TARZAN SEASON ONE

Pilot

Review by KT

I don’t get WB but a very kind friend made a tape of Tarzan for me. And I am very grateful to him for this. Xena fans are just the best!
 
This is actually the first draft of a synopsis of the ep. I intended to watch the episode again and smooth out the details. But I put the tape into a furken VCR that I forgot had been timer programmed for the summer Sci-Fi channel X-Files schedule which I tape in work. And indeed, as I sat innocently across the room working on something else, the TV quietly turned itself on at 3pm and since we don’t have that channel at home, taped an hour of sheer static over my TarXan episode one. So, we shall have to make do with the first draft. *sigh*
 
Pilot Episode (Doesn’t seem to have a name…)
 
The episode opens with a high shot above New York City. The camera pans around the city and I think that maybe there’s a little bit of CGI mixed in, particularly the shot of Broadway from on high.
 
There’s a quick shot of a building and then the camera zooms into a very high-ceilinged room where we see a guy on a table. A doctor with a syringe leans over him. The shot changes to show a guard upstairs walking by a window that overlooks the room. Suddenly there’s crashing sounds, flashing lights and yelling. Tarzan has escaped. People are hunting for him with flashlights shining down long, dark empty corridors (shades of X-files!) and whenever they come across him, we have shots of Tarzan crashing through doors, just shattering them into splinters and breaking windows into shards.
 
He climbs up the building and gains the roof. A number of swat-team-dressed people catch up to him. There is a huge fight. Tarzan gets away from them. The last shot in the scene is of Tarzan hanging by his hands, face out, dangling from a large stone Eagle at the corner of a building. To his right in the background is a large building with a lighted sign that says “Greystoke Building”.  End of Teaser.
 
The next scene is a scan across a room. Jane is introduced first in a picture on the bedside table of her and Michael, her boyfriend. Then we see her getting out of bed and getting ready for work. She’s does some heavy duty exercises in her apartment. At breakfast, we meet her younger sister, Nicky who lives with her.  They engage in sisterly verbal byplay during which we learn that Jane is a cop. Michael is also a cop and is on the front page of the newspaper due to a big case he’s working on. Jane shows a little frustration saying, “Wouldn’t it be something to be on a case like that.”
 
In the next scene, we meet Sam, Jane’s police partner. Who also lusts after big cases. They go to a briefing at the police station. There are shots of Jane and Michael exchanging “significant” glances in their business milieu. The chief talks about the homicide case Michael is working on. Someone is spilling flammable liquids on homeless people and setting them aflame.
 
Jane and Sam head out and engage in sarcastic work partner humor. He’s insistent on following up on a hunch he has about Michael’s case. Jane warns him that it’s Michael’s case but he has the hunch and doesn’t want to let it go.
 
Next we see Jane and Michael hanging together on the streets of New York. We can tell it’s New York because there’s a classic hot dog stand in the background. There’s some somewhat intrusive camera work-the camera spins around them and stops when what I believe is the Brooklyn Bridge in the background. If you look real closely, it appears that the actors are not IN the scene, but just acting in front of a screen filled with shots of New York and New Yorkers.
 
Michael suggests that he and Jane move in together and after a surprised second or two, Jane hugs him in delight.
 
That night, Jane and Sam are on patrol at the meat market, where stray dogs have been stealing meat. As they check around the area, they come across a pack of dogs rooting around in garbage in a dark alley. Suddenly Tarzan pops out from the blanket he was crouching under as he fed. Everybody is startled.
 
Tarzan runs away, leaping up to the fire escape and climbing up. Jane follows. On the roofs again and Tarzan is leaping beautifully and athletically over to other roofs. Jane again pursues but she’s fairly clumsy. She just jumps, doesn’t even looks where she’s going. She of course therefore misjudges and next thing you know, she’s hanging from a roof edge by the tips of her fingers. She reaches up and grabs a wire which pulls away from its moorings, bouncing a satellite disk over the edge of the roof. (Bet the folks who are inside watching Home Box Office are pretty p*ssed off.) She’s going…going…going…fingers are slipping off one by one…and suddenly a hand grabs her wrist. And she is effortlessly pulled up safely unto the roof by Tarzan. Who stares wordlessly at her.
 
