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Well, we agree on a lot. Check out my review Stephen!
Remember in a previous review that I mentioned that I’d rather see a buddy cop movie with Hawkins and Hake rather than the entire Jericho cast? Well, this episode appears to be the start of just something like that. The focus of the episode is with Jake holding Hawkins at gun point and forcing him to admit who he really is and what he’s doing in Jericho. The confrontation was spurred by a radio message that the terrorist used fake FBI credentials and the Sheriff remembered that Hawkins had flashed him an FBI badge early o. What’s funny is that the Sheriff goes directly to Jake for help and when Jake says that he wants to talk to Hawkins alone the sheriff just lets it happen. Isn’t he the sheriff? Shouldn’t he do the talking? Of course he should, but he’s not as interesting in this scenario, and of course from a character perspective I think the sheriff realizes he’s no match mentally or physically to Hawkins.
So, Hawkins tries a couple of moves on Jake to escape and Jake was always a couple of steps ahead gaining Hawkins’ respect. Hawkins warns Jake that if he reveals the entire story that Jake will have no choice but to become complicate, which Jake seems to have no problem with doing. So, the mystery as it were, is solved, as long as we believe everything that Hawkins says, and I do believe him. I think now the story turns from who and why to stopping those responsible. Hawkins reveals that he was part of a CIA operation to break up a terrorist operation with several different terrorist organizations working together to set off 25 nuclear bombs across the country. Unfortunately the terrorists moved up their time table and the CIA was only able to stop a few of the detonations. Hawkins is in Jericho because it was to be a rendezvous point if something were to go wrong because in all of their testing it appeared that Jericho would miss the brunt of the attacks and would have usable farmland and a salt mine. After hearing the whole story, and seeing the nuclear device that Hawkins is hiding in his basement Jake agrees to help Hawkins keep his cover story, and even work with him (this part is more apparent after seeing the previews for next week). It was cool to get all of these answers and still see a future for the series. It appears that the action will step up even more now that Jake is in on the big secret. At the end of the episode Hawkins discovers something that’s been obvious for a while; his own boss is the real villain of the story!
Other than that Gail and Johnston have a small subplot where Johnston is hiding out in a deer stand looking for deer that don’t exist. He’s trying to recover from everything that’s happened, not the least of which the death of his daughter-in-law. He asked to come back to town and help out in Gray’s place while gray recovers and he refuses. I think part of him is mad at the people of the town for losing faith in him and electing Gray. Anyway Gail goes to visit April’s grave and reveals a major plot hole. How did April get a big grave stone? If there is someone in town who just so happens to be able to do the masonry work I don’t think it would be tops on the to do list. At any rate Gail eventually brings Johnston some dinner and leaves him to collect himself. These two characters have real chemistry and they feel more real together than most other couples on the show.
Mimi is a character that’s growing on me too. She spends the whole episode talking to a chicken and trying to work herself up to cutting its head off. She’s struggling to deal with Bonnie who doesn’t like or respect and who is sleeping with a local boy. The evolution of Mimi and Bonnie’s relationship is a little schmaltzy but I like the characters so I cut it some slack. All of these stories work much better as lesser subplots to the Jake and Hawkins story. Where this series fails is when these soap opera stories take center stage. If the creators can continue to keep the focus on Jake and Hawkins and the chase for the bad guys and use the soap opera elements as filler this series could be something that lasts a bit longer than I had originally thought.
