Tarzan: For Love of Country (2003) – Review

With Jane and Tarzan on the run from the police the show ditches its police procedural format and replaces it with a “fish out of water” plot line. We’ve dealt with Tarzan trying to handle living in the big city so in For Love of Country we get city girl Jane trying to cope with being in the woods. *sigh*

 

Episode 7 "For Love of Country"

In the previous episode Surrender we had Jane trying to stop Tarzan (Travis Fimmel) from skipping the country and going back to Africa, but just as they are having a tearful goodbye Detective Gene Taylor (Fulvio Cecere) and a bunch of Jane’s fellow officers arrive to deliver a little blue justice. Tarzan is able to beat the crap out of all the cops but Jane (Sarah Wayne Callies) is hurt so our jungle boy takes her back to Detective Sam Sullivan's (Miguel A. Núñez Jr.) apartment where Sam gives them a key to his family’s cabin upstate.

 

“Don’t worry, it’s nowhere near Crystal Lake.”

Their plan making is interrupted by the arrival of a bruised and battered Gene who accuses Sam of knowing where Jane and Tarzan are, but Sam plays dumb as the two fugitives sneak out a window. So with Sam’s borrowed car our two heroes escape the big bad city for the wilds of upstate New York, and on the drive there Tarzan does more of the “innocent boy” act which was already getting old by the second episode.

 

He isn’t even able to sit in a car properly for Pete's sake.

It gets even worse when Jane pulls over to take a bathroom break in the bushes; while she is answering nature’s call Tarzan hops in the driver’s seat, starts up the car, pulls away, and then crashes it in a ditch. When she asks him what made him think he could drive a car he answers, “That’s what people do.” I am so sick of idiot Tarzan, and the fact that Jane still finds this man-child attractive is one of the show’s least believable elements.  Apparently the way to combat this level of implausibility is to constantly show us that Jane is almost as dumb as Tarzan. Jane has Tarzan remove the license plate from the crashed car so that their location can’t be traced, but one would assume a police officer would know that it would take a fellow cop about five minutes to run the serial number from the car’s engine block and discover the owner. This of course exactly happens and this puts Gene and his idiot sidekick Detective Carey (Sterling K. Brown) hot on their trail.

 

No real villains today just insanely obsessed cops.

Gene is after Jane and Tarzan because he believes them to be responsible for the death of a fellow officer and is willing to go outside the law to see justice done, and somehow this includes rallying fellow police officers to break the law and commit assault on one of their own i.e. Jane Porter. Even when ordered to stay away from the case by their boss Gene and Carey take it on their own initiative to track down these two fugitives of law, even to the point of wandering through the woods with shotguns. I’m sorry but I can barely buy one obsessed cop breaking the rules like this but how did Gene convince Carey to jeopardize his career over this?

 

Did Gene save Carey’s father in Vietnam or something?

And that isn’t even the worst element of this episode as we are forced to endure the idiotic antics of Big City Jane and her problems with nature. If they were in the jungles of Africa I could see her having to rely on Tarzan to keep her safe, but this is upstate fucking New York. Seeing Jane unable to handle a bee flying around her, or having to be helped up a tree (and we are talking about a tree that contains a treehouse which has steps nailed to the trunk) is just embarrassing. Tarzan on the other hand is of course at one with nature as he catches fish with his bare hands, communes with the local wolves, and is basically Tarzan...wait, he communes with wolves?  Are there actually wild wolves roaming free in upstate New York?

 

Is he Tarzan or Mowgli?

Then Gene and Carey arrive and the hunt is own. Jane tells Tarzan that she is just slowing him down (duh), but Tarzan is able to use his jungle cunning to lose their pursuers by using a stream to cover their tracks. For Christ sakes this is stupid. They are being tracked by two New York cops not a Sam Gerrard and a pack of bloodhounds, but apparently Gene is some super tracker who even after night falls is still wandering around the woods looking for a guy who grew up in the jungle. That Carey doesn’t just say “Fuck this shit, I’m going home” is more evidence that Gene must hold some big marker over Carey because this is some serious dumb shit.

