Jericho Season 2 thread

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

You know what this episode kept remind me of? The Patrick Swayze guerilla fighter movie Red Dawn. Except this story is even more terrifying because instead of playing on jingoistic Cold War paranoia, it reverses the invaders and makes them a distinctly American brand. The little details like the textbooks being rewritten and the journalist having a "heart attack" show the same kind of fascist threads from Red Dawn but wrapped in the red white and blue and slipping in peacefully. The storyline with Hawkins and Chavez fascinates me because clearing away the ambiguity has made that storyline more potent, not less. The idea that only four people in the entire country are willing to do anything about the truth, among a mere handful that even know the truth, is even more terrifying than the fear from last season that Hawkins was a cat among the pigeons, so to speak. Other interesting details: the virus is called the Hudson River Virus, which helps clear up why the legitimate United States government is based out of Columbus instead of one of the more eastern faction capitals. It's likely that the Albany/Rome government was forced west by the virus.

Wow, so much to talk about from this episode.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

Another interesting note, while I think about it: It's interesting that the farmer's sister is being played as a deaf mute this season. I spent a good portion of my childhood (~7-10 years of age) functionally deaf. Even now, I have problems in crowds, because my ability to isolate sounds is so poor (which is why I prefer headphones to speakers). The reason I mention all of this is because I became fascinated with Deaf culture during my year at RIT (which houses the National Technical Institute of the Deaf) and have more recently studied American Sign Language for the last year.
Portraying the character as primarily communicating through signing is more authentic to my experience within the Deaf world. However, we've already spent a year with the character presented as growing up in an Oralist household — certainly that's the only way she would be competent at reading lips. It doesn't jive, therefore, that she would all of a sudden stop talking — especially when it's been shown before that she also communicates verbally to the farmer when no one else is around.
The worse transgression, though, is the way the other characters act around her. Sign language is all about open body language. Eye contact isn't merely expected, it's downright necessary. The only way to convey the complexities of meaning we interpret from tone of voice is through facial expression. Since she is expected to read lips (which is a MUCH less precise method that TV makes it out to be) eye contact is even more essential. But no, she's huddled behind them in almost every shot, as they carry on conversations they she's expected to participate in even though they have their backs turned to her. They played fast and loose with this in the first season, but no where near to the extent they did in this episode. If I were Deaf, I would be absolutely lost in her position.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

WOLVERINES!!!!! sorry someone had to do it.

I agree with you Adam this new season is incredibly fast paced with alot to take in. Without getting too political I really like how it grabs snippets from both the past and present of American history.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

I know I made some waves when I commented that I was kind of let down by the season two premiere last week, but I have to say, this was a great, GREAT episode tonight! What a wonderful return to form. This is exactly the program I fell in love with last season and if the remaining five shows are this compelling, I will be one happy camper!

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

Good episode. A huge improvement from last weeks effort. I missed the first 5 minutes so I thought they were planning an assassination until they started copying data. I wonder how the guy leading the troops in Jericho can take the orders he is getting without questioning whats going on. Maybe that will change once he sees Ravenwood acting in Jericho. We know than Jericho's citizens will freak out based on their previous interaction.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

She was deaf in the first season also I just thought I'd point that out

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

It's the same actress, isn't it? There was a "Special Guest Star - Shoshannah Stern" credit at the front.

Pretty good all around, although I'm glad to see in the preview that the kids will be back next week. Having them and the older characters around made it feel more like the story of an entire town rather than just a few people.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

Yes, it's the same actress. They had that "Special Guest Star" credit for Sprague Grayden (Heather Lisinski) as well.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

She also played a deaf character on "Weeds", I think she's deaf in real life as well, IMDB says:



Shoshannah Stern

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

Last night's Morse code:

"J&R RAN BOXCAR" So Jennings & Rall evidently had a hand in the actual nuclear attacks themselves. I thought that maybe they were simply collaborators set up to move in once the bombs went off, but this is far more sinister.

