Like many families, the Pritchard gang is not normal. When SECOND CHANCE begins, Jimmy Pritchard is a disgraced former sheriff who is content to drink himself to death and sleep with prostitutes…while in his 70s. His son, Duval Pritchard, is an FBI agent raising a teenager daughter as a widower, trying to deal with his father and keep his less emotionally mature sister together.
But there’s an opportunity to change when Jimmy Pritchard is killed after stumbling into a robbery in his son’s house. Only Jimmy isn’t going to get a chance to die like everyone else, because Otto Goodwin helps to bring him back to life in order to save his terminally ill sister, Mary. Resurrected with a younger body and enhanced strength, Jimmy gets a second chance at life — but will he take it? During a visit to the SECOND CHANCE set in Vancouver, Rob Kazinsky and Tim DeKay spoke to journalists about their characters’ dynamics and what’s in store for the Pritchard family.
Will Jimmy Be a Different Father and Person This Time Around? “I don’t think he will be,” Kazinsky admitted, “I think it would be incredibly boring if this experiment made him a decent person and that’s the whole point of this show. I mean, yeah, you got a second chance, but [it’s a] nature versus nurture kind of thing. Seventy-five years being a pretty horrible human being is not going to change just because suddenly you have a young, strong body. There are mistakes you want to make the most of, but nature will out. And you’re still going to be, essentially, selfish and spoiled and shortsighted.”
Will Duval Be Suspicious About Who Jimmy Is? In a word, yes. Jimmy isn’t hiding the fact that his name is Jimmy Pritchard, even if he’s not coming right out and telling Duval he’s his father in a younger body. But what happens in the pilot is going to make Duval very suspicious about who Jimmy is. “There’s something about this guy,” DeKay says. “DuVal thinks he’s valuable, I think. So, I think he’ll use him for that. But there’s something more that eats at him.”
Despite Duval’s Curiosity About Jimmy, He’s Still Not Eager to Have Him Around. “Here’s the thing, right now [Duval] doesn’t want the guy in his life because ‘I don’t know who you are. I do not know who you are. I can tell you have had a dark past. I don’t want that. I don’t want that near my house’,” DeKay said. “If he ever finds out who he is, that’s all the more reason I don’t want you in my house. So no matter what, he doesn’t want him near him, but Pritchard has a strong desire so there is great tension there.”
Will Jimmy Be Using His Younger, Attractive Body to Party and Have Fun? Despite heading to a party and hooking up with a beautiful woman the first time he escapes from the Goodwins, Jimmy won’t be doing that “as much as you would think he is,” Kazinsky said. “He’s still kind of finding out who he is again [and] his major gripe here is that he is tethered to Lookinglass and Mary and Otto and he can’t leave them. He has to come home to them every single time [to have his body be rejuvenated] and he dies without them. He didn’t ask to be brought back. When he was murdered he was, he was you know a tired man, he was ready for the end. He didn’t fight too hard, he was just ready to go, he had had a pretty torrid last 20 years of his life. He didn’t ask to be brought back and yet he has and he doesn’t have a choice in it and I think there is an enormous amount of anger there. That anger manifests in a, not in a f*** you attitude toward Looking Glass, [but more] in terms of ‘I’m going to go and do what I feel I should be doing, what the right thing to do is, I’m going to go and help my kids I am going to go spend time with my grandchild and I am going to go and solve some damn crimes, because I am justice’!”
Will We See Flashbacks Between Older Jimmy and Duval? “We do,” Dekay confirmed. “One [reason is] because Philip Baker Hall is so great. There are flashbacks where you see the two of us. Obviously not [long ago] flashbacks, but just recently, so that Philip is in the picture. Literally.”
How Will Jimmy Work with Lookinglass and the FBI? “Solving crimes would be a lot easier if the law enforcement wasn’t restrained by law,” Kazinsky admitted. “And, you know, when somebody has done something awful and they get off on a technicality, that’s always a horrifying thing to have to sit there and watch. And when you have the ability and technology to find these people and see what they’ve done and you have somebody outside the law like Pritchard who is able to dispense the true ideal of justice, then you end up with a very powerful, megalomaniacal and dangerous vigilante….When you put that kind of power — which is the only super power that exists in the real world — in the hands of somebody [whose] morals are questionable, that’s when Duval becomes more and more important. And the straight edge side of the law does become important, to balance out this vengeful spirit that Pritchard is.”
How Are Duval and His Sister, Helen, Like Their Father? “Helen is….it’s like TWINS,” Kazinsky explained. “You’re [got] Arnold Schwarzzengar who got all the good and you’ve got Danny Devito who got all the bad. And in that respect, Duval got all the good sides of Pritchard. He got all the responsibility, the strength. And Helen got all the negatives. She got the real bum end of the deal from Pritchard. I think Helen is his real kind of guilt. I think that’s the one thing that he really needs to fix more than everything else. Or not even fix, just help and apologize to. Duval was strong enough to kind of deal with things on his own and Helen was not. And I just think that Prichard owes her a lot more than he owes Duval.” DeKay explained that “[Duval and Helen] need each other, they need each other greatly, she’s a mess, a wonderful mess. They both are in their own way because they were raised by a monster…But now because I’m a widower and have been for a long time, we need each other simply because we’re siblings and you need your siblings at some point, and if you don’t, it’s sad. They’re always in each other’s lives, and they love each other. There’s no judgment there. So yeah, she will continue to be in his life.”
What Kind of Influence Will Mary Goodwin and Jimmy Have on Each Other? “They certainly have a balancing effect on each other,” said Kazinsky. “One is a straight laced as possible and one is a jagged edge. He shows her how to live and she shows him how to exist and those are two different things.”
What Will Jimmy’s Relationship With Otto Be Like? “Not fun,” Kazinsky admitted. “They are polar opposites. You have somebody [like Otto] who is so regimented and rigid and obsessive compulsive. When you are that wild [like Jimmy is] against something so staid…you know Mary can adapt but Otto, he actually cannot adapt and there is a little bit of nemesis happening there. I don’t think Pritchard appreciates how dangerous Otto can be.”
Is Enhanced Strength Jimmy’s Major Super Power? “He is not done evolving and he will continue to evolve throughout the course of the show,” Kazinsky warned. “The way he is now is not the finished product. There is a reason there was an original title to this [“The Frankenstein Code” and that’s] where he is kind of going to end up. There is a monster inside.”
Don’t miss the series premiere of SECOND CHANCE on Wednesday, January 13 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.
