While I haven’t written about the last couple episodes, it wasn’t because there was nothing to talk about. I actually had quite a bit to say about them, but I was far busier than usual the last little while and it meant that I wasn’t able to write about Jericho until Saturday or Sunday, by which time I was kind of fuzzy on specifics. Some of this column wasn’t written until Friday, but it’s still plenty fresh in my mind. My schedule is more back to normal now so I don’t anticipate further delays in the future.
The marines arriving in Jericho was one of those situations where even though the characters themselves have no reason to suspect, the audience knows something is going to wrong. Jericho would become a very dull show if order was suddenly restored throughout the whole of the United States. It is kind of like how whenever the Voyager crew thought they may have found a way home; something is always going to come along and mess things up before the end of the episode.
So when a bunch of marines showed up offering to help the people of Jericho, I was immediately assuming something would go wrong. And once the marines told us that the country had been united under a single president only 2 episodes after we were introduced to the idea of their being 6 claimants, there credibility was immediately suspect. But it wasn’t until they started talking about how they weren’t sure if they had enough supplies to make it back to their base or not that I realized that they were running a supply scam.
The people of Jericho, of course, weren’t so quick to catch on to the scam. Partly because, unlike the viewer, they had no reason to suspect something was going to go wrong once the marines showed up, and partly because you have to believe that at this point they’re so desperate to be saved that they really wanted the marines to be telling the truth.
I was quite glad that at least some of them caught on pretty quickly though. And it wasn’t just reliant on Jake just happening to hear something on the radio; Jake was suspicious even before that. And the town wasn’t even reliant on Jake figuring it out as it seems like Johnston figured out something was up almost immediately. Sometimes the people of Jericho have been a little too slow when it comes to deductions so I’m glad that that wasn’t the case this week.
I’m not too sure that they made the right call letting the rest of the town believe the marines were real marines. Admittedly, they were faced with a pretty shitty dilemma. If they had told the townsfolk that the whole thing was a scam, it would have had a devastating effect on morale. But given that they kept the tank and the promised supplies aren’t going to be arriving it seems inevitable that the truth will come out sooner or later (either they’ll need to use the tank, or someone will let something slip, or some such); once it does, that’s going to hurt the town’s trust in their ‘government’ (granted only the Mayor is actually part of the government, but many of the unofficial town leaders were in on the decision to hide the truth as well). It’s one of those situations where there isn’t really a ‘good’ choice.
Hawkins was also showing off some intelligence this week. And he apparently actually listened when Darcy told him Sarah couldn’t be trusted. As soon as Robert started kissing Sarah, you just knew he was on to her.
Sam didn’t display the same level of intelligence though. He has to be the most oblivious kid ever. Sure he looked up once or twice when his father’s conversation with Sarah was getting really specific, but once Hawkins said it was okay he just went right back to his coloring book, not a care in the world. Sure, it shows that Sam really trusts his dad, but damn, that is one unobservant kid.
I was surprised at how quickly Sarah was dispatched (though I did anticipate Allison being the one to shoot her once Robert and Sarah began their little scuffle). At the end of last week’s episode, I assumed Sarah killed the assassin because of her own, Hawkins’ specific agenda, but given how quickly she was killed off, and how she still seems to have been working for someone else, I’m not sure if it was her choice to handle Hawkins differently, or someone else’s. Time shall tell, I guess.
In the first half of the season Jericho was pretty slow-paced. A lot of time was devoted to setting up the premise, and giving little teases of information, but not a lot happened. So far the second half of the season seems far more eventful. We’re actually learning quite a lot more about the state of the US/the rest of the world, the plot behind the attacks, character motivations, etc and the plot feels like it is moving forward every week. I’m enjoying it.
