What I Watched - ‘Jericho’ Special Edition
Posted by kittson on 20 Feb 2007 at 7:20 pm | Tagged as: Television, Review, What I Watched
Check your supplies and set your DVR: this Wednesday Jericho returns from a three month hiatus with twelve new episodes. The story of a small Kansas farm town that finds itself cut off from the rest of the world after a series of nuclear explosions obliterate most major U.S. cities, it’s CBS’s answer to Lost, only these survivors don’t need to buy plane tickets to find themselves stranded on an island surrounded by an ocean of apocalyptic chaos.
Although Jericho isn’t as slick as a Lost or a Heroes (there’s the sense the producers didn’t want to sink too much money in the gloomy concept), it does have the high tension of a 24. It has a unique combination of war-torn bleakness and wholesome, small-town existence; here the same people who baked casseroles for their neighbors now fight each other in the street for food and fuel.
Like Lost, this show is chock full of mysteries. The mayor’s prodigal son (I’m mixing Biblical metaphors, but CBS has never shied away from God), Jake (Skeet Ulrich), coincidentally returns to Jericho after a cryptic five year absence mere hours before the bombs go off, armed with some serious combat and medical skills. Of course, there’s also the good son, Eric (Kenneth Mitchell), who worked beside his father throughout Jake’s absence and is unwilling to give up his status as the favorite son to his hero-like brother. Questions: where was Jake, and why did he come back?
Hawkins (Lennie James), a man claiming to be a former policeman, with a secret high-tech communications room in his basement, moved his family to town a couple of weeks before the explosions. Questions: was Hawkins privy to special intelligence, or was he involved in the bombings? How much of the U.S. still remains outside of Jericho? This week’s episode is something the geeks call an “origins” episode. “The Day Before” (a hat tip to the eighties mini-series) flashes back to the day before the bombings and promises to answer some of these questions.
If you missed the first half of the season, all episodes of Jericho are available on iTunes.
