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?

You can read all my reviews for this show here: Tarzan: The Complete Series.