Two Apocalyptic J Shows
Two Apocalyptic J Shows
At the suggestion of ewans_gal_4ever, I started watching Jericho recently. It put me in mind of another post-apocalyptic J show I missed during its original run. Thus, I've been watching Jeremiah too. I far prefer Jeremiah, which fascinates me because one could make a good case that Jericho is the better show. My response (and the reasons for it) remind me of the Firefly/Crusade comparison I've made in the past.
Quick Summary
The two J's have quite a bit in common. Both are post-apocalyptic shows set in America in/very near the present. Both focus on their young, white, male J-named hero's adventures in trying to (re)build civilization, with recurrent appearances by diverse other characters, hurtful, helpful, or helpless. Both shows eschew transparent "good guys" and "bad guys" in favor of depicting how desperation impels people to various acts, noble or villainous.
Jericho illustrates the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war that destroys the United States' infrastructure and leaves the small Kansas town of Jericho as an island state attempting to provide for its people, protect its borders, and help strangers when it can.
Jeremiah takes place fifteen years after a plague killed off (almost) all people over the age of puberty. It depicts the semi-rebuilt civilization of the now grown children of this catastrophe, one that consists chiefly of villages using a mixture of left over technology and crude return to medieval crafts. It focuses on movements afoot to accelerate the rebuilding of society.
At this point, I have seen about half a season (10 or so episodes) of each one, so disclaimer: I may be missing dimensions that emerge later.
Comparison
Apocalypse:
In terms of enacting the devastation that would follow the destruction of the US infrastructure, Jericho excels over Jeremiah. Both shows grossly underestimate the degree of socioeconomic (and, in Jericho's scenario, ecological) collapse that would follow the disasters they depict. To Jericho, I can say only, "See The Road." Very likely, everyone would die (not right away, but the eventuality would be evident pretty quickly). On a more mundane scale, where do they get that endless supply of giant candles and shampoo? And how long would pretty boxes really retain economic value as trade for food? A week... maybe? For all its flaws, at least Jericho spends serious time worrying about the realities of the situation: food scarcity, loss of power to the hospital, constant onslaught by bands of hungry thugs, winter cold.
Jeremiah pays some lip-service to these things but is not very concerned with them. There's little direct discussion of how the new economy works, who's growing food (I have yet to see a farm), how all those presumably fifteen-year-old cans of food have not already been used up, where all this gas keeps being found, why most people's clothes look made new in a factory. [1] Except for the clothes, Jeremiah gets a bit of a free pass because its society has had fifteen years to rebuild. I buy that they've figured out how to make good candles. Their apocalypse is also less devastating to begin with because it just attacked humans, not the entire biosphere.
Race and Gender:
Jeremiah race-fails epically more than Jericho. In Jericho, the most interesting character in the story, Hawkins, is black. He is not the lead, but he is far more intriguing, ambiguous, complex, knowledgeable, and powerful than any other character. His entire family is well written and their troubled dynamics fascinating.
In Jeremiah the number 2 character, Kurdy, is black, and boy, is he ever number 2. He's not a bad character (very well acted), but he is consistently written to be the competent lieutenant safely inferior to the protagonist in every way. Compared to Jeremiah, he is less intelligent, less visionary, less mature, less perceptive, less committed, less a leader... do I need to go on? While he sometimes saves the day or has words of wisdom Jeremiah needs to hear, he has not one consistent trait in which he surpasses Jeremiah (unless it be writing poetry, which he's good at but is not much discussed).
In both shows, the majority of the cast is white, so Hawkins/Kurdy end up representing a lot of racial discourse. In fairness, in both shows' settings (Kansas and the Northwest US respectively), one could expect a majority white population, so that's not unwarranted in itself.
If Jeremiah wins the racefail prize, however, Jericho, hands down, takes the cake of genderfail. Jeremiah is mildly disappointing for a JMS show in its female cast: Theo (leader of a town) is awesome but not present enough. I have a soft spot for Meaghan, but she's exceptionally underutilized. Erin is Kurdy: competent lieutenant inferior to her partner (Markus) in every way.
Compared to Jericho, though, Jeremiah looks like a gender egalitarian utopia. It's been a long time since I have seen women so consistently damselized as in Jericho. The persistent refrain is "the womens is helpless." They take part in very, very little of the action: protecting borders, making decisions, even raising food, etc. By and large, they worry about their personal soap opera drama while the men worry about the survival of everyone in the town. (The exception is medicine, where the female doctor and nurses are shown to good effect.) When a woman does attempt to make a contribution, the standard response, "We couldn't possibly let you risk yourself, dear helpless little woman!" Yes, there does have to be a huge debate over whether the healthy woman or man with a broken ankle should walk back to town for help, likewise a huge debate over whether the woman who knows how to make generators should possibly be permitted to risk herself by coming with them to, you know, help make a generator, likewise much disapproval that the only person who could successfully control her criminal father dares to follow the mens and control her criminal father.
