USA Today and other outlets have announced that the CBS Wednesday night drama "Jericho" won't be cancelled after all.
In an online announcement Wednesday afternoon, CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler called the online outcry a "probably unprecedented display of passion in support of a prime time television series" and said CBS has ordered seven more episodes of the show for mid-season.
If you haven't watched it, here's what it's about:
Jericho is set in a post-apocalyptic Kansas town that survived, through an accident of geography, atomic explosions that lay waste to major cities including Washington, San Francisco, Boston and Denver.
The show centers on the perils that the Green family and other Jericho townspeople face in a world without electricity or a functioning central government. Food is scarce, life is harsh and organized gangs and government thugs (it's difficult to tell which is which) roam the Midwest.
I wasn't sure what the show would be like when I saw ads on it last summer; the little boy watching a mushroom cloud in the distance intrigued me, however.
Anything science fiction interests me, but the show is far more than that (actually the nukes are more of a side-issue). The characters are some of the most realistic I've ever seen in a TV show. There are all sorts of major and personal plot lines playing out over the episodes which keep things very interesting.
And it's not some cheap, B-grade post-apocalyptic piece of trash like some of these movies you see on the Sci-Fi Channel. It's about realistic people struggling with interpersonal issues, the problems they now face in a changed world, and they're still trying to figure out exactly what's going on in the world beyond the borders of their part of Kansas. (In one episode, they came across a huge swath left by migrants heading south for the winter, and in the debris was a bag from...of course, Wall Drug).
My favorite characters are the main guy, Jake, and Rob Hawkins, who you quickly realize is at the center of the cause of the nuclear explosions...but is he a good guy or bad guy? This question appears to have been answered a few episodes ago...but given the twists and turns of the show, I'm not 100% convinced. Regardless, Hawkins has saved the town's bacon several times. But he has issues with an estranged wife and children he hasn't seen much of as he's spent years working undercover...and the danger he's placed his family in through his work.
I believe the network idiots are the ones who screwed up the shows ratings during the winter. They didn't show any new episodes (or even reruns) for something like 2-3 months. (Didn't they think they might lose audience during such a gap? Duh!)
You can watch all the episodes online.
Hopefully the network suits won't do anything stupid like that again, and hopefully people will rally around a great show and keep it around for years to come.
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