 

If this was a horror film he’d be dead already.

Sam shows up and is somehow able to find Jane and Tarzan but instead of getting the hell out of Dodge they decide to split up so that Tarzan can lead the two Elmer Fudds away. This plan fails immediately as Jane and Sam are quickly captured by Gene and used for bait to lure Tarzan back. Gene smacks Jane around to get her to call out to her boyfriend (this guy has gone from obsessed to serial killer crazy in just 24 hrs) and unfortunately for him this ploy does bring out Tarzan who then proceeds to kick his ass…again.

 

Gene does seem to be a slow learner.

So Sam cuffs Gene and Carey, sticks in them in the back of his car and calls the local authorities while Jane and Tarzan makes themselves scarce. Exactly what does Sam intend to tell the police? “Hi, these two assholes were planning on shooting a couple of fugitives; I arrested them and let the fugitives go.” If Jane is wanted for questioning about the cover up of her fiancé’s death Sam will now be wanted for aiding and abetting fugitives.

 

“No, I can’t explain how the fugitives had my car or were hiding out in family’s cabin.”

While walking down the lonely country highway (which considering that Sam just called the local sheriff you'd think it would be a good idea to stay clear of main roads) Jane tells Tarzan she is sick of running and wants to return to New York City to face his uncle, the police, and everything. Tarzan agrees on the condition that Jane teaches him to drive.

 

"Tarzan, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

That decision makes this entire episode a complete waste of time and as there is only one more episode left that is not a good thing. The fish out of water comedy didn’t work and only added to the ineptness that has become Jane Porter. Now we know her to not only be a pretty terrible detective but she can’t even handle being two hours outside of the city. That is unbelievably pitiful and a terrible thing to do with what could have been an interesting character.

Raiders of the Sun (1992) – Review

With Raiders of the Sun we get producer/director Cirio H. Santiago most environmentally conscious film yet, and by that I mean 90% of the action in this movie is recycled from his previous films Wheels of Fire and Equalizer 2000. This is the ultimate in low budget post-apocalyptic film making as it not only reuses footage but also costumes, plot elements, actors and characters with only the names changed to protect the guilty.

 

Note: The guy on the poster does not appear in this film.

The title may seem like Santiago is ripping of Raiders of the Lost Ark this time, but that is not the case, this is just another one of his Mad Max rip-offs. The film opens with a battle between the Alpha League and an insurrectionist group led by Colonel Clay (William Steis). Clay is dressed in the exact outfit that Steis wore in Equalizer 2000, and is still playing the main nemesis to this movies badass hero. In that role we have Brodie (Richard Norton), also dressed exactly as his character from Equalizer 2000 was, and he has been given the mission of getting more gunpowder for Alpha League.

 

Note: This big opening battle is mostly footage from the big closing battle of Wheels of Fire.

Where this film differs from Wheels of Fire and Equalizer 2000 is that Brodie is not the film’s sole male hero, after the Battle of Brokedown Pass (also the name given the location of the battle in Wheels of Fire, which makes one wonder if Cirio H. Santiago just has a Boggle game with names and words that he just dumps out on the table and calls it a script) we are introduced to Talbot (Blake Boyd) who is retiring from service return to his farm and beautiful wife.

 

Our two heroes and a goat, and yes we do get a bestiality joke.

What is truly unusual is that Brodie and Talbot don’t have much actual screen time together, instead of getting a buddy adventure film these two separate and go off on two divergent plot lines. Talbot’s plot line has to deal with going home to find his community had been destroyed by a redneck army led by an asshole by the name of Hoghead (Rick Dean). Most of the villagers are killed and Talbot’s wife Vera (Brigitta Stenberg) is captured.

 

Sadly the community was constructed by a 9th grade drama club, thus quite flammable.

