Jericho: Four Horsemen review

I started to watch this week’s episode of Jericho, Four Horsemen before the Lost season premier but kept getting interrupted. Fortunately, CBS’s innertube came through for me, and I was able to watch the end of the episode. The online commercials’ volume continues to be annoying, but what can you do.

Four Horsemen dealt with the aftermath of the first potentially radioactive rainstorm after the bombs dropped. After the storm, the leaders of Jericho decide to split up and see how the rest of the world has fared. The rest of the town throws a giant picnic. Jake, who travels northward, discovers a couple of downed planes and confiscates the black box to determine what happened. With a little technological help, Jake is able to play the black box and filter out all of the background noise to discover a hidden message of hope for his ex-girlfriend. That hokiness aside, the recovery storyline continues to develop (albeit slowly), and next week’s preview makes it seem like the military presence will begin to be felt, so maybe the pace will finally start to pick up. So long as it doesn’t turn into a remake of The Stand, that will be fine by me. A few observations:

Observation 1: Hawkins continues to develop as a character who knows a lot more than he lets on. After all, who stores those kinds of weapons and whatever is in the barrel in a public storage facility? I suppose, as long as he pays his bill, they won’t rifle through his stuff. And why is he bricking up whatever was in the barrel?

Observation 2: The majority of the parents of the teenagers in Jericho are either dead or simply unable to control their ungrateful children. I find it hard to develop any respect for the one kid (Dale) who appears to have a thing for the popular girl when she hands him some stale crackers to eat. Gee, that’s the thanks after supposedly saving her from the radioactive rain? Her friends epitomize the saying, "with friends like those, who needs enemies?"

Observation 3: The electricity has gone out, but the beer is still cold, which is great for whatever beer company paid to advertise it– I would imagine that as product placement continues to develop in online media, more specific advertising will appear. If there was a specific beer that paid to be advertised, it didn't do a very good job. One potential problem with product placement advertising has already begun to surface, and I will save my commentary on this for another day. As long as it's not blatant like the Converse ads were in I, Robot, that will be fine by me.

Observation 4: Speaking of radioactive rain and their Geiger counter, the Jericho survivors seem to put a lot of faith into the ability of covering their face in case the Geiger counter indicated something bad rather than nothing. The joke about the filth being what’s left of Denver was kind of funny. Major Dad’s patience with his political adversary has also reached its limit, which is good since I find it hard to believe that kind of petty bickering would survive past a nuclear attack. Jericho's democratic government remains indefinitely suspended.

Observation 5: I counted seven bombs that went off, and putting my recollection of Hawkin’s map from last week’s episode, this means that they hit in Denver, Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, and Philadelphia. The lamp obstructed my view to see if Seattle had been hit, and apparently it hadn’t been, and they are leaving for Heroes to save New York, since that city was apparently not a target in this show.

Conclusion: The show has begun to remind me somewhat of the Morlocks and the Elois from H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine. I still am not sure what the show is about other than maybe rebuilding a society, but hopefully it’s not as boring as that. And the kid discovers the missing train of supplies? Next thing you know they will develop a relationship between the IRS agent and the guy she was investigating (also Jake’s friend).

Tags: jericho, four horsemen, cbs, innertube