Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Jericho—The Day Before

Since Bones isn't on tonight, due to the omnipresence of the annoying juggernaut of American Idol, I decided to drop by CBS to catch Jericho.

For Jericho's return from hiatus, we go back to thirty-six hours before the nuclear blasts. While the backstory provided tonight was interesting, I found it a bit disappointing. I'd hoped we'd find out a bit more about Jake and Hawkins' pasts, given the comments made in the press about this episode. Basically, they didn't tell us much we didn't already know.

As promised, the major storylines had to do with Jake and Hawkins. Jake has a connection with Ravenwood, the mercenary group that gave him trouble a few episodes back when he was trying to scare up medicine for his father. We knew this, though, or strongly suspected it, from his reaction to Ravenwood's appearance in that episode. Hawkins had a connection with whoever placed the bombs--in fact he was supposed to place one himself, but didn't, instead going AWOL to kidnap his wife (ex-wife?) and kids and drag them to Jericho. This wasn't a huge surprise, either. I think it was fairly obvious he was part of some widespread government conspiracy, altough not so obvious that he was actually involved in the bombings.

Other brief glimpses include April going to get the divorce papers, and Mimi's arrival in town. Emily and Roger are shown squabbling because Roger wants to leave Jericho for a big job offer, while Emily does not. This was covered a few episodes ago in Emily's flashbacks, so again, nothing new here.

After the glimpse at thirty-six hours before, the show jumps forward to where we left off, eight weeks after the bombs. Roger's return along with other refugees from the plane crash puts a damper on the growing sparks between Jake and Emily. Roger is obviously suffering from PTSD. Hawkins is trying to deal with the threat from his top secret organization, but it seems to have arrived in the person of his old girlfriend/cohort in crime, whom we met in the backstory section. Now that was a bit of a surprise.