 

Not to mention the added embarrassment of being defeated by a guy in a pig hat.

While tooling around on his chopper Brodie encounters some of Boss Hogg’s men…I mean Hoghead’s men, and he tries to rescue Vera, but they shoot his bike and the villains just drive off with the girl. Nothing beats seeing a hero Insta-Fail. Talbot shows up while Brodie is burying Vera’s dad and they decide to join forces as the most likely place that they would have taken Vera is the town of a Valentine, which is also a good place for Brodie to investigate a rumored lost gunpowder mine.

Note: I’m not sure the filmmakers are aware of the fact that gunpowder isn’t something you mine. At one point in the film a character refers to potassium mines but potassium nitrate is only one ingredient in the making of gunpowder, and yet these guys find mines loaded with explosive black powder just lying around.

While on route to Valentine Brodie and Talbot rescue a beautiful Filipino woman named Sierra (Lani Lobangco) from some Mountain Hunters, she is grateful and decides to join them. When the trio make it to Valentine Brodie follows some of Hoghead’s men into a bar while Brodie and Sierra interrogate a group of little people who may know the location of the lost mine. They inform Brodie and Sierra of a place called Aguilla Point, located in the mountains to the west, where the fabled gunpowder can be found. Later Brodie rescues the little people from a bunch of assholes who think burning midgets is fun.

 

Still a better gig than the Lollipop Guild.

Back in Valentine Talbot has impressed the members of Hoghead’s gang and is now working undercover in the hopes of finding his wife. Meanwhile Vera does seem be doing pretty good on her own as she knees Hoghead in the groin and knocks out one of his teeth when he tries to rape her. Tickled by her spunk he has her locked in one of the dungeon cells for later. Hoghead is suspicious of Talbot and forces him to compete in an Initiation. This entails two idiots swinging back and forth on ropes while trying to hit one another with clubs. Hoghead tosses Talbot’s opponent a knife, the dirty cheater, but Talbot is still victorious.

 

In a post nuclear holocaust world you get your entertainment where you can.

Back with Brodie and Sierra we find that Brodie was injured and has been taken into the mountains where Sierra’s people live. Sierra nurses Brodie back to health but Brodie is a bit miffed to find out that Aguilla Point is where Sierra is from, and that he's been traveling with a person who knew all along where the location of the lost gunpowder mine was.

 

They then have sex so he gets over this betrayal rather quickly.

He tries to appeal to her father, telling him that the Alpha League desperately needs the gunpowder if they are ever going to defeat Colonel Clay and his evil insurrectionist, but this is a peaceful village and they only use the gunpowder for ceremonial purposes.

 

Then for some reason Clay decides to train these peace lovers in staff fighting.

Trouble enters paradise when Clay and his soldiers arrive, having figured out this is where the gunpowder can be found, and then we have a rather one sided battle between spear wielding mountain people and dudes with M-16s. Then something happens that will surprise no one who has seen Equalizer 2000, poor Sierra is gunned down.

 

Sex with Richard Norton is notoriously fatal.

Did I mention that Colonel Clay and Hoghead were brothers; well they are and have decided to team up to destroy the Alpha League, but then Hoghead is run over by an escaping Talbot and Vera. Damn, I hate when family reunions are ruined by vehicular homicide. Clay vows revenge and prepares for the big fight, but not before having a funeral pyre for his dead brother of course.

 

Does anyone else smell bacon?

Clay and his forces, now combined with his late brother’s men, lay siege to the Alpha League Citadel, but just when things seem at their bleakest a car blasts through Clay’s soldiers, evading multiple mortar rounds, and is revealed to be Brodie in a car full of gunpowder and little people. The gunpowder is rushed into the Citadel so that the men can start loading shells, and once again I’m not sure the filmmakers understand how firearms work. The time it would take to process the gunpowder, and then load it into shells for your standard mortar shell and M-16 casing, is a tad longer than your standard battle. If this was an actual siege, where the Alpha League was able to hold off the enemy for days, this would make sense, but not here where everyone immediately engages in a massive firefight, thus making the arrival of the gunpowder completely pointless.

