So I finally made it thru Season1 of this.
Here's the show's problem---it's actually too good for it's own good.
I know that doesn't make sense. But hear me out...
Should a show on CBS starring Skeet Ulrich as the main lead in a post-apocolyptic conspiracy story about a midwestern town be worth watching? No. Anything starring Skeet Ulrich should be relegated to the VHS bargain bin in the back of Blockbuster.
But alas....this show is actually good. Great characters, engaging mystery, and extremely solid character development all thru the entire show.
Like I said---its an engaging mystery....too bad the rest of the personal stories get in the way. I could care less about young Dale's personal struggle to keep the local grocery store stocked, or the pretty blonde's worry about is her fiance still alive.
I liked it....and I'm even giving serious thought to following Season2. I just wish I cared about the story enough. The show is produced superbly. The characters are extremely likable and interesting. Too bad the show itself moves so slow that you get bored easily.
If you can brave thru the boredom...you'll find a quality show.
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Promo for the second season of Jericho.
Okay, I promised I was going to give a thorough examination of
Jericho and today's the day.
The second season premieres Tuesday night THIS week, but I won't get to see it until it gets arrives bootlegged here in Asia (which usually happens about a week after a TV show's season finale).
Still, I hope everyone watches this, because it IS a show worth watching and one that rewards patience and those Nielsen statistics we love to hate will be the deciding factor on whether this show gets a long-term commitment from CBS.
But enough blather, let's analysify!
I think
Jericho is a very DIFFERENT program, and I think one of the reasons why it may not have gotten the ratings that other programs have gotten is simply because of how many things it lacks many of the things that would keep most primetime programs in 21st century American TV on the air.
- There's no one defining character who commands the viewer's attention, no real center figure. This isn't a show about EXCITING characters who EXCITE you with how awe-inspiringly AWESOME they are. Which means Jericho doesn't have the automatic ratings draw that a show like House and Shark has. Both are blessed with a lead role so strong, that it almost exists solely for a single actor to hurricane his way from scene to scene while a bunch of lesser talent scuttle about to fill time in between. To a lesser extent, this also applies to Prison Break and 24, which carry themselves with a lead character who is blessed with meticulately realized character psychology. A friend of mine joked once that "It would be refreshing to see a TV show in which the actors didn't have that crazed look in the corner of the eyes that shows they are going for the Golden Globes."
- There's a 'soap/dramedy' structure given to the writing that isn't present in the high concept uber-serials like Lost and Heroes. I think to some extent, this put off viewers who were expecting Jericho to have the same locomotive-like plot momentum that 24 or Prison Break has. They came in expecting a big new serial drama that Demands Your Attention Or Else, but instead they got Northern Exposure after the apocalypse. Watching Jericho frequently reminded of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the sense that a continuing 'mystery' hangs across the season, but the narrative does not rely on cliffhanger-ized chunks to keep its audience. Not to be gendered about it, but Jericho is basically a girl-show ( Ugly Betty, Brothers & Sisters ) with a man-concept.
- A lot of people have confused the fact that Jericho has non-repulsively charmless actors playing unglamorously quirkless characters with Jericho being badly written or completely ill-acted. This is probably one of the biggest deal-breakers I think, but IMHO this is not entirely accidental. Jericho is supposed to be about a small town in the post-nuclear holocaust, and so it deadpans itself by being completely devoid of whip-snap dialogue ( The O.C., Ugly Betty ) and realistically populating the place with Very Ordinary Looking Guys who don't really Talk Clever at all. 24 and Prison Break gets away with the deadpan thing because they have casts of Really Serious Super-Guys who are Not Like You And Me and therefore are Too Busy Being Awesome or Bad-*** to break deadpan, while every non-fantasy dramedy since Dawson's Creek usually gets past Being Unfantastic by using characters who are Ordinary like You and Me but talk cleverer than we really would.
I have nothing against these shows, as I love them all, but I think I admire Jericho simply because it doesn't rely on Awesome Dialogue as a crutch, it's not full of Super-Fellas, Scene-Stealers or Witty Ordinary Guys that captivate your attention, nor is it trying to gain an audience by generating Eternal Watercooler Discussions through the use of cliffhangers and serialized narrative hooks.
So what does Jericho get right?
First, the writers are smarter than they seem. In the absence of whip-snap dialogue and random scenes full of opportunities to present the focused totality of bad-assery, they know how to write episodically.
