Jericho
Season One Review
“Nuts.”
U.S. Army
General Anthony McAuliffe issued that one-word response to a German
surrender ultimatum during World War II, and it was again uttered by
Skeet Ulrich this past May as his fictional town went into battle during
the final first-season episode of Jericho. It also became the
rallying cry for fans of the CBS series, recently released on DVD, as
they bombarded the network with forty thousand pounds of peanuts in
order to ensure that the last episode of the first season was not the
show’s last overall. Although such protests seldom work, CBS was
swayed by the outpouring and ordered an additional seven episodes of
Jericho for mid-season despite having initially cancelled the
series.
Jericho
is different from the norm in more ways than its ability to escape fate,
however. CBS has had the reputation of being an older-skewing network
from a viewership standpoint for years but still managed to rise to
the top of the Nielsen ratings by utilizing a combination of forensic
dramas and light-weight comedies. In that sense Jericho and
CBS are a lot like the Sesame Street “one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others”
song because no other show on the network has as much depth or development
of character.
The pilot
episode, for example, starts quickly. No sooner has Jake Green (Ulrich)
returned home to Jericho, Kansas, after a five-year absence—was
he in the army? the navy? playing minor league baseball?—to confront
his estranged father about signing over an inheritance when a mushroom
cloud appears in the sky over the vicinity of Denver.
Panic soon
erupts amongst the townsfolk when the power goes out and it is discovered
that the Colorado capital was not the only city hit by a nuclear explosion.
Fights erupt at the gas station as residents argue over fuel. Police
searching for a missing school bus find a prison transport instead.
Food soon becomes scarce, the criminal element of the town attempt to
take control, and vigilante tendencies begin to run rampant. Strangers
arrive in town while vague information likewise trickles in, enabling
the various layers of the show to build and overlap in ways they never
could on CSI or Criminal Minds.
It may
have been because Jericho is not a typical CBS show, however,
that enabled it to survive cancellation. By granting it a second life,
CBS was able to cultivate some “credibility” with younger
viewers and even use the opportunity to help redefine itself. The network
has also never experienced the ingenuity that genre fans can serve up
in protest, thus possibly making CBS more susceptible to the onslaught.
And Jericho
is indeed a “genre” show, for it contains all the elements
that attract that kind of rabid-cult fanbase. First off, it’s
a “fantasy,” an apocalyptic drama exploring what would happen
in small-town America if a terrorist attack left most of the country’s
major cities in ruins. The residents of Jericho therefore find themselves
surviving in a world after the world has ended, cut off and isolated
with no means of communication and having to fend for themselves in
order to find basic needs like food and water.
The show
has intrigue and mystery, mostly surrounding the characters of Jake
Green and Robert Hawkins, who each have a dark past containing many
unanswered questions. This adds up to another element—human redemption—as
Jake attempts to prove himself to his father, while Hawkins, initially
part of the terrorist attack (or was he?), tries to protect the family
he abandoned years ago.
Jericho
even has a musical score by David Lawrence that is on par with that
of Michael Giacchino of Lost in its ability to add to the tension,
action and heartbreak, and at times evokes shades of Greg Edmonson’s
Firefly soundtrack.
Lastly
it’s part “soap” as it follows various families and
the dramas that play out within them, and is likewise filled with “cheesy”
humor; for instance, when Jake asks his father if he received permission
to go on a dangerous mission, the elder Green responds, “Son,
I’m fifty-nine years old. I was mayor of this town since the Carter
administration. I’m a retired U.S. Army Ranger, a combat veteran.
Of course I asked your mother.”
In many
ways the series plays out more like a cult B-movie rather than a true
Hollywood classic, and thus has flaws as well as attributes. A small
town consists of numerous residents, and as the show tries to incorporate
as many as possible, several of them disappear for multiple episodes
only to reappear and pick up where their storylines left off. Jericho
also tends to burn through mini-plots quickly, like the aforementioned
prison bus escape or a run-in with mercenary contractors. All of this
jumping around, however, is because of the show’s ambition to
demonstrate the many challenges and obstacles one would face in a world
that has changed so drastically, thus making such shortcomings understandable.
Jericho
may not be the best of its genre, or even the best currently on the
air: that mantel is presently shared by Lost and Heroes.
But it is a good show nonetheless, a show that is both engaging and
enjoyable. It is easy to see why Jericho acquired such a loyal
fanbase, and why the show, as well as those fans, received a deserving
second lease on life.
Nuts,
indeed.
October
15, 2007