 

And then Sierra's people show up so we can use more footage from Equalizer 2000.

We finally get the showdown between Brodie and Clay, with the latter ending his villainous career with the standard villain fall to his death moment, and the day is saved. Midgets, forest folk, and Alpha League soldiers all cheer our valiant heroes, and another exciting post nuclear war movie comes to a close.

Raiders of the Sun has enough action for fans of the genre, and if you have seen Wheels of Fire and Equalizer 2000 you can play the “Spot the reused footage” game, and it really is astonishing how much Cirio H. Santiago much he recycles from footage to costume to script ideas. The Alpha League soldiers are dressed like The Ownership from Wheels of Fire while Clay’s insurrectionist are dressed like The Ownership from Equalizer 2000, and having Richard Norton and William Steis practically revising their characters from the previous film is just bizarre.

Dune Warriors (1991) – Review

The 80s were over and most low budget film producers had moved away from Mad Max rip-offs to make ninja movies instead, but producer/director Cirio H. Santiago is not one to let a genre die easy. In this installment we have bandits of the wasteland harassing a small village who then get help from a group of warriors to teach them how to defend themselves. So not only is this movie a Road Warrior rip-off it’s also blatantly taken the plot from The Magnificent Seven, but that’s okay as that was just a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. Hell, even Roger Corman himself took a shot at that story with Battle Beyond the Stars, and it even turned up in an episode of Battlestar Galactica called “The Magnificent Warriors.” Basically I’m saying a Mad Max meets The Seven Samurai was not so much a case of if but of when.

Shockingly the movie doesn’t open with the standard narration, we do eventually find out that this is at least a couple of generations after a nuclear war, but opens with a BANG as an army of nefarious baddies shell the crap out of a ramshackle village. This army is led by a warlord by the name of William (Luke Askew) and he is after water. His men lob rocket after rocket into this town, in between machine gunning down the fleeing inhabitants, unfortunately this town doesn’t have much water but after interrogating one of the villagers they learn that the town of Chinle has a large supply of this most precious commodity. William orders a group of his men to secure Chinle while he and the rest of the men forage the area for more supplies. Um, isn’t water a most crucial supply? Why send a handful of men to hopefully secure your armies life’s blood when you could easily take it with your full army and then forage later from a secure location?

 

William is a top notch warlord, but a very poor delegator.

To be fair the men he sent do this job easily take over the village of Chinle, but then they “secure” the village as ordered and not just wipe out the inhabitants. This is a change in tactics with no logical reason.  Now in The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven the bandits needed the village to provide food, if they just road in and murdered all the farmers there would be no one to plant and harvest more crops in the future. Thus keeping the villagers kowtowed but alive was crucial, but in Dune Warriors the town of Chinle has apparently a spring of inexhaustible water and the last time I checked you didn’t need farmers to plant or harvest water.  So exactly why are these people being spared? In the opening scene William had his men murder an entire village before finding out if they had water, which they didn’t, but for some reason he doesn’t order the extermination of the people that do. All the sparring of Chinle does is allow the movies heroine time to sneak out and find warriors to help free the village. Enter Val (Jillian McWhirter) a pretty blonde who asks her fiancé, “Luis, don’t you want to see something of this world other than this valley?”

Luis (Henry Strzalkowski) is the son of the Reynaldo (Joseph Zucchero), a member of the village council, and both father and son are duplicitous cowardly asshats. When William’s men take the village these two jerks do their best to convince the town folk to submit to this new ruler, and Luis doesn’t even try and prevent Val from an attempted raped. Val’s brother on the other hand does try and help and he gets shot for his trouble. With the death of her brother, and the wishy washiness of the villagers, Val decides that she must go elsewhere for help and so one night she sneaks off into the dark.

 

And because this is a Cirio H. Santiago film she runs into dwarves.

