himself and Thomas, and Jarod tells Miss Parker he brought Thomas and her together.
Mr. Cox is looking for Daddy and he keeps torturing Broots. Daddy and Brigitte (who's about to give birth) borrow Miss Parker's car. A Centre operative called 'Rumour' is the killer and Miss Parker receives a file telling her who the killer is: Brigitte. But Miss Parker doesn't kill her because Brigitte knows she's going to bleed to death when the baby is born.
It was Daddy who left the file for Miss Parker (not Jarod), he was just using Brigitte to breed another son, and he's put the blame for everything, including M'Tumbo's death, on Brigitte. Cox is a doctor, and he takes charge of the child, then Miss Parker says goodbye to Thomas at his grave.
76. Spin Doctor
Secret Service Agent Todd Baxter, who gave Jarod a lift when he escaped from the Centre, is dead and a lady profiler says it's murder dressed up as suicide. Daddy Parker is back in charge at the Centre, where Sydney goes mad after Angelo leaves a broken watch for him to find. Todd's girlfriend says he had demons and a drug habit but Jarod finds that she is being intimidated by the killer. Jarod thinks a reporter was killed because Todd was going to leak something to him. One of Todd's colleagues, a spin doctor, gives himself away via a lie, so Jarod pieces together his shredded documents.
At the Centre, Daddy tells Miss Parker that Sydney killed a woman years ago. The woman died after a car crash, the Centre didn't help her, and Daddy used her death to blackmail Sydney into carrying on working with Jarod. So Miss Parker confronts Daddy and gets him to erase the lies. And miracle! Claudia isn't dead after all and she is reunited with Sydney while Daddy tells Miss Parker he was just following orders when he told Sydney that Claudia was dead
Meanwhile, Jarod is rumbled by one of the investigators but he talks his way out of it. Then he and the lady profiler bluff the spin doctor, who has been ruining reputations with his lies, into leading them to Agent Halder, the killer. After some rocky moments, Jarod and the lady profiler end up getting on very well and he thinks her bouillabaisse is at least as good as instant soups and snacks – this episode's gimmick.
77. Cold Dick
Broots and Miss Parker are sharing a honeymoon suite in Las Vegas and waiting for Jarod to show up at their hotel. Meanwhile, Jarod is in a freezer with Argyle (Episodes 36 & 56) and thinking about how he got there. Jarod is pretending to be private eye Dick Dickson, who is looking for a showgirl called Mona and investigating the murder of club owner Dirty Willy. It soons becomes clear that the story is the worst possible Raymond Chandler pastiche, which is full of bad 'dick' jokes. All credibility goes when Broots beds Miss Parker and there is none left when Broots tells Lyle where to get off and captures Jarod. And Mr. Raines dances with Miss Parker in a leopard-skin trunks. But it all turns out to be a Broots daydream.
78. Lifeline
Jarod is told he'll meet a kindred spirit and he sees a woman putting on a disguise to evade a man. Jarod becomes the head of security at the gun dealer where Jenny McGann works and proves to Miss Parker that Mr. Raines' god-bothering is a hollow sham. Jenny is an undercover AFT agent and the fianceé of Pritchard, the gun dealer, who is suspected of murder and money laundering. Jarod prevents a hit on Jenny, who was being harassed by Agent Alonzo, her controller.
Jarod's mission is to reunite Jenny, who has been undercover for over a year now, with her daughter and father. Miss Parker finds out that Raines' priest is someone she used to date at school. Pritchard has been skimming the money laundering cash and he is now a target. Jarod prevents another hit attempt and Broots discovers that Raines is reviving a project involving a lethal gas.
Jarod finds that Pritchard knows that Jenny is an AFT agent but he thinks she'll provide a 'get out of gaol free' card after Pritchard gives his boss to the AFT. But Jarod gets him busted for murder and reunites Jenny's family. Meanwhile, Miss Parker learns that Raines has used the gas to cure baby Parker's lung problems and Raines tells her that he is not her enemy, even though she needs enemies to survive; which is pretty much what the priest told her.
79. Ghosts From The Past
Jarod is in Georgia with a white supremacist group run by 'The General', who wants to stop a Unity Rally organized by a black preacher. At the Centre, Angelo thinks someone from his past is going to kill Jarod. Miss Parker & Co. hope to catch Jarod if Angelo can work out who's after him, so cue a trawl through some of Jarod's cases. Jarod is posing as an explosives expert and 'The General' wants to use his bomb to kill the preacher's 2 girls.
