“Once Upon A Blue Moon” is a creepy episode about a child’s killer. Jarod recognizes the MO of a new kidnap case from one he worked on years ago at The Centre. He becomes a criminal behaviorist from the justice department and enlists the assistance of the convicted psychopathic killer from the earlier case to help rescue the kidnapped girl before she is killed by the copycat killer. Miss Parker, Sydney and Broots continue to peruse Jarod under the continued interference from Mr. Raines. The girl who was kidnapped then, was Raines’ daughter. In “Someone to Trust” Jarod falls in love with a woman who sees him as a fall guy for her plan. She wants her dominating husband dead, and she uses Jarod and the Sheriff to execute her plan, although, she thinks it works. Jarod sends a clue to Miss Parker at The Centre leading to a new discovery about Mr. Lyle's past. Mr. Lyle says he wants to better his life but, in the end, we see him again selecting another post order bride. Really good episode.

Episode “Betrayal” is one of the best episodes of the season. Broots is in trouble when he is at a satellite Centre facility where everybody gets killed except him. He is persona no grata and Jarod is the one who helps him. Miss Parker picks up Broots’ daughter and keeps her safe. Jarod is the one who help Broots from getting killed. Really enjoyed this episode, Broots in the spotlight! In “Parole” Jarod pretends to be an ex-con in order to find out about an ex-inmate who dies. His parole officer has something to do with it. Jarod alerts Sydney that the husband of his girlfriend from long ago where he has a son with, is in the hospital, not expecting to live long. His son overhears that Sydney is actually his father. Note – Some nice Jarod/ Sydney moments and noteworthy is that Miss Parker absent the whole episode.

Well, from here on out it will be a bit more difficult as I did not take notes after episode 6. In “Homefront” Jarod takes on the identity of an arms dealer to help a mother get her children back from her gangster ex-husband. This guy is a real bastard, who lets his kids believe that their mother is dead. Same that was done to Jarod when he was a little boy, by the Centre. Jarod steals Mr. Lyle’s car and destroys it, sending the license plate to Lyle as proof. Miss Parker doesn’t even pretend to find this horrible for Lyle. In “Flesh & Blood” Jarod becomes an ATF agent to help Sydney's son after an Appalachian militia kidnaps him and other educators helping at a local village for ransom. Sydney arrives to help but so does the Centre. One of best episodes this season, guest starring Andrew Robinson. In “Murder 101” Jarod becomes a professor of a criminology class whose former professor has mysteriously gone missing leaving behind his pregnant wife. He leads the class to explore and reveal the sinister truth of his disappearance. Mr. Parker and Brigitte are engaged!

Episode 10 “Mr. Lee” is a clip show which I normally am not so fond of. This one however, was a good mix of present and past scenes. A blind mystery man called Mr. Lee (James Hong) interviews seven people whose lives Jarrod had touched in the past for better or worse in order to find him. Parker and her team try to find out who Mr. Lee is working for. What was extra fun was that Mr. Lee’s assistance, Anna (Mia Korf), was working for Jarod. He had helped her in the past and so she did the same for him now. “The Assassin” marks the first appearance of Thomas Gates or Tommy (Jason Brooks). When Miss Parker first meets him, she only sees him as an annoyance. Jarod finds Rachel (Jessica Steen) being menaced by a man in a bus station restroom and comes to her rescue. She's surprisingly ungrateful at first, which turns out to be because she's afraid the interference will cause the villains to retaliate on her children. Rachel's children have been kidnapped by a rogue CIA agent to secure her co-operation in an assassination. We also we see Mr. Parker’s and Brigitte engagement card, which Miss Parker is far from happy over.

In “Unsinkable” we see Argyle return. Argyle is in need of Jarod’s help again. Argyle owes money to Sonny Faddis, a local loan shark. Argyle wanted to take his dad to see the pope, he is a big fan of the pope. Miss Parker, Sydney and Brooks, returning from Hawaii on a Centre jet, get delayed in a storm and Miss Parker tells Sydney about her feelings for Thomas, the man doing some work on her house. Thomas finds a sealed door and wants to reopen it, Miss Parker (of course) knows of this room but wants it stayed sealed. Thomas decides not to listen to her. In “Pool” Jarod intervenes to stop a young woman named Billie (Jennifer Garner), from shooting a flamboyant pool hustler named Fontenot (Tim DeKay). Learning that Fontenot is suspected of having murdered Billie's adoptive father, Marvin Dupree, Jarod promises to help uncover the truth. Miss Parker, at her father's insistence, introduces her boyfriend Tommy to her family. Miss Parker's father marries Brigitte. Funny moment when Thomas asks Mr. Lyle during dinner about this thumb! Things get awkward at the dinner very quickly. Lyle himself is okay with it, but it causes everyone else to just stop talking for a beat. Note - Some fun and twisted moments between Miss Parker and Brigitte.

A great episode is “At the Hour of Death” where Miss Parker collapses and struggles to survive internal bleeding from a perforated ulcer. Jarod's survival skills are put to the test when he crashlands in the Yellowstone wilderness. Young Jarod, Young Miss Parker meet a girl in the Centre who is ill. This girl is Faith, Faith Parker, a sister of Miss Parker. Faith is very ill and doesn’t make it. While they are both experiencing life threatening experiences, they both remember this incident from their childhood at The Centre involving a dying girl named Faith. A very emotional episode! In “Countdown” Jarod needs to find the father of kid who needs a kidney transplant. The father is in jail and appears to cooperate, but he just wants to escape. Jarod decides to operate on him himself in a motel room to save the boy.

