Patrick Bauchau: "The Pretender"




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Patrick Bauchau: The Pretender

Patrick Bauchau plays Sydney on The Pretender, a one hour drama originally co-produced by NBC and 20th Century Fox Television. The show premiered Thursday, September 19, 1996 at 9:00pm (Eastern time) on NBC, before moving to its regular timeslot on Saturday nights at 9:00pm. During its fourth and final season on NBC, it was moved to 8:00pm on Saturday. The Pretender is also seen in many other countries. The show is now in syndication on Turner Network Television during the week and various stations on weekends. TNT has co-produced two Pretender movies to air on the cable outlet. Pretender 2001 premiered on TNT on Monday, January 22 at 8pm EST/PST. The Pretender: Island of the Haunted premiered Monday, December 10 at 8pm EST/PST.

The premise of the show is that there are geniuses, or Pretenders, "...who can become anyone they want to be." One such Pretender is Jarod (Michael T. Weiss). Jarod was stolen as a child and brought to a mysterious corporation known as the Centre. He was kept there, his abilities honed and exploited, until he escaped as an adult. Now Jarod searches for his family while taking on various identities and roles in order to help others. Meanwhile, he is pursued by the Centre.

Sydney (Patrick Bauchau) is a psychiatrist in the Centre's Psychogenic Research area. Sydney trains Pretenders to run "simulations" of events; a Pretender uses his skills to become the person involved in a given event, thereby enabling him to predict the outcome. Sydney often acts as a father figure to the Pretenders he works with.

Sydney raised Jarod from the time Jarod was brought to the Centre. Sydney appears to see Jarod as a surrogate son and will do whatever is necessary to protect him. Yet he remains at the Centre, participating in the search for Jarod. Therefore, Sydney's motivations are not always clear. This apparent ambiguity and the dynamic between Sydney and Jarod combine to provide one of the most fascinating aspects of The Pretender.

Sydney works closely at the Centre with Miss Parker (Andrea Parker), the daughter of Mr. Parker (Harve Presnell), the Centre's Chairman, and the late Catherine Parker. Miss Parker was pulled out of "Corporate" to head the team in charge of bringing Jarod back to the Centre. Since the first episode, the team has been expanded to include Broots (Jon Gries), a computer/technical expert who has become a close friend to Sydney and Miss Parker. Mr. Lyle (Jamie Denton) also joined the team after initially trying to assume Mr. Parker's position at the Centre. It is now believed that Mr. Lyle is in fact Miss Parker's twin who had been spirited away at birth under the pretense that he had been stillborn. Lyle is a man who seemingly will stop at nothing, including murder, to achieve his aims.

Other characters include the evil Mr. Raines (Richard Marcus), a man who has used the Centre to further his own, often unethical, scientific goals; Angelo (Paul Dillon), a sort of savant with empathic abilities, who for a time was considered along with Mr. Lyle as one of two possibilities as Miss Parker's long-lost twin; and Ethan, half-brother to Miss Parker and Jarod, who was discovered in the season four finale, "The Inner Sense."