Wednesday October 4, 2006
103
After seeing a broadcast via satellite from Asia, Jake gathers a group of people together for information gathering. After finding out that there is information out there, Jake suggests having four search parties to go out to get a better understanding what is going on outside of Jericho. The search parties set off in four different directions.
Read Full Recap » (warning: possible spoilers!)Being that I'm originally from a small town in Texas, this episode truly hits home for me. This episode reminded me of the days when my hometown would have real city functions. We'd usually start with parades, followed by many fun events at the city park, and ended with street style diners just as the city folk did at the end of the "Four Horsemen".
It's always amazing how when we're young we so desperately want to leave to larger cities with the hustle & bustle. But always long for the unity & kindness only a small town can give. The city of Jericho really captured that with this episode, for no matter what hardships they encountered they still banded together to get things done for one another.
Jericho emerges from the rain to find that their fears of nuclear fallout are not yet realized. They send out scouts in all four directions to find information and try to piece together what is going on. hide show
Who would have ever thought that nuclear war could be so upbeat? This episode goes from serious to exuberant to depressing and then back to optimistic so rapidly that the viewer is likely to get emotional whiplash. People are worried about radiation poisoning; suspicions are circulating that some townspeople may have murdered one of their own to prevent a panic; the growing realization that food is running out is apparent; and the picture emerging of a widespread nuclear holocaust... Things are grim. In light of all these depressing facts, what could possibly be more appropriate than a hootenanny barbecue?
My main dispute with this episode is the 90210-esque love story between Dale, the unpopular guy, and Skylar, the popular girl (who has the cliche snobby friends who do not approve of their fraternization). Complete with whatever horrid pop-rock music they thought would properly punctuate the teen angst of the moment. I don't care. I don't care about this snobby girl at all, and I sure don't care about the semi-mute Dale, who seems to be a good guy, but has absolutely no personality whatsoever. I don't know why they thought to shove it into the story in the first place - he is a cardboard cutout and she is a cliche. People in Jericho have two reactions to the nuclear bombs: most people just ignore it and kind of wander around as if nothing is going on; a select few start overreacting to everything. No one feels real to me. They aren't weeping and flooding their churches, no one riots or tries to hoard food, nobody starts carrying their gun around everywhere they go... no one acts like the world just changed- this conveys the impression that it hasn't changed, and it doesn't make sense.
I really want to like Jericho. I really want to explore how a group of characters deals with the apocalypse. But, the writers seem to want to focus on interpersonal relationships (like the affair between Eric and Mary or how Jake and Emily sort out their ill defined complications or the tedious Dale and Skylar subplot) and only use the seriousness of the situation as a backdrop for them.
The town receives a disturbing news broadcast while Jake makes a startling discovery outside town. hide show
Once the trapped townspeople are freed from the mine, a frightening map showing possible destroyed cities makes the town's first priority information. The town is cut off and blind, were the bombs an accident or an attack? Is the government intact and coming to help? Four groups are formed to go find out. Jake also finally meets Hawkins. Jake returns far quicker than expected when he discovers that planes, suddenly without fuel, landing space or navigation, have been forced to land anywhere they could, from fields to highways. After actually going inside the planes, he returns with the 'black box' of a passenger plane which (brilliantly done!) gives the residents of Jericho a bit of an outside view of the world, and Jake deciphers background chatter, finding Emily's fiance's plane landed successfully.
Gray, ass that he is, challenges Johnston (loudly) about the med clinic's non-working fallout shelter. To be honest, he has a point – how could a *hospital* not have a working fallout shelter?! If Jake hadn't improvised, a lot of people would be dead now. But Johnston makes a good point too – Gray is trying to turn people against him instead of doing what's best for Jericho.
Then there's Dale – having a brainwave that never occurred to anyone else, checks the train tracks and comes across the missing train… full of food. This highlights Jericho's exact problem, a problem that Jake tried to address with the 'Horsemen': the town still has the mentality that they're going to be 'saved', that this is all temporary and everything will soon return to normal. You can't blame them, it's an unbelievable adjustment to have to make, but they're just not thinking long term. Johnston, of all people, should have thought of it – start sending out parties looking for trucks or trains which could have supplies. He didn't so Dale manages to find enough supplies to (secretly) stock Gracie's store for several weeks.
An important episode, filling in a little more of the bigger picture.
After the rain looking outside Jericho begins. hide show
Jake suggest that they send out reconnaissance mission to the north, south, wast and west of Jericho, in order to get some more information on what is going on outside of Jericho. There's hope that Emily's boyfriend survived. There is brief glimpses that others survived trhough military chatter and through airplane chatter though none fly above. The writing is superb as they give us a little information to answer our questions, like with Hawkins, yet leave us with even more questions like how is the town going to survive as they run low on supplies? We can only glimpse what we hope are the answers to those questions!
After the rain stops people have to get on with their lives. hide show
Jake suggest that they send out reconnaissance mission to the North, South, East and West of Jericho, in order to get some more information. Emily decides not to accompany him and tells him he should have died instead of her boyfriend. This episode only show the results of one of these recon missions, Jake's. He discovers a few crashed planes who tried to use the highway as a landing strip. He cannot find any survivors but he does retrieve the black box. When they listen to it, the plane with Emily's boyfriend is on it and it's mentioned that it landed safely, so presumably her boyfriend is still alive.
After last week, Dale is ignored again by the rich spoilt brat.
Hawkins seems to have some secret plan, after going out in the nuclear rain, he now tells his wife and kids that they cannot go outside.
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