Working Hell: the Centre in The Pretender

One of the most brilliant aspects of The Pretender is how the main characters perceive the Centre:

An everyday workplace.

Obviously, it isn't. It's a secret agency with impressive funds that operates outside legal mandates. Yet Miss Parker and Broots--and a large number of ancillary characters--treat it like a day-to-day workplace. The secrets and lies and assassination attempts, the back-biting and constant maneuvering may be troubling. They may cause interdepartmental tensions. They may lead to torture and Star Chamber-type interrogations. But they are normalized by Miss Parker and Broots' acceptance.

Miss Parker doesn't know better. Broots does, but he complains about the Centre rather the way Dilbert shrugs about his workplace: Eh, that's life, gotta pay the bills. 

Even Jarod, despite escaping the Centre, continues to circle back to it. It is Home, the only baseline of "normal" that he has. He is intelligent enough to question what he knows or thinks he knows. Nevertheless, the Centre, or rather Sydney through the Centre, remains Jarod's most reliable "truth". 

Interestingly enough, Sydney--marvelously played by silver-voiced Patrick Bauchau and Alex Wexo (the latter produces one of the best purely physical performances I've ever seen)--is the only member of the group (Miss Parker, Broots, Jared, and himself) to have both the life experience and inherent perception to observe the Centre clearly. Unlike the other, younger members, Sydney gives the impression that he has willingly sold his soul to what he clearly comprehends to be Hell.

In fact, the Centre is rather like C.S.Lewis's hell in The Screwtape Letters: ostensibly civilized yet filled with self-serving bureaucrats who use and undermine each other in turn.

It is incredibly clever. And very human. In The Pretender, the Centre as a deeply corrupt yet outwardly normalized workplace allows the protagonists to continue to work there. It also makes them natural compatriots. As the only truly decent people in the organization, Miss Parker, Broots, and Jared--and Angelo--are drawn together in orbit around Sydney, the only father figure they fully understand. It keeps them within the structure of the show, yet in constant opposition to that structure.

Very smart writing!