Category: Jericho (Page 7 of 11)

Any excuse to make a Kaiser Chiefs reference, right? Well, actually, by the time the opening credits were rolling in this week’s episode, it was less a prediction than a statement of fact; when Mayor Gray decided to kick the refugees out of Jericho because they couldn’t support them anymore…well, the refugees didn’t take kindly to that development. Next stop: Flying Fists, Nevada!

At first, it’s really tough to buy into Gray’s decision – it comes across as harsh even for a longstanding dickhead like him – but upon reflection, exactly what are the refugees supposed to do, really? A few episodes ago, Jericho’s higher-ups made a decision they thought was right, but now that word’s gotten out that the “Marines” who visited the town were a bunch of phonies, people are rebelling in a big way. Basically, the town’s a powder keg, and it’s hard for cool heads to prevail when the dumbasses are so prone to making sweeping gestures like, say, throwing tear gas cannisters into the building where the refugees are holed up. Even when both parties try to discuss things, everything goes horribly wrong. Gray pulls a gun on Roger (you know, Emily’s husband…who, by the way, seems to have gotten his shit together, psychologically speaking, over the course of the last few episodes) but ends up getting shot himself. One of the refugees breaks into Johnston and Gail’s house, probably in an ill-advised attempt to get Johnston’s attention, and things go awry there as well…although visions of Gail’s head being cracked open by a baseball bat don’t come to pass. It’s here that we’d normally get a full-on “Little House” moment, but, instead, when Gail tries to explain that the reason they don’t let the refugees stay in the empty houses is because they’re waiting for the townsfolk who were out of town when the bomb dropped to return, the refugee replies, “Yeah, well, wherever they are right now, I hope they’re not being run out of town.” Ouch. When all’s said and done, Gail convinces Gray to let the refugees stay in the empty houses…except for Roger, who actually gets off easy by only getting banished from Jericho. And since he won’t let Emily go with him, count on the Jake / Emily relationship to be blazing again soon.

Other moments:

* Dale and his new, bestest lady friend manage to swipe back some of the gas that was stolen from Dale, but, like their maneuvers last week, you know it’s just building to some awful payback. My theory…? Dale will be a swinging single again by the end of the season.

* You know, with the whole subplot about Hawkins’ family, here’s what I’m saying: how can we miss them if they won’t go away for even a full episode? Anyway, he only stops by to catch a glimpse of them before he travels to Nebraska to try and complete Sarah’s work (read, “stop the bad guys who she was working for”). We get no closure on this, but based on the news reports that the townsfolk pick up, it does look like the folks in Jericho are about to realize that Hawkins ain’t actually FBI. Had to happen eventually.

My declaration: best episode of the season so far. My God, it’s so good that, with the look at next week’s episode (which indicates that lots of secrets will be revealed), I almost hope the show gets renewed…and in past weeks, I’ve been a long way from thinking as much, so that’s really saying something.

After taking a week off, “Jericho” returns with an episode that actually packed a bit of emotional heft.

We begin with Hawkins spending his evening doing what any newly-single fella would: digging a grave. He’s interrupted from his task, however, by the appearance of Deputy Jim, who’s inching closer and closer to being immortalized in the Dopey Deputies of Television trifecta alongside Barney Fire and Enos Strate. I mean, you’d like to think the guy’s got some Marge Gundersen in him and that we’re just underestimating him, but any hint of that vibe is depleting at a rapid pace. Jim’s looking for Sarah, but Hawkins hems, haws, and finally claims that she’s headed to New Orleans to visit family; after another drop-by visit, he then admits that his own family has jumped ship…but to help cast away some of Jim’s rising suspicion, Hawkins takes the deputy over to the shelter where Darcy and the kids are staying. There’s a little suspense about whether Darcy might just narc on her husband and get him out of her hair for good…though the implication that Hawkins might pop a cap in Jim’s skull (he grabbed his gun before heading over to the shelter) is so stupid that surely no-one really believed it was going to happen…but she finally decides to stick to the story for the sake of her daughter, a.k.a. the person who actually killed Sarah. And, once again, things end with the presumption that Hawkins will never see his family again. Yeah, right.

Inevitably, the most interesting subplot of the week was the death of April. I didn’t see it coming, I was actually depressed about it (Lord knows there were far more worthy candidates within the town to have shuffle off this mortal coil), and her last scene – when she tells Eric that she likes the name Tracy, even though he knows that their baby has already died – is gripping. We also get to see Dr. Dhuwalia again…and although it gets a little too CBS-y when he’s struggling with his whole “I just want to live a simple life” thing but suddenly comes around thanks to Jake’s pep talk, Aasif Mandvi is a great actor who manages to rise above the schmaltz. Indeed, the only up-side to April’s death is that we’ll see more of Dhuwalia.

