Episode 3: Wages of Sin (Where ARE they getting these titles from?)

Review by KT
Click here for screengrabs from this episode


Lucy is featured in the coming attractions—she gets in the first dialogue. Yay!

Recaps again, starting with the capture of Tarzan in the jungle. We hear the regular recap voiceover, the one that starts by talking about Detective Jane Porter, not Tarzan. The “recap” also includes scenes from upcoming eps, because they show that bit where Kathleen says to Richard, “It’s about control of Greystoke” and we haven’t seen that scene yet. On to the first set of commercials.

The credits roll. The ep opens with a shot of Kathleen’s house and the sound of grunting and thuds of falling objects.

Interior shot. Kathleen comes running into the foyer and asks the maid what’s going on. The maid says that they thought he was sleeping and the doctor had been trying to get his blood pressure. Kathleen and the maid run up the stairs.

Tarzan is having a fit. He’s trashing his room. Aunt Kathleen says that he needs to calm down. Tarzan says, “I want to go!” (Potty?) Kathleen says he needs to stay here so she can keep him safe from Richard. She says, “John, I’m on your side. I’m family.” John Tarzan answers, “So is HE.”

Then he picks up a chair. Kathleen cringes and protects her face and head, thinking he’s going to hit her with it. Instead, he throws it through the window and leaps out. He climbs down the front of the building. And once again is free.

Cut to Michael’s funeral. Jane stands at attention in full uniform, crying as the coffin, covered with an American flag, is carried out from a church. Sam stands next to her Bagpipes play “Amazing Grace”.

Tarzan is back on Tar Beach, watching from a roof across the street. Cut to two men look out over a parapet. They have binoculars and are scoping out Jane. One guy says with a fairly good attempt at a New York accent, “Dere she is. Right down dare. Jane Pawtuh”. With his super jungle hearing, Tarzan hears him. (Not only his words, but his heartbeat too!) He scans his head around like a satellite dish and finally focuses on the two men on a balcony high on the side of the church. The other guy asks why Richard’s looking for her (did he not pay attention at the briefing?) and the first guy tells him that Richard feels she’s the key to his nephew. They’re supposed to stick with her until he shows up and then bring him in. He scans the funeral crowd and says, “No sign of him.”

As “Amazing Grace” continues to play and Sarah continues to cry, Tarzan leaps down from the roof, somersaults over a little fence and climbs the side of the church. He comes up behind the guys and a big fight starts. OH suddenly there are THREE guys! One guy, apparently tired of being tossed by Tarzan, decides to opt out and “rest” against a slanted roof outcropping. But Tarzan grabs him by the throat and snarls into his face, “Leave her alone” in a deadly menacing tone and then tosses him down to the ground. (The roof’s “ground”, not over the parapet to the sidewalk’s ground.)

End of teaser

The theme song starts—it’s both torpid and pretentious to my taste. Commercials.

Quick fade up on the Empire State Building and a building friend enjoying the sun rise. Cut to Sarah’s room. She is grieving. Tarzan knocks on the window and comes in. Tarzan tells her that her eyes are showing her pain. She tells him he has to go. He says he wants to help her. She says, “I don’t care what you want”. How many times do I have to tell you? And now someone is dead. Michael is dead because you won’t listen. So please…leave me alone.”

Tarzan stares at her in frustration and then jumps to the window sill and out the window.

Next scene, Nicky is asking Jane why she’s trying to protect “this John guy” when he killed Michael. Jane says “I told you he didn’t kill anyone. He tried to save Michael.” Nicky asks Jane why she is not telling people what happened that night. Jane says she can’t, that John is in danger from his uncle and from other cops. Nicky says, “I don’t understand”. Jane answers, “Then you’ll just have to trust me”.

Cut to the station. Jane walks in. Sam and another guy are going through files. Sam gets up and hugs Jane and asks if she’s okay. She’s been told to take a week off, but she says she got tired of daytime television. She asks what they’re working on and nobody wants to tell her. She guesses, “Mike’s case?” She forces Sam to fill her in. Sam figures that the rich kids could not have taken Mike down, so he’s thinking that somebody else was involved also. Their boss interrupts, telling Jane she should be home that she needs time. Jane says she needs work. Sam and the boss look at each other and reluctantly give in.

