Pilot (Jericho episode)

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Jericho episode
“Pilot”

Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 1
Guest star(s)	Alicia Coppola Germaine De Leon
Writer(s)	Stephen Chbosky
Director	Jon Turteltaub
Production no.
Original airdate	September 20, 2006
Episode chronology
← Previous	Next →
"None"	"Fallout"

Opening Morse code
`·--- · ·-· ·· -·-· ···· --- ·--· ·· ·-·· --- -`
Translation
“JERICHO PILOT”

"Pilot" is Episode 1 of Season 1 of the CBS apocalyptic drama Jericho.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] Plot synopsis

Thirty-two year old Jake Green returns for a short visit to his isolated rural home town of Jericho, Kansas after a mysterious five-year absence. While he was away, Jake had no contact with any of his family or friends, except possibly his mother Gail. Jake is evasive about his absence; he is asked where he has been by various Jericho residents, and he gives different answers -- include claims to have been playing minor league baseball and serving in both the Army and Navy.

Jake's mother, Gail, who apparently knows where Jake has been, is very happy and relieved to see him. Jake discusses with his father, Mayor Johnston Green, the inheritance Jake's grandfather left him. Johnston refuses to release the money to Jake until Jake leads what Johnston calls "a more productive life." Afterwards, Jake goes to visits his grandfather's grave, despite his mother's objections. Jake leaves Jericho that same day, telling his mother that he must return to San Diego.

As Jake leaves town, the President addresses a joint session of Congress about a rise in global violence. Simultaneously, all the television and radio stations and telephone communication go dead. At the same time, some residents of the town see a mushroom cloud on the horizon, in the direction of Denver, Colorado over a mountain range. On the highway, another driver, distracted by the cloud, drifts into the opposing lane, where Jake is driving, also distracted. The cars collide, killing the occupants of the other car and knocking Jake unconscious.

Meanwhile, a school bus is returning from a from a field trip, late because it had to stop for repairs, with the elementary-school-aged children of Jericho. Heather Lisinski, the teacher accompanying them, notices the mushroom cloud. The children are watching a deer running next to the bus for a few seconds; it then crosses in front of the bus and is hit, causing the bus to swerve off of the road.

On the highway, Jake regains consciousness and finds that he has a leg injury. He finds the passengers in the other vehicle dead. He begins walking back toward town, and shortly afterward encounters two children who have ventured from the bus in search of help. Jake makes it to the bus, where he finds the driver dead and Heather with a broken leg. Only one of the children is injured, but she is having significant difficulty breathing and is in mortal danger. Jake performs an emergency tracheotomy, using straws from the children's juice boxes to create a temporary airway. Then he then drives the bus back to town.

While searching for the children, the sheriff and a deputy from Jericho find a prison bus that has crashed. They mistake it for the school bus, and are both shot while investigating.

In town, Dale Turner discovers a message from his mother on his answering machine. The end of the message is interrupted by a large explosion heard in the background. Dale later plays the message for a group of adults at the Greens' house. Gail offers condolences to Dale, saying that she hadn't known Dale's mother was visiting Denver. Dale tells the group that his mother wasn't visiting Denver but rather was in Atlanta, Georgia. Earlier, Mayor Green had tried to calm citizens by speculating that the Denver incident was isolated and possibly a military accident instead of a widespread enemy attack. Once news of of the Atlanta explosion reaches the rest of the town, residents swarm the gas station to fill up their cars and trucks. Electrical power fails. The situation comes close to a riot before Mayor Green arrives and calms the crowd, temporarily. The townspeople press the mayor for answers and the situation almost escalates again, but calms down when the school bus arrives with the children. Jake tells the crowd to help the children, and informs his brother that he drove past a prison bus that had crashed.

With communications and the power out, Jake and the small town of Jericho are physically and psychologically isolated from the outside world—not knowing what is left of that world, or how many others are still alive—and must find means of survival in the midst of panic and chaos.

The episode ends with Emily Sullivan, an old friend of Jake who is seemingly unaware of the day's events, driving on an isolated rural road. She is on her way to the airport to meet with her fiancé, who's returning from a trip. Feeling bumps in the road, she stops the car and gets out to see what the problem is. The road is covered with dead black birds that seemingly just dropped from the sky.

[edit] Music

The Killers - "All These Things That I've Done"
Rascal Flatts - "Pieces"
Bon Jovi - "Who Says You Can't Go Home"
Goo Goo Dolls - "Better Days"
Snow Patrol - "Run"
John Powell - "Nach Deutschland" (from The Bourne Supremacy soundtrack)

[edit] Trivia

The pilot episode was filmed on location in Fillmore, California, while the standing sets for the town of Jericho were built at Calvert Studios in Van Nuys, California.
The shape of the mushroom cloud seen in the episode is suggestive of an atmospheric nuclear blast in sub-megaton range, with maximum height of roughly 50-70 thousand feet. It is unlikely that such an explosion, should it occur in Denver, would be visible anywhere in Kansas. [1]
Furthermore, there was no bright flash seen that would accompany a nuclear airburst. If a mushroom cloud over Denver could be seen, then the flash would have been visible as well. By the same argument, the child standing on the roof who sees the rise of the cloud would have been blinded by the flash (and probably killed by the explosion).
The "screener" version of this episode (a rough cut version used to give advertisers and industry insiders some sort of idea of what to expect from new television shows) used different incidental background music than the version which aired. Some of the musical themes are "borrowed" from the film Rounders.