Pretender: Every Picture Tells A Story
Dec. 4th, 2008 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kerravonsenWell, I'm joining in the chain of Pretender watching which RedStarRobot, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
astrogirl2 and vilakins are perpetuating. I'm skipping the pilot, because I already re-saw it relatively recently. So we go with the first episode (is it the first or the second?) "Every Picture Tells A Story".
Sydney has the meccano Empire State Building from the pilot in his lab!
The department where Sydney works is called "psychogenetic" something or other. He seems to be working exclusively with twins. And he doesn't seem to have any assistants.
Miss Parker and Sydney snarking in the lift about "do you want to talk to me about it?" - the look she gives him! Ha! I wonder who would out-snark the other, Miss Parker or Snape?
And it's interesting that Miss Parker has formed her self-understanding as "someone who is stronger than my mother, who was weak". She thinks that the way not to break is to be strong, immovable, rather than flexible. Chinese saying about bending willows come to mind.
Miss Parker's standard phone-answering technique seems to be to bark "What?" into the phone, no matter what time of day or night it is. And it neatly avoids having to tell us what her first name is.
It's so entertaining seeing her and Jarod on the phone.
I'd forgotten that the painting of Miss Parker On The Death Of Her Mother had been so early; it really stuck in my mind. Ah, the reveal, with the single tear on the young Miss Parker's face, and then the single tear on the current Miss Parker's face when she calls Sydney to ask him what really happened to her mother. Poor Miss Parker.
"Is Jarod my real name?"
And he had already started painting the painting at that point. Maybe the trigger of him asking Sydney that right then was "What am I going to sign this painting? Is Jarod really my name?"
And interesting that Sydney hedges the answer with "that's the name they told me"; I'm not sure whether he's trying to wash his hands of the responsibility, or trying to be as accurate and precise as he can. Probably something else completely - he is a psychologist, after all.
Okay, I assume that we are meant to deduce, from the contents of the DSA, that Mrs Parker did not commit suicide. I'm just not entirely sure how we're meant to deduce it. The sequence of events is (1) loud commotion (2) "get her out of the lift" (3) multiple gunshots. If it was suicide, there wouldn't have been multiple gunshots, just one, is that it? Or is it also that the gunshots occur after the "get her out of the lift", implying that someone killed her in order to prevent her from leaving.
Ha! I just realized that all my wibblings so far have been about the B story. Well, that's the ongoing interesting stuff, ain't it?
One thing that puzzles me about the A-story is: how does Jarod decide what Pretend to do next? I mean, he already has newspaper clippings about Tom King, so he already must have suspected something was up, and yet he still sounds surprised when he deduces that foul play was involved. Which one is it? Are there Pretends that he does, complete with newspaper clippings, ones that we don't see, where there hasn't been any foul play? And he also seems to spend a lot of off-screen time just learning new things, or doing both. Like at the start of this story, it's mentioned that he spent five weeks learning to swim, and at the same time preventing a nuclear disaster. He also mentioned that "I was a midwife once", and I don't think he's referring to his stint as a doctor in the pilot.
Thinking of the pilot, I'm reminded a bit of an episode of Stingray where Ray pretended to be a doctor, though he had the help of people that he called in favours of. Golly, what a mind-boggling crossover it would be if Ray and Jarod were both investigating the same thing at the same time, and both pretending to be someone they weren't? I'm not sure if utter chaos wouldn't be the result.
I must admit, I get a kick out of Jarod telling people the exact truth and them thinking he's joking - such as "oh, I forged my transfer papers". And I suspect he gets a kick out of it too.
One thing that puzzled me; was the fact that the bad-guy coast guard kept on postponing the woman coast guard's rank review - was there a reason for that, or was that just supposed to indicate that he was a Bad Guy?
I liked that hermit-guy, he was sort of sweet.
Oh, the look on Jarod's face when he describes listening to The Magic Flute! You really get the feeling that his childhood was bleak and regimented, and yet also that his spirit was alive enough to hold such glimpses of beauty to his heart and treasure them.