The plane that dropped the Nagasaki bomb was "Bock's Car." Named after the normal aircraft commander, Frederick Bock. But the name caught my eye when they showed it on the computer screen the first time. I did think the same thing about the possible connection.

"Bock's Car" flew the second atomic mission. Are there plans for a second nuclear attack? "Bock's Car" was also flown by a different-than-normal crew. Substitute leadership?


Absolutely, re: Esai Morales' character...in fact, that very last shot we got of him just standing there, ruminating on everything he's recently learned, makes me think that Beck is gonna have to choose sides here very, very soon. Haunting shot, and told you a lot about Beck's real character.

You know damn well he's probably gonna end up picking Jake and Jericho over Valente and Ravenwood, and I don't see him making it out of this season alive. Especially once Hawkins' and Chavez's info finally gets leaked to the world, and the shit hits the fan.

Remember what I said earlier about Ravenwood (and, by extension, Jennings & Rall) turning into the S.A./brownshirt-arm of Tomarchio and Valente's regime?

Ravenwood helping to supress the "Hudson River" vaccine. 'Nuff said. And United Nations troops quarantining/cordoning off the Mississippi River border? Very interesting. Wonder which side they're going to end up recognizing as "legitimate," depending on how Texas swings?

I think there is a distinct possibility that Mayor Anderson doesn't come back alive from that "constitutional convention." He plans on asking a lot of questions, and I get the impression that the Cheyenne government is not going to tolerate too many questions that they don't like.


Warning Spoiler! Click to show
I remember in the original Jericho HTF thread back in November, 2006 (during the first season), I predicted that Gray -- after getting elected, and demonstrating a few "iffy" decisions early on -- would be the first one to cozy up to the New Order and welcome them with open arms as a collaborator, once they rolled into town and set up shop.

...Boy, was I wrong, and I'm more than happy for the fact.

And that new textbook? Twisted, subtle stuff. Yet already, people on other boards are once again whining and bitching about the Jericho producers having it in for "right-wing conservatives," et al...

(Also, surprised no one's yet commented on the fact that Lance "Alex Rogan" Guest played the doomed reporter in this episode.)

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

Perhaps the best thing about this series, is how it seems to capture the chaos that exists in states (as in international actors) after they suffer catastrophe, be it war, natural disaster, or otherwise.

Jericho's America (by that I mean the show's America) is suffering many problems that can be seen in the real world today. The citizens are effectively cut off from the rest of the world, which continues to go on normally. For example, while Jericho residents were struggling to make it through the winter, people were snowboarding in the Alberta Rockies. As the government struggles to survive, and the press is effectively suppressed, one can imagine the press in, say, the UK, reporting on the latest Royals gossip.

The way I am interpreting the lack of "help" from American allies such as Canada and the UK is that it's not that they are helping, but it hasn't been shown, but more that America has been effectively abandoned.

The "help" from China in season 1 only serves to show how China is the new hegemon in this future (replacing the US).

The show has evolved, much to my delight, from being mere apocalypse in america, to a commentary on modern society. This show depicts how life *actually is* is some places in the world, right now.

cheers!

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

Actually, wasn't one of the aid packages in the first season German, with all of them tagged with US Military RFID chips? The suggestion might be that the world hasn't abandoned America, but that the Allied States don't want any part of the outside world's aid, so that they can keep control over what they've got. It's not unprecedented; North Korea has turned humanitarian aid down in the past for similar reasons.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

Yeah, I am pretty sure the 'foreign aid' was dropped from U.S. planes and was thus a scam.

Last night, by the way, was an awesome episode.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

I understand they had to move things along. But, it just seems like the outside(of Jericho) world has been fixed up rather quickly in just 4 weeks.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

I had a lengthy post written, but I hit backspace and it went to the previous page instead of deleting so I lost the whole thing.

