A Pretender Ending

The late 90's action-drama  The Pretender. Was about a savant named Jarrod who had escaped the corporation that had raised him. But there was one man there, a psychiatrist named Sydney who actually had raised him and been like a father to him. So while he's running all over the United States helping the little guy, he maintains contact with Sydney. As Sydney, Ms. Parker and a tech geek Broots try to track him down.

Now at First Sydney is too consumed with his feelings of guilt and culpability over what happened to Jarrod at the centre. he'd been raised there since he was like 4 years old and later told his parents were dead. Which was another Centre lie. They push passed that t at the beginning of season 2 and from then on they are always there for each-other and would do anything for each other. Sydney was the closest thing to a father Jarrod ever knew. Sydney learns he has a son Nicholas who never knew that the man who raised him wasn't his biological father. Until that man was dying.

In season four Sydney and Jarrod all but stop talking to each-other. Nothing gets between them they just don't interact for the last third of the season. In fact the trio of hunters I call the three musketeers have minimal direct contact with Jarrod -- the Pretender after whom the series is named -- as they solve Centre secrets, people and deal with increasingly demented co-workers.  In fact for the last 6 episodes fo the series Sydney and Jarrod do not communicate at all. Which I thought was kind of pathetic since thier relationship was the heart and soul of the whole series. I will fix that stupidity in MY version of season 4 of the series. Beginning with the last time they even talk in the actual series. Jarrod demands an explanation for why Sydney didn't protect him from these narcotics experiments years ago. And Sydney admits that he couldn't...because he had been a test subject himself. He'd wanted to spare Jarrod that pain so he'd insisted he be used as a test subject instead of Jarrod.  He'd never told him what he'd done for him 'because I didn't want you to feel obligated to stay at the Centre if you ever had the chance to escape.' Cue the last line Sydney ever says to Jarrod in the series and the first line of MY version of the story.

     A New Ending

“I'm sorry Jarrod. I'm Really sorry.” Sydney said as he hung up the phone. He'd made apologies to Jarrod before. For his part in keeping Jarrod without a past, locked up at the centre since he was a boy. And that he couldn't do more to help him find answers not that he was free. The devastation and sorrow he felt as he said these words left them all behind.

'I never knew. I can't believe I misjudged him. He was a better man than I thought and I thought the world of him before tonight.' These were the expressions that passed across Jarrod's face in the 10 seconds after he hung up the phone. He glanced at the ambulance in front of him. In the four years since he'd escaped the centre his remarks to Sydney had gone from 'tell me the truth' to 'help me find the truth' to 'if you're in danger, walk away' and then finally a demand of 'How do you face your past Sydney?!' that last one was thankfully not the last thing he'd said to the man. But somehow nothing that happened later seemed to even exist anymore. He walked out of the phone booth and back to his apartment.

It was a motel really, one of those pay by the week places. He unlocked the door, flipped on the overhead, turned it off immediately and lay down on the bed. He felt like he'd never had more to think about since father's day 18 years ago. He reached over to the lamp at the nightstand, turned it on low and let his mind go blank.

At 8 am the next morning he called The Centre, Sydney's direct line.

“This is Sydney.” the man said in the familiar, almost familial tone he had.

“Sydney it's me. I just wanted to say...I'm the one who's sorry.”

“Jarrod you don't have to...”

“You were always like a father to me Sydney. And I know you've had to keep that part of yourself locked away. You sacrificed yourself to save me the pain. Then kept quiet to spare me the guilt or..”

“..Let's go with guilt Jarrod.” Sydney answered, his right hand on his left shoulder.

“Sydney, remember a year after I got out, I asked you if you ever thought about what it would have been like to have been my father?”

“I've scarcely stopped thinking about it since.”

“Well let me ask you the same question again.”

“I would have been proud to call you my son Jarrod. But I could never call myself your father.”

“You ARE my father Sydney. You're the one who was there for me___in the little moments.”