Have I mentioned before how much I love it when sports programming I don’t care about (read, almost all of it) interferes with the airing of shows I actually do care about? Cause it’s annoying. Yes, I know that the various sports/award shows/etc do usually pop a big rating, but I still like to complain about them. On the plus side, “Winter’s End” had almost enough material in it for two episodes, so it balances out. This time.
When April lost the baby, I was actually relieved. In the land of television pregnancy storylines and the resulting babies all tend to be pretty much the same. Once a character has a baby, it’s often just something the writers have to remember not to neglect for at least the first two or three years of its life. By the time the baby is old enough to start being developed as a character, the show’s run is usually over. Of course, a large number of pregnancy storylines come about only because the actor is pregnant, so it’s not surprising that the stories/babies are usually less than compelling.
I did kind of feel bad about cheering fetal death when April herself died a short while later. Even when the operation became about saving April’s life, I didn’t really have any expectation that she would end up dead. So it was pretty surprising that things turned out the way they did. It made sense though. The only thing April going on was her failed relationship with Eric; Doctor Kenchy has far more issues going on than April ever did.
April’s impact on Eric (and Mary) is far greater now that she’s dead. Eric obviously took the death very badly and it’s quite possible that he blames himself for her death. If Eric hadn’t been such a wuss when it came to telling April about his affair their marriage would have ended weeks, if not months sooner, quite probably before April became pregnant. So if not for Eric’s lack of courage, April would be alive right now. It’s not really Eric’s fault but it’s not really surprising that he volunteered for the potentially dangerous trip to New Bern; it not only makes it easier to avoid everyone, it also shows (in Eric’s mind at least) that he’s not a coward anymore.
I think we can pretty much guarantee that we’ll be getting an episode or two set in New Bern before the season is over. When it was just Heather, there was no guarantee of that but now that Stanley and Eric are also in New Bern they’ve got enough Jericho characters to base a plot around (be it uncovering a dark secret, being taken hostage or what have you). I’m guessing it’ll be at least a couple more episodes before we see anything in New Bern though given that Jake, for the first time in the history of the show, did not volunteer for a dangerous and/or unpleasant task and instead he stayed behind in Jericho.
The other storyline in the hospital (the E plot? The sub-A plot?) with Mimi and Bonnie was okay. The writers often seem to forget Bonnie exists so it was nice to see her get a bit of a storyline. I suspect there was a scene or two cut out of this plot for time reasons though. Bonnie was upset about the way Doctor Kenchy was treating her but we didn’t really see much interaction between the two (just the stethoscope thing and Kenchy taking an IV bag from her when she didn’t hear what he said). So either Bonnie really had her heart set on using the stethoscope (which she couldn’t use on account of her being deaf, of course) or else there was a scene with Kenchy being rude/ignoring her that we didn’t see.
I was quite happy with how the Hawkins storyline turned out. I love it when what initially seems like sloppy writing ends up making complete sense, and that’s what happened here. When Jimmy showed up to check up on Sarah, he was a bit surprised that Hawkins was still awake. It would have been very odd for him to be doing a routine refugee monitor housecall after most people in town were expected to be asleep. So when it turned out that Jimmy was actually investigating Sarah’s possible connection to a murder, everything fell into place.
In the other story this week, we had Dale continuing his turn to the dark side. But apparently Skylar gets off on his increasingly thug-like behaviour, so I don’t see him turning things around any time soon. It seems that with each passing week he becomes more and more like his ‘old pal’ Mitch Cafferty.
I think this week may have actually done a bit too much. Unless next week’s episode depends on it or something, they probably could have pushed back the Dale storyline and used the added time to flesh out Mimi and Bonnie’s story and (most likely) spend a little more time on April’s death.
I’ve yet to see the preview for next week’s episode, but the title “One Man’s Terrorist” suggests we’ll be seeing some of the grey area re: the line between rebel/terrorist.
As of about an hour ago, I’m on a week’s vacation. I didn’t find out for sure I was getting my vacation until Wednesday so I don’t actually know what I’m doing for my vacation or where I may go over the next week. But, if I do end up going somewhere, my columns on 24 and/or Jericho may be a bit later than usual. I’ll definitely be recording them if I’m not around so they will go up, it just may (or may not) be posted a bit on the late side.
