Jericho: Series Premiere & Fallout review

Quick review: Jericho has an interesting post-apocalyptic premise, multiple storylines, and is worth a shot. This show definitely should be on a 10 PM timeslot rather than 8 PM, at least for the hope that they can get into some darker concepts. Check it out online; it will keep your interest piqued for at least six episodes.

My pitch for watching it online: CBS’s innertube has once again permitted me the opportunity to watch another show after hearing one of my friends give me a two minute rundown of it and it seemed like one that had a lot of potential. Again, the commercials online jump up like five decibels, so be aware you will need to turn down your computer to compensate.

The plot: Imagine living in a small Midwestern town and off toward the West you see a mushroom cloud rising. The television goes off, phones stop working, and giant flying animals start dropping from the sky. Thinking in terms of parallels, think end of Terminator 3 meets the Postman 15 years before the movie took place and with a substantially better plot. Now ask yourself how long do you think it would take before civilized society resorts to its degenerate bases? How fast would panic set in, rioting and looting become commonplace, and marshal law become declared? And what if you had no idea whether the persons who would be in a position to restore order are even around to do so? Welcome to Jericho, the post-apocalyptic paradise of the New World.

The characters: Thirty-two year old Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich) is Jericho’s reluctant high school hero who has been away for five years. His explanation of where he has been varies depending on who he talks to, but given his rudimentary medical training, prowess with rigging dynamite, and ability to drive a bus as good as Sandra Bullock, it appears he probably had some military training. Jake’s Major Dad (probably better recognized as George Hearst on Deadwood) Gerald McRaney is the incumbent mayor of the quaint little town of Jericho. There are a bunch of side characters (Jake’s ex-girlfriend who, for television purposes, gets out of her car on a dark desert highway to examine some dead crows, a deaf girl, one or two other girls who have crushes on Jake, his mother, his adulterous deputy mayor brother, his brother's bartender lover who kind of looks like Jeri from one of the Survivor shows, his brother’s doctor wife, the mayor-hopeful, a rogue IRS agent, and a MacGyver-type ex-cop from St. Louis, Robert Hawkins (Lennie James), who appears to also have an impressive knowledge of ham radio, electronics, nuclear safety, and Morse code.

The story: I think Jericho has the potential of being either really good or really bad. On the one hand, these type of end-of-the-world type stories don’t tend to do that well, and many of the storylines are recycled. On the other, I don’t recall off-hand any recent shows or movies (and the only older ones I remember are the Postman and Mad Max), that examine how a small town would react to the blackout of news to the rest of the world and scattered knowledge that multiple nuclear or hydrogen bombs have been dropped in several US cities. Personally, I think the world would slip to chaos much faster than it appears to be doing on the show, but at least this show attempts to tell how one town will try to survive and rebuild, based on what little information they are getting.

My review: I think a show like this has more good potential than bad, but I’m just not sure where they are going with the story after two episodes. They are leaving a lot of loose strings that can be tied up in future episodes, but I think the pace needs to pick up a bit if they want to secure the ratings victory. I do like how they are trying to focus the story on Jake and his role in all of this, but after watching the first two shows back to back, I have to wonder whether this is turning into a Postman-type tv show, or will it become something better. If it turns out to be a story about delivering the mail or if Jake winds up to have known something about all of this and it's some sort of elaborate set up, the concept may be better off left to the silver screen.

Thus, the concept merits further review, but two episodes haven’t appeared to have brought out the specific storyline, so I have to wonder if they will do it in four more (obviously the general theme is “survival past the end of the world”). I’m hopeful, but haven’t been able to determine a better way to do it yet, so I will watch for another month and see how creative these writers really are.

Conclusion: If you don’t have a better show on the 8 PM Wednesday time slot or have some free internet time and a high speed connection, check out Jericho. If you wonder how your town would react in the face of a disaster that effectively isolates your town from the rest of the country, this show offers a look at one possible, optimistic scenario as to how our citizenry would react.

Tags: jericho, cbs