Jericho (the show, not the band)

[Shrain]

"I'm sick of getting poked with needles every ten minutes. They'll be sorry when my spider powers kick in!"

The show's premise is beyond terrifying: multiple nuclear bombs go off in major city after major city in the United States. I never planned to get hooked on this show, but, hey, it's one of the free shows I get on my DVR from Comcast. So I thought I'd watch the pilot--give it a shot. This one is so impressive and real that it's scaring the heck out of me. The story focuses mainly on a small town near Denver, which was hit by a bomb.

Jericho has a go-to mayor, played by Gerald McRaney. Also in town is a prodigal son (the mayor's, in fact), who has oodles of surprising skills. He's been who knows where for five years (Skeet Ulrich plays this role). Oh, and don't forget the prodigal's old flame, whose fiance may or may not be dead.

Who else? Well, Jericho has an ex-St. Louis cop (or so he says) who has all this Hazmat stuff in his basement. This dude is a blessing and a curse, I think. Also in the character line-up are a farmer and his deaf little sister, whose family ranch is being audited by the IRS.

One of my favorites is a nerdy teenager with a heart of gold. A feisty grocery store owner. A deputy (another son of the mayor) who's pretty heroic except for the fact that--well, you'll see. Anyhow, this show rocks! Is anyone else watching it?

[stacer]

I am and I love it. I think it's my favorite show of the new ones from this season. There are some stupid details the writers completely overlook, such as the town barbecue where everyone leaves and leaves all the lamps burning, when they know darn well they have a power shortage, but overall I think the *idea* is so interesting that I'm continuing to watch because I think it's going somewhere cool.

[Entsuropi]

I'm watching it via the powers of bittorrent. I agree with stacer - poor writing in places (the mayor didn't realise that gasoline would be crucial and took steps to preserve it?) but the concept is gold.

The shows writer/creator says that it's designed to be a hopeful story about how humans can come together and deal with a crisis, rather than a doom&gloom story about people's hair falling out and bodies in the streets.

[Tink]

I'm watching this. I'm somewhat interested so far. I watched it via the network's Web site (thanks to Lost, lots of shows can be watched online, at least for ABC and CBS; not sure of the others). It makes me want to study on what to do if there is a nuke blast, but I wonder how much we really know about it. I was surprised that it was okay to go outside once the rain stopped. Is that really all there is to it? (That along with what they said about getting rid of top soil, etc.) I thought there would be more lingering affects in the air. Maybe I'm thinking this due to Blast from the Past with Brendan Fraser where they stayed underground for 30 years waiting for the air to clear. Don't know.

[stacer]

But they stayed underground for 30 years starting in the 60s, so perhaps the idea was that they were working with outdated information? How long did it take Nagasaki to clear?

[42]

I've watched the first two episodes. It hasn't really drawn me in.

I think it is all the details that get overlooked that are driving me nuts. Also, I'm not really attached to any of the characters.

[Entsuropi]

It depends on how severe the war is. The 3 decade underground hideouts are for the aftermath of a full-scale nuclear war (ie, if the Cuban Missile Crisis went even more wrong). There would be a nuclear winter, so most life would die off, and there would likely be clouds of radioactive dust for years afterwards.

But Jericho isn't about that. It's had around 10 explosions, scattered far and wide. The towns main problems stem from their sudden isolation and general unpreparedness for the situation. Radioactivity from that blast would have reduced to 1% of it's initial lethal levels within a fortnight, or so i've read. Still, it's safe to say that town might have a very high cancer rate within a decade odd.

[42]

So I watched another episode, now I'm just getting annoyed.

Things that reveal the makers of the show don't know what they are doing:

1-It's significantly more than 2 hours to get to the Kansas border from Denver.

2-That area of the US does not have have that many hills and trees. The area is actually really, really flat.

3-That has to be the most ethnically diverse small town in the mid-Western U.S. ever (except maybe Smallville).

4-Why does every small town portrayed in media have half the town members involved in extra-marital affairs. Don't they realize that affairs are less likely to happen in a small town since the chances of getting caught go up a lot.

There are just a lot of little things going on in this show that are keeping it back. Otherwise, it could be rather good. IMO

[stacer]

I completely agree with #3 and #4. If anything, if you have an affair, it's with someone from the next town over. (I've heard people in my hometown having affairs. The next town over is 10 minutes away, and it's much easier to keep quiet with someone from out of town.) I suppose it's a little farther than that in western Kansas, but still...