Inside the boss’s office, Jane and Sam look at a computer with a picture of a little boy in the back seat of a car. He is tied up and has duct tape over his mouth. The boss says, “Ransom demand”. (Boy, people do EVERYTHING over the internet these days.) Sam asks what they’re supposed to do. The boss says they’re supposed to take care of the parents. Sam resists, saying he doesn’t want a baby-sitting detail. Jane says, “Sam. We should talk to them.”

We get a few music video moments of Tarzan walking around Times Square as a song with a male singer plays on the soundtrack. Tarzan is brooding as he walks. Nice sulky pout on that boy.

Cut to the young boy’s parents in an interrogation room at the station. Jane and Sam are there with them. Sam tells the parents that the FBI will leave a duffle bag with marked bills at the pick-up point. But they will keep it under surveillance and when the kidnapper shows up, they will tail him right to their son. The dad says, “The e-mail said no police. What if he sees you? Maybe we should just pay”. Sam says they won’t see them. The mother laments that her baby may be dead. Jane tells her there’s still a lot of hope and that they will help her find her son. Dramatic intense face shots all around.

Jane walks out of the police station in the pouring rain and notices a limo parked across the street. The window slides down. Kathleen peers out. YAY!

Jane runs over and gets into the car and asks, “What are you doing here? No one should see us together.” Kathleen tells her she can’t find John and asks her if she’s seen him. When Jane answers, “This morning”, Kathleen demands in exasperation, “Then why didn’t you bring him to me? Jane admits that she was angry and sent him away. Kathleen is upset and says that Jane of all people should realize Tarzan is in danger. Jane says, “I’m sorry. I am. But Miss Clayton, this is your family. I don’t even know how I got this involved. But it’s already cost me too much”. Kathleen doesn’t respond to this, but only answers in a grim tone, “Let’s just hope that I find him before Richard does.” Jane gets out and the limo drives away. She scans around the roof tops but misses seeing Tarzan who is looking down at her. She runs back into the station.

The music video music starts again. We see Tarzan on the roof, turning away from the edge. Pan down the side of the building to show him squatting against a wall, miserable and shivering in the pouring rain. The male singer’s voice begs, “Cause that would be, heavenly, Baby if you just rescue me now.” Commercial.

Jane and Sam are with the mother and father of the kidnapped boy in their apartment. The mother says, “What’s taking so long?” Cut to the outside streets to show a video camera looking down on a number o f undercover agents lounging around the streets in various disguises, lounging economically challenged folks on the street, hippies drinking coffee, shoppers and tourists. Back in the apartment, the computer says, “You have new mail”. It’s a picture of the agents, showing their radio ear plugs dangling behind their ears. On the bottom of the screen it says, “You lied to me. Jason is dead.”

Cut to the police office. Sam says they’ve been over everything three times already. Jane says they will never find the kid this way. She thinks for a moment and then gets up and walks out of the station, ignoring Sam as he asks her where she’s going. Outside the station, Jane starts walking around, looking up at the roofs.

Cut to Greystoke Building. Interior shot. Some guy is saying to Richard, “Mr. Clayton, that boy is heir to one-third of this company. And he’s running wild in the streets. He’s uncontrollable”. Richard answers, “No, there’s something that can control him. Actually, someone. I need to talk to Detective Porter.”

Jane is walking down alleys, yelling up at the roofs, “John, where are you? I need to talk to you. If you’re up there, answer me. John? John, I need your help.” This being New York, she attracts absolutely no attention. She turns to walk out of the alley and Tarzan jumps down from a fire escape ladder. She asks him if he can track anyone like he did with her. Tarzan just looks at her.

Cut to a playground. Jane explains that the boy was snatched from this playground when his father turned away for a second to take a phone call. Tarzan asks why someone took the boy. Jane tells him for money. That if the kidnapper doesn’t get the money, he’ll kill the boy. Tarzan finds this almost unbelievable. Then he says, “I need his scent.”

