Farewell to Jericho

Warning: Here be spoilers for the series finale of Jericho.

Okay, you've been warned, you may now proceed.

~*~

"I think we started a war today. Let me guess...not your first?"

"Jake this war was coming with or without us. I just hope we did enough to make it a fair fight. How does it feel?"

"What?"

"Making history."

~*~

And there you have it folks. Jericho is no more. I'm not even going to try to pretend it doesn't suck, but I think the show runners did an excellent job of giving the fans closure. One of my favorite sub-genres of science fiction is that of the alternate history, as well as that of the dystopia. Jericho managed to take these concepts and weave them into a powerful story, and one that is just a bit scary for how realistic it is. I know, I know, but it's science fiction--nothing realistic about it! Maybe realistic isn't the right word--believable might be better. I believe the writers definitely studied up on their history and their current events when they planned out their story arc. Then they took believable characters and said, okay, how would this person react if this event happened? It all played out so well. I mean sure, there's the usual television/fiction quota of highly convenient coincidences to be filled, but setting those aside, the most appealing thing about this story to me has always been how true the characters seemed to me. Plus, as a historian, I can completely follow how events could have played out the way they did on screen, even when they weren't events I was happy about. Jericho definitely wasn't a show to pull its punches.

So I say farewell to one of the best scripted hours to grace the television screen in some time, and I now begin my patient wait for the release of season two on DVD so I can watch it all again and catch all of the great moments I missed the first time through. I know there's already a fan campaign underway to save the show once more, and I wish it luck, but CBS has been pretty clear that they aren't bringing Jericho back. Carol Barbee is shopping it around to other networks, sure, but the likelihood of it actually getting picked up by someone else is slim. Hey, I won't complain if it happens though.

It's already past my bed time, so I'll wrap up with some of the moments of the final episode that, for me, were the highlights.

• Stanley burying Bonnie. Her death touched a nerve, and it was extremely touching to see the Rangers rally around Stanley to give his sister a decent burial before letting himself be captured by Beck.
  
• Eric passing on the deal with Constantino. It still freaks me out to see Timothy Omundson playing the bad guy--especially because he is so bad in this--in the way that Hitler and Marx were bad--because he does have a type of appeal to people who are desperate. Eric's realization that he, and subsequently the town of Jericho, just couldn't go down that same road really defined the spirit of the show.
• Beck's realization that Cheyenne was on the side of wrong. This may be something that had the military fans cringing--certainly a large part of service is loyalty to your country no matter your personal feelings on individual issues--but I think it was necessary. For one thing, the Allied States of America is not the country the men and women in Jericho originally swore to serve--it was the straw of order they managed to grasp at in the chaos. For another, our nation's very existence is largely due to those in service seeing that the existing government was wrong and doing something about it. Don't get me wrong, I am not an advocate for revolution, no matter how crazy I think things are, but in the course of the story it made sense and Beck was exactly the man to catalyze the needed change.
  
• Texas. Hell, yeah. I moved down here ten years ago and have found myself unsurprisingly reluctant to leave ever since. It was a pure joy for me that the Republic of Texas was the group that was going to sway which government got to actually become the new America. Plus the Texans got to save the day. It was fun to get to see us wearing the white hats--literally, check out the last few scenes of the episodes and you'll see a few guys in white cowboy hats. Sweet.

So there you go. This series has just been so incredible to me because it has been a prime example of compelling story-telling. I am sad to see it go, but I think television is better for having had it around, even if only for an abbreviated run. Besides, if it keeps going it's just going to have to get into the bureaucracy of rebuilding the nation once Columbus and Cheyenne duke it out. Revolutions and civil wars can only last for so long, and even if the repercussions are far-reaching, there's a reason stories rarely ever stop at the actual end.

I hope you have a great week.

Take care,
C