Posted by Ryan
Jericho, Season 2, Episode 5, “Termination for Cause”: Jake and the Rangers square off in a battle for survival against Goetz and Ravenwood, while one of the Rangers takes a course of action that will alter his life forever.
We’re down to the last three episodes of the season — probably of the series — so we should be getting all sorts of revelations and resolution, right? Wrong. At least they’re killing off characters.
Stanley’s sister Bonnie is dead, killed by Goetz and Ravenwood. Mimi is shot but still alive, and is transported to the hospital. Goetz wasn’t aware that Mimi was in the house — she’s a witness who knows what happened in the house and why Ravenwood was coming there in the first place. So Goetz has to get to the hospital to finish off Mimi. But Jake and his guys are armed and protecting the hospital — and we have yet another standoff.
Trouble is brewing over in New Bern, too. Cheyenne is cracking down hard on them, and we learn that Constantino is the leader of a resistance force that is setting off pipe bombs and putting prices on people’s heads. Russell and another guy from New Bern sneak into Jericho with the intent of collecting the bounty on Heather, but they’re also after a bigger prize: Goetz.
Stanley says goodbye to his sister in the morgue. He also thanks her for taking a bullet for Mimi. I’m not sure if talking to the dead in sign language is touching or cheesy.
Mimi calls Trisha from J&R and tells her the news of Bonnie’s death. Trisha’s feeling a little guilty that she told Goetz about Mimi’s accounting, so she’s willing to make up for it by telling the J&R bigwigs about Goetz embezzling. J&R doesn’t much care about murder, but they will call down the thunder if you embezzle from them.
Ravenwood starts threatening the family members of people holed up inside the hospital. They threatened the wrong guy when they came for Hawkins, who kicks ass on a few of them and gets inside the hospital. But we know by now that whenever random townies are involved in anything, they always screw it up — like when Fred releases the Ravenwood hostage and lets Goetz in through the back door. But Jake’s guys burrowed through a wall to give the impression that they’d escaped the hospital when in fact they were just hanging out upstairs. Fortunately Goetz doesn’t have time to check the whole hospital — he’s got a date with some Ravenwood reinforcements coming into town.
But the reinforcements are actually representatives from J&R who’ve come to fire Goetz for embezzling. They strip Goetz and his team of their weapons and leave them out there on the road. Jake and his guys are waiting to pounce on Goetz, but so are a bunch of guys from New Bern, and we get another shootout. Goetz surrenders. But while Jake and Russell from New Bern argue about who gets Goetz, Stanley comes up and pops a bullet in Goetz’s head.
We learn very little from or about John Smith, Hawkins’ guy within J&R. Smith wants the bomb, but we’re not totally sure what he intends to do with it. Smith explains that President Tomarchio was once a young star in the J&R corporation, that J&R contributed heavily to his campaign and that Tomarchio appointed J&R employees to cabinet positions. J&R and the government are basically the same. This should surprise no one. But is Tomarchio the mastermind or just a J&R stooge?
Next week’s previews make it look like Beck is going to come down hard on Jericho for the shenanigans that occurred while he was off quelling the insurrection in New Bern. But why does Beck care about what happened to Goetz? He’s a reasonable man. He should be happy Goetz is out of the way. It also sounds like there’s going to be a new American Revolution. They better hurry — they have only two episodes left to overthrow Cheyenne.
Photo: Greg Schwartz/CBS ©2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