Narrative, Character, and Relationships
Still, Jericho can claim more naturalistic writing, "better dialogue," one might loosely call it. Jeremiah is a true JMS show, and as with Crusade and to a lesser extent B5, that is both its blessing and its curse. It suffers from the usual JMS pitfalls:
* Oversimplified preachiness, unrealistic dialogue.
* Sacrificing character to plot needs (ex. People react in a way that supports the hero's plan even though real people wouldn't respond to him that way because he's the hero and his plan has to be good for the plot to be furthered.)
* Thuggery: my term for the inclusion of characters whose sole job is to be stupid, ignorant asses so that the hero can look good. (Actually Jeremiah does this less than any other JMS show I've seen.)
Jericho is not particularly marked by any of these shortcomings, yet I find Jeremiah infinitely more engaging. Why? Same reason I prefer Crusade to Firefly, the reason JMS, despite being in essence a (very good) hack, retains such a fervent fan following. The strengths of the JMS narrative:
* It's mythic/epic. It talks about big issues--re-envisioning society, God, the soul. Jericho, in comparison, is a daily-life drama--just one set in a daily-life with a lot of problems. My preference marks me a sociological science fiction fan: I like the neo-mythic, the cutting deeper than the everyday.
* Its focus on human relationships stems from genuine contrast of personalities, from human psychology and personal narrative rather than the standard clichés. This is the big point. Jericho loves the soap opera cliché: high school lovers meet again and she disdains him in favor of her new, awesome fiancé, even though her former lover will really always be the man she was meant for; prodigal son returns to strict but loving father, strong but gentle mother (one of the best characters), and stalwart, "good son" bother; city girl and farm boy fall in love. The relationships are based on "type" rather than character. City Girl, Farm Boy, Pretty Love Interest, Troubled Hero. In not one single case could I tell you why any of the romantic couples fit together as individuals (except for mom and dad, who make a good, old married couple, and the Hawkins stuff, which is a cut above). In the main, I find it all very tiresome.
Jeremiah, thus far, stands well below B5 and Crusade in its depiction of interesting characters and relationships, not least because it focuses on just two guys traveling around and meeting guest stars, and those two do not have a very compelling relationship (because it's hard to have one when one of the two is inferior in every way). But it does throw enough kernels my way to get me fannishly engaged in a way Jericho never will. I'm eager to see the series through to the end (probably never will with Jericho) because I want to see where these characters go.
One thing I adore about JMS is his unapologetic willingness to show men as deeply important to each other. This might sound like a simple thing, but it's almost verboten in our era of "any same sex closeness reads as gay and we mustn't have it be gay!!" JMS, bless him, just doesn't care. He's really a very het writer, but he is no homophobe, to wit Ivanova/Talia and his brief but very clear message in B5 that gay marriage is around and accepted. More deeply, he doesn't shy away from men being central to each other. Londo and G'Kar are central to each other. Gideon and Galen were on track to be central to each other, if they hadn't been cancelled.
Jeremiah isn't quite there (at least yet in my viewing), but it has the potential, and the powerful potential pairing is Jeremiah and Markus. They are both men of vision and natural leaders but a great contrast of personalities--almost opposite personalities in some ways. Jeremiah is a vagabond, and actor, an instigator. Markus is community oriented, place-bound, cautious, conservative. One can easily see how they could make a crack team in shoring each other's weaknesses (which is the direction it's going so far) or have an epic meltdown due to philosophical and interpersonal conflicts. Any and all would be riveting. You just need to get them in the same room more than they have been thus far.
I am also charmed by the romance between Markus and Meaghan. (Yes, I know it's not going to end well. Markus's name marks him as cursed in the JMS-verse.) Like Marcus and Ivanova, Markus and Meaghan do not get enough screen time for their relationship to be properly developed. And Meaghan really is underused. She seems to have done nothing with her life for fifteen years but ruminate on how not to go crazy. Why (as one of the only living people with a high school diploma) she hasn't been studying the biology of viruses is anyone's guess. Still, they have an interesting setup that is ripe for fannish extrapolation. The conceit of their not being able to touch each other requires their relationship to be developed in other directions, and even if too many of their conversations revolve around how they can't touch each other, one gets a potent impression of two people who, through nothing more than talking, have become a truly committed couple over the years.
And that is why I prefer Jeremiah. It is perhaps JMS's greatest talent to draft characters of depth and soul. He plants them in our hearts and we can do with them what we will.
Note [1]: See my dissertation for more on JMS's ecological fail. He really doesn't seem much concerned with ecological relationality/economic cause and effect.
