About Angela Wilson
Location: Midwest
Occupation: Web Producer/Freelance Writer
Bio: I love to read - and write - and surf. My FAV genres include mysteries, romantic suspense and thrillers. I'm finally working on my own thriller (under a pen name) and writing a book on marketing/PR for authors. I blog about writing at www.wickedwordsmith.com, and have accounts on various sites. You can find me on MySpace, Facebook and more by visiting www.angelawilson.net.
Posts: 222
More from this author
Dale, the tough teenage trading post owner, and his girlfriend go with Russell, a New Bern man, to the salt mines. In the last episode, they cut a deal that would give Russell the rights to trade the salt along his prosperous route – and, Russell secretly hopes – will create good relations between New Bern and Jericho.
The inept Mayor Gray Anderson, seeing the world through his own greed of resources, doesn’t want the deal to go through. He goes out to the salt mines to stop it. Already, New Bern residents are there to steal salt. Russell tries to get Dale to leave, but he refuses. Shots are fired and one person from New Bern dies. Russell finally admits during a meeting with Gray and Johnstone that Gray must approve the deal or things are going to get bad. Russell also tells Johnstone that Eric is missing and Jake went after him.
Johnstone, who might have been able to prevent the impending war if he had been reelected mayor, heads to New Bern to find his boys. Johnstone, Russell and Constantino meet. Constantino’s hatred of Jericho’s good fortune during tough times shows through. He refuses to let Johnstone see his sons. They escort him out of town.
Eric is being beaten regularly. New Bern wants to know about Jericho’s defenses, where sentries are posted and what resources are available. It’s all for the eventual takeover New Bern has been planning since the town was raped and pillaged by Ravenwood. New Bern residents feel like Jericho should have warned them, but how they were supposed to do that with communications down, I don’t know. The New Bern deputies threaten to cut Jake’s throat if Eric doesn’t tell.
Maggie, one of the Marines from a previous episode, is in jail and helps Jake and Eric. She is able to nab a get out of jail card with Constantino with information about Hawkins. She gets to Hawkins and works with him to rescue Jake and Eric.
Hawkins steals a truck of explosives from the munitions factory. He sets the truck into drive and runs it into the factory to destroy it. The explosion stops the near-fatal interrogation of Eric and Jake. The guards take the men outside, guns drawn. Hawkins takes out several before he is shot. Maggie is shot as well. Johnstone is at the checkpoint. The men leave their post to see what’s going on. He drives his big truck into the fray and rescues Jake, Eric, Hawkins and Maggie. They take the safe route Russell told Johnstone about. The truck runs out of gas and they have to walk the remaining 12 miles.
There were no unique twists to make this a stand-out episode; it was cookie-cutter television at its best. In fact, if you’ve watched the show enough to get the groove and saw the previews for Wednesday night’s show, you probably figured out what would happen: Jake and Eric captured and threatened. Hawkins and Big Daddy Johnstone rush in to save the day. War is inevitable. (It’s pretty sad to be able to summarize an hour in three short sentences.)
How will this war between the two farming towns play into the larger role of the second American Civil War between factions still unknown? It’s a tantalizing thread with zero development by creators. We haven’t heard about the division of America post-nuclear bombs and it’s still unclear exactly which towns were, in fact, destroyed. We still don’t know key players in the overall war and that is an important story thread that has not been developed nearly as much as it should have been during this first season.