Jane casually sneaks into the parent’s house to find something of Jason’s. She picks up a teddy bear from his bed. Mom finds her in the room and confronts her, saying icily, “May I help you? Jane tells her that she wants to borrow something of Jason’s because they’ve got a “sort of a bloodhound”. Mom lets her take the bear.

Back outside, Jane gives the bear to Tarzan. He takes it in his hands and just looks at it. In the next scene, he’s jogging around the city as we hear fast drumbeats. He’s too fast for Jane to follow, though she tries.

On the street, Richard pulls up in a Cadillac SUV (that just strikes me as hilarious, that Cadillac makes an SUV) beside Jane. They have an antagonistic exchange. Richard says he wants her to work with him to find John because he wants to help him. Jane asks, “The kind of help where you shoot him with a stun gun or the kind of help where you chain him up in a box?” Richard replies, “Oh, is it better to let him run wild in the streets like an animal?” Then he brings up Michael’s death as proof that John is dangerous and that he will hurt Jane. She stalks off. Richard gets back into his vehicle and says, “Stay with her”.

She walks down an alley, Tarzan grabs her around the waist and pulls her up on a little platform and says, “Let’s go”. They take off. Then Richard’s vehicle drives through the alley, looking for her. But she’s already gone.

Jane and Tarzan are walking around in a bad area. (We can tell this because there’s lots of garbage on the ground and bums sitting around 55 gallon drum fires.) She’s scolding Tarzan for having left her behind. Tarzan tells her, “This is how I hunt.” Jane tells him that “Every second we got is precious”. Tarzan just smiles and repeats, “This is how I hunt”.

Nighttime scene. They are walking in a boat yard. Tarzan says the boy’s scent leads to a boat. They go aboard and find an empty child’s sleeping bag and some junk food wrappers. And the dad, dead on the floor. Commercial.

Later. Bunch of cop cars are on the scene. The boss says in a voiceover, “The father’s involvement puts a whole new spin on this investigation. We need to know friends, employees, associates. Whoever took the kid, Bancroft obviously knew it”. (I’m guessing “Bancroft” is the dad.)

Sam and Jane walk away from the boat. Sam asks Jane how she found the place. Jane claims she played out a couple of leads. Sam demands, “What leads?” She says, “Later, Sam” and asks what the feds are saying. “Do they really think he’s gonna kidnap his own kid?” Sam explains that Dad had a partner and they must have had a falling out. Jane asks, “Isn’t he rich?” Sam explains that on the background check, the cops missed that he owed six figures to Atlantic City casinos. All the money belongs to the wife and it’s tied up in trusts so he couldn’t touch it. They figure he ran this scam to get his wife’s money to pay his debts.

Jane walks over to a dark area, away from the police cars and lights. Tarzan crawls out from behind a 55 gallon drum. He tells Jane to follow him. They go down by the river and Tarzan tells her that the scent trail dead ends on the riverbank.

Tarzan asks, “The boy’s father. He would hurt…his own child?” Tarzan talks about his own father and how lost he felt when he died. Jane watches him with a sad and sympathetic look on her face.

Jane says she’s going to keep looking for Jason, but that John can’t help because his uncle is still looking for him. She tells him to go home to his aunt’s. She says, “She’s worried about you, John.” Tarzan takes off.

Back in his room, Aunt Kathleen tells him again that the city is dangerous. And that she can’t make him stay, it’s his choice. But that she would really like him to. And she says, “Oh and do me a favor-if you want to leave, just… um…open the window.” Tarzan stares after her as she walks away.

Jane and Sam are in the office again, Jane in front of the computer with the boring badge screen saver, going through a file. Sam is standing next to her and asks her if she knows that she moves her lips when she reads. Jane says she’s been checking into the Bancroft family scrap metal business but that it tells her absolutely nothing.

