Episode Report Card Keckler: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT April Is The Cruelest Month, Bleeding
By Keckler | Season 1 | Episode 16 | Aired on 03.27.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.It's been a cold week here in Jericho, Kansas. Hawkins has just finished burying Sarah's body when Jimmy the Sheriff comes poking around, asking inconvenient questions about her. Another time, when Hawkins is burying the Really Big Bomb not very deep in Jericho soil, Sheriff Jimmy comes back, wanting to know more about Sarah and also to give Hawkins marriage counseling. Finally, Hawkins leads Jimmy to where Darcy is staying with the kids at Branch Rogerian, and lets him question Darcy. After Hawkins properly preps Darcy, of course. At the end of this plot thread, Sheriff Jimmy tells Hawkins that they found a body in the woods. The body is bald and enjoying a broken neck, so we know it's the Sarah-dispatched Hunter. Hawkins shrugs this off and agrees with Sheriff Jimmy that Sarah might have something to do with it. In order to fulfill the Pregnancy Prophesy that about 75% of all television writers adhere to, April collapses and brings herself and her unborn baby to the brink of death. (Jake dashes out to get Dr. Kenchy.) Unfortunately, despite Kenchy's best and mostly sober efforts, the baby dies, and April isn't fairing much better. Dr. Kenchy rips off his mask -- mid-suture -- and announces that none of it is worth it and goes outside to have an existential breakdown. (Jake dashes out to drag Dr. Kenchy back inside.) Both knowing that April is going to die, Dr. Kenchy finishes his surgery while Jake watches, all torn up inside. With Eric the Ineffectual gripping her hand, April dies after naming their dead baby Tracy. The entire Green family mourns. (Skeet is really good at crying. *Sniff* Really good.) Distressingly sans Heather, the boys from New Bern arrive with Jericho's windmill, and drive a hard bargain when Gray asks for ten more. For ten windmills, New Bern wants 10% of Jericho's crop. This becomes a huge issue, which needs slight discussion. In the end, Jericho agrees -- and secretly thinks, as Stanley suggested -- that when spring comes, they don't really have to fork over that 10%. New Bern is still one step of Jericho, however, because they ask for ten Jericho men (good and strong) to come back to their town and help build the windmills. Eric (yay!) and Stanley (boo!) are two of the ten to hoof off. Jake -- being the kind of AWESOME that only Jake can be -- collars Russell of New Bern and tells him that if anything happens to the Jericho Ten, Jake will be taking it out of his Sawyer-lite hide. Russell knows. And Jake knows. And we know. Because Jake is just THAT awesome. Frankly, my friends, I'm still shocked Jake didn't perform the miracle surgery that would have saved both April's and the baby's lives, as well as brought Gracie back to life. Meanwhile, in Shire News, Skylar is totally turned on by Frodale's machismo as she watches (and slightly cheers on) him waving a gun around in order to get Gracie's share of some beet yield. By the end of the episode, the two horny teens are making out across their sleeping bags. (Must've been all those bloody beets.) Want more? The full recap starts right below!
We are staring down the slanted headlights of a parked car. In the foreground, an exposed and very dead hand is slowly being buried in a shallow grave. I mean, I assume the hand isn't the only thing being dead or buried in this scene, but it's all we can see. Notice how people always bury people at night by the light of their headlights? It's on every Lifetime movie. It's gotten so that if I saw a non-moving car with its headlights on, I'd just think, "Huh, someone's burying a body." Although, maybe not so blasé. Maybe more "HUH, SOMEONE'S BURYING A BODY!!" Hawkins grunts as a few snowflakes swirl lightly around him, and finishes spooning dirt onto Sarah. So, remember how we saw news reports that this was supposed to be the "worst winter in decades"? And remember how people were turning into AARPcicles? And how the ground was so cold it was leaching all the heat from Skeet's body? Remember? Well, isn't it awesome how, in that Basement of Nuclear Disaster Magic Tricks, Hawkins had a self-heating spade to break up the frozen ground? I swear, that man thinks of everything.
Back at his house, Hawkins mops up blood with a red towel. Whether the towel was red to begin with or was once white but now is soaked with blood is left to our fertile imaginations. The liquid Hawkins now squeezes into a bucket by the full light of a bare lamp bulb is certainly quite cranberry juice-like in color. As Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon would shriek over at Demian's place, "GORE!" But hark! There's a knock at the door to disturb Hawkins's grisly chore. Hawkins quickly snaps off the light and pauses, contemplating whether he should get the door. The knocking comes again, more insistent this time. Hawkins hurriedly gathers up his rags and bucket, and brushes at his pants. Because bloodstains brush off? Did you learn nothing from Lady Macbeth? Hawkins walks toward the door.
Jericho Medical Center. Mom nags at April about whether or not she's getting enough sleep, because she looks tired. A diminutive woman in scrubs, and with a cap of smooth black hair, tells April about some patient who won't let anyone touch him but her. The diminutive woman identifies herself as a third-year Chicago University med student, who came in with the Branch Rogerian refugees. Although -- and this is how you know she's got spunk up the wazoo -- she tells April that she prefers "visitor" to "refugee." April apologizes and thanks her for helping out. "Don't thank me," says Med Student, her tone all but throwing "bitch, please!" hands. "I'm just working here because I get to sleep in a bed instead of the church basement. Where do I start?" April gestures around and tells her to take her pick of pneumonia, malnutrition, and hypothermia.