She immediately pulls her gun on him. And then she faints in his arms. EUUUUUUWWWWWWW, yucky! We Xena fans are just not used to fainting females anymore.
 
Tarzan props her up against a roof protuberance (I THINK it might have been a skylight, but I can’t CHECK that since I recorded OVER my furken tape…) and then fondles all the bare skin he can find. Actually, he softly caresses her face, her neck and then her belly where it’s peeking out from her shirt. She wakes up and pushes him away. He moves away, spinning around as he does so. Travis plays Tarzan moving with a four-limbed orientation. It’s a very good imitation of the way chimpanzees move. Nicely done.
 
He comes back to Jane and once again touches her face and his own face.  Teenage angst music starts playing in the background as he explores their skin.
 
Suddenly they are hit with a downdraft and an intense light. A helicopter drops some swat-team dressed guys wearing a shoulder patch with the letter “G” on it, onto the roof. Tarxan does his four limbed chimp walk over to them and stands to confront them. And they immediately fire darts into his chest. (Well, they look like golf tees, but we adventure show veterans know that they’re tranquilizer darts). They roll the now sedated Tarzan into a net while Jane lies there watching with a bewildered and confused face, still too faint to move.  The helicopter pulls them up on lines and moves off eerily against the night sky. Again, a very X-files like scene.
 
Jane picks up Tarzan’s necklace and locket, which he had worn all through his life in the jungle but which he loses here.
 
Next scene, Jane is in her boss’s office showing him the picture of a man, woman and child in the locket. Jane apparently suffered a concussion the night before. (I didn’t know that hanging by your fingertips could do that. Maybe the satellite dish bonked her on the way down?) The chief has a hard time believing her story.
 
As Jane looks around the chief’s office, she notices a picture of the chief getting a check from Richard Greystoke, standing under a Graystoke sign with the same “G” that she saw on the helicopter swat team’s shoulder patch. She tells him about this and he says, “Prove what you saw.”
 
In the next scene, a guy with a weed spray can is looking threateningly at a homeless woman and her child. But he takes off without hurting them.
 
Later at home, Nicky is interested in what Tarzan looked like. She thinks the whole story is very romantic. Jane says, “No honey, it’s not romantic, it’s a case.” Next day in the office Jane is researching Greystoke on line. She finds out about a plane crash in Africa that killed John Clayton Sr., his wife Phyllis and their son, John Jr. Then she comes across the same photo as is in the locket.
 
Jane gets an audience with Richard Clayton, John’s younger brother. (Mitch looks odd without his glasses.) Jane shows him the locket. Richard tells her that it’s very important to him that this remain a private family matter.
 
Then he takes her to a balcony overlooking an enclosed glassed-in room. The whole area is built sort of like a geometric dome. She looks down on Tarzan squatting on the floor, rocking. Richard tells her that he’s mute but otherwise healthy. And adds with a nostalgic smile that when he was a kid, he never shut up. He tells her that the D.A. knows everything and is letting him handle his nephew John. He says “I’m going to protect him. I owe my brother that much.”
 
Tarzan spots Jane and swings on the furniture up to the glass and says hello. Before Jane can respond, Richard clicks a little remote that slides a grey panel down over the window, cutting off her view of the room.
 
The swat-team dressed guys go into Tarzan’s room and once again tranquilize him and put him back in his bed. But not quite! Tarzan has copped one of the credit card kind of door keys from one of the guys and hides it under his leg.
 
In the next scene, Jane and Michael are dancing in a fancy restaurant. (On the dance floor, not on the tables or anything.) Jane tells Michael she loves him. Michael’s cell phone rings and he goes outside to answer it.
 
When he hits the streets, Tarzan is there standing in front of him and kind of glaring. Michael hands him some money, figuring he’s a homeless guy. Then he moves off to finish his phone call.
 
