Watching Jericho

Watch the full episode here.

From CBS.com:
Parts of Jake and Hawkins’ pasts are revealed with a flashback to 36 hours before the bombs went off. The day before the explosions, Jake is in San Diego trying unsuccessfully to make an honest living, while Hawkins’ mysterious past is furthered by his association with a woman named Sarah. Emily’s fiancé, Roger, heads to Chicago for a job interview that Emily is not happy about. Meanwhile, in the present day, refugees including Roger and Sarah arrive in Jericho bringing more questions with them.

Originally aired: Wednesday February 21, 2007 on CBS
Writer: Mike Kelley
Director: Matt Earl Beesley

Recap below the fold…

Jericho, The Day Before, TV, television, CBS

We open with the now infamous “See You Soon” on Hawkin’s Toughbook laptop, and see the classic flashback starter….

8 Weeks Earlier

36 Hours Before the Bombs

We’re in an airplane hanger, shades of the first Sneak Peak (Jake’s Past), with Jake and a suit walking through and discussing the airplanes.

Jake gets slammed for not giving the company that he’s interviewing with “Full Disclosure” of his past in Iraq and Afghanistan, and instead of telling the guy about it, he walks out.

Cut to an aerial view of Washington DC, and Hawkins is watching a news anchor discussing the President’s approval ratings dropping, and we get to see the first of the Mystery Woman, Sara, as she comes up behind Hawkins, turning off the TV and kissing him. They discuss the fact that “they” want Hawkins in position when his phone rings, and we cut to a series of nondescript white trucks which lead us into a warehouse and Hawkins with a group of other guys receiving their papers and instructions. Hawkins looks in his packet, and with a wad of cash and keys, there’s a piece of paper with Columbus, OH printed on it. So this was why Hawkins was hiding that barrel while everyone was hiding from the radioactive fallout in 1.2 – Fallout. The de-facto leader of the group tells the men (Hawkins included) to look around, because these are the Faces of the Men that Will Change the World. Sorry, it just lends itself to capitalization.

33 Hours Before the Bomb.

We pan in to Jericho’s City Hall, where Eric is trying to convince Johnston that they should submit Jericho to a Top 5 Towns Under 5,000 contest, which Johnston vetoes as all it would do is bring developers to Jericho to ruin it. Eric counters with the fact that advertisement like that would bring voters out next month, and Johnston dismisses him completely just as Gail and April Green show up to push Johnston into going through with his physical in his office, since he’s been neglecting to come into the clinic for it.

We change scenery to San Diego, where Jake enters a tiki-style bar to tell his friend that the lucky tie he borrowed didn’t seem to work. They discuss Jake’s lack of money, and his friend, Freddie, says that he needs a beer. Whistling at the waitress (Freddie’s fiancé) to get her attention, some catty banter later, and Freddie trying to hook Jake up with one of her sisters, Freddie’s phone rings and he has to step out to take the call.

Next thing you know, Sara’s on the computer, and Hawkins calls her to tell her that things have changed slightly and he’s got to go and pick up his kids. She disagrees, saying there’s not enough time, and he hangs up on her.

Back to the beach, Jake congratulates Freddie’s fiancé, and Freddie asks him to be his best man. After accepting, Freddie pulls Jake to the side saying that he’s got a cargo-running gig for Jake and him. The money’s good, but the gig’s in Afghanistan. Jake slams that idea, and they argue about it, Jake bringing up the horrible things that they saw and did over there, and walks off.

We finally get to see what the good Miss Sullivan has been up to, cutting over to her house and her just-rediscovered fiancé Roger on the phone, wheeling and dealing someone on the other end of the line. Things aren’t all hunky-dory in the house, as Emily and Roger get into a little tussle over whether she should ditch her grading to a sub and head off to Chicago for some Chicago-Style Sex, er, Pizza with him. After some kissing and such, she agrees to go with him.

Jake’s not doing so well, in his trashed-out bachelor pad as Freddie’s fiancé comes over to see if Jake can help her with the fact that Freddie got into it with some “military” kind-of guys, and came back with a black eye and a job that would take him away for two months. She tries to get Jake to convince him not to go, or if all else fails, for him to go with him “over there”, saying that she knows what Jake did for him over in Iraq. Jake responds with the fact that doesn’t seem to matter much anymore, and she drops her own little bomb with the fact that she’s pregnant and has a bad feeling about this deal.

We head back to DC, where we come across Hawkins and Sneak Peek Number 3, where he snatches his kids and wife from the jaws of certain doom and takes them out of DC.

30 Hours Before the Bombs

Jake and Freddie meet on a pier for fishing and beer, with Jake telling Freddie that he’s in on the deal. Freddie’s got a nice shiner on him, and doesn’t seem to want to give up their new employer at first, finally saying that the new employer is an offshoot of Ravenwood, trying to divert Jake by handing him a rough looking envelope with what should be $30,000, with the promise of three times that when they get back from the convoy mission.

Back to Jericho, and April’s leaving an attorney’s office very suspiciously carrying the divorce papers that they found after the house fire. Then we cut over to Mary Bailey’s bar, and Stanley and Mary are betting on a ball game when Mimi, all prim and proper comes in to ask for Mary’s “best wine”, which gets a response of “beer”. Mary gets a booty, er, phone call from Eric, and we leave them to it. Johnston, on the other hand, gets an ear-ful from his lovely wife about how his diet and lifestyle needs to change because the job is starting to wear on his health.