Sam changes the subject and says, “I would die for you, you know that, right Jane? But I need you to talk to me”. Jane says, “Okay”. He throws a file on her desk and says that the suspects in Mike’s murder all talk about a wild man with long hair and bare feet who beat them down. Sam then talks about how half the police in New York and the feds couldn’t get a lead on the kidnapped boy but Jane did. He says, “I’ve only seen that kind of thing happen once before, Jane. Someone who could find anyone, anywhere. But that guy’s dead, right?” Jane looks down and doesn’t answer.

Cut to Tarzan scouting around the river bank. Then back to Jane and Sam, fighting over Tarzan. Sam is VERY angry and frustrated. He says, “John Clayton is alive. He killed one of my friend’s and my other friend, probably my best friend she’s protecting him?”” Jane says he doesn’t understand and he agrees with her that he doesn’t. He tells her she has to bring him in. Jane says she can’t because the cops won’t care if it was self-defense or not. Sam asks if she’s going to cover it up. He snaps out that Tarzan is dangerous on the streets. Jane asks for time. (Girl ALWAYS needs time.) She asks Sam to be quiet about things until she figures out what to do. Sam says, “I won’t lie for you, Jane. I’m sorry, I won’t do it.” He walks off, anger and frustration in his posture.

Back to Tarzan. He jumps over a chain link fence and he’s in a car junkyard. (Watch out for Alti, boy!)

Jane is back on her computer at work, looking at the ransom picture of the boy. She notices that there is a reflection in the car window. She blows it up and can read, “SEK”. She goes to Sam’s desk and says she saw this name on the boy’s toy truck in his room. “SEK scrap metal yards. Sam, it’s the family business. I think that’s where they’ve got Jason.” She tells Sam that later on he can be pissed at her all he wants, but right now she needs his help.

They drive out to the junkyard. They see a guy who is messing around with something in the trunk of a car. Sam asks him what he has in the trunk and the guy pulls a gun and fires. He yells, “The kid’s in the car so don’t shoot!” He jumps into the car. Tarzan leaps down from a WAY HIGH stack of cars, lands on the hood, breaks the window out and drags the guy out of the car. They scuffle and the bad guy slams a crowbar into Tarzan’s face and knocks him down. The bad guy gets up, pulls out his gun to shoot Tarzan. (The fight is done in jerky fast-motion. Very weird.) As the bad guy points his gun at Tarzan, Jane (who has not identified herself as a police officer, never mind an armed one) shoots him in the back in slo-mo. The guy falls down in slo mo. Jane runs over in regular mo, grabs the crow bar and levers open the trunk. There’s just junk in it.

She runs to the downed bad guy and asks him where Jason is. He says, “The trunk.” Jane asks Tarzan, “Where is he?” Tarzan says, “He’s close”. Panning shot over hundreds of smashed cars in the yard. Commercial.

Tarzan is running along the lines of cars. Jane is forcing car trunks open with her crow bar. Tarzan climbs up stacks of cars and keeps leaping around the yard. Sam is standing around holding a cell phone. He covers his inactivity by claiming he was going to call for back up. Jane says that if he makes that call, Tarzan can’t stay. Sam says there’s too many cars. Jane says that no matter how many cops Sam calls, John can work faster.

Sam is indecisive. Tarzan beams in on one car. He jumps to it, monkeys around on its roof and then calls for Jane and her crowbar. Jane opens the trunk and there’s the boy. (You’d think maybe he could have called out and helped them find him. But noooooooo.)

Next scene, the boy is sitting on a bench seat still in the junk yard, playing with his teddy bear. Tarzan asks him what the teddy’s name is. The boy says, “When he was my Mommy’s bear, she called him Leo. But I call him Thomas.” Tarzan replies, “He has two names. Like me.” He looks up at Jane, who’s looking back at him as Sam looks at Jane with a “Oh, I don’t believe THIS” glance. Cop cars come barreling in. Jane tells Tarzan he has to go. He leaves.

The mother and child are reunited. The boss asks where the “perp” is and Sam says, “He didn’t make it, Lieutenant.” (AH, finally we hear his title.) The lieutenant asks how things went down. Sam looks at Jane who looks pleadingly back. Sam claims credit because “I’m just a super star cop.” The lieutenant is obviously not a super star cop since he apparently misses all the meaningful looks and pleading glances and takes Sam at his word with just a slight tinge of an “Oh yeah?” look. So now Sam does lie for Jane and Tarzan.