Jane is sitting at the table and someone walks up to it. Jane thinks it’s Michael but when she looks up she realizes it’s Tarzan. The Maitre d’, immediately appears at her table, all upset because they have a strict dress code and Tarzan is not following it. Once the Maitre d’ realizes that Tarzan is not only jacketless but barefoot, he is absolutely scandalized and promptly orders them both out of the restaurant. Tarzan snarls at him. Jane holds Tarzan back.
 
Meanwhile, back on the street, Richard and Sam pull up in cars. (Together or not? I meant to check that too…) They all go back inside to find that Jane and Tarzan are gone. Sam tells Michael that this is not Jane’s fault. Richard is very upset.
 
Tarzan does an almost Saturday Night Fever strut around Broadway. Again the camera spins all around the actor, to show him in Times Square. (I was hoping they would have a “GREASE Featuring Lucy Lawless” billboard, but they missed that one.) Jane tells Tarzan that people are probably looking for him and she’d better get him home.
 
Next, we see the weed exterminator guy spraying a street guy with flammable liquid. This time he lights a match and torches him.
 
Tarzan runs into Central Park and climbs a tree. When Jane asks how he found her, he says, “I hunt. I hunted for you.” He asks her name. And tells her he’s Tarzan. Jane says, “I thought your name was John.” Tarzan looks up at the Greystoke building (which has a tendency to move around Manhattan as needed) and says, “HE calls me John. He keeps me caged.” Jane says, “You belong there and you’ll be safe there and it’s the law and I’m a cop and it’s what’s right.” Tarzan answers gently, “No it’s not.”
 
Tarzan tells Jane of his capture. “It was when I was free. It was when I was home.” I kind of like Tarzan’s dialogue. Succinct and yet it tells everything one needs to know at the moment. We see a flashback of the capture. Tarzan is up in a tree at night, looking down on a group of swat team dressed men and Richard. Richard snaps out, “This is not a hunting expedition. Put her out of her misery”. One of the guys shoots a gorilla lying on the jungle floor.
 
Tarzan begins to storm around in the trees, freaking out the swat team men who can’t really see him through the foliage. The head swat team dressed guy shoots at him as he’s jumping around. Tarzan crashes to the ground. Richard goes over to him and gently pushes the hair back from his face. He notices the locket around his neck. And says very softly and wonderingly, “John?” Tarzan has a bullet wound in his upper chest near the left shoulder.
 
Back in the present, Jane says she sorry. Tarzan says he’s glad. Jane says, “What?” Tarzan says, “Because I found you.” She laughs and they have a little cuddly scene and once again the teenage angst music starts. Tarzan literally sniffs Janes hair and head. She resists the sniffing at first but then gets caught by his gaze. She doesn’t sniff him back. (Probably a wise move on her part.) She mumbles something under her breath about “a barefoot guy in Manhattan.” She tugs on him and says, “C’mon.” Tarzan pulls back a little and says, “Your voice” in a questioning tone. She doesn’t answer. I think this was possibly meant to show that Tarzan is tuned to the nuances of people’s voices. That he reads the meanings underneath the words.
 
They’re walking home when many cop cars pull up. Jane tells Tarzan not to resist because they will hurt him. He stands still and passively lets them lead him to a patrol car. He stares broodingly at Jane through the car window as they drive away.
 
MAN there are a lot of commercials on the WB network!
 
Now we are at the police station. Tarzan is still staring at Jane and you can tell he thinks she’s betrayed him. Jane tells the chief that Richard kidnapped John. She says to the chief, “This isn’t about the law. This is about what’s right.” Boy, she’s ALREADY taking on Tarzan’s view. The chief throws her out of the office.
 
She’s back at her desk and Michael comes up and says, “You forgot your purse.” Jane starts to apologize for disappearing from the restaurant but Michael interrupts and says he’s WORKING a case and has to go. She’s upset when he leaves.
 
Next, Jane and Sam are in their car. Sam has a clue about who the weed killer is. Sam wants them to check out an address. Again, we have some cute little partner comedy patter and away they go.
 
Tarzan is in a cell, being guarded by two hefty donut-eating cops. They get too close to the bars and next thing you know, not only are they handcuffed to the bars but Tarzan has stripped them of their shirts and ties and left them bare-chested. Kind of odd, I thought.
 