Hawkins gets into it with his estranged family, trying to convince them in his own way that they need to stick with him, then locking them in the cab of the truck while he goes to “do his part”. Way to engender trust in your family, man. Darcy asks if he took Allison’s cell phone, and little Samuel says that he has his in his backpack. I’m sorry, since when to grade-schoolers have cell phones? While I don’t live in DC, I do live in Atlanta, and there’s no way in hell I’m giving my daughter a cell phone at that age. Anyway, Darcy dials 911, and we cut to…

Jake, who has unexpected visitors in his apartment, where we find out that these feds that he’s familiar with want his help in nailing Ravenwood, who are selling weapons all over the place. The feds have obviously been tailing Jake, as they show him some very nice prints of him talking with Freddie on the pier.

Hawkins goes to retrieve Sara from their apartment, and finds nobody home, and that she’s left behind her cell phone when he tries to call it. As Hawkins goes back to the truck, though, he’s greeted by a couple of uniformed police who make him show them what’s in the truck. Getting a little freaked by the drum canister safely secured in the back of the truck, one of the cops tells the other to cuff Hawkins and he goes to the front of the truck, finding the family just before Hawkins clocks him, knocking him cold.

24 Hours Before the Bombs

Bailey’s bar is doing some good business, with Johnston and Eric settling in one of the booths, where Johnston lays out a “plan” for Eric to take over the family “business” of running the town of Jericho. Eric doesn’t seem to be up for this, but doesn’t really make a real case against it.

Jake confronts Freddie with the information that the feds are onto Ravenwood’s plot to sell the convoy supplies, the guns, to the insurgents and they plan to meet up later to sort things out.

Meanwhile, Emily finds out from Roger that the meeting in Chicago is actually a job interview for him, and she’s not really happy with the idea of moving away from Jericho. The words “Screw You” and “Selfish” are bandied about between them, and Emily throws out the ultimatum that if he wants to take the job in Chicago, for him not to bother coming back.

The Hawkins Family settles into their new house, with all new things, and Mom confronts Hawkins saying that tomorrow she’s going to have him arrested. He responds with “A whole lot of things were going to change tomorrow”.

Jake opens his apartment to a bleeding Freddie, who’s been shot by the Ravenwood guys. He does what he can for him, calling 911 as Freddie dies asking him to take care of Anna and for them to get on a bus and get out of there, as Ravenwood’s coming after him next.

12 Hours Before the Bombs

Jake tries to comfort Anna while they’re waiting on their buses, and Jake gives her the money that Ravenwood had paid as a down payment to him and Freddie. Anna asks him to come with her, and he says that he can’t.

Johnston and his wife discuss going on vacation, and as she responds that they don’t book things six years in advance, he throws her for a loop by saying that he was thinking more along the lines of Christmas. She freezes, after answering the phone, and we get to hear Jake on the end of the line saying hello over and over again.

Emily’s having her own phone calls go to voice mail, and she listens as Roger apologizes very well to the answering machine, saying that he was on his way back tonight and that he didn’t go to the interview, preferring to stay in Jericho for the rest of his life if that was where she was going to be.

Jake’s on his way into town, Stanley’s bantering with Mimi about the lack of cabs in town, and she finds out that the man she’s talking with is the man the IRS wants $180,000 worth of back taxes from.

Hawkins sends out a message to Sara, I’m presuming, wondering if she’s gotten compromised and to get to the rally point as she can, while the President is walking onto the Senate floor. The Video Chat icon appears on his desktop, and we see a very battered-looking Sara, and she asks him via text if he delivered the package. When he responds negative, she’s moved from the screen by two burly guys in facemasks who tell Hawkins to deliver the bomb or she dies before disconnecting from the video link. Glass breaks above upstairs and Darcy greets him with a gun to his head just as the bomb in Denver drops.

8 Weeks After the Bombs (i.e., Present)

Hawkins, back at his computer, receives the See you Soon communication as Jake and Emily dance to Sinead O’Connor in Bailey’s Tavern. Just before they kiss, Eric snags Jake to come outside as the refugees stumble into town down Main Street. We see Roger with a horrid fake beard and roughed up London Fog jacket, which Emily pays no attention to as she has him lean on her and leads him into the Tavern. Eric and Mary discuss what to do with the refugees as Roger starts telling Emily what happened to him, ending up in a refugee camp in Nebraska with most of the others that he was with. There were 21 men and 32 women, and Jake goes off to do a headcount.

Hawkins warns Darcy to keep herself and the kids inside because he’s got to go out and sort some things out, and you can tell that between the kidnapping from DC to now, he’s grown into a real human being.

At the bar, Mary’s made a list of the injured that she hands to April, very awkwardly, as her and Johnston enter to help out the refugees. Jake does the noble thing by telling Emily to go to Roger, that he needs her. We also see April talking to one of the refugees which ends up being Sara, our Mystery Woman, we cut just as April asks her if she knows anyone in Jericho, which Sara responds with, “Actually, I do.”