Back To The Beginning
I bet you all thought that now that I'm finally finished making my way through the entirety of The Pretender, you weren't going to see any more comment posts from me on the subject, huh? Well, ha! You forgot about the commentaries and extras, which I'm only just now getting around to watching.
I just played the commentary track from the pilot episode, featuring the show's creators/producers, and I learned some moderately interesting things, which I thought I would share with those of you who might be interested but don't have access to the DVDs. So...
Things I learned from the pilot commentary:
The visual resemblance between Miss Parker and Emma Peel was entirely deliberate.
When they showed the first cut of the pilot to the network, the network guys claimed not to understand it at all, and the show's creators immediately figured they'd better start looking for other work. But it set a record-breaking score with test audiences, so the suits pretty much just shrugged and decided to let them do what they wanted with it.
The reason why when we first see Miss Parker, she's not wearing one of her characteristic miniskirts isn't because they hadn't decided on that look for her yet. It's because they were filming in Toronto in winter, and Andrea Parker told the producers she wasn't putting on a miniskirt unless they did.
Originally, they'd shot adult Jarod's introductory scene with a bit of a darker feel to it, but then decided that, no, you want to see childlike good-guy Jarod first, before you see "crazy bastard" Jarod doing "the crazy things he does at the end of every episode." (Which pretty much confirms my eventual conclusion that, yes, these guys did understand that Jarod was a crazy bastard right from the beginning.) And when they saw the smile in Michael Weiss's eyes in that first scene of his, they knew they had something special. (Which they certainly did. Man, how did I ever not realize what a great actor that guy is?)
Also, they had originally left out the scene where Jarod makes sure that the drunken doctor doesn't actually get to operate on the other doctor, but they realized that was kind of essential, because, while Jarod might be twisted, they didn't want the audience to think he was "a cold-blooded killer."
They loved it any time they could get Jarod and Sydney face-to-face, but tried not to do it too often, both because it was difficult to arrange, and because they wanted it to feel special when it happened.
I just played the commentary track from the pilot episode, featuring the show's creators/producers, and I learned some moderately interesting things, which I thought I would share with those of you who might be interested but don't have access to the DVDs. So...
Things I learned from the pilot commentary:
The visual resemblance between Miss Parker and Emma Peel was entirely deliberate.
When they showed the first cut of the pilot to the network, the network guys claimed not to understand it at all, and the show's creators immediately figured they'd better start looking for other work. But it set a record-breaking score with test audiences, so the suits pretty much just shrugged and decided to let them do what they wanted with it.
The reason why when we first see Miss Parker, she's not wearing one of her characteristic miniskirts isn't because they hadn't decided on that look for her yet. It's because they were filming in Toronto in winter, and Andrea Parker told the producers she wasn't putting on a miniskirt unless they did.
Originally, they'd shot adult Jarod's introductory scene with a bit of a darker feel to it, but then decided that, no, you want to see childlike good-guy Jarod first, before you see "crazy bastard" Jarod doing "the crazy things he does at the end of every episode." (Which pretty much confirms my eventual conclusion that, yes, these guys did understand that Jarod was a crazy bastard right from the beginning.) And when they saw the smile in Michael Weiss's eyes in that first scene of his, they knew they had something special. (Which they certainly did. Man, how did I ever not realize what a great actor that guy is?)
Also, they had originally left out the scene where Jarod makes sure that the drunken doctor doesn't actually get to operate on the other doctor, but they realized that was kind of essential, because, while Jarod might be twisted, they didn't want the audience to think he was "a cold-blooded killer."
They loved it any time they could get Jarod and Sydney face-to-face, but tried not to do it too often, both because it was difficult to arrange, and because they wanted it to feel special when it happened.