REPORT: JAROLDO!
FILE #: 115

IN THE HAMPSHIRE BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY we see Jarod in a black undershirt, standing with long spindly acupuncture needles protruding from his right arm like porcupine quills. He’s used the needles to deaden all feeling in that arm, and tries to manipulate a pair of scissors with this left hand. Frustrated that he’s unable to use the scissors correctly, he throws the scissors onto a table. They land on a newspaper. An article on the front page tells about a cameraman, Ken Watanabe from Seattle, who was left partially paralyzed as a result of a gunshot wound he received while covering a gangland turf war.

TWO DAYS LATER , Miss Parker and Sydney arrive at the building and are let into Jarod’s vacated room by the building manager, a hippy-like pseudo-medicine man, who tells them that Jarod is no longer living there. He explains that Jarod — a very “even-tempered” man — had shown an interest in acupuncture, so the building manager taught it to him. Jarod was most interested using the acupuncture needles to manipulate the “bronchial plexus”, the nerve center for the upper extremities. He would purposely deaden his right arm and walk around with it like that for days at a time. Unimpressed with the manager (or his unveiled sexual attraction to her), Miss Parker readies to leave, but the manager stops her to give her a red notebook from Jarod. “He said you’d understand what it meant,” the manager tells her. Inside the red notebook is newspaper clippings with headlines that read: “New York Slumlord Arrested, Forced to Spend Month in Roach Motel” and “Bronx Tenants Freed From Bondage”. Miss Parker says the articles are about a nearby building in the Bronx and demands that Sydney go with her there. Sydney tells her that this notebook was simply Jarod’s way of making a point about “freedom”, and didn’t necessarily signify that he had ever gone to the Bronx location. Miss Parker ignores Sydney’s assessment and makes him go to the building with her anyway.

IN SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, we see a second-rate newscaster, Phil Campbell, arrive in a parking lot below a mid-town building. He looks up to see a “jumper” — a man threatening to commit suicide — on the rooftop, and angrily demands to know where his cameraman is. One of the tech people on hand points up at the roof, and we see Jarod, as videographer Jarod Crane , walking along the edge of the roof, approaching the jumper. Phil complains, through Jarod’s communications headset, that Jarod had better be getting film of this. Jarod gives Phil an irritated glance then returns his attention to the jumper. The jumper is a man named Dave who has been separated from his family. He drinks too much and can’t hold down a job, so his wife left him with their two kids. He’s so despondent that he wants to die. Jarod tells him to use the camera to talk to his family, to tell them how much he loves them… When Dave is calm enough, Jarod reaches out a hand to him and escorts him off the roof. Later, inside the studio at KTJE Channel 43 Seattle, Jarod meets with Phil Campbell, the program director Chris Rockwell [who rudely refers to Phil as “Grecian Formula with talent” ], and a film editor named Annie. Chris is excited about the footage Jarod got of Dave, but Phil remarks that it would have been more interesting and made for better ratings if Dave had actually committed suicide. It would have given the story more “punch”. Somewhat sickened by Phil’s attitude, Annie complains, and Phil rebuffs her with the remark that sensationalism is what sells in the news business these days. “If it bleeds, it leads,” he insists. When Chris says he’s anxious to get Jarod on the air with his footage of Dave, Jarod suggests — playing to Phil’s ego, while also protecting himself from being photographed on television where he might be seen by Centre operatives — that the footage be re-cut and looped with Phil’s voice, making it look as though Phil was responsible for the “save” and not him. Phil thinks it’s a great idea, and Chris is willing to go along, but Annie is against the fraud. “I thought only God rewrote history,” she complains. Phil remarks: “God never won ‘Sweeps’.”

IN THE BRONX, at 1811 North Bushnell Street — the address mentioned in the articles in Jarod’s red notebook — Miss Parker and Sydney arrive to find the building is a ramshackle place that has been condemned. Nevertheless, they go inside to look around. Sydney keeps suggesting to Miss Parker that they send Cleaners in to check the building, but Miss Parker — her gun drawn and ready to fire — is insistent on checking the place out herself. In the basement, they are attacked by two looters, and in the fracas Miss Parker’s gun discharges — into Sydney’s right leg. He collapses to the floor, and the looters wrest Miss Parker’s gun away from her, take her watch and jewelry and then bang her on the back of the head with a piece of pipe. They then take Miss Parker and Sydney to a fenced-in storage area in the basement and lock them inside of it.

