I think Jericho took a step backwards this week. While there were some promising developments and some good characterization, there was an awful lot of stupid to be had in this episode; I’m looking at you tied and bound cops in the trunk!
Though I kind of doubt it, I’m hoping we’ve seen the last of the escaped prisoners (we were never told how many there were but I’m willing to bet it is more than 2). Last week I worried that storylines involving the prisoners would be lame and this week those fears were confirmed. Even though it seemed pretty implausible in a town of 5000, I was willing to accept that the whole shock of finding out about nuclear attacks was enough to keep Emily from realizing she did not know either of the cops (in a town that size, there probably aren’t a whole lot of cops, and people are going to know them on sight). The prisoners knocking out the two cops and then leaving them bound in the trunk made much less sense however. Based on their actions at the farmhouse, the don’t seem like they would have qualms with killing someone, but let’s just say that for some reason the prisoners didn’t want to kill the police officers. Why then would they take the cops with them? Did the prisoners want someone to torture in case of boredom? Were the cops supposed to be emergency rations? The fact it isn’t addressed in the least suggests that the writers wanted the officers to still be alive but couldn’t be bothered to come up with a better idea as to how to keep them that way.
I did enjoy the fallout preparations aspect of the story but there was at least one glaring plot point left unaddressed with that as well. They had everyone who had take shelter in their basement if they had one, meaning the only needed to find room for the people without basements (which, based on some of the numbers used, seemed to be less than 1000 people). If space was such an issue with the shelters, why didn’t they have some people double up in some of the basements. We never got any indication that more than the immediate family was staying in any given basement so, as far as we know, there should have been plenty of room to accommodate the others without the need to stick a bunch of people in a mine and collapse the entrance (presumably getting the people out of the mine will be a big part of next week’s show). Admittedly they were pressed for time when the fan broke but surely someone would have mentioned using up some of the extra basement space long before they were rushing off to the mine.
I’m curious as to how they will deal with the fallout aftermath. I’m kind of suspecting that (for some reason or another) there will be little or no fallout. I’m certainly no radiation expert but if the worst case scenario they described came to pass, it seems like it would be virtually impossible to effectively decontaminate the area to safe levels without some severe radiation exposure in the mean time (and that is assuming that somehow the fallout is a one time event). I’m sure will get an indication as to their plans on that front sometime next week.
We also found out this week that there were indeed a number of cities hit (or at least it was implied. I suppose it is possible that the message could be wrong or the tacks could be marking something entirely different that involved Denver and Atlanta). We saw the first few of them (Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Diego) and we know that there were at least 3 more (given that Hawkins picked up at 3 more thumbtacks before the camera cut away). Assuming whoever sent the morse code message is being truthful/accurate, then there’s probably some sort of continental communications still up running (unless the person sending the message knew about the attack and targets before the explosions occurred).