The only other notable events of the week were the arrival of the wind turbine in town, Dale protecting his interest in Gracie’s store and, as a result, finally getting some long-deserved action from Skylar (though you can just about count on her shitty friends popping up again so they can convince her that he’s not good enough for her), and more annoyed interaction between Mimi and Bonnie. Okay, those scenes weren’t bad…but, God help us, we also got yet another gag-reflex-inducing scene between Stanley and Mimi, where they finally admit that they love each other.

Seriously, I really can’t believe they killed off April instead of one of those two.

Anyway, the episode ends with ten of Jericho’s best and brightest – including Eric and Stanley – heading off to New Bern to help build more wind turbines. Not a real cliffhanger.

This week, Jericho is invaded by…fake Marines! Hey, thank God Johnston used to be a Marine himself, so he can spot their chicanery…!

Okay, I’m just kidding. This was actually mostly…not entirely (more on that at the end of this blog), but mostly a solid episode. When a bunch of guys and gals in USMC uniforms show up at your town hall driving tanks, why would you question that they’re who they say they are? I mean, especially if you’re getting as close to the end of your rope as these townsfolk are. It might’ve been nice if they could’ve stretched it out for more than an episode – it all seemed to move a little too fast, particularly the love connection between Jake and a sweet young Marine named Maggie – but it was an effectively dramatic episode.

The episode scores bonus points for having not one but two laugh-out-loud lines:

1) Mary Bailey gets up in arms when Maggie the Marine comes looking to borrow a transistor from the bar’s jukebox, but Maggie responds, “You’ve got three Spin Doctors CDs in that thing. I’d be doing a public service.”

2) Later, when in a deeply flirtatious discussion with Jake, she sagely observes, “You’ve really got this brooding bad boy thing down, don’t you?”

Mayor Anderson, ever the gloryhound, makes a point of trying to suck up to the Marines…only to be sorely disappointed when he discovers that they aren’t planning to leap to Jericho’s aid. (He also demonstrates that he can’t hold his liquor very well, sounding pretty well soused even before his mayoral predecessor makes a toast before the detachment heads out of town.) Once Jake discovers that they’re a big bunch of fakers, things fall apart in a hurry, and the USFMC are led to the city limits…in a hero’s farewell? Yeah, reasonably, it’s decided that the townsfolk probably draw more from the belief that the government is back together and working to save the country than they would from the news that they’ve been lied to. Let’s just hope that doesn’t backfire…

Hawkins spends the entire episode battling back and forth with his former partner, Sarah, who is keeping his family at gunpoint until he hands over the mysterious package he’s been holding on to…which turns out to be the missing atomic bomb that Hawkins never set off. Possibly not coincidentally, it was intended for the city which the faux Marines claimed was now the center of the US government: Columbus, Ohio. (Are the producers of “Jericho” attempting to curry our favor by giving such importance to the city where Bullz-Eye holds most of its editorial meetings…?) Although it takes too long to finally come to fruition, by the end of the hour, Sarah’s dead and Hawkins’ family is safe…but his wife’s finally had enough; as she departs with the kids, you can tell by Hawkins’ daughter’s tone that she doesn’t expect to see her dad again anytime soon. Things end on an uncertain note: is Hawkins secretly working for the same people that Sarah was answering to…?

In closing, it’s now official: Stanley and Mimi are EXCRUCIATING as a couple! When they were sniping at each other in the early episodes, that was entertaining…but the hackneyed lines they’re spouting nowadays are only getting worse. Seriously, it’s so bad this week that I feel obliged to quote them directly:

Stanley: Not now, Mimi!
Mimi: Like Hell not now, cornhusker!
Stanley: Cornhuskers are from Nebraska; I’m a jayhawk.
Mimi: Mimi: You drive me so crazy, and you know that I can’t stay here forever, but the truth is…I can’t live without you, either.
Stanley: Really?
Mimi: Yes, really!

Cue the music, the big kiss…and the impending waves of nausea. Thank God this subplot was the only piece of crap in an otherwise exemplary episode. I’m not a guy to wish harm even on fictional characters, but, geez, one of those two really needs to buy it sooner than later…and given that the preview for the next episode (arriving in two weeks) indicates that one of the main characters dies, I might just get my wish.

It’s funny that “Jericho” seems to be taking a coincidentally similar tactic to “Lost” lately, putting a few disparate people into groups and having them react to each other; they did it last week when they went to the flea market, and they did it again this week when they went on a hunting expedition. This time, we get Jake, Stanley, and Mimi…and, yes, it’s pretty obvious which of these people is not like the other. As it happens, though, Mimi’s inability to hunt never really comes into play, what with all the discoveries of dead bodies, the car chase (and subsequent wreck), inclement weather, and whatnot. The real payoff from the sequence, aside from the thieving of the Jericho folks’ vehicle by the masked marauders who ran them off the road in the first place, was that it led to Jake finally opening up to his dad about what had gone on in Iraq…and how he was responsible for killing a little girl.

Hawkins and his lady friend embark on their mission, and although we knew from the last moments of the previous episode that she was preparing to betray him, I think we all suspected that he suspected this would happen. They managed a decent amount of tension as we waited for her to betray him; I was surprised that she didn’t play her hand…and given the finale of the episode, I’m not entirely sure she knew about everything that Hawkins found on the computer.

Emily’s fiancee still seems out of it, but his interest in assisting the others who suffered through the same fate as himself has, if nothing else, made her a bit more sympathetic to what he’s dealing with…and her conversations with them have reminded her just how much he loves her.

The obligatory “Little House”-styled moments – when Ma and Pa Green find Jake’s secret stash of liquor and get a nice buzz going – were nicely done…although when they showed up later to save Mimi’s hide, I kept thinking, “Geez, good thing there’s not much chance of them getting pulled over and given a breathalizer!” I’m not sure if they’re getting better at slipping these moments into the action or if I’m just getting used to them, but they don’t feel as forced as they used to. What does feel forced, however, is the romantic dialogue they saddle Stanley and Mimi with; they’ve got no chemistry whatsoever. At least their last scene of the episode has her responding to one of his comments with, “That’s the worst line I’ve ever heard.”

Well, now that they’ve gotten the flashback episode out of the way, “Jericho” has gotten back into that whole “Little House on the Prairie” mindset a little bit, a tendency that made so many earlier episodes less than thrilling…but while not every major character in town got a decent amount of screen time this week, the ones who did appear tended to have some pretty good stuff in their respective scenes.

Winter’s bad in Jericho, and after Gray Anderson paints the bleakest possible picture of what things will be like over the course of the next couple of months (“Where are the dancing girls?” asked an annoyed Johnston), the townfolk are looking for fuel alternatives…and it’s interesting that when the time comes to send out an exploratory party to a trading post of sorts at a nearby fairground, everyone literally turns to look at Jake. The fact that Jake’s group ends up consisting of his dad as well as Heather and Dale makes for an interesting dynamic that we haven’t seen before, and their expedition was easily the most interesting thing going on in this episode. It’s a decidedly dark moment when the gang realizes that they ain’t kidding around at the trading post about stringin’ up folks who misbehave. Heather finds someone she knew back in the day, and they give them a tour of the joint. The news tower is a cool concept, as are the various constantly-updated lists of what items are most in demand. They’re realizing that the suspects on the list of who bombed the US are shrinking…even as, apparently, the number of US Presidents is growing. (We’re up to six now, it seems.) There seems to be some sort of slavery operation going on at the place, but we didn’t get much of a look at it before Dale pulled his jackass stunt of stealing the machinery they’d been trying to work out a deal for. At first, it struck me as a bit odd that this friend of Heather’s would leap to the cause of our team as quickly as they did…but, then, it WAS a pretty shady operation; maybe they were just waiting for an opportunity, and it finally presented itself. Heather’s departure with her friends led to a decidedly schmaltzy speech – followed, of course, by a sweet embrace between her and Jake – but it was, at least, surprising that she opted to leave like she did.

In other news, Robert Hawkins is dealing with the sudden reappearance of his old partner, who’s observed that Hawkins is in possession of a package of some sort; it seems as though the two of them are on approximately the same wavelength as to their feelings on the organization to which they formerly belonged. Fortunately, we get a surprisingly successful division between the emotional turmoil on Hawkins’ family and the drama with the goings-on with their former employer. Gail Green is still royally pissed off at her son’s new lady friend, Mary, but they finally sit down and talk…which, surprisingly for a show that so often leans toward sentimentality, doesn’t immediately result in a happy ending; the reveal of Gail’s note at the end of the episode was actually rather a sweet moment. Emily Sullivan and her husband got just enough time in the episode to make me twitch; I have absolutely no idea what the hell to make of this revelation that her husband claims to have been taken by a light during his absence.

Still interested. Still coming back next week.