Mr. Wydey's
TV Series Episode Guides

The Pretender Movies

The Pretender cast

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 (who isn't in the first film). Miss Parker has a brother, Lyle and Brigitte (row 2) arrives in due course to twist her tail. (Brigitte isn't in either film.)

The Pretender 2001 (Jan. 2001)

Jarod, Miss Parker and her half-brother Ethan survived the bomb which Ethan planted on the subway train at the end of Episode 86. Miss P. was returned to The Centre, she has dreams in which she is about to be crushed and her mother saves her, and she wants to know what happened right after the big bang. The Centre still wants Jarod back.
   Ethan is with Jarod, studying DSAs from The Centre. Edward Ballinger, another runaway Pretender, was shot and wounded while working as an NSA agent. Daddy Parker is missing. Lyle has a new thumb; a transplant from Mr. Raines. Jarod infiltrates the NSA, looking for the assassin, and hooks up with Ballinger's female partner. At The Centre, Sydney tells Miss P. he helped to develop her mother's inner sense.
   An assassin called the Chameleon is killing NSA undercover agents. Ballinger was also on his list and the NSA knows there's another target in the USA. Jarod finds that the Chameleon has created pictures of him! They were constructed by pasting his face from an ID photo onto other pictures. Jarod later realizes that the pictures are supposed to give him a clue to the Chameleon's identity.
   Sydney introduces Miss P. to her inner sense. She and Ethan both come up with the need to find someone called 'T.T.' The Chameleon phones Jarod at his NSA office to mock him. At the hospital, Ballinger tells Jarod he did a sim at The Centre to create identities for NSA undercover agents. Then a helicopter arrives at the window and blows Ballinger away. Broots comes up with a Dr. Tommy Thompson, who used to work at The Centre. Lyle is looking for Thompson as well as Miss P.
   The trail of the Chameleon leads the NSA agents to Blue Cove, Delaware, where Jarod has a near miss with Lyle. Miss P. twists Lyle's tail and follows him to sub-level 20 at The Centre. Raines is there and he tells Lyle he wants his thumb back. The female NSA agent becomes suspicious of Jarod. Lyle gets instructions to kill Raines and Miss P. tells Raines to talk or croak. He says her mother got him to hire T.T.
   Another pretender called Alex was in on the escape which freed Jarod and Ballinger. The Centre covered up the existence of Alex, Raines says. Alex fell during the escape attempt and he was recaptured and he has kidnapped Daddy Parker. Lyle was put in charge of Alex, but he failed to control him and Alex began to work directly for the Triumvirate.
   Broots finds T.T. – he's in Maryland. Ethan has also worked this out and he tells Jarod. Miss P. walks into a trap. She finds her mother's diamond ring just before a bomb goes off. She finds herself trapped and reliving the dream featuring her mother (it was a warning of a future event), but Ethan saves her.
   Jarod and the NSA find T.T. dead at his home and Broots hiding in a cupboard. Sydney tells Miss P. that Raines has disappeared from The Centre. Jarod gives Broots a story to explain his presence at the crime scene. Ballinger created lives for 5 undercover NSA agents. 4 are dead, killed by the Chameleon, and Sydney tells Jarod who the 5th NSA undercover agent is.
   Alex left a Jarod fingerprint (from a rubber overlay on his finger) at the crime scene so Jarod and Broots have to escape from the NSA building. Alex makes Daddy phone Miss P. with details of a rendezvous. Jarod takes a bullet for the 5th undercover NSA agent and chases down Alex briefly.
   Alex tells Jarod he reversed the outcome of the sims which Jarod created for The Centre; making planes crash and killing people instead of saving lives. Jarod convinces the NSA lady to let him go after the Chameleon. Daddy isn't grateful when Miss. P. lets him out of a box, then Alex turns up. He explains he's not a lunatic psychopath, he's a sociopath because The Centre removed his conscience, and he tells Miss P. that Daddy isn't her biological father.
   Jarod arrives to tangle with Alex. Cornered, Alex tells him The Centre will never let Jarod find his mother. Then Alex does a high-dive into a dock. His body isn't found (as Lyle's wasn't when he did his plunge into the Hudson river in Episode 35). Broots has disappeared; he was last seen when Jarod dropped him off after they escaped from the NSA building.
   Jarod is left wondering why The Centre wants him back, and whether there's a reason other than that he's a Pretender. Finally, Miss P. receives an email while she's on the phone to Jarod – a picture of her and Jarod's mothers together. Raines sent it.

