The Pretender is one of only a handful of shows that lived, albeit briefly, after it was cancelled by its network.  The show originally aired from 1996 to 2000 on NBC.  After it was cancelled, the show went into syndication on TNT, and the ratings were so high that the cable station teamed up with 20th Century Fox to produce two movies based on the series; The Pretender 2001 and the atrociously named The Pretender: Island of the Haunted.  That's impressive and shows that the program had a strong fan base.  20th Century Fox has now released the entire first season on DVD, in a nicely compact four disc set.  I hadn't seen the show before popping these DVDs into my player, and was pleasantly surprised at how interesting and engaging the show is.

There is a certain type of genius known as a "pretender."  These gifted people can put themselves into other people's shoes, actually becoming someone else.  They think, feel, and react the same way that the actual person would.  In 1963, a corporation known as The Centre (sic) found one of these geniuses, a small child named Jarod, and trained him.  They taught him to simulate events and solve problems.  Jarod could become Lee Harvey Oswald to discover whether he acted alone, or an astronaut on Apollo 13 to help them find a way back home.

Jarod spent his childhood and early adult year locked up in the Centre, having no friends or companions aside from his trainer, a psychologist named Sydney.  He spent his life running simulations; becoming another person so he could discover what they were feeling and thinking.  He's done literally thousands of these, being just about every type of person imaginable.  But when Jarod discovered that the information he was coming up with was being used to make weapons and to harm people, he escaped.

Now free for the first time in his life, Jarod travels the country using his special talents to right wrongs and get justice for the disenfranchised.  He is also searching for his parents, and trying to discover who he really is.  The Centre isn't happy that they've lost someone who was so valuable to them though, so they have assigned Ms. Parker, their tough-as-nails former chief of intelligence and daughter of a high ranking executive, to track him down.  Along with Sydney, and assisted by Broots, a technical guru at the Centre, Ms. Parker plays a game of cat-and-mouse with Jarod; trying to catch him, but always arriving just a little too late.

When the series first starts, The Pretender plays a lot like a cross between The Fugitive and Quantum Leap.  Jarod roams the country, on the run, searching for his past while taking on a new personality in every show to help someone out.  After he's accomplished his mission, Jarod manages to escape just before the Centre catches up with him.   But this program has some unique traits that set it apart from other TV shows.

One of the most notable things about this show it that it has a dark streak to it.  Jarod takes emotional revenge for the victims of crimes that have gone unpunished, and he makes the punishment fit the crime.  If someone was burned alive in a fire, he locks the murderer in a building and starts it on fire.  If someone beats a girl to death, Jarod ensure that they get beaten too.  Of course he doesn't really let anyone die, he's the good guy after all, but he does convince the guilty party that they are going to die and manages to record a confession at the same time.

One of the appeals to this show is that each episode is a bit of a puzzle.  As the show begins you aren't sure what Jarod is after, or who he is going to be.  There are clues, told through a red notebook of newspaper clippings, but what Jarod is actually going to do is a bit of a mystery.  This adds some mystery to the show, trying to figure out who the villain actually is and how Jarod is going to nail them.

The show also has a good amount of humor and charm to it.  Jarod is child-like in a lot of ways.  He never really had a childhood, so he's experiencing life for the first time.  Locked up in the Centre, he never had ice cream or saw popular movies.  He doesn't know much about pop culture, and things like Pez, or bubble gum are astounding to him.  As he says when he first encounters Silly Putty "Why would something so versatile be called 'silly'?"

The show isn't just stand alone episodes though.  There is an overriding story, or two actually.  First Jarod is looking for his parents, and he does make some progress through the course of this season.  The second related mystery has to do with Ms. Parker's mother.  She killed herself in an elevator at The Centre when Ms. Parker was a child, but Ms. Parker, thanks to clues from Jarod, is no longer certain that the fatal gunshot wound was self-inflicted.  She's trying to find out the truth about what has really been going on, while still chasing Jarod down.

The continuity from these two story arcs really add a lot to the show.  They keep it from being a "pretend of the week" show, which would quickly grow dull.  As this first season progresses, these stories start taking up more and more time, and the show gets a little dark as a consequence and takes on some eerie qualities.  About half way through the first season some new more sinister characters are introduced which give the series an edge that the early shows lacked to a certain extent.  It usually takes a couple or seasons for a series to evolve like this, and I was very impressed that The Pretender was able to make changes in its formula mid-season like they did.  Just as I was starting to get bored with the formalistic nature of the show, they changed things around enough to keep my interest.

