Jericho is one of the new shows from CBS this season and I'm here to tell you it is one compelling show. When I say compelling I mean it quite literally. I felt compelled to keep watching (I also saw the 2nd episode of the season).
Why did it suck me in so effectively? Well let's get to a description of the show first (and stick with me, the review starts with the negative but doesn't end that way).
The show opens at a train station in Denver, Colorado, followed by a shot of someone taking the cover off of a 1960-something model muscle car (I'm not an expert, I think it was a Barracuda). Cut to the driver, a handsome, scruffy, young 30-something guy (Skeet Ulrich as Jake Green) headed for Jericho, Kansas. My first impression was "cliché". By that I mean I saw a fairly stereotypical "cool guy" lead character, complete with three-day beard growth, cool classic car, etc. My thoughts continued on that path when he arrived in town and a friend he hasn't seen in five years is overjoyed to see him, gives Jake a bear hug, and we cut to Jake's fairly disinterested face. Add "disconnected cool" to the cliché character traits, I thought.
The cliché was compounded by the fact he gave a different answer to anyone who asked where he'd been for five years. Army, minor league baseball, Navy, etc. Then he runs into an old girlfriend (gorgeous, of course) who just happens to be engaged (not married, hence, available) to a rich banker-type (visions of Roadhouse popped into my head). Oh, we also had the "disappointed" dad (played by the always enjoyable to watch Gerald McRaney) who didn't like his son's apparent drifter existence.
Enough set up. The main plot point of this show is the exploding of — what seems to be only one — nuclear bomb visible off in the distance on the horizon, and what life is like for the town afterward. This is where the show really had my wife and me riveted and wanting to see what happened next.
Article comments
1 - R. Garcia
Thre's too much of my own personal nightmare involved in this show - as was with "The Day After" and "Threads", for me to really enjoy it. I had the same 'nuke-mare' the night before the show aired and sat in the dream waiting for the blast wave to reach me - as I have constantly for the last forty years or so - since I finally understood what we, as a species, planned to do to each other over flags, ideology and real-estate.
I grew up under the constant threat of a nuclear war, propagated by madmen who insisted that "If we have enough shovels...", we'd survive. I remember the "duck and cover" cartoon and the monthly 'drop drills' accompanied by the howling of the air raid sirens - and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Just to add spice to my life, the US conducted tests of A-Bombs in Nevada throughout my youth, sometimes allowing fallout to drift our direction - just to see what effect it would have - so when the cancer shows up (and I have no doubt it will) I'll know were it came from: my own government's concern for its populace. Thanks, Mr. Reagan. What a way to have a childhood.
I hope that the same insanity that led to our incredible overkill (39,000 warheads in the US alone) doesn't lead to another arms race among the paranoid and death-loving right wingers with this show as a catalyst.
The only fantasy involved in "Jericho" is that anyone would survive, or that if they did, they wouldn't envy the ones who were killed instantly.
Hiroshima (the only time the weapons were used on an enemy) was a tiny firecracker compared to our arsenals now.
Pray that we never use these terrible weapons again.
Karma, as they say, is a bitch.
2 - Shade
It would be interesting to see what direction the show is going or what the overall point is. I expect that they either try to play the 'terrorists are out to get us because we're such wonderful people' gag, or that it was an 'unprovoked attack by (insert country that is tired of being bullied here)' line or reasoning.
I doubt that it'll be a play on 9/11 where the government orchestrated an attack on it's own citizens to justify all out war(s). Too many cities were hit in the storyline for that to fit.
I know too many people that are afraid to death here at home that people will die in far greater numbers in the near future because of what's going on, and you should consider what 'far greater numbers' means, being that hundreds of thousands (actual tally for the last 50 years is closer to five million) have died as a result of US action.
The show gives me the creeps. Sheer curiousity is going to keep me watching it at least for a while.
3 - Thriftshop
If you guys liked this, check out an old UK show from the mid 1970's - SURVIVORS.
Not about nukes, a man-made, flu-like disease spreads worldwide via air travel and in less than a week almost the entire population of the earth is dead...
It is not going to get better, there is no miracle, nowhere else to go. How do you survive? How do you make wax for candles? Temper steel? When to plant what seeds? What happens when the Supermarkets have been emptied/petrol has run out? How will the few hundred people who are left organize themselves?
Check out the DVD set...
4 - Grace
I LOVE JERICHO!! Can't wait for it's return on Feb. 14th. 2007. It's so exciting and suspenseful. And I LOVE Gerald McRaney!
Good job, CBS!!