Island of the Haunted (Dec. 2001)

A black bloke and some goons invade a vault but what they're after isn't there. Daddy Parker is catatonic at The Centre to the frustration of his daughter – if she is his daughter. She shows him the photograph of the 2 mothers, which Raines sent her, but gets no reaction. The black bloke is called Adama and he's from the Triumvirate. His crew takes over Daddy Parker's protection and they blew a vault on SL 15. Miss P. is told to push off.
   Broots is back and he has found that Jarod is a professor of archaeosymbology in Boston. Jarod tells Miss P. that the photo holds the key to the whole puzzle. Then he leaves as The Centre's goons close in. Jarod has been researching a symbol featuring 8 skulls guarding a box. It belongs to a 100-year-old secret society. Jarod learns that his mother visited the premises of the society 2 days before him and she's headed for The Isle of Carthis, which lies off the Scottish coast.
   Miss P. wants DNA tests to find out if Daddy is her dad. Then she puts Angelo on the problem of what her mother and Jarod's mother would do together. Angelo goes crazy and directs her to the island, where the natives have totally weird 'Scottish' accents for a place which has Glasgow as its nearest airport.
   Jarod ends up at a monastery, where privacy is the rule. A huge storm approaches and (nearly) everyone is being evacuated from the island as Miss P. arrives by helicopter. Broots and Sydney burgle the Centre's cold store for a Daddy Parker DNA sample. Miss P. meets Jarod's mother at the Chapel of Souls then someone slugs her. Mom gets off the island leaving a distraught Jarod stuck there with Miss P.
   Jarod and Miss P. find his mother's bag. Ocee, a blind herbalist, is still on the island. She says Jarod's mother was searching for 'the scrolls'. There is no apparent change in Daddy Parker at The Centre but Lyle gets Adama out of the way so Raines can speak to him. The founders of the monastery brought 6 scrolls containing prophecies back from the Crusades – the Vespasian Scrolls.
   Jarod's mother was looking for P-47; a plot of land on the island. Miss P. keeps seeing a young girl. She finds the doll that Jarod's mother had. P-47 contains the cottage where the crypt-keeper, who found the scrolls 100 years ago, murdered his family. Jarod falls foul of the bloke who slugged Miss P. The crypt-keeper's family were Parkers, the killer founded The Centre and he was Miss P.'s great-grandfather. So now she knows where she came from if not who she is.
   Ocee interrupts as Jarod and Miss P. are about to get personal. Miss P. has been seeing visions of the crypt-keeper's daughter, who has been dead for 100 years. Angelo gives Broots and Sydney a clue to a place where 'terrible things happened'. A Father Theo died holding a picture of the little girl, who is called Angel. His Bible's binding contains a letter saying Angel's father found the scrolls but the child hid them and told Father Theo what she'd done in the confessional, which is why her father killed Father Theo.
   Jarod breaks the head of his mother's doll and finds a key. Broots learns that Daddy Parker has a weakling brother, who was given up for adoption. His existence was then erased with a false death certificate. Mr. Raines is Daddy Parker's brother! Jarod finds a pouch in the church and a monk tries to grab it. Then he tries to blow up Jarod and Miss P., who have to dive through a stained glass window to escape the explosion Ocee is killed. The pouch contains a pictorial map drawn by Angel. Jarod and Miss P. find the monk dead.
   Broots discovers that Adama, Daddy Parker and Lyle are all missing from The Centre. Jarod and Miss P. track down the scrolls, another monk points a gun at them and he is shot! By Daddy Parker! He was faking being catatonic. Raines is with him and they are delighted to have the scrolls and Jarod. They head for Glascow (sic!) airport to give the scrolls to Adama. Jarod tells Miss P. to do the decent thing and stop them.
   Broots and Sydney tell Miss P. that the only DNA they could find was semen and Daddy has such a low sperm count that he's probably not her father and Raines probably is. Daddy, Raines and Lyle were planning to double-cross the Triumvirate and parachute off the plane with the scrolls and Jarod. They have only 4 parachutes and Miss P. is an unwelcome complication.
   The scrolls contains prophecies which the Africans believe are true. Possessing them gives The Centre power over the Triumvirate, which will be lost if the Africans get the scrolls. Jarod talks Daddy into having a look at the scrolls to see what they say. Meanwhile, Raines and Lyle shoot the Africans and hijack the plane. Daddy Parker decides to send the evil scrolls 'back to the sea' and he refuses to tell Miss P. if he's her biological father before he bails out.
   Raines shoots the pilot, so they need Jarod to fly the plane and tell them how to repair the electrics. The plane splats down with the landing gear up, Jarod escapes from the cockpit and everyone else gets out before the plane blows up. Raines takes over The Centre after telling the Africans that Jarod sabotaged the plane and escaped with the scrolls. Which means The Centre's efforts to capture him have to continue.
   Everything is 'back to normal' with Lyle and Miss P. in competition to find Jarod and only the winner will survive. As a token of loyalty, Lyle has given Raines his thumb back. In the end, Jarod phones Miss P. and she wonders if Daddy bailed out for the right reason. She tells Jarod he can forget what happened on the island and she's coming after him. The first one to find the answers lives – if the prophecies are true.

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© Clyde E. Wydey, 2005.
Cast pictures based on images from "http://www.angelfire.com/tx5/pretender/"