Episode Report Card Pamie: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Me Tarzan. You WB. Me Flimsy Premise. You Low Standards.
By Pamie | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 10.04.2003
Night. New York bridge. Broken glass gets scooped up with shovel as Sam complains about the kinds of cases they get: "Stray dogs trashing markets." Sam and Jane walk away from the crime scene as Sam asks, "You know who we need on this case? Those two creepy German guys. You know, Las Vegas, the-the-the- the-the leathery skin? Siegroy and Freed [sic]." Jane laughs. "I bet they'd have our mutts jumping through hoops in no time." Oops. Even Gilmore Girls had the sense to take out the Bali joke before it was too late. "Yeah, they're magicians, not animal trainers," Jane says. JANE CAN SEE THE FUTURE! Sam says he'd like to see this case disappear. Suddenly they hear more dogs barking, and notice an animal-control van in a nearby alley. "Maybe they found our dogs."
Sam and Jane approach the vehicle. The van is filled with cages of pound puppies, all barking and growling. In the driver's seat, an anxious man in uniform lights a cigarette. Jane asks what's going on. "In there," the man says, opting to let two police officers enter a dangerous area without the slightest warning or foresight to know what to expect. Good work, dude.
Jane and Sam don't need to be briefed. They'd rather walk in, letting the scary music be their guides. They hold up their flashlights and walk slowly down the alley. "[crunching]," says the closed captioning. We see dogs, gathered, eating something. Maybe meat, on a box? It's really hard to tell. Sam's no good with a flashlight. And the sounds are not unlike the ones in that scene in Cabin Fever. Y'all know what scene I'm talking about. The music gets creepier, and Jane aims her flashlight on -- A MAN! TARZAN! "[growls]," says the closed-captioning, and Jane jumps back (like a good cop does). Sam opts for the other thing cops shout in situations: "Hey, hey, hey!" He also pulls his gun. Jane runs in the opposite direction, shouting, "I got it!" Tarzan does an unnecessary spin out of shot. Sam's still shouting, "Hey!" But then the dogs start barking at him, and he's too scared to go any further.
More "tribal" music. Tarzan leaps to the fire-escape ladder, muscles bulging, and starts pawing his way up the building. Jane stands, impressed. She watches until he's about halfway up the building, and then she runs the other direction again. Is she planning on taking an elevator? No, the interior stairs, which somehow allow her to run up the building faster than Tarzan's leaps and swings. Tarzan at one point is climbing the air-conditioning vent, but slow and steady wins the race, and Jane books her way up the twelve flights of stairs in no time. Jane is suddenly outside the building again, climbing up the last of the fire-escape stairs just in time to see Tarzan leap off the building onto the next one. Jane runs, hauling ass across the building, leaps, and falls to the next building, somehow not shattering her ankles. She falls on her face, gets up and runs again. Tarzan leaps in the air like he's jumping off a trampoline. Jane runs, leaps into slow-motion, legs bicycling in the air. She flies across the alley but -- she doesn't quite make it! She's clinging on by her French manicure. She kicks and gasps, sets her teeth, and tries to pull herself up onto the roof. She sees a cable on the ground and grabs it. She hangs on. But it's a cable for a satellite dish, and the dish immediately comes loose and flings off the roof, beaning Jane in the forehead before crashing to the ground below. This message brought to you by Time Warner Cable. Jane almost falls off the roof, too, but she's been doing all of those pull-ups in the morning, so she's still hanging on. She struggles, grunts, kicks, and pants. Her eye shadow is still perfect, but her patent leathers are going to be seriously scuffed after this. One hand slides off the roof -- she's only hanging on by three fingertips now (she must have used some Krazy Glue or something). Just as she's about to let go and fall to her death, Tarzan finally decides to do something. He grabs her hard by the wrist, making Jane gasp in fear and surprise. He lifts her up by one arm. Jane dangles from his massive arm. Tarzan's a little dehydrated from all this city life, I guess, so he's a little puffy in the face. But homeboy's got one hell of a shaving system. The only hair on this man's body is on his scalp. Jane swings from Tarzan's arm as he inspects her. They are both open-mouthed, awed with each other. The music is totally smitten with this scene. Jane tries to speak, but cannot. Tarzan is breathing hard. He looks a little like Spicoli in some of the close-ups, doesn't he? Tarzan pulls Jane to the roof, finally, and lets go of her arm. Jane staggers backward, trying to get her balance, her senses, and blood back to her left arm. In the most unintentionally hilarious moment of the 2003-2004 season, Jane then pulls out her gun and pants, "You're under arrest." Tarzan cocks his head to the side, confused by man's shiny sticks that are always getting pointed at him. Jane -- like the fantastic cop she is -- then passes right the fuck out. Into his waiting arms! The light kisses Tarzan's face as he looks down at Jane through his long blond hair.