Jane is walking around the ruins of a brick building. Tarzan calls out to her from a doorway. Jane says, “Seems like I’m always finding you in the shadows”. Tarzan peers out at her. “I wish you could be in the light, John. You deserve to be.” Tarzan walks over to her and asks if the boy is with his mother. Jane replies, “Thanks to you.” Then she says she is glad he was here today and she apologizes for what she put him through. She talks about how she was angry over Michael’s death and blamed Tarzan even though it wasn’t his fault. She said the fault was actually hers—her weakness and her lies caused Michael’s death. (Personally, I would say that Michael charging Tarzan and knocking them both over the roof edge caused Michael’s death. But he’s dead, so where’s the chance for an actor to pay an angst-filled scene in that?) Tarzan is upset because he couldn’t save him. But she says she knows he tried. Then she suggests YET AGAIN that he go back to Aunt Kathleen’s.

And here we are at Aunt Kathleen’s. Tarzan is in his room. Looking…tormented? He goes to the window and opens it. Nice shot of New York with a big ol’ fake moon hanging over it. (The moon actually looks more like the earth as seen from space, real blue-ish. That’s odd. But pretty!)

Tarzan climbs out the window, up the building, gains the roof again. And stares out at the city. Sirens howl as they always do whenever he’s on the roof. He’s obviously never been on this part of the roof before because he looks curiously around the area. He sees a small window and goes over to it and cleans it off. He peeks into an abandoned room where the furniture is covered with sheets. The camera pans over a bed. At the foot of the bed is a small chest labeled “John’s Toy Box”. He opens the window and jumps in. Another song starts. He looks around and it’s obviously his old room. He begins to pull back the sheets and finds a little pillow with the name “John” on it and a little teddy bear tucked into a pocket on it. Then he finds some photos of himself and his parents.

Cut to Jane’s apartment. Jane enters, Nicky is there. Jane talks to her about how she’s been lying to everyone she loves. She laments Michael’s death. And talks about how confused she is about everything. She cries in her sister’s arms. *sigh*

Back to Tarzan. Who has entered another room, also sheet shrouded. This room has French doors opening unto a…well, it’s a jungle. Tarzan looks around in wonder. Lots of vines, ferns, palm trees maybe even a palmetto.

Aunt Kathleen comes in. YAY! (I LIVE for the Aunt Kathleen moments.) She tells him that she closed the whole wing up so she could forget it was there. And that this was where he and his parents lived. She says, “After your disappearance, I couldn’t bring myself to change it. Couldn’t bring myself here at all”. She keeps looking around with nostalgia and just a glimmer of tears in her eyes. She tells John Tarzan, “This place has got your spirit. Your father’s spirit.” John Tarzan is pretty much just listening and looking at her. Suddenly Aunt Kathleen ducks under a bit of shrubbery. Next cut is of John Tarzan pushing open the doors and going back onto the balcony. (Where the heck was Kathleen going? Was she off for a quick pit stop? Kind of odd editing on that one.) John Tarzan again jumps up and perches on the parapet. Kathleen follows him outside. She stares up at him. She is obviously trying to get up the courage to say something to him. Finally she says, “So will ya stay?”

(The music for this scene ALMOST sounds like something from Lo Duca!)

John Tarzan just looks at her and says nothing. She smiles at him. He gets a more pleasant look to his face maybe?
Fade to black.

A credit rolls on the screen saying that the music this week comes from a Matt Nathanson CD. And it can be bought from the WB online.



So what have we learned after three episodes? Well, that this show is actually about Jane, not Tarzan. Jane has far more screen time than he does and her character has changed over the last three weeks and his hasn’t. Jane’s problems are the ones that are lingered over. Jane is the one in conflict with herself. And with her partner. And with her new boyfriend. She has gone though grief and desolation and as a result has betrayed her formerly strongly conformist sense of honesty and integrity. The woman Jane was in the first ep believed absolutely in her job and the institution she works for. Now she is following situational ethics where Tarzan is concerned. The Jane of week one would surely have turned Tarzan in and expected that he would receive justice from the system. This Jane of episode three is not only hiding him but also asking her partner to lie for him also to help hide him from the police, their co-workers.

