Jericho: Pilot Episode
What a wonderful place Jericho is, it’s like the idyllic small town. The perfect place to meet the apocalypse? Or perhaps the sort of place that would have you wishing you’d been incinerated instead?
Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich) returns home after years away to claim his inheritance and try and put his life in order. Encountering old acquaintances who ask where he’s been he responds with a different answer each time, so it’s clear he has a secret past. After failing to get his money from his father, the town’s Mayor, he heads back to the big city. And that’s when things get a bit more interesting. But only a bit.
After the opening ten minutes of family squabbles and a soundtrack that suffers from a severe case of bland rock overkill, I was starting to lose interest. Thankfully, this is when a nuclear explosion goes off destroying Denver. Not that I have anything against Denver. It’s just that if that hadn’t happened, I think I might have fallen asleep.
After checking that the radiation is below danger levels, the Mayor organises a search party for his son and a missing school bus. He attempts to calm the concerned parents only to be told, “That’s easy for you to say, you don’t have a child out there.” Cue clichéd cut to Jake.
Both Jake and the bus crashed, but not into each other. When two kids from the bus find Jake walking along the road (somewhat the worse for wear), they lead him back to the bus. When they get there they find one of the children is having trouble breathing. With a penknife and some straws, Jake saves the girl, so either a) he has some medical training in his mysterious past, or b) he’s a big fan of ER.
Meanwhile in town, things seem to be taking a darker turn with a near riot at the gas station that put me in mind of a scene from Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. What Tom Cruise didn’t realise was that all he needed to do was give a stirring speech and everyone would calm down. Gray Anderson, the Mayor’s rival, gives the speech. When the Mayor comes on the scene, he finds the ire of the crowd now turned on him. Luckily Jake picks that moment to arrive with the school bus. Being a politician, he can’t resist giving a speech, this one is the kind of over sentimental bullshit that had me reaching for a sick bag.
While this episode has Jericho coming across as a modern day Waltons with added holocaust there are hints that the series may turn a little darker. At least one other bomb has gone off in Atlanta (thankfully, a kid’s mom was on vacation there and picked the moment of detonation to call or we wouldn’t know about it!) Plus a second bus is found, this one a prison transport and it’s empty. Lets hope the escapees stir things up a bit