At the suggestion of ewans_gal_4ever, I started watching Jericho recently. It put me in mind of another post-apocalyptic J show I missed during its original run. Thus, I've been watching Jeremiah too. I far prefer Jeremiah, which fascinates me because one could make a good case that Jericho is the better show. My response (and the reasons for it) remind me of the Firefly/Crusade comparison I've made in the past.
Quick Summary
The two J's have quite a bit in common. Both are post-apocalyptic shows set in America in/very near the present. Both focus on their young, white, male J-named hero's adventures in trying to (re)build civilization, with recurrent appearances by diverse other characters, hurtful, helpful, or helpless. Both shows eschew transparent "good guys" and "bad guys" in favor of depicting how desperation impels people to various acts, noble or villainous.
Jericho illustrates the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war that destroys the United States' infrastructure and leaves the small Kansas town of Jericho as an island state attempting to provide for its people, protect its borders, and help strangers when it can.
Jeremiah takes place fifteen years after a plague killed off (almost) all people over the age of puberty. It depicts the semi-rebuilt civilization of the now grown children of this catastrophe, one that consists chiefly of villages using a mixture of left over technology and crude return to medieval crafts. It focuses on movements afoot to accelerate the rebuilding of society.
At this point, I have seen about half a season (10 or so episodes) of each one, so disclaimer: I may be missing dimensions that emerge later.
Comparison
Apocalypse:
In terms of enacting the devastation that would follow the destruction of the US infrastructure, Jericho excels over Jeremiah. Both shows grossly underestimate the degree of socioeconomic (and, in Jericho's scenario, ecological) collapse that would follow the disasters they depict. To Jericho, I can say only, "See The Road." Very likely, everyone would die (not right away, but the eventuality would be evident pretty quickly). On a more mundane scale, where do they get that endless supply of giant candles and shampoo? And how long would pretty boxes really retain economic value as trade for food? A week... maybe? For all its flaws, at least Jericho spends serious time worrying about the realities of the situation: food scarcity, loss of power to the hospital, constant onslaught by bands of hungry thugs, winter cold.
Jeremiah pays some lip-service to these things but is not very concerned with them. There's little direct discussion of how the new economy works, who's growing food (I have yet to see a farm), how all those presumably fifteen-year-old cans of food have not already been used up, where all this gas keeps being found, why most people's clothes look made new in a factory. [1] Except for the clothes, Jeremiah gets a bit of a free pass because its society has had fifteen years to rebuild. I buy that they've figured out how to make good candles. Their apocalypse is also less devastating to begin with because it just attacked humans, not the entire biosphere.
Race and Gender:
Jeremiah race-fails epically more than Jericho. In Jericho, the most interesting character in the story, Hawkins, is black. He is not the lead, but he is far more intriguing, ambiguous, complex, knowledgeable, and powerful than any other character. His entire family is well written and their troubled dynamics fascinating.
In Jeremiah the number 2 character, Kurdy, is black, and boy, is he ever number 2. He's not a bad character (very well acted), but he is consistently written to be the competent lieutenant safely inferior to the protagonist in every way. Compared to Jeremiah, he is less intelligent, less visionary, less mature, less perceptive, less committed, less a leader... do I need to go on? While he sometimes saves the day or has words of wisdom Jeremiah needs to hear, he has not one consistent trait in which he surpasses Jeremiah (unless it be writing poetry, which he's good at but is not much discussed).
In both shows, the majority of the cast is white, so Hawkins/Kurdy end up representing a lot of racial discourse. In fairness, in both shows' settings (Kansas and the Northwest US respectively), one could expect a majority white population, so that's not unwarranted in itself.
If Jeremiah wins the racefail prize, however, Jericho, hands down, takes the cake of genderfail. Jeremiah is mildly disappointing for a JMS show in its female cast: Theo (leader of a town) is awesome but not present enough. I have a soft spot for Meaghan, but she's exceptionally underutilized. Erin is Kurdy: competent lieutenant inferior to her partner (Markus) in every way.
Compared to Jericho, though, Jeremiah looks like a gender egalitarian utopia. It's been a long time since I have seen women so consistently damselized as in Jericho. The persistent refrain is "the womens is helpless." They take part in very, very little of the action: protecting borders, making decisions, even raising food, etc. By and large, they worry about their personal soap opera drama while the men worry about the survival of everyone in the town. (The exception is medicine, where the female doctor and nurses are shown to good effect.) When a woman does attempt to make a contribution, the standard response, "We couldn't possibly let you risk yourself, dear helpless little woman!" Yes, there does have to be a huge debate over whether the healthy woman or man with a broken ankle should walk back to town for help, likewise a huge debate over whether the woman who knows how to make generators should possibly be permitted to risk herself by coming with them to, you know, help make a generator, likewise much disapproval that the only person who could successfully control her criminal father dares to follow the mens and control her criminal father.
