Jericho: Sedition
By fred | March 19, 2008
(S02E06) We’re almost there, at the end of the journey for the little town of Jericho and its people, whose fate are now linked with the fate of the entire country, on less. Jericho has always been a very special town, and it’s not because its mayor ran away for undisclosed business that this was going to change. Everyone there is still very much involved in everything that’s going on, sort of.
And since next week will be the finale - question is, season or series finale ? - we are getting very close to some kind of resolution. Either way, we’ll get there. The question is, will they fail, or will there still be hope for success in a following season ? As far as I know, still no answer from CBS on that one, even though they keep referring to newt week’s episode as the season finale. Not that it means anything anyway…
This season has been weird when it comes to who is involved and who is not. Not everyone was there at first, people come and go, and Emily is always around, doing nothing. Dale came by for a little visit at one time, and this week it was Mama Green who paid a visit, more on that later.
First, let’s resume where we left off last week : with Goetz dead body hanging from a tree. What a beautiful image that was, wasn’t it? Last week I wondered what would Beck do, how it would react to such image. Would he try to understand what’s going on, look at the big picture and act accordingly, and over-react, follow orders like a stupid sheep and join the forces of Evil. Clearly, he went with the later.
I don’t want to say killing people is good, or that it was justified to kill Goetz (but really, it was… wasn’t it?), but Beck would have at least tried to understand what went down there. I assume that once he reported his death, he found out that the guy had been fired, he found out what really happened with him, to Bonnie and Mimi. The guy was clearly a murderer, he went into people’s house and opened fire, killed an innocent citizen and almost got a second one.
But he missed, she lived, and when he found out he just went back and tried to assault the hospital, cutting power and charging in, without a thought for the actual patients that may have been there as well. He had to kill another innocent citizen. That’s clearly not a good guy we’re talking about there, and clearly the new government in place doesn’t care, and wouldn’t have done anything about it. Let’s face it, they knew already.
And when they found out, all they did was to fire him and his men. No repercussion, no charges, nothing. He’s just fired. he can even keep protective vest with a shining official logo and a gun. That doesn’t sound like any justice to me, and after all he did it is understandable why the people from Jericho and New Bern reacted the way they did. And if he had given any thoughts to his situation, Beck should have came to the same conclusion, and tried to calm things down.
Instead, he’s clearly going the opposite direction, declaring everyone terrorist and willing to do anything, literally anything, to get them. I’m not sure he had any real proof that they were guilty of anything, especially since his “source” told him people from Jericho - except for Stanley - actually tried to capture Goetz alive and bring him to Beck. So to launch a frontal attack with the town of Jericho wasn’t a good choice, and locking up Jake and torturing him - an innocent citizen - leaves no doubts whatsoever, Beck is now part of the problem, not the solution.
As cutie Heather told him, he was the one doing this. Jake had been locked up for days having boring hallucinations of his grandpa, yet Beck was still adding more and more reasons to get the people to retaliate. Not so long ago he was still wearing an uniform that said US Army, but those days are long gone, and now he is proud to wear one that reads AS Army.
Thank God for us, and the people of Jericho, as he switched side, and maybe that was a requirement, he also lost part of his brain. Because when Mimi decided to leave the hospital to go see Stanley, there wasn’t one man to actually watch her, follow her every move, and report to Beck where she was going. Just like when they brought Jake’s mom back, once she decided she was done, they just let her go, unwatched.
It was the most obvious thing, that the first thing she might do was to run to her other son and let everyone knows about Jake’s condition, as well as all she could about the place they’ve taken her. A place conveniently enough put where it can easily be located, even blindfolded. Anyways, once again they let her go, and they did not hide some tracking device on her or followed her.
Meanwhile, they weren’t the only ones to act stupidly this week. Hawkins used to be this kick-ass guy who always had a smart plan in mind, but not this time. This time when he received a phone call that made it obvious that whoever he as talking to, the guy could see him one way or another, he was able to track him down, he knew he was moving. And he made it clear he would not let this happen.
So what did Hawkins - who still got kids, we saw them for about half a second for no reason - do ? Nothing. He kept on going, not changing anything from his plan. Then of course the army showed up, and decided it was perfectly fine to shoot at a running car carrying a nuclear bomb. Because there’s no way such a nuclear device could be any danger, or that should the car explode it would have any consequences. Other that, you know, what a nuclear bomb could do.
So of course Hawkins lost the bomb, and the other guy who designed the plan and made it happen, he actually wants the bomb to go to Cheyenne, so that he can blow it all up then. And of course, only two men can prevent that from happening : Jake and Hawkins.
Whether they’ll do we’ll find out next week, along with whether they succeed or not. But since it looks more and more likely than CBS won’t renew the show, and I haven’t heard of any possibility of a move to another network (like The CW or Sci-Fi), then chances are next week is a series finale. If that’s the case, to have as last shot of the series yet another nuclear explosion could be quite good actually… don’t you think ?