BACK IN SEATTLE , at KTJE, Jarod sends another e-mail message to Sydney from his laptop computer: “Sydney, why aren’t you responding to me?” When Annie sees him busily typing at his computer she asks if he’s writing Phil’s copy for him, too. Jarod smiles and tells her, no, he’s just trying to get in contact with an “old friend”. He closes up the laptop and follows after her as she walks through the studio. He tells her that Phil had asked him to get some of the old video footage from the studio archives so that he can see how Phil likes to be “shot”. Annie takes Jarod to an indoor storage cabinet and lets him pick out whatever archive materials he wants. He chooses tapes of the Ken Watanabe shooting. Later, Jarod watches the old news footage at his lair. We see images of Phil and Ken approaching a warehouse on the docks where members of a local gang are gathered outside. Suddenly, members of a rival gang show up and both gangs start shooting at one another. Ken is caught in the crossfire and is injured; his right arm is immediately rendered useless. He begs Phil to rescue him, and Phil pulls him to safety.

BACK AT THE CENTRE in the Tech Room, Broots is on-line participating in an internet chat-room conversation. He’s “Samson”, and his contact is “Delilah”. Samson says he’d like to meet Delilah, but Delilah responds that she’s a little afraid to do that. The telephone next to him rings, and Broots answers it, “Samson… I mean, Broots… here.” It’s Mr. Parker on the line, and he wants to know where his daughter is. Broots says he hasn’t seen her or Sydney for quite a while, but that he’ll keep an eye out for them and let Mr. Parker know if he finds out anything. Mr. Parker hangs up before Broots can say “good-bye”.

IN SEATTLE , Jarod is walking into the studio at KTJE when Dave — the man whom Jarod saved from suicide, stops him momentarily. Dave is doing better and thanks Jarod for helping him. He says he’s located his wife and kids, but his wife won’t take him back until he gets a job. Jarod says he’ll let Dave know if anything comes up at the studio. While they’re talking, Dave keeps looking at some technicians working on some satellite transmission wiring outside the studio. Jarod asks him if he’s an electrician. Dave says, no, but he was a Sat Com (satellite communications) grunt in the Army, and he knows bad wiring when he sees it. If the technicians continue the way they’re going, they’re going to blow out the power to the entire facility, he says. Jarod goes into the studio, and approaches Phil, asking him if he can see the raw footage of the Ken Watanabe shooting because he wants to see how the raw stuff was cut together to create the final news clip. Phil brushes him off saying all the old tapes are recycled. Jarod doesn’t really believe that, but before he can say anything else, all the power goes off in the building. Jarod looks up in the dark smiling and says, “Way to go, Dave.” Later that evening, in his lair, Jarod uses his laptop computer to hack into the studio’s raw footage archive. He finds the footage he wants on the Ken Watanabe shooting and watches it. In the raw footage, we see Ken and Phil arriving at the warehouse. Phil seems to know exactly where he wants to set up the camera to film the scene, and we hear Ken quip, “Oh, been hanging out with the homies, eh, Phil?” When Ken is in position, Phil tells him how he wants the filming to go. As they’re talking, the rival gang shows up. There is shooting, shouting… Jarod can make out the name “D-Mac”… and Ken is hit by gunfire. He collapses immediately, crying to Phil that he’s been hit and that he can’t feel his arm. Phil at first looks like he wants to run away, but Ken grabs hold of the front of his shirt, and drags him toward him, begging for help. Phil — eventually — pulls Ken away to a safer distance. Jarod backs up the film again, and zooms in on Phil’s chest area, after Ken has grabbed Phil’s shirt. Under Phil’s white dress-shirt is thick black padding. “Interesting undershirt, Phil,” Jarod remarks to himself. Jarod returns to KTJE after hours, breaks into the place, and pries open Phil’s desk. He finds a black padded bulletproof vest in one of the file drawers buried under sheaves of paper and folders. “Is a flak-jacket standard issue for newscasters these days?” Jarod asks aloud.

IN THE BRONX , Sydney is not fairing well after having been shot in the leg. He’s going into shock. Miss Parker searches the area for a blanket to warm him with and finds one strapped to one of the support pillars in the basement. She removes the blanket from the pillar… and notices that the pillar is covered with wires and small soft-pack charges: it’s all ready for a demolition blast that will collapse the entire structure. Horrified, she returns to Sydney, tells him that the place is wired to explode, and asks if he had told anyone at The Centre where they were going. Sydney shakes his head, no. Miss Parker didn’t tell anyone where they would be either… Unable to escape, and unable to call anyone for help, Miss Parker wraps Sydney in the blanket and tries to warm him. “Some future,” Miss Parker complains, “sitting around waiting to get blown to bits.” As the hours go by, Miss Parker starts to show the signs of nicotine withdrawal. She has no cigarettes with her, and is also without her ulcer medication. “I’m sick, Sydney,” she tells him, as she moves around the confinement of the fenced-in area, nearly doubled-over, pale and perspiring. Sydney tries to distract her from her pain by talking to her, and they get on the inevitable subject of The Centre and her father. Sydney says she’s still young, she still has a life ahead of her: why doesn’t she just go to her father and tell him she wants to leave The Centre. Miss Parker shakes her head and starts to laugh at the absurdity of the suggestion, and Sydney laughs a little, too, if sadly.

