Jake Green

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Jake Green
Image:Jgj.jpg
First appearance	Pilot
Information
Gender	Male
Age	32
Occupation	Uncertain
Relatives	Johnston Green (father) Gail Green (mother) Eric Green (brother)
Portrayed by	Skeet Ulrich
Created by	Stephen Chbosky

Johnston Jacob "Jake" Green, Jr. is a character on the US post-apocalyptic drama Jericho. He is played by Skeet Ulrich. He is a primary character of the series.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In the Pilot, Jake returns to his home town of Jericho, Kansas, after a five-year absence, to pay his respects to his recently-deceased grandfather. When he arrives in town he tells friends different stories about what he had been doing while he was away, including playing minor league baseball and serving in both the Army and Navy. Eventually it is revealed that he came to claim money that he inherited from his grandfather, which his father Johnston, also then Jericho's mayor, refuses to hand over. Despite the urging of his mother, Gail, to stay, Jake leaves a few days after arriving.

However, while driving on the highway on his way out of town, his watch dies, and the radio station he is listening to turns to static just as a mushroom cloud appears in the direction of Denver, Colorado. Distracted, he doesn't see an oncoming car stray into his lane, and there is a collision. The two people in the other car die and Jake injures his leg. While Jake is walking back to Jericho, two children approach him; they have come from a school bus that crashed nearby. Jake returns to the bus with the children, where he finds the driver dead. He performs an emergency tracheotomy on a girl who injured her throat when the bus crashed. Jake then drives the bus and its passengers back to Jericho, earning new respect from his father.

The next day, as a storm harboring deadly radioactive fallout approaches town, Jake takes charge of getting the decrepit fallout shelter underneath the medical center up to scratch. However, when his efforts fail, he leads a group of survivors to an abandoned salt mine where, after sealing the mine entrance, Jake rushes off to rescue his former fiancé Emily, who was unwittingly in the company of two escaped prisoners posing as Sheriff's deputies. Shooting one of the prisoners dead, Jake takes cover with the hostages in a farmer's storm cellar.

As the storm disappears and the town faces an unknown future, Jake starts to take on a leadership role in trying to get help for the citizens of Jericho.

[edit] Jake's background

Country	Date Entered	Date Exited
Honduras	11 August 2003	21 August 2003
Mexico	22 September 2003	2 October 2003
Colombia	22 April 2004	29 April 2004
Venezuela	18 May 2004	3 June 2004
Qatar	13 July 2004	25 July 2004
Colombia	11 August 2004	21 August 2004
Peru	1 October 2004	9 October 2004
Guatemala	5 November 2004	2 December 2004

Initially, the show sheds little light on Jake's background, and when asked he provided different answers, which may or may not be true. However, he has displayed some surprising and remarkable abilities, such as performing an emergency tracheotomy, and is shown to be very knowledgable about mechanical devices (such as a ventilation system and a flight data recorder) and explosives. In one episode, both Stanley Richmond and Robert Hawkins question Jake about his intricate knowledge on how water pumps work, and he gives Hawkins the flippant answer that he was once a pool man.

Jake is also shown to be accurate with a revolver at a distance, shooting and killing an escaped prisoner from many yards away. He is also shown wearing dog tags after showering; which may or may not have belonged to his Army Ranger father of the same name. In episode 5, Robert Hawkins looks up Jake on the Department of State database, and finds that he has visited several countries, and that his passport (issued 02 Mar 2004) is flagged. It is later revealed in the episode The Day Before that the FBI has flagged Jake's passport for non-cooperation on an undercover mission against a private military company, a splinter of Ravenwood.

It is revealed in the ninth episode, Crossroads, that Jake was once engaged to Emily Sullivan before he left Jericho, although there appears to have been some kind of falling-out between them, which is revealed (or implied) in the sixth episode to have been as a result of a failed robbery attempt that left Emily's brother dead. However, it is clear that schoolteacher Heather Lisinski is interested in Jake, after he rescues her and the students from the stranded school bus in the pilot episode. He offers to walk her home in the fourth episode, but they are sidetracked by events. In the seventh episode, Jake is kissed by Heather -- unexpectedly and passionately -- before Jake and Eric leave to retrieve medicine for their father.

At the beginning of the series, Jake says that he had been living in San Diego, and that he had temporarily been in Denver before he came to Jericho. This would have placed him in two major cities very close to the time that they were attacked.

In episode 8, Rogue River, Jake tells Payton (the military contractor) in the hospital that he "drove trucks" in Iraq while working for "another contractor," and had known a lot of Ravenwood members previously. To add to episode 8, in episode 12 it is shown that Jake is a skilled aircraft pilot; a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Jake has done work in Iraq and Afghanistan not directly for the US military seemingly for a PMC, Ravenwood, prior to the events of the show, and was involved with crimes against humanity including the killing of a young girl in Iraq.

[edit] Jake's age

Jake states that he is 32 years old in the pilot. If his age and the birth date on his passport is accurate, then the series is set in the year 2009.
Jake's birth date on his passport is 21 January 1977, but it is likely a fake. Eric's birthday on his driver's license is 21 September 1977. It is unlikely that only eight months separated their births. However, if Jake is 32, then the series is set in the 2010s. (Despite the fact that people thought that Jake was younger, it is revealed in Episode 12 that Jake is the eldest son.) Though not canon to the show in the commentary of the episode Vox Populi as seen on CBS internet, executive producer Carol Barbee states that Jake is the older brother of Eric at time index 4:52. Also at time index 6:29, Carol Barbee states that the 1990 song Nothing Compares 2 U was a hit when Jake was 16, therefore putting the date of events seen on the show roughly in 2006.