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Pretender Episode Review

In which you should never use napalm in your exploding shoe ad.

What Happened

In between annoying Miss Parker with a radio-controlled Igor and teasing her with a secret about her mother, Jarod steps in for a stunt coordinator on a beer commercial who was horribly burned driving a car through an exploding billboard. Dave Duggin's best friend Mickey has been blamed for what happened and is beating himself up over it.

Jarod talks Mickey into going to see Dave in the hospital, but Mickey's parents shut the door in his face. While Mickey is off, traumatized, his former assistant Ray suggests to Jarod that they spice up their exploding shoe gag with some napalm. That puts him on the list of guys who might have set off a secondary explosion in Duggin's car.

A video tape tucked away in Igor is a tape of Miss Parker's mother meeting with a Mr. Fenigor. She was trying to get Timmy and Jarod out of the Centre. Sydney remembers another of Raines' projects, a boy named Timmy who disappeared the day after Mrs. Parker died. In SL-27, they find a neuro-electric chair; Sydney hopes that Angelo may be able to empath what happened. Angelo is very very unhappy about being down there and falls into a daze. Miss Parker sends Broots into Raines' archives and he finds a tape of Catherine trying to stop Raines from shocking Timmy and failing. Raines announces that Timmy is now to be called, "Angelo."

Jarod puts on a Dave Duggin mask and lays a major guilt trip on Ray, who admits that he showed producer Brynne how to use the napalm and suspects she spiked the car with it. Without the protections Ray might have otherwise taken, Duggin was nearly killed. Jarrod and Mickey later get Brynne on tape, wailing that she needed the explosion to keep her job.

What We Learned

• Broots doesn't think spontaneous combustion is a myth.
• Igor knows the secret.
• Igor had better not snore.
• Sure beats talking frogs.
• Jarod's annoying but he is clever.
• Cars don't blow up by themselves.
• Dead ends are not an option.
• The first step towards forgiveness is telling the truth.
• Not even Jarod knows who Mr. Fenigor is.

What Did I Think?

"Sometimes the destination isn't as important as the journey." That's just a TV way of saying that it will be years before we get an answer.