AT THE CENTRE , Broots gets another telephone call, but this time it’s from Jarod (who’s speed-reading the official rules of basketball while he talks to Broots). Jarod wants to know where Sydney is, and Broots tells him that Sydney and Miss Parker have been missing for two days. Jarod is concerned that they may have gone to the Bushnell address, so he tells Broots where it is.

IN THE BRONX , Miss Parker remembers the reception that took place after her mother’s funeral. Her father wasn’t with her then, and, in a room full of people, she was sitting alone in a chair, crying. Sydney approached her, took her hand in his and tried to comfort her. He then had one of the operatives take her home… and gave her a kiss on the forehead before she left. Miss Parker looks over to Sydney, who’s looking worse from loss of blood and shock, and asks him to tell her about her mother’s death . “I know it wasn’t suicide,” she tells him. But Sydney won’t let her torture herself with talk about her mother’s death and instead tries to focus on her mother’s life. Catherine Parker was a driving force in The Centre in its early years, he tells her, and spearheaded many altruistic projects. Miss Parker says she can’t believe that The Centre was ever involved in anything positive, and Sydney tells her of the days when The Centre was able to influence nations toward peace talks and democracy, and how it was rumored that the “Pope-mobile” was really a Centre invention. The Centre had saved thousands of lives in those days, Sydney tells Miss Parker… lives which it had since reclaimed when its benevolent projects were pushed aside to make room for malevolent ones. Miss Parker asks Sydney why he didn’t leave when he realized the evil change was taking place at The Centre, and he tells her it was, in part, because of Jarod. He couldn’t leave Jarod there alone. “He’s not very different from us, you know,” Sydney tells her; all of their lives would have been different had they been able to choose their own paths. “I could have saved him. Jarod.” Sydney says, “He should have lived a normal life.” Trying to comfort him, Miss Parker tells him, “They would have killed you.” Sydney sadly responds: “You can’t kill someone who’s already ‘dead’.”

IN WASHINGTON , at the gang’s hide-out on docks, Jarod walks in on the African-American gang members as they’re playing a game of basketball. He has a box of pizza balanced on one hand, and is eating a slice of pizza with the other. He watches the game for a moment, and then calls “traveling” on one of the players. The gang members approach him en masse, trying to threaten him with their number and attitude, but Jarod isn’t phased. He just smiles at them, charmingly. The gang leader, D-Mac, asks him if he has a death wish and Jarod answers frankly, “Not that I know of” . D-Mac continues: “Well, didn’t your mama ever tell you that White people shouldn’t be walking around in other people’s neighborhoods?” Jarod responds that he never actually knew his mother, so the answer to the question was probably, no. Jarod then holds the pizza box out to D-Mac and offers it to him. D-Mac pulls out a switchblade in response. Jarod looks at the knife, looks at the pizza, and says, “Thank you, anyway, but it already comes pre-sliced.” He introduces himself to everyone, says he’s from the local television station, and wants to talk to D-Mac. D-Mac asks if he’ll get on television, and Jarod answers, “Quite possibly, yes.” D-Mac takes the pizza box from Jarod and tosses him the basketball in its place. Jarod shoots for a basket at the three-point line… and makes it. The gang-members are impressed. Sitting alone with D-Mac, munching on pizza, Jarod asks him about the shooting that left Ken Watanabe injured. D-Mac tells Jarod that a man who “sounded White” had called him on his cell phone one night and asked to talk to him about the turf wars. D-Mac agreed to the meeting, but when the time of the meeting arrived, a rival gang met him instead. The gangs started shooting at one another and Ken was injured. Jarod asks D-Mac if it was unusual for a White man to call him on his cell phone, and D-Mac gives him a puzzled look, “You really didn’t have no mama, did you?” Jarod doesn’t answer… But he does ask D-Mac for his cell phone number so he can check to see who made the call to him.