In “PTB” Jarod helps a late-night talk radio show host Neil Roberts (Bryan Cranston), who frequently discusses government conspiracies. Neil has been receiving a series of creepy messages in the mail, and the author of the messages comes to his studio armed with a shotgun and attacks him while he's on the air. Jarod offers his assistance in identifying the attacker and preventing him doing further harm. Tommy Gates tells Miss Parker he has finished the renovation job that brought him to Delaware; his next fixer-upper is in Oregon, and he wants Miss Parker to leave the Centre and go with him. Miss Parker struggles with her loyalties, and at first breaks up with Tommy before realizing that it's time to put herself first for once. She tells Tommy that she will go with him, warning him first that with her troubled past she's going to require some renovation work herself. Note - Another fantastic episode if you ask me.

Another great episode “Ties that Bind”. Especially the Miss Parker & Thomas thread is very interesting and nearing closure! While returning a boy to his father, Jarod witnesses the yacht he and his father live on, explode, and one of the detectives is being paid off by two men. Discovering a law firm is tied to the boy's father, Jarod investigates and discovers the father was an informant set to testify against one of the law firm's attorneys. Meanwhile, Miss Parker is hesitant to tell her father she wants to leave The Centre and move to Oregon with Thomas. In “Wake Up” Shortly after the events of the last episode, Miss Parker awakens to find Thomas murdered on the front porch. Devastated, she throws herself - and Broots and Sydney - into investigating who did it. With some help from Jarod - whom she surprisingly agrees to meet with face-to-face in a diner - she is able to trace the case to a seedy local car garage. However, the investigation is stalled when her star suspect is found dead in an apparent suicide, and her father instructs a Centre sweeper team to "clean it up." On a phone call with Jarod, Miss Parker vows she will wait a bit before discovering who at The Centre is responsible and avenging his death. Note – This episode is, for me, the best episode of the season. Seeing what Miss Parker endures, not believing her beloved is dead, the possibility that the Centre is involved, top notch!

Note - The next episode is a cross-over episode with the show The Profiler! In episode “End Game”. In the Profiler TV show the story is concluded in “Grand Master. Profiler Samantha Waters (Ally Walker) works the same case as Jarod, who pretends to be a police detective. This case is very important to Jarod where a young boy is kidnapped, it reminds him what happened to him as a boy. Samantha Waters almost immediately senses that something is off. The chess prodigy Bryce Banks is kidnapped but he is not the first one. Upon finding the kidnapper's hideout, the team discovers the two boys are still alive, having been kidnapped and brainwashed by a man they call Father, and being renamed Joshua. Bryce is rescued and returned to his family. Meanwhile, Miss Parker is asked by her father to investigate Brigitte's strange behavior. Miss Parker witnesses her taking injections, leading her to believe she is a drug addict. Investigating on Miss Parker's orders, Broots discovers her and Lyle together. Further testing on Brigitte's syringe reveals she was taking fertility drugs. Mr. Parker reveals Brigitte is pregnant, stunning to Miss Parker.

Profiler episode: Grand Master – Season 3, episode 19:

Sam continues to study the case of Bryce Banks, a 13-year-old chess prodigy, whose life might still be in danger and deals with 'Pretender' Jarod (impersonating a police detective named Doyle) who is looking after Bryce. Her fears are proven right when Bryce disappears. Sam and Jarod suspect the enigmatic Father (Ronald Dain) is using the boy in his revenge plans by killing all the members of a top-secret project 20 years before involving brainwashing.

This concludes the storyline.

In “Qallupilluit”, In an attempt to find his father, Jarod poses as a climatologist and journeys to an arctic research station, unaware that it's operated by the Centre. Shortly after his arrival, murders begin to occur. There is a secret lab there they have been experimenting with DNA, Jarod’s DNA. The leader of the expedition is a friend of Jarod’s father. Before he dies, he tells Jarod where to go to find his dad. In the season finale, a two-parter called “Donoterase”, Jarod and his father (George Lazenby) are finally reunited, but assassins from The Centre are on their trail. Jarod and his father later team up to rescue the ‘Jarod’ clone created by the Centre's "Project Gemini", and Miss Parker learns more about her mother's murder. Raines plans on assassinating Mr. Parker, but Miss Parker catches the bullet for him, leading to Brigitte capturing Jarod. Jarod’s dad escapes with the clone boy who looks exactly like young Jarod. Note – Great television this two-parter, great show.

Final Word:

The Pretender has all the ingredients for hit show, but somehow, if got not passed the 4^th season which still amazes me till this day. Anyways the 3^rd season is top notch again, we get more and more answers about the Jarod’s family, about Miss Parkers family, about the Centre. Exciting stories, great acting, wonderful guest stars and so on. I think this is my 7^th watch of the entire show, perhaps even 8 or 9, it just keeps being interesting, entertaining, provocative. It truly is a unique show in terms of the premise. It should have been a 7-season success story, instead we get 4 seasons and only 2 out of 3 movies, such a shame! I rate this season 8.5/10.

Help:

Regarding me not having notes after episode 6, I think 35% is from my mind, rest I searched online, was difficult to find websites which have lots of details. Yes, I can remember the pretender storyline but it is in the details which makes this show so interesting. What I have found was on these sites below, which I am very grateful for.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/ThePretender

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Pretender_episodes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Profiler_episodes#ep60

IMdB – The Pretender – Season 3

Screencaps taken from IMdB