Fallout (Jericho episode)

"Fallout" is the second episode of season one of the CBS drama Jericho. It received a rating of 11.47 million viewers.

Plot synopsis

The residents of Jericho are threatened by an incoming rainstorm carrying radioactive fallout that will reach the town in two hours. They take cover in their houses and the town's two fallout shelters. Meanwhile, Emily, her SUV having broken down the previous night, flags down a police cruiser being driven by two sheriff's deputies, from whom she learns about the nuclear explosion in Denver, Colorado. She agrees to help them find a place to get some gas. Emily is unaware that the deputies are really two escaped prisoners – probably from the crashed prison bus – who have stashed the real officers in the trunk; but she is unsettled by their odd demeanor and a prominent tattoo on one's neck.

As the shelter underneath the town hall fills up, Jake is forced to quickly prepare the dilapidated shelter underneath the medical center for other survivors. When a ventilation fan there malfunctions, he decides to move the survivors to Gray Anderson's salt mine. Elsewhere, his brother Eric Green flexes his leadership muscle to convince everyone at Mary's bar, many of them out-of-towners, to head to the shelters while Dale Turner, mourning the death of his mother in Atlanta, Georgia, takes refuge with Skylar, a girl who fears that her parents in New York City may have been killed as well.

Robert Hawkins, who originally warned the town of the incoming fallout-laden storm, discloses that he had been a police officer in St. Louis, Missouri and had learned about the effects of radioactive fallout during homeland security training after the September 11, 2001, attacks. He finds a weak signal broadcasting Morse code over the radio and transcribes the message, which visibly disturbs him, though he tells a passing Gail that he could not get the radio to work. Gail finds her husband unconscious on the floor of his office. It isn't immediately apparent what has happened to him.

The first Morse code message that Hawkins picks up on the ham radio is "DELTA CODE DELTA 2 MINUTE WARNING". The second message is "SCORE REMAINS SCORELESS". He receives a third message that viewers cannot hear.

At the Richmond farm, Emily and the fugitives wait for Bonnie Richmond's brother, Stanley, to return to unlock the fuel pump. Emily soon discovers who the prisoners are and calls for help on their police radio. After getting a group of survivors settled in the abandoned mine and sealing the opening with explosives, Jake races to rescue Emily just as the convicts come out of the house to confront her. Jake and Emily shoot and kill the convicts, and then he, Emily, Bonnie, and the freed deputies find shelter in the farm's storm cellar just as the storm hits.

At the end of the episode, Hawkins is alone with a map of the United States. He refers to notes he made from the Morse message and takes five push pins from a drawer and places them on the cities: Denver, Colorado; Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and San Diego, California. He then takes more pins.

Fallout shelters

• The town of Jericho has two primary large-capacity fallout shelters: one with a capacity for 300 people under the town hall, the other under the hospital. Mayor Green suggests that people with storm cellars use them because the large fallout shelters could not hold the entire town's population of about 6,000.

• There is an abandoned salt mine outside of the town. A mine is arguably a man-made cave, which is an acceptable alternative to a basement or other constructed underground shelter facility.

Reception

Jason Van Horn at IGN praised the episode: "Proving the pilot wasn't a fluke, Jericho continues to bring the suspense, and manage to make something as ordinary as a rain cloud seem like one of the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse", and particularly the finale: "the kicker is the very last shot, filled with nothing but the sound of a hand reaching into a drawer, as [Hawkins] continues to pull red pin after red pin out, and you hope he eventually stops, but he doesn't and the episode finally ends with him still going through the motion. The image is so haunting and creepy, it is a little unsettling, but still you can't wait to see what happens next."^[2]

References

External links

• "Fallout" at CBS.com