When Jane tells Tarzan her revelation about her own motives and lies leading up to Michael’s death, we see that she has grown through the things that happened to her. Tarzan however, is totally unchanged from the character he was in episode one.

The focus on Jane notwithstanding, one also has to wonder why they even named this show “Tarzan” anyway. There’s virtually nothing left of the Tarzan myth. Everybody’s calling him “John”. He’s not living in the jungle (though of course they can use the cliché of New York as an urban jungle). He’s not wearing nothing but leather undies. He doesn’t have chimp friends. Jane has not come to his world, they meet in hers.

Why take a myth and then drop all the familiar elements of it? Since I don’t have WB, I’ve never seen an episode of Smallville, so I don’t know if they’ve done this same thing with Superboy. But it just annoys me—there is no reason I can see to call this story “Tarzan”.



Oh well, I’m only watching this for Lucy, anyway. And I am enjoying watching Lucy shape and define her new character.

Kathleen had to be very young when John “died”. Even if she’s supposed to be Lucy’s age, 35, then she was just about 15 when it happened. She probably was living in the house also. I presume that her father was dead because last week she mentioned that John Jr. had run the company the same way her father had. Perhaps her mother was alive or perhaps Kathleen just lived in another part of the house and John and his wife took care of her.

What a grievous loss for a young teenager. She’s like the kids I knew who lost young family members in Vietnam. It absolutely changes your life and it’s something you never get over. She surely must have been terribly lonely after they were gone. I imagine she was the classic poor little rich girl.

Lucy plays Kathleen just so vulnerable and tender towards John. Kathleen obviously had no hope of ever seeing her young nephew again. And suddenly he’s back. And even though he’s not particularly glad to see his family again, Kathleen is absolutely filled with wonder and joy that he’s alive and back home again. With her. The return of her nephew is a marvelous gift she’s been given. And she wants to make the most of it. She has no intention of losing him again.

The disappearance and presumed deaths of John and his family obviously shattered the family. Even worse was the fact that they weren’t sure for years what had happened. Rather than bringing the two siblings together in shared grief, the loss of their brother resulted in a wedge being driven between them. Creating an antagonism that has lasted for 20 years already and hasn’t seemed to crest yet.

Their main conflict is ostensibly over control of their dead brother’s share of the family fortune. Damn, that’s crass.


Fimmel does okay but he hasn’t been asked to do a lot yet. But then Tarzan was never very talkative.

Sarah is doing really well. She’s playing a very conflicted character and truly she is carrying the bulk of the series on her back. She does some original acting things, like in the way she plays her face when she’s trying to explain something to someone when she’s not totally sure what she’s really feeling or even what she really should say. I’ve never seen her in anything before. But I’d say she’s competent and since this is a drama and not just a stupid sitcom, she should get more acting experience the more eps she works in.

I wonder how Sarah is taking the surge of attention and interest in the "upstart" Lucy. Let's hope she has half the graciousness of Renee O’Connor in working as a team player. Though this is a different situation. Renee was hired to play the sidekick to the star. Jane SHOULD be a bigger, more important character than Aunt Kathleen. But as one of the show's writers said, the show will be focusing on the conflict between Kathleen and Richard. Hope it all goes well. Lucy is so gracious and so generous that I suspect she'll certainly behave herself and be supportive of all the actors.

I really like Miguel . He a good, natural, attractive actor. He makes you believe in what he’s saying and in how his character reacts to events around him. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Mitch’s fans must be going nuts. He’s in the show even less than Lucy is. He’s done okay, but to me he seems to be still Assistant Director Skinner. So much so that I almost believe this IS Skinner and we’re just finding out about his secret home life. (In which he wears contact lenses.) But to be fair, his character hasn’t been written with a lot of complexity yet. Hopefully we’ll get to see more of Richard’s motivations and experiences so that Mitch has a chance to build Richard as more than just a cardboard bad guy.

