Friday, February 8, 2008

Jericho: The Return





For all those Jericho fans out there, and I am one of those, the wait is over. On February 12th at 10pm et/pt the eagerly awaited Season 2 of Jericho begins. Although only 7 episodes have been made (thankfully before the writer's strike), there would not be any if not for the efforts of the fans. The key word was NUTS, uttered by Jake in the last episode of Season 1, and that is what CBS got from the fans, tons and tons of nuts, or precisely, peanuts. A save Jericho movement started by Nuts for Jericho got enough fan support to send over 20 tons of peanuts to persuade the PTB to give us 7 more episodes. You can read a little more background about the cancellation and revival in this L.A. Times article.

For those who know nothing about Jericho and are intrigued by the fan fervor it developed, here are a few places to get you caught up with the rest of us. A good place to start is CBS where you can find everything from recaps from Season 1, promos of Season 2, fan blogs, photo galleries and most importantly full episodes of Season 1. You might also want to check out CBS' Official Fan Community . Jericho Season 1 is available on DVD and those of you with the Universal HD channel can watch the entire 22 episodes of Season 1 in full HD splendor starting Saturday 7 pm pt/10 pm et.

What initially interested me in Jericho was of course the nuclear bomb. I am a sucker for disasters of any kind; earthquakes, volcanoes, meteors, floods, you name it, I love them. But what kept me coming back were the characters and the complex plot lines. And the fact that one of the characters had a nuclear bomb buried in his basement kept the disaster theme firmly in place. Jericho is not like the usual post apocalyptic themed movie. There are no people running around in rags, no spike haired motorcycle mad men and no bomb worshiping mutants. What you will find are down to earth people trying to cope with the loss of electricity, food, communication with the outside world and basically everything they have taken for granted. This is a situation that you could conceivably find yourself in someday (hopefully not!), and that makes it something that you can relate to on a very basic level.

2 comments:

Jane said...

I am absolutely going to check out Jericho on the CBS website, thanks for the heads up! I've always been obsessed with the post-Nuclear holocaust genre. In fact, I am watching the classic, "On the Beach" even as we speak (love that TCM on demand!)Can you believe I've never seen the whole thing start to finish? So many movies...so little time!

Lisa said...

I've also not been a devout follower of Jericho but am going to catch up on it. Sounds good although I wouldn't mind just a glimpse of a bomb worshipping mutant, should one happen by...

Great post!