These Jawa wannabes chase after our poor unarmed Val but before they can catch and…eat her? Well before they catch and do whatever a band of angry desert dwarves would do with a young woman, she is rescued by Michael (David Carradine). His rescue consists of waving his arms and saying, “Get out of here” and though this technique works I must say Ben Kenobi’s krayt dragon impression to scare off the Tusken Raiders was way cooler. Val asks Michael where she could find warriors to recruit for her cause and he says the best place to look would be in Freetown.

In Freetown she witnesses two men jousting on motorcycles which tells us a couple of things; one that these men are fearless badasses, and secondly that Cirio H. Santiago is a fan of George Romero’s Knightriders. Later at the local salon she approaches John (Rick Hill), Dorian (Blake Boyd) and their friend Ricardo (Dante Verona) to ask for their help, but before she has a chance one of the saloon patrons recognizes John and Dorian as conmen who hoodwinked his whole town. A bar fight ensues and the two escape by jumping onto Michael’s truck. When Val fills them in on her town’s need, and the endless supply of water as a reward, they decide to help her. While on the way to Chinle they run into Miranda (Maria Isabel Lopez) a friend of Michaels who is a fellow warrior of the wasteland, and thus we now have our Magnificent...um…five?

 

Miranda will be the tough chick that tragically dies. Another Santiago staple.

Our warriors stage a brilliant night attack that easily defeats the men holding Chinle, but John and friends don’t get the warrior`s welcome they expected as Luis and his father are constantly working the villagers into giving into William’s command. Luckily Val’s father gives a rousing speech, not quite a St. Crispin Day speech but it's enough to get the villages motivated to fight, and so John and friends proceed to train these hapless farmers in the art of war. Oh, and by art of war I mean mostly training them in using their farming implements for staff fighting.

This is a problem that turns up in many films that decide to use medieval weaponry against modern ones. In Star Wars the use of a sword against a laser blaster would be ridiculous if it wasn’t for the fact that their swords are made of energy and they have The Force to help them, while in films like The Sisterhood and Masters of the Universe the guy using a sword against a gun comes across as a bit of a moron.

It’s not all hard work and training for the people of Chinle as we also have Luis getting jealous of Dorian who is making moves on Val, and being Luis is an established weasel and a coward we know how this is going to turn out. That she never loved Luis, it being an arranged marriage to end strife between two families, certainly didn’t help his case. That isn’t the only love that blooms as we also get a tryst between John and Miranda which is of course immediately forgotten when she dies.

 

And the film does have the required gratuitous nudity.

The cuckolder Luis helps two of William’s men escape so that they can warn the warlord of these interlopers and their plans, but then the king of delegation sends just five more vehicles to once again secure the town. William is apparently waiting around the desert for some gasoline convoy which never shows up. Of course five “Road Warrior” modded cars should be enough to take out a town that has plywood walls, and is guarded by farmers with sticks, but they did not count on John’s secret weapon.

 

A rope net?

Seriously, they take out an armored car with a fucking rope net. Defeating this one car turns the tide and William’s men are soon captured and their weapons added to Chinle’s arsenal. Meanwhile back with William he is in trouble because the gasoline convoy he’s been waiting for has not shown up and he’s about out of water. This is why dicking around the desert for days, doing who knows what, was a poor choice when his army could have easily wiped out Chinle ten times over and then gone out to find this mysterious convoy. Finally realizing water is kind of crucial to his army not dying of thirst they had to Chinle, but they are repulsed by flamethrowers mounted on the walls of Chinle.

 

I'd be careful using a flamethrower next to that much cardboard.

Traitorous Luis sneaks out of the village, cutting the fuel lines to the flamethrowers before leaving, and he runs off to inform William on how best to take the village. Meanwhile John has sent Ricardo to sneak into the enemy camp to destroy their water supply so that William can’t win a siege. What the fuck? How does John think there is even going to be a siege? William has dozens of armored vehicles, many of which contain rocket launchers and mortars, and Chinle has the aforementioned plywood walls, a couple of machine guns, and a bunch of sticks. How could a battle between these two parties last more than an hour let alone turn into a siege?