Narrative, Character, and Relationships
Still, Jericho can claim more naturalistic writing, "better dialogue," one might loosely call it. Jeremiah is a true JMS show, and as with Crusade and to a lesser extent B5, that is both its blessing and its curse. It suffers from the usual JMS pitfalls:
* Oversimplified preachiness, unrealistic dialogue.
* Sacrificing character to plot needs (ex. People react in a way that supports the hero's plan even though real people wouldn't respond to him that way because he's the hero and his plan has to be good for the plot to be furthered.)
* Thuggery: my term for the inclusion of characters whose sole job is to be stupid, ignorant asses so that the hero can look good. (Actually Jeremiah does this less than any other JMS show I've seen.)
Jericho is not particularly marked by any of these shortcomings, yet I find Jeremiah infinitely more engaging. Why? Same reason I prefer Crusade to Firefly, the reason JMS, despite being in essence a (very good) hack, retains such a fervent fan following. The strengths of the JMS narrative:
* It's mythic/epic. It talks about big issues--re-envisioning society, God, the soul. Jericho, in comparison, is a daily-life drama--just one set in a daily-life with a lot of problems. My preference marks me a sociological science fiction fan: I like the neo-mythic, the cutting deeper than the everyday.
* Its focus on human relationships stems from genuine contrast of personalities, from human psychology and personal narrative rather than the standard clichés. This is the big point. Jericho loves the soap opera cliché: high school lovers meet again and she disdains him in favor of her new, awesome fiancé, even though her former lover will really always be the man she was meant for; prodigal son returns to strict but loving father, strong but gentle mother (one of the best characters), and stalwart, "good son" bother; city girl and farm boy fall in love. The relationships are based on "type" rather than character. City Girl, Farm Boy, Pretty Love Interest, Troubled Hero. In not one single case could I tell you why any of the romantic couples fit together as individuals (except for mom and dad, who make a good, old married couple, and the Hawkins stuff, which is a cut above). In the main, I find it all very tiresome.
Jeremiah, thus far, stands well below B5 and Crusade in its depiction of interesting characters and relationships, not least because it focuses on just two guys traveling around and meeting guest stars, and those two do not have a very compelling relationship (because it's hard to have one when one of the two is inferior in every way). But it does throw enough kernels my way to get me fannishly engaged in a way Jericho never will. I'm eager to see the series through to the end (probably never will with Jericho) because I want to see where these characters go.
One thing I adore about JMS is his unapologetic willingness to show men as deeply important to each other. This might sound like a simple thing, but it's almost verboten in our era of "any same sex closeness reads as gay and we mustn't have it be gay!!" JMS, bless him, just doesn't care. He's really a very het writer, but he is no homophobe, to wit Ivanova/Talia and his brief but very clear message in B5 that gay marriage is around and accepted. More deeply, he doesn't shy away from men being central to each other. Londo and G'Kar are central to each other. Gideon and Galen were on track to be central to each other, if they hadn't been cancelled.
Jeremiah isn't quite there (at least yet in my viewing), but it has the potential, and the powerful potential pairing is Jeremiah and Markus. They are both men of vision and natural leaders but a great contrast of personalities--almost opposite personalities in some ways. Jeremiah is a vagabond, and actor, an instigator. Markus is community oriented, place-bound, cautious, conservative. One can easily see how they could make a crack team in shoring each other's weaknesses (which is the direction it's going so far) or have an epic meltdown due to philosophical and interpersonal conflicts. Any and all would be riveting. You just need to get them in the same room more than they have been thus far.
I am also charmed by the romance between Markus and Meaghan. (Yes, I know it's not going to end well. Markus's name marks him as cursed in the JMS-verse.) Like Marcus and Ivanova, Markus and Meaghan do not get enough screen time for their relationship to be properly developed. And Meaghan really is underused. She seems to have done nothing with her life for fifteen years but ruminate on how not to go crazy. Why (as one of the only living people with a high school diploma) she hasn't been studying the biology of viruses is anyone's guess. Still, they have an interesting setup that is ripe for fannish extrapolation. The conceit of their not being able to touch each other requires their relationship to be developed in other directions, and even if too many of their conversations revolve around how they can't touch each other, one gets a potent impression of two people who, through nothing more than talking, have become a truly committed couple over the years.
And that is why I prefer Jeremiah. It is perhaps JMS's greatest talent to draft characters of depth and soul. He plants them in our hearts and we can do with them what we will.
Note [1]: See my dissertation for more on JMS's ecological fail. He really doesn't seem much concerned with ecological relationality/economic cause and effect.