Well, I seem to have written more than I expected. Comments, people?
astrogirl2 and vilakins are perpetuating. I'm skipping the pilot, because I already re-saw it relatively recently. So we go with the first episode (is it the first or the second?) "Every Picture Tells A Story".Sydney has the meccano Empire State Building from the pilot in his lab!
The department where Sydney works is called "psychogenetic" something or other. He seems to be working exclusively with twins. And he doesn't seem to have any assistants.
Miss Parker and Sydney snarking in the lift about "do you want to talk to me about it?" - the look she gives him! Ha! I wonder who would out-snark the other, Miss Parker or Snape?
And it's interesting that Miss Parker has formed her self-understanding as "someone who is stronger than my mother, who was weak". She thinks that the way not to break is to be strong, immovable, rather than flexible. Chinese saying about bending willows come to mind.
Miss Parker's standard phone-answering technique seems to be to bark "What?" into the phone, no matter what time of day or night it is. And it neatly avoids having to tell us what her first name is.
It's so entertaining seeing her and Jarod on the phone.
I'd forgotten that the painting of Miss Parker On The Death Of Her Mother had been so early; it really stuck in my mind. Ah, the reveal, with the single tear on the young Miss Parker's face, and then the single tear on the current Miss Parker's face when she calls Sydney to ask him what really happened to her mother. Poor Miss Parker.
"Is Jarod my real name?"
And he had already started painting the painting at that point. Maybe the trigger of him asking Sydney that right then was "What am I going to sign this painting? Is Jarod really my name?"
And interesting that Sydney hedges the answer with "that's the name they told me"; I'm not sure whether he's trying to wash his hands of the responsibility, or trying to be as accurate and precise as he can. Probably something else completely - he is a psychologist, after all.
Okay, I assume that we are meant to deduce, from the contents of the DSA, that Mrs Parker did not commit suicide. I'm just not entirely sure how we're meant to deduce it. The sequence of events is (1) loud commotion (2) "get her out of the lift" (3) multiple gunshots. If it was suicide, there wouldn't have been multiple gunshots, just one, is that it? Or is it also that the gunshots occur after the "get her out of the lift", implying that someone killed her in order to prevent her from leaving.
Ha! I just realized that all my wibblings so far have been about the B story. Well, that's the ongoing interesting stuff, ain't it?
One thing that puzzles me about the A-story is: how does Jarod decide what Pretend to do next? I mean, he already has newspaper clippings about Tom King, so he already must have suspected something was up, and yet he still sounds surprised when he deduces that foul play was involved. Which one is it? Are there Pretends that he does, complete with newspaper clippings, ones that we don't see, where there hasn't been any foul play? And he also seems to spend a lot of off-screen time just learning new things, or doing both. Like at the start of this story, it's mentioned that he spent five weeks learning to swim, and at the same time preventing a nuclear disaster. He also mentioned that "I was a midwife once", and I don't think he's referring to his stint as a doctor in the pilot.
Thinking of the pilot, I'm reminded a bit of an episode of Stingray where Ray pretended to be a doctor, though he had the help of people that he called in favours of. Golly, what a mind-boggling crossover it would be if Ray and Jarod were both investigating the same thing at the same time, and both pretending to be someone they weren't? I'm not sure if utter chaos wouldn't be the result.
I must admit, I get a kick out of Jarod telling people the exact truth and them thinking he's joking - such as "oh, I forged my transfer papers". And I suspect he gets a kick out of it too.
One thing that puzzled me; was the fact that the bad-guy coast guard kept on postponing the woman coast guard's rank review - was there a reason for that, or was that just supposed to indicate that he was a Bad Guy?
I liked that hermit-guy, he was sort of sweet.
Oh, the look on Jarod's face when he describes listening to The Magic Flute! You really get the feeling that his childhood was bleak and regimented, and yet also that his spirit was alive enough to hold such glimpses of beauty to his heart and treasure them.
Well, I seem to have written more than I expected. Comments, people?
