1.1 - Pilot
From CBS.com:
After mushroom clouds appear on the horizon, fear of the unknown propels Jericho into social, psychological and physical mayhem when all communication and power is shut down. The town starts to come apart at the seams as terror, anger and confusion bring out the very worst in some residents. Jake Green, the prodigal son of the town’s mayor, becomes a reluctant hero when a school bus crashes as a result of the explosion.
Originally aired: Wednesday September 20, 2006 on CBS
Writer: Stephen Chbosky
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Recap below the fold… forgive the length, but there is a ton of stuff going on in the first episode.
The Killers’ All These Things That I’ve Done opens the show, which was a great way to keep my attention, as that has recently become a song put in heavy rotation in my home, at the request of my daughter.
Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich) opens the show on a train, heading towards home. Once he retrieves his car from a parking garage, he drives into Jericho, changing the station to hearing a news agency reporting of problems in D.C., specifically how the President President has called an emergency session so that he can give an address about “the issue of global violence.” As Jake drives through Jericho, the radio station continues, “Recent attacks have pushed this administration to take extreme action, raising more fears than it’s alleviated.” It goes on to say that “the President is taking a risky step by confronting what some political observers…..”.
Jake stops at a vegetable stand on the side of the road and is greeted by Stanley Richmond (Brad Beyer), his friend from childhood, and Stanley’s sister Bonnie (Shoshannah Stern), who’s deaf. Stanley and Jake play catch up, Jake finding out about Stanley’s audit by the IRS and Stanley being told by Jake that he’s been in the Army for the last five years. While Stanley seems to believe it, I believe the rest of the audience, like me, questions that statement.
We cut to Gracie’s Store, where Gracie (Beth Grant) is filling Jake in on a family that bought the old Thompson place with cash a few weeks ago, and has been scarce since then. Gracie asks him where he’s been, and this time he responds with playing Minor League baseball. While we’re panning around Gracie’s store, we’re introduced to Skylar Stevens (Candace Bailey) and her friend, trying out the makeup and harassing the stock boy, Dale Turner (Erik Knudsen).
Jake exits the store with a bouquet and cake box in his hands and catches up with his old girlfriend, Emily Sullivan (Ashley Scott) as she’s putting stuff in her SUV and talking on her cell phone. After a brief conversation where Jake lets us know that he’s in town only for the day to see his grandfather, Jake decides to tell her that he’s been in the Navy when she asks where he’s been, and he says exactly what it looks like she’s thinking with “Why do I even bother?”, which is what I’ve been waiting for from one of these characters in dealing with Jake’s ever-changing past. You know, if I were trying to hide what I’ve been doing and where I’ve been, I’d try to stick to the same lie. But that’s just me, I guess.
Jake shows up in front of a large house, with a dog running up to him as if he’s been gone a day instead of five years. He opens the screen door and walks in, startling his mother, Gail Green (Pamela Reed), who grabs him in an expansive hug. His brother, Eric Green (Kenneth Mitchell) follows with his own hug. The reunion with Dad, though, doesn’t seem to be so friendly. Johnson Green (Gerald McRaney), Mayor of Jericho and Jakes’ father, wants to know why he’s there. Jake responds with just wanting for Johnson to sign something and then he’s out of there other than to visit his grandfather’s grave. Gail recommends to Jake that they go out and see his grandfather after Johnson storms out.
At the cemetary, Jake starts mumbling about wanting to have been there, and Gail placates him with the almost cliché, “You would have been there if you could.” To me, that means that Grandpa died sometime within the last five years, in Jake’s absence. It also leaves you with the feeling that Gail knows where Jake’s really been, which grows during their conversation as they walk back to the cars. Gail offers his some money, then argues with him because he won’t tell Johnson where he’s been and what he needs it for. After admonishing her that Johnson can never know, Jake gets in his car and heads back onto the road.
Cut to montage of the citizens of Jericho, starting with a boy (I want to say his name is Woody, but I could be wrong) watching the President being announced to Senate to give his address that the radio station spoke of at the beginning of the episode. That carries over to Heather Lisinski (Sprague Grayden), a school teacher coming back from a field trip with a bus-load of kids that got waylaid on the ride home, which in turn carries over to Emily putting up Welcome Home decorations for the fiancé, Roger, who is due back that evening from a business trip. Mimi Clark (Alicia Coppola)(that IRS lady auditing Stanley’s farm) stops into Bailey’s Tavern, the local watering hole and catches some of the President’s speech to the Senate on the television. That, in turn, segues to Jake driving down a desolate stretch of road listening to the same speech on the radio.
Woody and his little sister remove themselves from the President’s speech to go and play hide and seek outside, where we find his sister counting down from five, tapping her feet in rhythm. Heather loses her cell phone signal while talking to someone at the school, and Jake loses the radio signal in his car as the little girl is searching for her brother. The camera pans up to Woody, standing on his roof, staring at the bright mushroom cloud coming from the West.
Bonnie is also watching the mushroom cloud from her porch, and her brother Stanley comes out of the house, grabbing her to pull her inside. Heather watches a deer, running frantically away from the cloud, which ends up wrecking the bus, just as Dale lets himself into the trailer that he shares with his mother on the “wrong side of the tracks”. The answering machine flashes a greeting to him, signaling that something bad is about to be announced.
Johnson walks down the stairs in his house, seeing a crowd from two of his deputies and their families. Woody is telling Gail what he saw in the west, and Johnson corrals the deputies to head up to City Hall with him to help gather information, speculating that the bomb hit Denver.* Gail worries about Jake, and Johnson promises her that they’ll find him.
