Skeet Ulrich in JERICHO: Patriots and Tyrants(2008).
© CBS

Mania Grade: C-
Episode: Patriots and Tyrants
Starring: Skeet Ulrich, Lennie James, Kenneth Mitchell, Gerald McRaney, Pamela Reed
Written By: Jonathan E. Steinberg, Dan Shotz
Directed By: Seith Mann
Network: CBS

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JERICHO: Patriots and Tyrants

So, it’s over for good this time, the end for the little show saved for a season by some nuts. A lot had to happen in this single episode to even begin to tie the story up and in the end what the creators tried to do was a pretty noble effort for the fans, but was only partly successful. The goal shouldn’t only be to tie up the story but to also craft a solid single episode of the series. What we end up with is a choppy poorly paced episode with everything coming ridiculously easy to our heroes. The creators aren’t necessarily at fault here, the network should have either cancelled the series or committed to it back at the halfway point so the writers had enough time to give a strong and powerful ending to Jericho, but that’s not how it went.

So Jake and Hawkins chase the bomb that's been at the core of the series from the beginning and because Jake just so happens to have a bit of information from his time working with the Big Brother Company that’s trying to take control of the country, they find the bomb in minutes and in a few scant minutes more, they get the desperately needed protection of the independent Texas. Back at home, every plan stops so that Bonnie can be buried, and Eric gets the bright idea to use this burial as a way to make a stand against Beck, a man he is placing his faith in. It makes sense that Beck question the people he works for, he’s been uneasy throughout his time in Jericho but seeing him peruse the evidence on Hawkins’s laptop and change his tune so quickly was almost laughable, not because he changed his decided to go against the corrupt government, but because it was just so simple for him to see everything on that sweet laptop. Heck, the file he needed to see was just sitting open waiting for him to see, that laptop must have one heck of a battery because it was taken the previous night. There are a couple of truly iconic shots of the group of rangers at the grave-site with the sunset shining through them but I want to know where Jake and Eric’s mother was for that burial. That seems like the place she’d be, standing next to her son. We saw her last week, so we know she’s back in Jericho, right?

By the end of the episode, Texas was doing the right thing and a civil war is set in motion with Beck and his men siding with Jake and Hawkins. A lot can be assumed for the true end of the story but we really don’t know how the war will come out. Also, the real bad guy’s big appearance in the episode was extremely anti-climactic with a wound and a dash off screen. If this was to truly be the end of the episode, why not have Jake fill him full of holes? Well, the answer has to be because the network didn’t decide prior to most this episode being shot. A final season following the civil war could have been fantastic but it’s just not in the cards for Jericho regardless of how many nuts get sent to the network. As I said, the episode feels choppy, the ending is anti-climactic, as is the appearance of the villain that started it all, and many characters get very little or no screen time, but this ending is much better than how things stopped at the end of season one.