_Jericho_ season 2 starts tonight (in the USA), and mini-season 1 review
An abbreviated (7-episode) season 2 (all written, and I think entirely filmed before the writers' wtrike) starts tonight.
I hope to have more time later but been meaning to post (among MANY other things :) ) that
echo_eriol was up a few weeks ago and we did our usual spend-a-ton-of-time-watching-most-of-a-season-of-some-TV-show with Jericho season 1 on DVD. She'd not seen it before, and I had seen every episode a week apart.
One thing with season-at-a-time watching: a show's strengths and weaknesses are amplified. And Jericho's biggest weakness luckily starts to get corrected a little over halfway through Season 1 (I'm told by a friend in television that that's about how long it takes viewer/critical feedback to be listened to and, one hopes, corrected, in a show). To wit, Jericho was trying to be both a suspense thriller and some sort of small-town soap opera, and Sho and I were just about screaming at the screen to get back to the good parts of the plot quite a bit. Finallly, that soap opera quality starts to go into the background (yes, a sprinkling adds some human interest, but omg we don't CARE who's going to go back to his wife or pick his mistress anymore after a while).
When Jericho sticks to its strengths -- the effects of nuclear explosions taking out many major U. S. cities as seen from a small town's point-of-view, it can be incredible. It did a reasonably good job of looking at the impact on all levels, from people's hopes that their out-of-town neighbors and friends were returning through how news travels in a post-catastrophe world through what happens to the government, with a side-story about a newcomer to town who obviously knows way too much about the attacks. It's not perfect, some of the characters never got past being cliches, but it did get better and better as the season progressed.
I'm hopeful the writing and plotting stays that strong this season.
I hope to have more time later but been meaning to post (among MANY other things :) ) that
echo_eriol was up a few weeks ago and we did our usual spend-a-ton-of-time-watching-most-of-a-season-of-some-TV-show with Jericho season 1 on DVD. She'd not seen it before, and I had seen every episode a week apart.
One thing with season-at-a-time watching: a show's strengths and weaknesses are amplified. And Jericho's biggest weakness luckily starts to get corrected a little over halfway through Season 1 (I'm told by a friend in television that that's about how long it takes viewer/critical feedback to be listened to and, one hopes, corrected, in a show). To wit, Jericho was trying to be both a suspense thriller and some sort of small-town soap opera, and Sho and I were just about screaming at the screen to get back to the good parts of the plot quite a bit. Finallly, that soap opera quality starts to go into the background (yes, a sprinkling adds some human interest, but omg we don't CARE who's going to go back to his wife or pick his mistress anymore after a while).
When Jericho sticks to its strengths -- the effects of nuclear explosions taking out many major U. S. cities as seen from a small town's point-of-view, it can be incredible. It did a reasonably good job of looking at the impact on all levels, from people's hopes that their out-of-town neighbors and friends were returning through how news travels in a post-catastrophe world through what happens to the government, with a side-story about a newcomer to town who obviously knows way too much about the attacks. It's not perfect, some of the characters never got past being cliches, but it did get better and better as the season progressed.
I'm hopeful the writing and plotting stays that strong this season.