Reality does win out as William attacks in the morning, and despite a valiant attempt by the villagers, William and his army kick their asses. Miranda is killed, the place is shelled to pieces, and most of the good guys have to flee into the hills.

Val and Dorian are captured and for some reason William decides that Jason (Val Garay), his second in command who failed to take Chinle, must have a duel to the death with Dorian. Strangely we don’t find out who would have won because just as the fight is getting good, well as good as poorly choreographed knife fight can get, John and Michael launch a counter attack. But wouldn’t this attack be suicidal? How could our band of farmers hope to overcome a vastly superior force? Well turns out while hiding in the hills one of the village kids found a cave that contained weapons and munitions depot. How’s that for lucky?

 

It's better to be lucky than good.

That those weapons that were just laying around a damp cave for decades still function is a bit farfetched but even more so is the villages ability to use them with thirty minutes of training. Using an RBG or a mortar is a bit trickier than a stick. Regardless our heroes are victorious and Michael gets to face off against William, who we learnt was responsible for the death of Michael’s family, and after a brief sword fight he disarms William. But once losing his sword William goes for his gun, which begs the question, “Why the fuck were you getting into a swordfight for if you had a gun?” Clearly this dude did not learn from Raiders of the Lost Ark on how one deals with a man wielding a sword. Though even with a gun he is a bit useless as he gets off a shot but Michael just shrugs it off, he is after all David Carradine, and he lops off Williams’ gun hand.

The day is saved. Michael and John ride off into the sunset while Dorian stays behind with Val to become a farmer, because if you’re going to rip-off The Magnificent Seven you might as well do every goddamn beat including the ending. As a Road Warrior/Seven Samurai hybrid there is some novelty value, but the action is by the most party repetitive and boring. If you cast David Carradine, star of television’s Kung Fu in your movie and yet you relegate him to practically second banana status next to Rick Hill you have made a tragic mistake. Also this film is called Dune Warriors and yet there are no bloody DUNES in this entire movie, just the same rocky quarry local we see in all these film. The repeated locations and props from all of Cirio H. Santiago’s previous films certainly do not help remove the stench of refried action here. Dune Warriors should only be watched if properly medicated with a good quantity of alcohol.

Tarzan: Surrender (2003) – Review

Well the shit has finally hit the fan. No more crime solving mysteries for Jane and Tarzan to solve this week as now every New York City cop is on the hunt for the jungle man. The first five episodes were pretty rocky in quality ranging from pretty good to downright awful, but can amping up the stakes help?

 

Episode 6 "Surrender"

Evil Uncle Richard (Mitch Pileggi) has mentally tortured agoraphobic germaphobe Donald Ingram (Tim Guinee) into telling the police that he saw John Clayton/Tarzan (Travis Fimmel) murder Detective Foster, and that Detective Jane Porter (Sarah Wayne Callies) was also there on the rooftop where it all went down. Jane is woken up by her an Internal Affairs officers and a bunch of cops who have come to take her downtown for interrogation concerning her involvement in the cover-up of Foster’s death. At the same time across town the police storm into Kathleen Clayton’s (Lucy Lawless) home looking for Tarzan. For some reason Tarzan doesn’t just slip out of a window and escape across the rooftops but drops down right in the middle of the cops. Kathleen begs him not to fight, and at first it looks like he is going to listen, but then as one cuff goes on he flips out and proceeds to beat the crap out of the police and escapes out a window.

 

“Well we can now add resisting arrest and assaulting police officers to his charges.”

