Failed Sci-Fi Dramas?: Jericho (2006)

In keeping with our return to roots movement, we're going to take a look at one of my favorite underrated sic-fi shows, Jericho. I'm sad to say that I didn't stumble across Jericho until after it had been cancelled, and at that point, it just stared at me provocatively at the local movie rental store each time that I went in. So my wife and I gave it a try and ended up loving it from start to finish! Throw it on the ever-growing pile of shows that were killed before their time because, as you'll see, this was one wild ride!

Jericho the show takes it name from its primary setting, Jericho, Kansas. The fictional town represents 'typical small town middle America'. Most everyone subsists on agriculture to one degree or another, everyone knows everyone else, and the mayor spends his mornings tending crops the same as everyone else. It's a little on the over-idyllic side, but not so much so as to render the illusion moot. Speaking of the mayor, although the ensemble cast all get their fair share of screen time and development, the definite 'main character' is a chap named Jake Green, played by Skeet Ulrich, who is the mayor's rebellious wayward son. That's going to be important later.

The show opens with a literal bang. As Jake rolls back into town on the wind, and old acquaintances are reunited, we see a kid standing on the roof of his home viewing the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion:

It became promotional material for the rest of the series run..

At this point, the show has already set up that fact that Jericho is a pretty isolated town. The assumption is that it's close enough to Denver, CO that the explosion can be seen, but far enough away that it's barely going to be a blip on any state or federal run emergency crisis team's radar. I'm sure that the premise becomes pretty obvious after this revelation: What are the people of Jericho, Kansas going to do now that nuclear armageddon has been thrust upon them? Now, this show was running concurrently with shows like Lost, and Heroes and you can definitely see some influence in the way that things are presented. It's rare that the viewer gets information before the characters. In this way, the scope of the story remains extremely limited and that adds to the mystery and suspense of the show over all. Threads and questions are set up as each serialized episode plays out that further feed the intrigue and the excitement of seeing what's going to happen down the road. Shoot, it takes until near the end of the second season before the audience finally gets a glimpse of what's been going on in some of the major cities around the country. The producers teased the show out in an extremely slow and measured way, and for me, that really made the experience that much more fun.

Some of the more notable story lines seem pretty mundane in writing, but play out well within the visual narrative of the show. Obviously, after a nuclear attack, the residents have to reestablish their livelihood. Power is suddenly unavailable, and they need to ensure that they have clean drinkable water. It seems mundane to us, but put yourself in this crisis scenario and try to answer with as much honesty as possible how you would fare. Once things are finally squared away on the home front, leadership from Jericho open relations with a nearby town that can offer windmills for power in exchange for food and salt. This seems like a mutually beneficial arrangement until the sheriff of the other town declares war on Jericho. That's our season one cliffhanger, and it was quite a nail biter as the show makes it abundantly clear that a bunch of mostly conservative middle-American farmers have a ton of weapons at their disposal.

As the second season opens, it's like a layer of an onion being peeled back. Instead of focusing on mere survival, we get a small peek into the general political situation when troops from the Allied States of America roll into town and put an abrupt end to the conflict between Jericho and the other town. The ASA seems like a godsend as the troops implement further structure to the daily affairs of the town and offer protection for seedy malicious groups, however, it doesn't take terribly long before the residents begin to see this repressive force in its true colors. The leader of the troops, Major Beck, eventually gets fed up with how he's being ordered to treat mostly harmless citizens, and orders his troops to stand down and stay out of the way.

Political intrigue grips this season as another bigger player in this show, Robert Hawkins, played by Lennie James, has been trying to get to the bottom of who orchestrated the nuclear attacks. This is a slow burn subplot left over from the first season that gets a lot more development during season two, and it's pretty unsettling given the political climate in which we live. I'll leave that reveal as guarded as I can just in case you wish to give this show a try later. At any rate, Hawkins does eventually solve the mystery, and it all points to certain characters who are now in league with the ASA. In the meantime, The USA is still running and Texas, being the land of infinite ammo, is a neutral state at this point in time, but Hawkins believes that if he can get his evidence to the leaders in Texas, that he can persuade them to take sides with the USA, and that the combined forces can muscle the ASA out of the picture. It's an intense series of events and as the last episode is coming to a close, Hawkins ominously talks about how a second civil war was always inevitable. It's a heck of a cliffhanger to leave off on and then be cancelled, but it made for some great TV watching!

Now, this may have been where a lot of shows just let out their death rattle and rolled over, but not Jericho, oh no. It's got spunk! I think that Jericho may have been the first to do this, but if not, it was one of the first to continue its story through comic books. In 2011, IDW started publishing a short event comic series that played out the general story that was to have been season 3. I haven't actually been able to read it so I don't know how good it is, but for those of us who were craving closure, it came as a huge relief. But wait there's more! After the success of that series, IDW finishes, I think, everything up with a season four comic arc! So if you end up trying the show and loving it, but want to know what happens after the show's cancellation, you've got options. This ended up extending to a bunch of other shows, Buffy, The X-Files, and Smallville, just to name a few, but in the case of Jericho, it really was a huge treat for the loyal fans.

So how does this show stack up and what led to its demise? Well, I'd say, on the whole, the show was well made. The characters were all well-developed, and interesting to watch. The actors did well portraying the roles, and the chemistry between the various cast members came across well. The plot was intriguing, and moved a pace just fast enough to stay engaging, but slowly enough to really build that suspense as you watched. Set design, camera work, basically all the technical stuff was done proficiently. I could probably find some faults with it, but it would take me a bit of work in order to do so. So why the ax? Basically, it comes down to numbers. The show was competing with a lot of very similar shows all at the same time. The market for such things became saturated, and because all the networks were fighting for a piece of that market pie, all of the audiences lost out. Its time slots didn't help. Its first season is was scheduled for Wednesday 8 pm, right along with Dancing With The Stars. For its second season, it was moved to Tuesday 10 pm, where it had to compete with Law & Order: SVU. Both of these other shows were well established with a well established audience base. Jericho probably didn't stand a chance. But you have to ask yourself, could there have been a slot that would have been accessible and that wouldn't have required it compete with other heavy hitters. I don't think that there were because TV can't slow down. Everything has to be bigger, better, more all the time, and as a result, thoughtful shows tend to get lost in the mix. At least, that's my take.

In all, I see a wasted opportunity in Jericho. It's certainly an intriguing premise, and the presentation left little to be desired. I think that the creators of the show had a well-defined vision driving their decisions, and that definitely shows in how the story played out. It's streaming on Netflix and perhaps a few other services, and if you can't find it there, the DVDs are pretty affordable on Amazon. Give it a go and let me know what you think! And stay tuned for next week as we'll be celebrating our two year anniversary!