Jericho

 _****½

A visible nuclear detonation rocks a small town, forcing its people to come together to deal with the chaos created when the town's electricity fails, a bus of school children goes missing during a field trip, and isolation sets in as modern communication cuts off. The mayor of Jericho struggles to maintain the peace as rumors of possible nuclear war run rampant through the darkened streets.

Jericho is a series that I have heard good things about, and I have even seen clips of it here and there, but I never before found or made the time to watch it. It has a group of actors that I'm somewhat familiar with, many of whom I quite like, and a storyline that sounds quite interesting to me, so how this escaped me during it's original run is beyond me.
The most refreshing thing about Jericho is the fact that all of the characters presented in this episode are, at heart, good people motivated by their own basic needs. Dale Turner (Erik Knudsen) spends his day reveling in his own personal devastation, and deals with this by turning wordlessly to the aide of Gracie Leigh (Beth Grant) and her grocery store. Robert Hawkins, as played by Lennie James, has a deep desire to help the people of this town cope with this unknown situation, despite the fact that he himself is a newcomer, and does so only because he has skills and knowledge that other people might not be privy to. The people of Jericho have very real reactions, acting very believably in the face of impending disaster and possible invasion; even when they storm the gas stations and fight amongst themselves, it is due to their need to protect the ones that they care for.

The set-up for this series is done quite well, and while I feel that the tension in the Green family is somewhat overwrought, I think that the mystery of what happened to Denver and Atlanta, the uncertain future of Jericho, and the clear implications that not everyone is to be trusted under the new world order are going to play out in an interesting and satisfying manner.

It seems that, at times, the drama becomes a little bit forced due to the nature of coincidence; not only is it exceptionally convenient for the plot that Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich) returns to Jericho just in time for an impending disaster, but the woman who introduces the idea of the missing children is, naturally, the mother of the only child who is grievously injured. As far as Jake is concerned, it would be more believable if he had to seek a way of getting to Jericho after the disaster happens, but I understand that this would completely change the nature of the series. As for the mother and child, I think it would be better handled if we saw that particular woman reuniting with one of the other children, while seeing one of the extras rushing to the aid of their injured daughter.

The other moment that really bothers me during the episode is when Jake warns Heather Lisinsky (Sprague Grayden) that the school bus will soon run out of fuel. Ms. Lisinsky tells the kids that they will need to head back to town and bring back medical assistance, leading to a sequence wherein the children don't know their left from right. This scene in-and-of-itself does not bother me, but the next time we see any of these characters, they are driving the bus into the middle of town, making the previous scene inconsequential and useless. In an episode that feels as though it could be longer, this is one of those moments I would introduce to the cutting room floor.

The acting is solid from absolutely everyone from the veteran actors to the child actors, but the standout, in my opinion, is Pamela Reed, who plays Gail Green, the mayor's wife and protagonist's mother. She makes me believe in her devotion to her family while balancing a healthy faithfulness to her township. As the mayor's wife she finds herself thrust into the role of mothering the population of Jericho during the blackout and the actress manages to make it clear that it's was one of her ways of caring for her own son; she's hoping that someones caring for her child the way she's caring for their children, and it's impressive how she manages to evoke a certain level of distress while maintaining a level-headed facade.

The young boy in silhouette before the distant mushroom cloud is, for me, the iconic shot of this series; I imagine that that is the promotional poster from when Jericho was first being promoted. Director Jon Turteltaub makes a good job of showing distressing moments without lurking into the grotesque, showing only enough of the deer carcass that we understand what it is, and again when Ashley Scott's Emily Sullivan steps out of the car and into the mass of dead birds, but he's also subtle when he finds the need to be. The scene on the prison bus is dramatically eerie and off-putting in just the right way; there's no lingering shot of the discarded handcuffs, and there doesn't need to be, because it's clear from the mood that something is amiss. When the sheriff realizes that the prisoners have escaped, he turns to face the door, checking to see that he's not attacked, and I find it very powerful when we see that darkened figure slowly rise up in the foreground, with a quick cut-away before hearing a gunshot.

Stephen Chbosky's writing is pretty commendable: the characters are believable, the story is riveting, and, again, the set-up for the rest of the series is excellently done. When we first see Gail trying to sneak a wad of bills into her son's jacket pocket, I thought it was shoddy directing, as it was so clumsily obvious, but Jake immediately calls her out on what she did, essentially negating my complaint. There are, of course, a few missteps in the script, most of which stem from how difficult it is for Jake to function as a human being when he is so filled with dramatic angst, but I feel that, perhaps, the family drama might have been amped-up as a knee-jerk reaction to the impending disaster that was to come later in the hour.

All the elements of this show come together in a completely organic and entirely satisfying way; not only does it leave me wanting more, but it almost feels as though it was a short episode. The episode feels short not due to any fault of the writing but instead because I am so thoroughly enthralled with the story that it goes by much faster than I'm prepared to allow it. Provided the following episodes maintain this same standard of entertainment, Jericho seems like the kind of show that would be dangerous to marathon, as you would be hard-pressed to break for either work or sleep.

Jericho is in the running to become the feature for Mondays. The series ran from 2006 to 2008 on CBS with a total of 29 episodes.