Tarzan is running around the corridors and rooms of the police station, crashing through doors again. Michael corners him. They have a stand off and Michael tells him he’s becoming a pain in the ass. And asks, “What do you want?” Tarzan answers, “Jane”. Wrong answer, boyo, Michael is REALLY pissed now. He’s behind Tarzan, starting to handcuff him. Tarzan explodes into action, pushing Michael to the ground and running away. There’s a really cool brachiating down the fire escape scene and once again Tarzan is free in New York.
 
Back to Jane and Sam who are in an old warehouse looking building. They of course split up in that big spooky warehouse to search different areas separately all by their lone old selves. Sam is downstairs, Jane is up. As Sam goes up a staircase, the weed man slams a door on him and sends him spiraling down the staircase to land unconscious on the floor.
 
Then Weed man sneaks up behind Jane, grabbing her and knocking her gun down. Tarzan meanwhile is squatting around on a roof again. He hears Jane scream and makes a gorilla threat face and leaps to the rescue. Jane fights off Weed man, they trade punches and crash through a wall. Then he drops a huge book case on her, trapping her under it. *sigh* Tarzan comes crashing down through the skylight and he and Weed man start to fight. Tarzan takes Weed man down.
 
Tarzan pulls Jane out from under the bookcase. When Tarzan and Jane turn away, Weed man gets up and flames up his torch. And walks towards bottles of fluids. Tarzan leaps over to him just as everything explodes. Jane is thrown through the wall from the force of the explosion. (This show is HARD on walls.) She gets up and runs downstairs to rescue Sam as the building rocks with explosions.
 
Outside the building, reinforcements have arrived. Michael tells Sam that he was right about the case. The chief asks, “What about the Clayton kid?” Michael answers, “No chance”. Then he gives a deep, manly sniff.
 
The chief yells at Jane and Sam for being “reckless”, that they could have been killed. Michael says he is upset that he almost lost Jane. Now he wants them to get married right away. Jane doesn’t know what to say. Michael says, “It’s been a long night” and lets Jane go home.
 
Richard is also at the scene. He says to his head henchman, “He can’t be dead.  Keep looking.”
 
Meanwhile at Jane’s apartment, we see that Jane apparently showers with her robe on since she’s wearing it as she steps out from behind the shower curtain.  She hears a noise and grabs her gun and goes to investigate. Of course it’s Tarzan. Even grubbier looking than before—he’s all sooty now. She acts thrilled that he’s not dead and I realized that it never occurred to me that he would die. Jane needs to watch more TV. She wouldn’t worry about Tarzan so much then.
 
Jane tells Tarzan he should go home (as in “The Jungle”) because since everybody thinks he’s dead, he’s safe now. Tarzan says, “I belong with you.” Yet another teenage angst song starts as Tarzan starts to sniff Jane again. Again Jane doesn’t sniff back. Nicky comes in and of course, Tarzan is gone in a flash. The final shot is of Tarzan sitting on a rooftop like Spiderman and then “To Be Continued” fades in on the scene.
 
 
 
It wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be. The underwear model did a much better job than one might expect. He was very natural I thought. Of course, he didn’t have much to say beyond simple declarative sentences. But the dialogue fit the character. And Travis musters a good neutral American accent.
 
Tarzan has a very basic, black and white idea of what is right and what is wrong. And it’s a nice plot point that he is teaching the cop that the laws she has to implement are not always right and certainly not always fair. I liked the scene where he was romancing Jane in the park and he caught the nuances in her voice, rather than just listening to the words.
 
Also, there were some excellent primate movements from Tarzan that were very nicely done—he’s got the moves of a knuckle-walker down really well. This was a very nice touch that I don’t think any other Tarzan has done before. It’s fun to watch him sniff Jane as an animal would do. I like how he shows that he’s getting pleasure, not just information from taking in her scent.
 
Jane is not classically beautiful but has an interesting, intelligent and “real” face. She did a good job. There was kidding between Nicky and Michael about what a tight-butt character she has. Sam also made some comments about how she needs to loosen up. And when she actually does a bit, he is surprised.
 
