BTW, Jericho Is Back On The Air

I don't tend to watch a lot of television. My guilty pleasures are shooting, chocolate, books and the occasional well-written TV program. In this case it is the series Jericho, which returned to the airwaves last week. I had planned to mention it then (as in, Don't Miss It!), but forgot for one reason or another.

The series, if you are not aware, profiles the lives of people in a small Midwest town after simultaneous nuclear attacks on 23 United States cities. The nation, and government is fractured. The new season has one of the series heroes, a prodigal son, being offered the job of sheriff of his town. And gripping with the rise of a new nation, the Allied States of America, comprising all the mainland states west of the Mississippi River, with the capital in Cheyenne, Wyo.). Of course what he really wants to do is take a group to the next town and "take out" the town leader there, whose greed and ambition after the attacks led to war between the two rural hamlets (the old "you've got what I want and I'm going to take it"), and to the death of the originally mentioned hero's father.

While it all may seem contrived to those non-viewers, it is a very well written look at the aftermath of a man-made disaster, the initial breakdown of law and order, and ultimately how society survives one day at a time. Not too far off many of the theoretical discussions in which I've participated.

It is on CBS, Saturdays (that's tonight!) at 10 pm. You can even watch episodes from last season, and last week's new season opener. You might ask why this show, that received little fanfare, mediocre reviews, and a modicum of respect from CBS is back on a second season. Or you might not even know. In one of the last episodes its its first season last year, when the little town of Jericho is about to be overrun by its larger neighbor, New Bern, a final ultimatum is given to the former. Give up and live. Or fight and die. The response over the two-way radio is, "Nuts," echoing history with the identical reply as that given by an American division commander in 1944 during WW2 when surrounded by German troops at Bastogne and all hope seemed lost. Anyway, when it became likely the network would not renew, thousands of fans send hundreds, if not thousands of pounds of nuts to network producers and decision makers in both Los Angeles and New York City.

The message was received. Jericho has returned for a second season. Power to the people.

An interesting aside: Though it does not focus the story this direction, the Jericho plot notes that the states east of the Mississippi River are less organized and aligning themselves around a new capital in Columbus, Ohio -- the city from which I daily post to The Ready Line. Columbus, which in reality has its own odd inferiority complex (we have larger populations than Cincinnati and Cleveland, and geographically are larger than Boston and many other more well known cities, but seemingly are only known for college football). The capital of a nation. I'm sure when that came out, our own Mayor Mike here in Ohio's capital city puffed out his chest a bit more than usual . . . and imagined himself as chief.