However, I'm still giving it a chance. TV/movie people rarely do understand the Midwest (how 'bout them Iowa mountains in Footloose?). It's still intriguing enough to see what they're going to do.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

1-It's significantly more than 2 hours to get to the Kansas border from Denver.

um... no?
I thought it was like, 160 miles from Denver to the Kansas border. The speed limit is, if I remember, 75. Even if you went *at* the speed limit it would only take you just over 2 hours. If you did what 90% of drivers do and go 5-10 miles over the speed limit, you'd get there in *less* than 2 hours.

2-That area of the US does not have have that many hills and trees. The area is actually really, really flat.

Again, I'm going by memory, but when I drove it solo a few years back I remember running into a *lot* of Butterflies, making my wind shield filthy and gunky. However, the other thing I remember about looking out of the window was there being a large number of trees on one side or the other. Nothing like the east coast or the Pacific Northwest, of course, but not a lot of featureless nothing. At least for a good way out of Denver.

Is it possible you just don't *want* to like the show? I mean, I've not seen it, but you seem to be finding faults that don't exist.

[42]

I mapquested the distance. It's more like a 180 miles to the border and it the speed limit is 65. Mapquest has it taking 3 hours on I-70. This is assuming the town is right on the border.

I've also been out in that area, it is flat. Even looked at a satellite image of the area through Google Earth. It is all farmland--no hills, no forests.

I guess my big beef is that I've seen other shows that take on the whole "the world as we know it has ended" theme and have done a better job of it. I'm just not seeing the intensity I would expect. The main characters seem too unaffected by a nuclear bomb going off.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

and we all know we should trust mapquest time predictions

even at 180 miles, there's no frigging way that's taking me 3 hours. If bombs have gone off, I'm going to reckon these people don't drive at 65. A more realistic prediction, even if the highways are still patrolled, is 75-80 mph. Which is still putting us at less than 2 and a half.

I didn't say there were forests. I said there were trees. Particularly right next to the roads.

This is a screen shot of good earth's images. It's about halfway, driving wise, between Denver and Kansas, along I70. I see green. I also see marks that indicate non-flat geography.

THis one is as zoomed as I can make it and still see satellite images. The green is not in regular shapes (circular for some sprinkler systems, square for many fields). THat would seem to me that we're not talking about farmed crops making it green. Again, we see some topography too.

This is not to say there is *no* farmland out there. Indeed, the further east, the more regular shapes you see. But my point is that doesn't encompass the entire trip. In addition, most farms border their fields with trees, for erosion prevention purposes. The road would then have a lot of trees next to it.

While I have nothing vested in the show -- I haven't seen it -- it seems you are making up complaints.  Like the stockpiling gas. How many cities actually stockpile gas? I know the federal government has *oil* reserves. But that's different from refined fuel, and then there's the problem of delivery. I've never heard of any gasoline reserves for DC, Arlington, Richmond, or Alexandria, all of which, I believe, are in the same size category of Denver.

Come on, folks, I check this out to find out if I should bother watching shows. Making up reasons not to like it doesn't help me.

[stacer]

In the midwest, there are plenty of trees. They just happen to be at the edge of fields as windbreakers and in waterways, as conservation efforts. Kansas is a lot more arid than Illinois and Iowa, so it has fewer trees, but as far as I know, it's still pretty treed. It's mountains I object to, and I don't remember seeing any in the show.

Like I said, it's worth watching. There are quirks that show it's not a typical midwestern town, but in this day and age, are we really going to put a show on TV that isn't diverse?

I think though, that the guy from "St. Louis," as he claims to be, is in a perfectly plausible situation. He's the only black guy in town--I didn't see too many people of other backgrounds. In my town, we were about 90% white, but we had a number of Latinos who descended from migrant workers, so it's not completely impossible for a small midwestern town to be diverse. The next town over from ours *did* have quite a bit of diversity, as well, so it's not like the midwest is an island of whiteness--it varies from town to town.

However, like I said, that's minor compared to the potential this story has, and I want to see where it goes. I still think it's the best show of all the new ones this season.

[Spriggan]

Just FYI the center and western parts of Kansas are considered the flattest place in the US, there's also less hills in Kansas then any other state.

[Shrain]

Hrm. All geography aside, I'm more interested in the dude with a satelite dish who claims he's an ex-cop from St. Louis. He is far too... brooding and sinister to be a good guy, imo. It's like his whole family is just a manufactured one; also, he seems to be far too interested in the mayor's son's (military?) past.

Plus, how scary was it that the guy who died in the hospital seemed to be part of a terrorist cell and that this "ex-cop" is a member too. And yet I can't quite believe that all these regular Americans who don't have ethnic ties to the Middle East, are tied up in a terrorist cell.