Cynical Cinema

One of my pet peeves with TV shows on DVD is when those DVDs don’t have an option to “play all episodes” on the menu. If you get into a show, and you want to really watch a disc or two, it’s annoying to have to switch back to the menu and play each one at a time every 45 minutes or so. A minor quibble, but one that becomes immediately apparent with a series like Jericho. This was a series that ran on CBS in 2006, but was cancelled after that season. But, like so many other TV shows of late, a fan campaign (one would assume one of those oh-so-effective online petitions) resurrected the program for the 2007-2008 season. After seven episodes in that second season, the show was canned again. This time, one would assume, for good. Those seven episodes are available on the Second Season DVD tomorrow, June 17th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Jericho is a series that I believe may have been overlooked. I can understand getting into this show in a big way, which is one reason playing each episode individually is so irritating. It’s a series that answers some questions - like “whatever happened to Skeet Ulrich?”, and poses many more. Questions like “how would America respond to a nuclear holocaust?” which is the basic premise of the show. Jericho is a small town in what used to be rural Kansas, that is attempting to rebuild after a massive nuclear attack on major cities destroys the United States as we know it. This of course presupposes, as do so many other television programs today, that no country outside the United States actually exists, or has ever existed. And only Americans can help Americans rebuild America in the American way for good Americans. Maybe the idea here is that after the Bush response to the last terrorist attacks, the rest of the world says “screw you, U.S., you’re on your own”? Well, it doesn’t really matter.

The setting of this show is pretty solid, in that small-town USA is the best place to see misguided patriotism and right-wing crazies and NRA members and gun nuts and humble apple farmers and jovial greasy spoon owners and drunken locals can all come together in the big melting pot, pulling together in a post-apocalyptic world. Although most of those characters aren’t there. The army is there though. And so is the sheriff, Skeet Ulrich. And the government is there too, in the form of a giant corporation called Jennings and Rall. It’s a solid premise, with the idea of a corporation rising in the wake of a massive nuclear attack to control the entire country in every facet making some obvious comparisons to the current governmental situation in the U.S.

But unfortunately, that’s the best thing this series has going for it - the premise. The characters are, for the most part, one-dimensional. The plot, despite the complexity of the ideas, is too simplistic. And the series just doesn’t attain the level of other, similar programs. What made Lost so popular was the fact that the first season was so compelling that people were desperate to watch the second one. (Although the second season suffered for the exact opposite reason - people need to know there’s an end in sight.) Jericho is the kind of series proves to be tougher for us to connect with it, and as such lost a large portion of it’s potential audience right away. But it’s also the kind of show that once you get into it, you need to know how it ends. And since Season Two is the final season (at least on CBS, for now), the DVD set needs to provide closure. And - it does.

What seems to be a hastily devised wrap-up for the show, written once they knew it would be the last season and they felt obligated to provide that closure, gives us the final episode. This is the one that was broadcast on television, ending with a looks-like-everything-will-be-OK-now finish. A second, alternate ending is provided on the DVD set as well, the one that would have been broadcast had the series been extended - a cliffhanger, will-everything-really-be-OK ending. At least the closure makes this DVD series worth picking up.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 1:53 am and is filed under Esai Morales, 2008, Skeet Ulrich, Mystery, Drama, TV series, Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.