April collapses at work and goes into premature labor. She's suffering from placenta previa, and both she and the baby will die without surgery. Tenchy is fetched, but he's still all ptsd and boozy and refuses to operate because he's tired of people dying when he tries to help them. Finally they convince him to try, but things are bad with April and he walks out in the middle of the surgery. Jake talks him back into the OR, where they have limited supplies, crappy tools, and are operating under lantern light. Jake's acknowledgement that Tenchy probably can't save April seems to give Tenchy an entirely different outlook on the situation--as if he just needed somebody to admit that he's only human, he can't work miracles, and that death under these horrific circumstances isn't his fault. And April does die, sadly, and so does her unborn baby. This sequence walked that line where it seemed to want to dive into unbearably melodramatic waters, but somehow it never quite did. While it would be unrealistic for mom and baby to have survived this ordeal, I expected one of them to make it out alive. In fact, I was expecting April to survive, leading to another painfully torturous subplot with her and Eric getting back together because he realized how much he loved her when she was on her deathbed. But they've eliminated that as a possibility. There'll probably be a painfully torturous subplot with Eric and Mary, but killing April and the baby seemed like a brave move on the part of the writers to me.
The windmill arrives from Newburn. Mayor Gray finds himself in a bad position when he asks what it would take to have more built, and the Newburn folks demand 500 (later 700) pounds of salt and ten percent of the spring harvest. Jericho needs the food, but they also need power. In the end, a deal is struck, but it involves ten men from Jericho, including Eric and Stanley, heading off to Newburn. I wonder if the show will follow their parallel story in future episodes. If so, maybe we'll find out what's up with Heather. Jake is concerned about her, to the point of leveling threats. So am I. Well, except for the leveling threats part. This is obviously setting us up for some more Tension with the Outside World, which makes sense. Jericho can't remain a haven forever.
Tonight's Music:
David Gray--Hold on to Nothing (played during the operating room scene)
Coldplay--Til Kingdom Come (played at the end)
(Music info thanks to the CBS Jericho forums cause Google refused to google.)
Jericho at iTunes:
