Red Flag (Jericho episode)

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Jericho episode
“Red Flag”
Boxes of food from China.
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 10
Guest star(s)	Darby Stanchfield, Bob Stephenson, Patrick Rowe, Richard Speight, Jr., James Remar, Beth Grant, Sterling D. Ardrey, Clayne Crawford, Jazz Raycole, April D. Parker, Alicia Coppola & Clare Carey
Writer(s)	Mike Ostrowski
Director	Martha Mitchell
Production no.	110^[1]
Original airdate	November 22, 2006
Episode chronology
← Previous	Next →
"Crossroads"	"Vox Populi"

Opening Morse code
`·· - -··· · --· ·· -· ··· ·-- ·· - ····`
Translation
“IT BEGINS WITH”

"Red Flag" is the tenth episode of season one of the fictional CBS drama Jericho.

1 Synopsis
2 Notes
3 Music
4 References

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

On the eve of Thanksgiving, Jake, Stanley and Jimmy are hunting for turkeys. Unsuccessful, Stanley and Jake head back to Stanley's truck when they spot two Russian-made jet fighters in the sky. They look up to see several lumbering transport aircraft begin to drop large parcels by parachute.

Finding one such parcel in a field, they open it to discover that it is stocked with food. Jake notices the food's packaging is in Chinese, and they uncover a flyer with the message "Do not fight... China is your friend." Several other packages have landed in town and on the Richmond farm. Although Jake and Mayor Green are wary about whether the food is safe to eat, Gray Anderson ridicules the notion that the food could be poisoned. He eats a cookie with no ill effect and tells Mayor Green that the food should be released to the increasingly hungry residents of Jericho.

Stanley arrives home to discover not only that Mimi has already helped herself to some chocolate from a food parcel but also that that another airdropped container contains a generator. He sends Mimi off to tell Jake.

Meanwhile it is revealed that Gracie had made a deal with Jonah to keep her store shelves stocked. Mayor Green arrives and persuades her to help store the airdropped supplies and to break off the deal with Jonah. Mayor Green has a tense, but non-violent, confrontation with Jonah and Mitchell, whom the mayor demands return an item he stole from Gracie. As retribution, Jonah's men take the two parcels from the Richmond farm, including the badly needed generator, assaulting Stanley in the process.

Mayor Green, Jake and Hawkins organize a raid on Jonah's compound to retrieve the generator. However, before they can do anything, Emily, who had snuck in minutes before, drives the truck carrying the generator out the front gate to the astonishment of Jake and Jonah, who orders his men not to fire. Afterward, some of Jonah's men, especially Mitchell, question his decision. Jonah tells them that you win some and you lose some and dares Mitchell to challenge his leadership directly, which leads Mitchell to back down for now.

Elsewhere, the relationship between Stanley and Mimi grows closer when she helps him recover from his wounds, and they later kiss after he helps her remember Thanksgiving before the bombs by mixing her a Tang and tequila drink. Eric finally learns that April is pregnant.

Hawkins returns home late for Thanksgiving dinner to face his disappointed family, who had hoped that at least this year he would be there instead of away on an assignment. Hawkins asks his family to accompany him to the center of town to see what he was working on. At the end of the episode, Hawkins helps Jimmy turn on the generator. People gather in the streets to see the lights illuminate for the first time since the EMP. As Gracie closes up shop, an unknown person grabs her from behind and stabs her in the abdomen with a knife. She slumps to the floor as people continue to walk by outside, unaware of her predicament.

[edit] Notes

The fighters and transports seen at the beginning of the episode were identified by Jake as MiG-19s and Antonovs. Examples of both can be found privately owned in the US.
Jake notes that those types of aircraft are Russian but haven't been used for decades.
Inspection of the recovered parcels revealed that parcels 1 through 5 contained processed food; 6 and 8 hold mechanical and medical supplies; and 10 through 12 are grain and personal supplies. Crates 7 and 9 initially are unaccounted for but are later found and revealed to hold more food and a generator respectively.
The air drop supplies were US Air Force G-14 Parachutes with RFID tags sewn into them.
Hawkins claims that he recognized Mandarin on the TV broadcast during the "Four Horsemen" episode, but cannot read the Chinese characters on the food packaging. As Hawkins put it, "you may not know German, but you know it's German when you hear it."
Mandarin refers to one of several dialects of the Chinese spoken language. However, for the most part (particularly with regard to common items such as foodstuffs) there is one standard form of Chinese written language.
While Mimi tends to his cuts with some iodine, Stanley sarcastically remarks, "My old friend iodine," alluding to events in the episode "Four Horsemen," when he drank iodine, which has a vile taste, on the advice of April after he was exposed to radioactive fallout.