Tarzan gently leans Jane back on the skylight. He cradles her head in his hands as he looks her over. Crouched over her body, Tarzan inspects his new friend. He caresses her cheek with the back of his hand. He then caresses his own cheek with his other knuckles. He moves past her lipsticked lips to her chin. He strokes her neck with the back of his fingers. He slides his hand down between her breasts to the exposed part of her flat belly where her shirt has flipped open. It's right next to the cell phone she didn't use when she was in trouble. Tarzan strokes the skin of Jane's stomach. This wakes Jane up, and she uses the squinty-head-shake of "Do I have a concussion? Where am I?" She lifts her head and holds it, making a pained noise. Tarzan's game, and does the same. She sees him and pushes him hard, grunting. Okay. Tarzan love games, so he spins on his monkey feet and comes back at her. He smiles and pounces at her. You have the right to go bananas, mister! Jane leans back, still confused, not bothering to call for help or pull her gun or stand up or do anything other than look at this manchild. He leans in, smiling. He touches her open mouth with his fingers -- the ones that recently were ripping open raw meat, and have touched every filthy street, building, and roof in New York City. ["Um, Pam? When you really love someone, you even love their disgusting germs. Maybe someday you'll love someone enough to know that." -- Wing Chun] He puts those fingers in her mouth and makes an awed sound. Jane doesn't even flinch. In fact, she's loving it. Tarzan then touches his own lips and exhales. Jane blinks three times. Then there's the sound of a helicopter overhead. Jane squints and turns her head away as bright lights engulf the roof and Tarzan stands up to face the Man Beams bravely. His hair is awesome. Men swoop in on ropes from the sky. Tarzan shields his pretty face. Jane -- an officer sworn to protect and serve -- does nothing. Well, she hides her pretty face away from the bright light and wind. Tarzan growls and monkey-crawls over to the men in black, who instantly shoot him with tranquilizer darts. Tarzan looks down at his magnificent chest and then passes out. Jane watches all of this. A man stands over her, looking through his night-vision goggles. Jane squints until she looks like Bonnie Hunt reading a cue card. The man turns, like he's in a line-up, to a profile, the light hitting the patch on his arm. Gee. It's a "G"! Three men clumsily carry Tarzan into a net. Jane squints, and the man with the goggles stares at her again. Surprisingly, we don't go to Silence of the Lambs-cam here. He walks away. Jane, a police officer, still does nothing. Tarzan's all chained up in his net now, and the men fly out on their cables just as they flew in, this time with Tarzan in tow. Jane keeps watching as the men disappear into a beam of helicopter light like evil angels. Jane blinks a lot as the helicopter flies away. The "tribal" music starts again as Jane looks down on the roof and sees Tarzan's necklace. It must have fallen off when she was doing absolutely nothing to help him. She picks it up and holds it in the air. Breathless, there's only one other choice now: our first commercial break.
The necklace has a locket, and inside is a picture of a mother, father, and young son. That's what the Chief is looking at right now. He says, "So he wore a necklace. That doesn't prove commandos or high-tech helicopters in the East Village." Jane can't believe he doesn't believe her. "I believe you believe it," he says. "If she says it happened, then it happened," Sam says. If I'm writing it, then I must be writing it. The Chief reminds Jane that her partner wasn't on the scene (thanks, Sam, for pussing out because three dogs growled at you), and not one person corroborated a helicopter flying overhead in the middle of the night. And apparently Jane suffered a mild concussion. Jane is indignant that a guy got "snatched" (heh) and they're not going to do anything about it. You didn't, Jane. The Chief says they'll fill out a wanted card and "pick the guy up." Who? Whatever. Sam says he'd like to concentrate on the Inferno Killer now. I'm sorry. I keep calling Captains "Chief," when I bet he'd rather be called The Captain. Sam says that the perp is "flame-broiling" in the same neighborhood where Edward Creal used to haunt. "They both found homeless victims in homeless areas, so what?" the Cap says. Jane is still eating her lips, upset that her new boyfriend is missing. Good thing she gets to wear sexy cop blouses. She looks over the Cap's table of family photographs. Her eye settles on the one where the Cap is taking a huge check from Greystoke Industries. How convenient! She gets excited, and tells the Cap that the man last night was wearing a patch with the Greystoke insignia. The Cap interrupts her and says she has to come back with hard evidence before he'll discuss anything else. "Sir, I know what I saw," Jane says. "Then prove it!" Hard-hit
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