'The General' tells his troops there's a traitor among them and he turns out to be Efram Bartlett, the people smuggler from episode 17. Jarod is unmasked and marched away to be executed but, luckily, the executioner is another undercover agent. Jarod has some fun with Bartlett, pretending he's going to burn him at the stake, and Pastor Jones lies to Miss Parker and says he's never heard of Jarod.
80. The Agent Of Year Zero
Jarod follows Lyle and an Oriental man (Mok) to a ceremony for swearing in new US citizens and a blind Cambodian woman (Kim) denounces Mok as a butcher. Miss Parker finds that Lyle is up to something in Venezuela. He says Mok is a freedom fighter and he owes him a favour. Kim says Mok, alias Col. Thon (one of Pol Pot's murderers), killed her family in front of her when she was 6. Broots finds that Mok's past is being erased. Jarod consults Sydney as he thinks Kim is suffering from hysterical blindness. Sydney advises making Kim confront the source of her terror.
Jarod kidnaps Lyle and uses him to take his sister out of circulation briefly. Lyle wants to get Mok appointed to the Port Authority to help with heroin smuggling. Kim, no longer blind, identifies Mok as a war criminal and he is hauled off under arrest. Miss Parker discovers that both Lyle and Mok have the same tattoo – the Cambodian symbol for cannibalism! She does a deal with Mok but it all goes down the drain when her brother the cannibal has Mok killed.
81. Junk
Jarod, a hopeless drug addict, is hauled off to a rehab centre. Another inmate, Jill, is being kept there and the courts are about to take her son away. Miss Parker starts digging into events at the Centre in 1976. Jarod tells Jill he is in the clinic as a favour to her father. She says someone is making her fail drug tests because she's not taking anything.
A David Arnold is being erased from the Centre's database so Broots has to burgle Raines' office to get some DSAs, which show Raines injecting Jarod with a drug. Jill's father was an orderly at the Centre, he gave Jarod a picture of himself and his daughter as a substitute family, he tried to blow the whistle on what was happening to Jarod but he was found drowned in his swimming pool. Miss Parker wonders where Sydney was while all this was going on.
Jarod discovers that Dr. Earl is putting drugs in sedative patches and he's helping a college classmate, Hilary, to adopt Jill's son. So Jarod injects Earl and Hilary with a highly unpleasant and addictive drug to get a confession out of them. Sydney gives Miss Parker a DSA and tells her (and Jarod later) that the centre was testing a drug which was supposed to make geniuses even brighter. He volunteered to take Jarod's place but Raines lied and used the drug on both of them.
82. School Daze
Jarod overhears a man talking on his phone about killing a witness for his retrial. So Jarod becomes a supply teacher to identify and protect the kid involved. Meanwhile, Miss Parker finds that Raines is visiting an asylum twice a week. All the single moms of Jarod's class want to cook for him. Raines is visiting Edna, his wife, who used to be a physician at the Centre, and a friend of Catherine Parker, and she's supposed to be dead! Edna visits Miss Parker and she's so confused after being doped for 20 years that she thinks she's visiting Catherine.
Jarod spots the janitor spying on the kids. His initial choice of the witness is wrong but he homes in on Eric, who pretends to be a master spy. The janitor is shot and he turns out to be a federal marshall. Jarod sends Eric a warning but the stupid kid loses his pager! There's a leak a the witness protection agency so Jarod takes Eric and his mom into protective custody.
In a lucid moment, Edna tells Miss Parker that her mother started Mirage and hoped that her daughter would finish it. Jarod decides that the school counsellor is the leak and Eric heads for the school to tell one of the girls he fancies her, as Jarod recommended. The bad guys grab him but Jarod rescues him at a building site and puts the baddies in a hole and pours concrete on them to get confessions. Then he cooks up some prune brownies as part of a plan to humiliate the school bully. And finally, Eric is paired with Molly and Edna Raines catches a bus.
83. Meltdown
Leonard, a burn-bag man at the Centre, tries to save the Mirage file for Miss Parker, whose emails are going missing. Meanwhile, Jarod and a brunch of crooks are exposed to the nerve gas, which they have just stolen, and Jarod reckons they have 6 hours to live. The 5-strong gang is controlled by videophone by Mr. Elijah and Jarod is hunting whoever killed a little girl on their last job. There is stuff at the hideout for Jarod to make an antidote to the nerve gas and we see the job as a series of flashbacks while he's doing that.