A lot of viewers were saddened when Johnston Green lost the election to Gray Anderson (and moreso after he perished in the season finale), but IMO this was smart writing because Johnston Green was TOO smart for the show's own good. At first, his awe-inspiring wisdom served to lay out the practical issues of a post-nuclear attack and a fragmented country but having too good a mayor limited the writers from having dramatic situations and conflicts.
Some people don't care much for Dale Turner, having written him off as an angsty teen created to pander to a younger demographic, but his character arc is interesting after he takes over the supermarket. Additionally, the writing focuses on an ensemble cast divided among A, B & C-plots and this works because Turner only needs five minutes an episode to tell his story. They don't squander him and they don't make his story any bigger than it needs to be.
Robert Hawkins is the best proof of this though. He's pretty much a character concept who ran the risk of having a short shelf life. Normally, a Secret Guy's shelf life lasts by making him a supporting character in the shadows --- such as Deep Throat or Cigarette Smoking Man from
The X-Files. But Hawkins is the Secret Guy who takes a Starring Protagonist Role. Which means developing him involves destroying what makes him appealing in the first place.
The writers did the smart thing by making him an 'out of touch family man' trying to balance his super-secret protector persona against being an emotionally disconnected grumpy bear.
I could write forever and ever, about this topic but I've already edited this section a thousand times, and now it's time I move on to the second point:
Jericho does not **** around with its viewers. About a year ago, I PMed Bass about
Heroes to ask him if I was the only one who didn't totally absolutely love
Heroes. He agreed, but he also defended it by thoroughly reasoning out its popularity and highlighting its strengths:
Bass said:
Ever since Babylon 5 and The X-Files, TV loves the big mystery show. Big mystery shows are great sells because people get hooked - it's a scavenger hunt.
Yet, these are rife with frustrated audiences because it's a piece of piss to say there's a mystery, but it's another thing to actually have a mystery that is worth watching. The mystery requires three things - That it is solvable; That it is solved with ingenious insight in a timely fashion when the audience's curiosity is peaked; and That it is worth solving.
The X-Files, Lost, and Battlestar Galactica weren't.
The X-Files wasn't solvable because there was never any clues. Each conspiracy episode was some alien thing showing up and not being explained. The X-Files was solved when in the fourth season finale, Mulder discovers there are no aliens and it's all been a ruse to keep military black ops secret. But they retconned it to it just being aliens. Blech.
Lost is the same. When I started watching Lost it occurred to me either all the psychic-destiny stuff is bunk, or it's true. And I realised that neither was satisfactory, so I stopped watching. The ending would never satisfy the set-up.
Lost and Galactica also have the 'it's not solvable' problem because the writers have yet to solve it. They have a basic idea of the end of the mystery but because they know only the picture of the jigsaw's final assortment but not how the pieces interact, it's not solvable - just futile disappointment.
Bass goes on to detail why
Heroes, "despite it's problems, is a genuinely exciting show that fills all the three main criterias" outlined above. Essentially, the problem of most Super-Mysteries is that they **** around with you, and
Heroes does not.
Jericho does not **** around. The Big Reveal(s) aren't total surprises, but you haven't been deliberately misled or bamboozled the way
Lost does to its audience. A reasonable number of clues actually exist so that questions about the outside world don't just come out of left field or revise themselves for the convenience of prolonging the mystery, such as
X-Files.
In fact, by the end of the first season of
Jericho Season Enigmas raised early in the series get answered in a very definite fashion. Episode 18 pretty much says everything about the acts, and the final arc --- which deals with the outside world --- gives you 'visual confirmation' of the state of the nation as opposed to the second hand stories passed by Roger Hammond (or from Gray Anderson's 'field trip' from early in the season).
True, some things remain unanswered, but the most important mystery --- What's Going On Out There? and the definite State of The Nation --- is pretty much answered.
This does not mean that the show is over. A lot of new scenarios present themselves:
How will the medical center fare under the new leadership of Dr. Kenchy Duwalia, arguably the most educated of its staff but also the most emotionally unstable?
Robert Hawkins might find relief in having made concessions about Super-Secrecy by confiding in his wife and family, but how will he deal with making The Hard Choices now that they have a say?
To what extent will Dale Turner match the antisocial tendencies of his predecessor, Gracie Leigh, in running the supermarket and possibly turn his business into the Kingpin of General Supplies?
Ahem.
So there.
My fingers hurt.
I am tired.
I will analyze the show in greater detail when I need to respond to other posts.
That said, I cannot overstate how much I want this show to go on.
So much that I have to say it in such understated terms:
Watch Jericho. Support the second season.
