The Checklist: Tarzan: The Epic Adventures (S1 Ep5) “Tarzan and the Scarlet Diamond”
Somebody really wanted Joe Lara to be Tarzan. Maybe it was Joe Lara himself. Maybe it was producer Micheline H. Keller. Maybe it was a combination of the two.
Lara’s first chance at playing the iconic character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs was in the 1989 made for TV movie, Tarzan in Manhattan… a movie intended to be a backdoor pilot for a more non-traditional Tarzan series that never happened.
Lara would get a second chance to play Tarzan in 1996 for the short lived syndicated series Tarzan: The Epic Adventures and it is that series that I randomly selected an episode from to be put to The Checklist test…
#1. Does the show have a quality open?
The open features a big leather-bound book and a narrator telling the backstory of Tarzan as the illustrated pages are turned, from Tarzan being orphaned and raised by apes, to his time as the Earl of Greystoke, to his return the jungle ten the live action scenes from the show including the obligatory Tarzan swinging on a vine shots kick in. And this is all accompanied by the beat of some drums and a majestic opening theme. 1/1
#2. Does the show have a premise with legs?
The adventures of Tarzan have stood the test of time and have been featured in novels, comic books, numerous movies and television series for decades. So the fact that Tarzan: The Epic Adventures only lasted 22 episodes can’t be blamed on the premise per se, but quite possibly the execution of the premise or like many things in the entertainment world, timing is often everything… was the world just not ready for another Tarzan series in 1996? If it wasn’t, nobody told the Wolf Larson starring Tarzán series that was revived just months after Joe Lara’s Tarzan: The Epic Adventures aired its last episode in May of 1997. 2/2
#3. Were there any notable guest stars?
Brittney Powell of To Be the Best and Airborne fame plays Emma, a pilot who crash lands in Tarzan’s neck of the jungle on her way to rendezvous with Dr. Albert Verpa. Emma is a headstrong and independent woman, who is reluctant to accept Tarzan’s help and even more reluctant to believe the renowned Dr. Verpa is a world class shit disturber that is causing a war between two tribes (one of which is a tribe of Lizard people that Verpa is playing like a fiddle)… but Emma eventually comes around and accepts the facts in front of her and helps Tarzan take down Dr. Verpa and end the war between the two tribes. And by the end Emma wants Tarzan (who even slips into some more civilized garb in honor of her going away) to go home with her. Spoiler alert… Tarzan opts to stay in the jungle. 3/3
#4. Did the animals get involved in the action?
Tarzan’s trusted ape friend, Bolgani, looks after the wounded Emma while Tarzan is out trying to figure out the whole mess between the Ungalli tribe and the Lizard people and do his best to bring peace to the jungle… I am not if Emma was more surprised that she woke up with an ape caring for her or that she woke up in a tree house. 4/4
#5. Did we get to hear the famous Tarzan yell?
The intro kind of spoiled this one, because if the iconic Tarzan yell was going to be featured, it would have been featured in the intro for sure… Tarzan does yell but instead of the famous yell, we get more of an animal roar out of Tarzan that really doesn’t compare… if people didn’t watch this series because they didn’t get to hear the Tarzan yell, it would not surprise me… it would be like having a Batman without any gadgets or a Superman who couldn’t fly. 4/5
- Final Score = 4/5 (80%) “Tarzan and the Scarlet Diamond” happens to be the highest rated episode of the series on IMDb. Now while IMDb ratings (and any Checklist final score) aren’t the end all and be all it is interesting that this episode that teases some Tarzan romance with Emma, is the highest rated. This leads me to another glaring omission from the series, based on my research Tarzan’s usual love interest, Jane, is not a regular part of the series… that could be another reason the series didn’t gain the traction it needed to succeed. Another possible issue the series faced was the fantasy elements that were incorporated… a society of lizard people for example. Were the series creators fixing something that wasn’t broken in order to be different than the previous depictions of Tarzan and/or compete with the other series competing for syndicated TV time? Maybe Emma should have been a series regular… I wouldn’t have complained about more Brittney Powell.
As a big fan of the original Tarzan books, I was very glad they didn’t have Tarzan yodeling like he always does in the movies. It’s ridiculous and makes no sense. The animal scream he does a couple of times in the show is closer to the victory cry of the bull ape that he does in the books, although they didn’t manage to make it terrifying like how it was described. Either way, I’ll take it over the yodel.
In the same way, I was glad to have an intelligent Tarzan who speaks perfect English (one of Tarzan’s defining traits being his facility with picking up languages). Unfortunately, Joe Lara just didn’t have the charisma necessary to portray the character in a compelling way, and the generic fantasy scripts didn’t help, even if they did try to pull in ideas from the books.
As far as the love interest angle, the show vaguely takes place during the second book, at a point where Tarzan and Jane clearly had an interest in each other, but had gone their separate ways (they would be married between the second and third books). For the show, this meant they could cycle in different love interests in each episode. The show ended with brief glimpses of Jane (but never her face), and the suggestion that she would be involved in the second season, which of course never came to be.