And unfortunately, the look of the show is still disappointing to me.


Now, about Lucy…

Lucy’s scenes:


The first Lucy scene is when Tarzan is destroying his room and Kathleen runs upstairs to see what the problem is. Lucy charges up the stairs with a very no-nonsense two steps at a time stair-devouring rate. This is a decisive woman who is ready to meet trouble head-on. John needs her and ZOOM, she’s up there. The maid skitters up after her like a girl. Kathleen of course, pulls away from her rapidly and hits the top of the staircase first.

In his room, when John picks up a chair to throw through the window, Kathleen ducks and covers her head and face since she apparently thinks he’s about to attack her with it. Kathleen’s cringe shows a very nice insight into her feelings about John. She KNOWS he’s savage but she’s willing to reach out to him even if it’s dangerous for her to do so. She cuts him some slack because he’s been living in the jungle without any control or supervision. And because he’s John, the baby and young boy she knew and loved in the past. And just because he’s back when she had expected never to see him again.

In the car with Jane. Kathleen is very focused on her own mission to get John again. She’s not very sympathetic to Jane’s, “It’s already cost me too much” line. Kathleen after all, understands and knows loss too. Both women have their own agenda where John is concerned. And may not always work together neither willingly nor comfortably.

Her next scene is when Tarzan comes home again for a little while. She makes a little joke about next time just pushing the window open when he wants to leave. And she makes it very clear to him that staying with her is his option. She knows (unlike Richard) that she cannot make him stay with her. But she adds that she would really like him to. She’s wearing her heart and affection for him on her sleeve. She woos him with respect for his choices and also proffers love to him from a member of his lost family.

(And if she really loves him, she should suggest to Richard that next time he captures him, he makes sure to give him a tetanus shot, what with him running around barefoot in New York and especially in Central Park. But she doesn’t have to tell John that.)

I really liked the last scene with Kathleen and John in the conservatory. It’s the first scene from TarXan that I’ve replayed. Lucy plays this scene just so well. She’s filled with nostalgia and a very vulnerable sorrow as she looks around, remembering her brother and their life together. I liked that noise she made, a kind of sigh, helpless in an “I just don’t know what to say” way. Maybe because she has her brother’s son back, she can begin to let go of her brother and accept that he’s gone. And she starts to do that at this moment, with tears glimmering in her eyes as she smiles fondly at the memories the place they shared their lives in are giving to her.

And then when she follows John out to the balcony. She wants so MUCH for him to stay with her. She scared to ask, she’s scared to hear his answer, but she just can’t stand it. She has to know. She’s so filled with tenderness for him as she looks up at him. And so filled with hope for herself.

Scenes I’d like to see Lucy in:

More of them. (Grin.)

I want to see Aunt Kathleen and Sam in scenes together. Because Kathleen is Tarzan’s protector and Sam is Jane’s. There could be some nice conflict scenes between them if Jane and Tarzan got kidnapped or were in some kind of trouble together. And the two protectors square off over their little chickadees.

Or, even if this angle isn’t used, I just think Lucy and Miguel would be good together in a scene. When Lucy acts, she talks like a real person. She talks in sentence fragments and contractions and seems to sometimes be searching for words just like real people do. I very seldom hear stilted dialogue from her or an unnatural rhythm like she’s reading from a script. And Miguel does this also. He’s also a very natural actor. So I’d just really like to see a scene between Kathleen and Sam. I think it would be terrific.


On the tough-o’-meter: Jane was more competent and strong in this ep. She didn’t faint or get trapped by the bad guy or give out any girly gasps. YAY! But then at the end she breaks down in tears into her sister’s arms over her confused feelings for the new boyfriend.*sigh* So she’s still a kind of wussy chick for fans of grrls like Xena. But stuff like this does sell with some young girls and those of course are the ones whom WB is aimed at.

Jane once again wears one of those specially tailored, form fitting female cop blouses, with the top three buttons open. I think she and Lily from Cold case get theirs in the same cop clothes shop.

I still know that if Lucy wasn’t in this show I wouldn’t be watching it at all.


KT