Speaking of Jake, he has become mesmerized by the mushroom cloud that he hadn’t noticed that the only other car on the road, coming in the opposite direction, has also become engrossed in watching the cloud that they have drifted over into his lane, causing a head-on collision. Quickly you cut over to the Jericho Sheriff Department [sic], where Johnson is gathering people and trying to sort out what has happened over in Denver. Trying to calm everyone down, speculating that they really have no idea what happened, whether it was an accident or an attack. Gray Anderson (Michael Gaston), Johnson’s would-be opponent in the upcoming Mayoral race and Owner of the Salt Mine comes in and offers his help to Johnson. Johnson thanks him, and recommends that they find any and all Geiger counters that they would have on hand to check the radiation levels. Finding the Geiger counters and testing to see that there are normal levels in the air, Johnson gets an angry mom in the face telling him of the missing kids and school bus somewhere out there on the roads.
Jake’s in his own little world of hurt, injured from the accident as he comes to in his car. He gets out of his own vehicle, limping badly, and goes over to the one that hit him, finding the occupants dead, probably pretty instantly from the looks of them. He decides that he’s got no choice but to hoof it back to town, and starts limping down the road. Johnson gathers the parents of the missing kids around and convinces them that it would be better for them to stay put while the sheriff and his men go out in search of the missing bus load of kids.
Robert Hawkins (Lennie James) introduces himself to the sheriff, offering his services which the sheriff declines, but the fire chief gratefully accepts, while Johnson takes Eric to retrieve the only known Ham Radio in town from the token crackpot who has decided the bomb dropping on Denver was actually aliens descending to earth. Johnson purchases the radio from Oliver (the crackpot) for fifty cents, and they’re on their way back to the sheriff’s department.
Dale leans on the pass-through in his trailer, playing the message from his mother on the answering machine over and over, realizing that he is hearing his mother and her boyfriend’s death. What breaks this cycle that he’s developed is the whole town losing power at once, which Hawkins explains to the fire chief as probably just the drain from Denver blowing out the substations, not an actual attack on the city.
Jake stops as he’s walking down a deserted stretch of road, hearing some kids calling out for him as they run. He follows them back to the bus, which hit the running deer, wrecking the bus and injuring Heather while killing the driver outright. Jake has to do some quick thinking to save a little girl’s life who bruised her throat by leaning over the back of the seat in front of her on the bus, with Jake showing off some of that Army/Navy/Minor League Baseball knowledge that he’s gleaned in the last five years. When one of the kids asked him where he learned how to do that, Jake replies with “Military School”, rounding out his educational background, only missing the Air Force and the Marines. Or the Coast Guard, if you want to nit-pick. Jake realizes that they’re going to have to get everyone back soon, especially the little girl with a juice box tracheotomy, so he does what he can to fix the bus and starts driving back into town.
The sheriff and his men are traveling all through the back roads surrounding Jericho, looking for the missing bus and also Jake. The sheriff sees an obviously wrecked bus, radioing his men that he’s found the bus and they are to keep looking for Jake. The sheriff and one of his deputies realize their mistake when they are ambushed by some prisoners on the wrecked bus, which wasn’t the missing school bus but a transportation bus from a nearby prison. They are shot and the escapees take their uniforms and cars.
Dale knocks on the front door of the Green House and is greeted by Gail. Not sensing anything other than the shock that seems to have effected everyone, Gail invites him in to her living room which is full of people. He shows Gail the tape, and she finds a tape player and plays it to the crowd. When she tells Dale that she’s sorry and that she didn’t know that his mother was in Denver, Dale replies calmly that she wasn’t in Denver, his mother was in Atlanta, throwing everyone in the house into a panic.
Everyone starts going crazy, just as you’d expect human nature to show off in the worst way during a crisis, with people fighting over the gasoline at the station and pulling bags of food and supplies out of the hands of others. Gail finds Johnson and tells him about Dale’s mother, and more importantly, about Atlanta.
Jake worries about the gasoline left in the bus while fighting shock and fatigue, and Heather and he tell the kids that if the bus stops again to start walking back to town, while at the gas station, the fire chief and Gray Anderson show up to help quiet down the crazy mob that had started to take over there. Johnson shows up, and as the town starts to turn against him as the authority figure, Jake rolls in with the bus full of the missing kids. The crowd finally calms when the kids are returned to their families, and everyone that needs medical attention are attended to.
Johnson makes a pretty, St. Crispin’s Day-style speech about all the people of Jericho working together to get through this crisis, not letting their imaginations run wild, and not letting their baser impulses take over to turn everything to chaos again, ending the speech with a very appropriate, “Folks, don’t you break my heart again.” before stepping off of his impromptu soapbox of the bus steps. Gail is talking to Jake, who’s been put in an ambulance as Johnson walks up to tell him that he did a very great thing with the kids on the bus, and that his grandfather would have been proud. Jake, not one for the heart-to-heart with Dad and Mom, tells his mother that “I’m gone a few years and the town goes to hell”.
Meanwhile, Emily who has so far completely missed anything to let her know that things are amiss is on her way to Wichita to pick up her fiancé, Roger, from the airport there. Maybe the road that she’s taken isn’t used all that much anyway, but I tend to pay a little more attention when I’m driving as a female all by myself on a deserted stretch of road. She pulls over because she gets a ton of road noise all of a sudden, and is surrounded by dead birds covering everything in sight. They close the episode with her standing in the middle of nowhere, saying “What’s happening?” as the music floods in from Snow Patrol and the episode closes.
*Don’t argue about geography, obviously either the writers don’t care or didn’t take too much time to research the geography.
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