Jane’s interrogation doesn’t go much better as she tries to explain that billionaire Richard Clayton must have forced Ingram to change his story, that John Clayton did not murder Detective Foster. Her failure to come forward with any of this earlier she admits to “being a mistake” and yeah, that’s a pretty big one. That they only take her badge and gun, when she is at the very least an accessory after to the fact to a cop killing, is blatantly ridiculous. Realistically she should be cooling her heels in holding cell and not trying to brow beat her partner Sam Sullivan (Miguel A. Núñez Jr.) into helping her save Tarzan from prison.

 

“Hell no way bitch, I am not helping your flaky boy toy!”

Meanwhile Kathleen goes to Richard and offers her voting shares of Greystoke if he calls off his witness, with the one stipulation that John keeps his inheritance. Richard is not interested in making deals as once John is captured he will be deemed insane and put under his care, and Kathleen’s obstructing justice and harboring of a fugitive will be enough of a scandal for her to lose her controlling interests in the company. Mitch Pileggi and Lucy Lawless are two highlights of this show and if they’d made a corporate drama series about the Greystoke Family, its financial wheelings and dealings, with corporate espionage and sexy liaisons, you’d probably have had a more interesting show than this one.

 

“I don’t care if I have to tear this company apart to stop you.”

This episode doesn’t just have Richard’s villainous machinations to worry about we also have all of Jane’s fellow officer wanting to get their hands on this cop killer. They call Jane a traitorous bitch, stake out her place, bug her and Kathleen’s phones, and even Sam’s new partner is secretly working for those out to get Tarzan. The problem here is that they are all in the right. Every last one of them.  They don’t know Detective Foster was a jealous asshat that was trying to kill John up on that rooftop, all they know is that their friend is dead and Jane, one of their own, helped to cover-up the whole thing.

 

NYPD Blue Balls.

Sam decides to help Jane and between the two of them they discover where Ingram is being held, and their plan is for Jane to sneak in and convince him to change his story…again. Tarzan shows up to help and they are able to spirit Ingram away from the two most incompetent protection detail ever.  Their victory is short lived as just after getting Ingram to safety Ingram is captured again by Richard’s goons. By now poor Donald Ingram should be a basketcase. Sam tells Jane to go home and get some rest and he’ll hide Tarzan at his place, but he turns his back for a second and Tarzan vanishes. Turns out that Tarzan was not too happy with Sam’s pep talk that basically stated that Tarzan is ruining Jane’s life. So Tarzan rushes off to confront the man behind all his misery, and when he confronts Richard his uncle also tells Tarzan that all Jane’s troubles are his fault.

 

“You can’t handle the truth!”

So Tarzan drops in on Kathleen and asks to go home and by "go home" he means back to the jungle. When Jane calls Kathleen she finds out that Tarzan is at Lindenhurst airstrip where a private jet will take him back to the Congo (not really sure why Kathleen felt the need to tell Jane which airstrip he was at), and so Jane rushes off to stop him. Unfortunately Sam’s new partner (Sterling K. Brown) had cloned his cellphone and now a bunch of cops, led by really angry Detective Gene Taylor (Fulvio Cecere). Jane arrives just before Tarzan is about to board the plane (which means a wanted fugitive was just hanging around this airstrip during the time it would take Jane to drive all the way across town) and they have a tearful goodbye.

 

“Here’s looking at you kid.”

The cops pull up and Jane has to run up and delay them, and by delay them I mean she punches Gene in the face. The plane takes off and the enraged Gene proceeds to kick the living shit out of Jane. I think almost everybody in this show has anger issues. But what’s this? Is that Tarzan leaping to the rescue? Yes he is folks, our jungle man didn’t board the plane and now he’s beating the crap out of the police.

 

So Gene was an asshole to justify this scene of asswhupin, right?

The episode ends with Tarzan carrying off the unconscious Jane. Where will they go? Who will help these misunderstood fugitives? If Jane’s career in law enforcement wasn’t over before, and really it should have been, it's certainly in the toilet now. Will the remaining two episodes be all about them on the run from the law? Will they team up with Richard Kimble and David Banner?  Only time will tell.

 

Does anyone else hear tiny piano music playing?