She is obviously being challenged by the wild man who has come into her life and who seems so sure that they should be together. She’s torn between duty, her strong desire to do a good job and the feelings Tarzan has evoked in her. She feels very protective towards Tarzan which fits with her being a cop. But she is also being thrown off balance by her physical attraction to him. They shared a few near-kisses-misses in this ep. And there she is practically engaged to Michael!
 
Richard is a complex character. He seems ruthless in how he treats his nephew and how he’s got everything worked out with the authorities to have control over Tarzan. He is absolutely determined to keep his nephew under his roof. But in the jungle we see him being upset with his employee who shot the gorilla and demanding a quick, merciful killing for her. And he treats the fallen, wounded Tarzan very gently. We have seen him watching Tarzan in his glass enclosure and have seen Tarzan glaring at him. But there hasn’t really been a scene with Richard and Tarzan facing off and talking to each other yet. I’m looking forward to that.
 
The fighting style is very interesting, very different from the fights on Xena. It’s kind of low-based—Tarzan seems to be on all fours a lot, swinging his legs around and knocking people down. The fights were a blend of slow motion shots interspersed with quick, short cuts. So some parts are very slow and fluid, long hair flying like flags, and some parts are jerky and sharp-edged. I’m not totally sure if I like this mix or not—but then I don’t generally like fight scenes.
 
Okay, we know Tarzan eats with the hounds (and probably doesn’t have a lot on the menu that is al dente) but where does he get water to drink? Not a lot of water fountains in New York work. Is he drinking out of puddles? (Shudder) Or out of the lake in Central Park? Or out of architectural fountains? (Maybe there will be a scene of Tarzan bathing in a fountain. That would be nice.)
 
And of course, where is he going to the bathroom? I doubt Tarzan had a flush toilet in the jungle. He’s used to living in the bush. New York has pooper scooper laws. Think he’s following them? Hey—there’s a good merchandizing idea—the Tarzan Pooper Scooper. And how does he keep his hair from getting all snarled up as he leaps, runs, crashes through walls, brachiates down fire escapes and climbs buildings and trees? I don’t think he has a comb. Hmmm—perhaps we’ll have a scene where Aunt Kathleen grooms him a la Lao Ma.
 
Michael is very intense. I don’t see a lot of chemistry between him and Jane though. I like how he reacts to her being almost blown up. It makes sense to me that after a scare like that, he would be more aware of how nobody can take anything for granted and that life needs to be lived now. And so he wants to marry Jane NOW.
 
Sam was fun. Very good looking and also an ambitious go-getter. He’s smart, sarcastic and driven. I hope we see more of him.
 
Nicky didn’t have many scenes. She did okay in the ones she had. Her first scene was mostly exposition. Through her talking to her sister, we find out that Nicky is in college nearby which is why she’s living with Jane, that the family is not terribly well off or doesn’t believe in sending their kids to college—Jane mentions holding two jobs while working her way through college. Nicky is used to allow us to see into Jane—through Nicky’s questions and comments we hear how Jane feels about her job and about Michael. And later when she tries to pump Jane about Tarzan, Jane is very non-committal saying it’s just a case to her. I’m looking forward to seeing Nicky’s reaction when she first sees Tarzan.
 
All in all an okay start. Though of COURSE it would have been better if Lucy had been in it. I didn’t get to see the coming attractions for Lucy’s first ep since they weren’t on the tape I received. Which is just as well, since now they’d be gone anyway.
 
Would I watch this show if Lucy Lawless was not in it? I don’t think I’d worry too much over catching the next ep or not. It’s certainly not the worst TV I’ve ever seen and I think it does have potential. But it’s not something I would have ever looked for without Lucy.
 
REALLY looking forward to Lucy’s debut as Kathleen in the next ep!
 
 
And now a final word from someone who knows the jungle and its inhabitants really well:
 
“I’ve collected the whole series of Tarzan books. And of course in the books, he marries this wretched woman named Jane. And I always thought Jane was a wimp. And I would have made a much better mate for Tarzan.”
 
Jane Goodall in “Reason For Hope”, the PBS special shown in Fairbanks on October 20th, 2004.