The idea of a man who can be anyone he wants to be, but doesn't know who he is, has a lot of irony to it.  It also makes Jarod into a sympathetic character.  Not many people can relate to someone who can preform open heart surgery after reading a book on it, but the pain from the loss of his family brings Jarod down to a level most people can understand.

Michael T. Wiess was very good in the title role.  Physically, he's attractive and has a wonderful deep voice.  But he's more than just a pretty face.  The role calls for a wide range of emotions, and Wiess plays them perfectly.  His wide-eyed amusement at discovering something new like Oreo cookies was both funny and real, but he was just as convincing when he was exacting revenge.  His ability to play someone who was child like and very dark was amazing and really made the show.

20th Century Fox did a great job with the packaging of this show.  The season of 21 hour long shows comes on four double sided DVDs.  The discs come in a pair of thinpacks, with two discs per case.  The thinpacks are enclosed in a slipcase and the whole package is slightly wider than a single Amaray.  With many people's DVD collections growing by leaps and bounds, space is becoming a problem for many people, myself included.  Making this season fit into such a compact space is a great advantage to me.

The menus for this set are fairly standard, but there is one aspect that I don't like.  There isn't a "Play All" feature on the discs.  After each episode is finished, the viewer is brought to the sub-menu for that episode.  They have to cursor back to the main menu and then go back to the episode selection menu, pick the episode and go to the episode sub-menu, then they can play the show.  This is unnecessarily complicated.

Audio:

This show has a stereo audio track in the original English, as well as dubs in Spanish and French, also in stereo.  I viewed the show in English, and it sounded very good.  The dialog was clear and easy to understand, and the background music came through clearly.  There wasn't any hiss or dropouts, and the show had a fairly good dynamic range for a TV show.  A nice sounding disc.  There are optional subtitles in English, Spanish and French.

Video:

The show is presented with its original aspect ration of 1:1.33.  Since this is a recent show, it looks very good, with nice colors and sharp definition.  Unfortunately there was a lot of edge enhancement applied to the image which gets heavy-handed at times.  This gives the characters a slight halo effect that will be noticeable on larger displays.  If you have a small TV screen, this isn't something to worry about, but it could become irritating on larger setups.

There was also a fair amount of aliasing in the picture, which caused diagonal lines to have a stair-step effect instead of being smooth.  Fine lines also tend to shimmer when the camera pans over them.  This was present in a large number of scenes, but it wasn't distracting like the edge enhancement.

Extras:

There is a commentary track to the pilot episode with Craig W. Van Sickle and Steven Long Mitchell the co-creators and executive producers to the show.  I wasn't that enthralled with this track.  There were some interesting tidbits that came out, how Jerod's character was originally darker for example, but most of what they talked about was things that people will understand from watching the show.  They talked about the reason they put certain scenes in and the order that the pilot was filmed, but there weren't too many behind the scenes anecdotes.  There were also long gaps in the commentary where you just end up watching the show.

The two co-creators are join by the director of the episode Fred K. Keller and Jon Gries (Brutes) for the commentary track on the two-part season finale.  Like the commentary to the pilot, there isn't a lot of information offered.  There was a lot of "he's a great actor" type back patting but not a lot of substance.

The making of featurette runs about 25 minutes long and is spread across three discs.  I would have preferred that they put the whole thing on the last disc.  It was interesting, consisting of the creators and actors talking about different aspects of the show, and was glad that they included it.  The only problem is that they give away plot points before you reach them in the series.  I'd recommend watching these after all the episodes.
 
There are also a series of TV promo spots for the show.

Final Thoughts:

This first season of The Pretender is a show worth watching.  I had never seen this show before I received the DVDs, and it was much better than I was expecting.  Though it starts out as a formalistic 'adventure of the week' type show it quickly evolves into more than that, with a good story and some engaging continuity.  There is a lot of mystery that draws the viewers in, and the characters themselves are interesting and convoluted.  While the story doesn't end with this season, the show does progress and some discoveries are made.  With elements of mystery, humor, drama and suspense, The Pretender is able to straddle genres unlike most other shows.  Highly Recommended.