LATER, BACK AT THE STUDIO , Jarod uses his laptop computer to hack into the local phone company’s records so he can find out who placed the call to D-Mac. It was Phil Campbell. He also discovers that Phil made a similar call to D-Mac’s rival gang on the same evening. Phil had set up the events that lead to Ken’s injury… Jarod then seeks out Annie and tells her what he knows about the Watanabe shooting, and asks her to help him trap Phil. At first, she doesn’t want to believe that Phil would have been that reckless and that careless, but then she agrees to help Jarod prove that Phil was responsible for the circumstances that left Ken injured. Jarod finds D-Mac again and asks him to help him set up Phil. D-Mac agrees. Jarod also goes to the rival gang and asks for their help, too, and angry at Phil for setting them up earlier with D-Mac’s gang they agree to help as well. Jarod then has Annie call the General Manager of the station to come to the studio for “a very special broadcast”. She does so, and when he arrives she puts the General Manager in the same viewing room as Chris Rockwell. They then wait for Jarod’s broadcast. Jarod goes to Phil and tells him he’s been tipped off about some “fireworks” going off between the local gangs, and he wants Phil to come with him to cover this fast-breaking story. Eager for more sensationalist footage and his face on camera, Phil agrees to go with Jarod to the same warehouse area where Ken Watanabe was shot. Rather than staying outside the warehouse, however, Jarod takes Phil inside… then disappears. Phil, afraid to be in the place by himself, starts to call for Jarod, but stops when he hears the gang members arrive. Members from both gangs flood into the building, talking loudly and hooting and laughing. Terrified, Phil tries to hide himself behind some packing crates. Through his mini-microphone/headset he whispers to Jarod, asking him where he is. Jarod whispers back, through his own headset, that he’s standing above Phil. Phil looks up to see Jarod on a catwalk above the gang-members with his video camera.

BACK AT KTJE , Annie runs outside to cue Dave — who’s now handling the wiring and broadcast systems for the station — to link up to Jarod’s transmission. As soon as the link is made, all of the monitors in the studio light up with the images of Phil and the gang members Jarod is filming. In the office both Chris Rockwell and the General Manager can see and hear everything that’s going on at the warehouse.

AT THE WAREHOUSE , the gang members are getting very rowdy and threatening each other with violence. Phil tells Jarod they’ll kill him if they find him, and he tries to escape out a back door. But Jarod has already seen to it that door was locked and chained from the outside, so Phil can’t get out. The gang members hear Phil fighting with the door, and descend upon him. They drag him out into the open and threaten to kill him. He tells them they can’t kill him because Jarod is standing above them with a camera, filming everything they’re doing. The gang members look up at Jarod and, still filming, Jarod waves to them. Jarod then confronts Phil with the information he’s gathered about the shooting that left Ken Watanabe paralyzed on one side. It was Phil who set up the confrontation, Phil who made the phone calls, Phil who protected himself with a bulletproof vest while he put Ken in harm’s way, Phil who appeared in all the publicity from the incident, Phil who lied about what happened… Afraid that the gang members around him are going to harm him, Phil begs for Jarod to help him. Jarod asks him why he should help… when Phil had offered no help to Ken Watanabe the night of the shooting. Phil says he didn’t know there was going to be any shooting that night. And Jarod then demands to know, if that was so, why did Phil where a flak jacket? Phil has no answer…and the gang members move in on him. Phil starts trembling and admits loudly, yes, yes, yes, everything Jarod said was the truth. D-Mac looks up at Jarod and asks him if he got all the footage he needed. Jarod gives D-Mac the thumbs-up sign and thanks him for his help. All the gang members then start laughing at and mocking Phil and disburse. Back at the studio, the General Manager has heard everything Phil said and admitted to, and he’s furious. Not only did Phil’s reckless behavior set the station up for a liability suit from the Watanabe family, he also ruined Ken Watanabe’s life and career. The General Manager fires not only Phil, but Chris Rockwell, as well, blaming Chris for allowing such a series of events to have taken place.

IN THE BRONX , following the address and directions given to him by Jarod, Broots finds 1811 North Bushnell. He searches around the perimeter of the building and calls Miss Parker and Sydney’s names. Miss Parker hears him calling, and from the basement lock-up area screams back, “Broots! You moron!” A few minutes later, Broots has the police and an ambulance unit at the site. Sydney is taken to the hospital, and Miss Parker leaves under her own power…. after stealing a cigarette from one of the policemen and inhaling at it with everything she’s worth.

IN SEATTLE , Ken Watanabe is in a park with Jarod and he’s very happy. Jarod has constructed a harness for him that will hold a television-style video camera up against his body and shoulder, so he doesn’t have use his arms or hands. He can manipulate the camera’s functions with a small remote unit he can hold in his left palm. Ken thanks Jarod for giving him the opportunity to get his job, his livelihood, and his self-reliance back. He takes some footage of Jarod smiling and waving at him, and Jarod makes him promise that it won’t appear on the evening news. The episode closes with Jarod standing on a seaside cliff in a yellow flight suit and dark glasses. He’s wearing a parachute on his back and a lightweight headset on his head. Through the headset he can hear the voice of a woman, who’s somewhere below the cliff on the beach. She tells him that if he manages to pull off this jump, he’ll make the record books. Jarod says, “Now that would be news, wouldn’t it?” and jumps off the cliff. When he’s partway, the parachute unfurls behind him.