Leonard was gunned down while trying to phone Miss Parker, CCTV shows. Broots finds that Raines has been intercepting Miss Parker's emails since Edna's visit, so they burgle Raines' office. Jarod breaks one of the hypos of green stuff so that there is none for the killer, so she confesses when he offers to share his hypo with her. Then the whole thing turns out to be a plot by the FBI, who already have Elijah in custody, to unmask the killer using fake news broadcasts. And finally, when Broots reassembles a video message to Miss Parker, Edna tells her she wants to talk about her mother and Mirage
84. Corn Man
Jarod buys a camcorder in a pawn shop and sees a woman (Nancy) and her daughter (Lee) attacked. People at the town shown in the video deny the victims were there but Jarod learns that they are lying and he finds possessions at the crime scene. Meanwhile, Miss Parker heads for Harlem to look for Edna Raines after a tip-off from Jarod. But she finds Mr. Raines with his wife's body. Raines says she committed suicide. Sydney says she wouldn't have killed herself willingly. Nancy's husband tells Jarod she's okay and he's just spoken to her. Jarod almost shows the film to the sheriff but a photograph on his desk shows he's a buddy of Nancy's husband.
Jarod crashes when someone shoots out a tyre on his car. The sheriff tells him Nancy and Lee have been kidnapped so Jarod shows him his US Marshall's badge. The ranson is paid and Jarod realizes there are 2 kidnappers: the deputy and his brother. The good guys follow a clue from Nancy to the Old Mill and rescue the prisoners. Meanwhile, Miss Parker and Broots dig up Catherine Parker's coffin and find it empty!!! Jarod tells Miss Parker to keep looking for the truth.
85. The Inner Sense (1)
Jarod is having a vacation in a hot-tub with Zoe when Dad calls on his videophone to say he's found Emily, who's a reporter for the Philadelphia Examiner. Jarod arrives at the paper's offices just after Emily has been thrown out of her window. Jarod joins the FBI to investigate the attack. Her landlord tells Jarod that Emily was close to finding her brother and hot on the trail of something big. And she was attacked by a man missing a thumb: Lyle!
Meanwhile, Miss Parker, drunk, calls on Lyle and finds he has a Mirage memo from Daddy. Then she and Broots find Raines' autopsy report on her mom, so Miss Parker prods Raines. Meanwhile, Major Charles helps Jarod to get Emily out of hospital before Lyle can finish the job. Emily has been tracking Ethan, a man who doesn't exist officially.
Miss Parker and Broots rescue DSAs from a bonfire at Raines' forest house. They show that Catherine Parker was still alive a couple of months after her 'death'. Ethan is making a bomb and he hears voices in his head. Angelo tells Miss Parker that Mirages are real and Sydney knows all the secrets and lies. Sydney produces a DSA in which Catherine Parker says she's going to stage her own death but he doesn't know what Mirage is.
Mr. Cox suggests kidnapping Zoe to deflect Jarod from Mirage. Another DSA shows Jarod meeting Catherine Parker at the forest house, and she's pregnant via NuGenics with Major Charles' child. Jarod has another brother; Ethan; and Raines has Ethan!
86. The Inner Sense (2)
Jarod doesn't remember being at the forest house, as the DSA shows. He tells Miss Parker that Ethan is involved in a project called 7677. Cox is on Ethan's trail. Sydney thinks Raines buried something that Catherine Parker told Jarod in his memory so he grabs Jarod when he catches up with Ethan, and Ethan heads off to get on with the bombing that Raines wants. Under hypnosis, Jarod tells Miss Parker that her mother had an inner sense to warn her of danger. Both Miss Parker and Ethan have the same ability and Daddy Parker wanted to create, in Ethan, a Pretender with Catherine's inner sense. Catherine Parker knew that she would be killed after her baby was born and she told Jarod to tell her daughter to complete her plan.
Raines thinks Mirage/7677 will put him in charge of the Centre. Jarod tells Miss Parker to stop him then he goes off to fine Ethan. Raines is taken prisoner by Lyle and Daddy and Cox grabs Zoe. Another DSA shows Raines murdering Catherine Parker after she has given birth to Ethan. The bomb will be on subway train number 7677 and it will blow up a peace conference. Cox videophones Jarod to give him a choice: save Zoe or stop Ethan.
Raines tells Miss Parker that her mother's plan is on a DSA just before Daddy shoots him. Jarod and Major Charles rescue Zoe and Jarod catches the train on which Ethan has planted the bomb. Jarod tells Ethan to listen to his mother via his inner sense. So he lets Jarod send the train to an abandoned station. Then Miss Parker gets in everyone's way. But they all jump off the train. Big Bang!
And that's it for the TV series. But two TV movies were made: The Pretender 2001 and Island of the Haunted.
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