However on one point:
Yes, which I acknowledged in my post. The change is not that she's portrayed as Deaf but that she's portrayed as (for lack of a more politically correct term) a deaf mute. There is a world of difference between deaf children raised in the hearing world as disabled who must be trained to speak English and gain some level of competency in reading lips and a member of the Deaf-World who is not considered disabled per say but uniquely suited to a subculture of social bonds united by a common, minority skill set. Bonnie was shown to sign in the first season, but she was overwhelmingly verbal — even in many private conversations with her brother who signs competently.

By contrast, in this episode she was completely non verbal and communicated entirely though American Sign Language, translated with subtitles for the mass audiences. That's the point I was making. She is, and in fact comes from one of the most prominent Jewish Deaf families. She is among the youngest of several Deaf generations.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

Okay... decided to go through it all again.

You didn't miss anything that would have implied otherwise. It was a deliberate bait and switch on the part of the writers, to build tension. One thing that struck me when the hummer with the Ravenwood emblem rolled up in front of the sheriff's office is what a visceral reaction that caused. Much like hearing Vader's belabored breathing or seeing his mask, it's the same kind of feeling of dread. When Ravenwood was introduced in the first season, it was a brilliant prediction of the excesses that result from private security contractors like Blackwater. (I know I'm not the only one who thought of Ravenwood when that one slaughter in Iraq made Blackwater front page news for weeks). But over the course the season, it came to represent something more elemental, like savages in the wilderness. Seeing Ravenwood at the height of its savagery, it's even more terrifying now that some semblance of civilized life has returned to Jericho. The wolves have been put in charge of the hen house. That's fascinating. Mass nuclear terrorism is definitely the most hostile method of market penetration I have ever seen. How much do you want to bet that Valenti is on the board of directors? While I find the complexity of Beck's portrayal incredibly rewarding, the thing I find most fascinating is that he and his unit are the 10th Mountain Division. The unit, which as has a high-profile role in the current War on Terror, is based out of Fort Drum near Watertown, NY. What is an eastern Army unit doing under the control of the Western government? Even though the government based out of Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, NY has apparently collapsed (apparently as a result of the Hudson River virus?) military command for New York units should have consolidated in the legitimately elected government based out of Columbus, not a foreign government on the other side of the continent.
I can think of a few possibilities: If the show takes place in the future, circa 2009 or 2010 as evidence from the show seems to suggest, it's possible that Fort Drum was shuttered during a future phase of military realignment and the unit moved west of the Mississippi. However, considering that Fort Drum is one of the few military installations left in the Northeast, that seems unlikely to me. I think either:

a) The 10th Mountain Division was deployed west of the Mississippi River addressing some natural disaster or political calamity that for whatever reason the state's national guard was unable to handle at the time of the attacks

b) The 10th Mountain Division was deployed west of the Mississippi River by the United States government in the aftermath of the nuclear attacks and got trapped when the government fractured into five capitals.

or

c) The 10th Mountain Division was deployed overseas at the time of the attack in a hot zone that the Allied government for some reason had superior access to.

If the Allied government is poaching units based out of the East, where is the Columbus government getting its soldiers from? If I had to make a guess, I'd say it recalled them from lower profile posts the Allied government passed over like Korea and Europe. With America in pieces, our role as defender of the free world is no longer plausible. The interesting thing is that I'm not entirely sure he will side with Jake and Hawkins. He's clearly disillusioned and would almost certainly sympathize with their cause. But I think he also has a strong sense of duty that would stay his hand. I don't necessarily think the United Nations would pick a side. After the the Sacramento government fell to Cheyenne, the newly declared Allied government likely began the march West. Seeing this, the United Nations swept in to preserve the legitimate government by freezing the borders at the current front which was probably the Mississippi. Considering that none of the surviving member states of the UN Security Council would have a stake in fighting another country's civil war, they'd probably be content with two governments much like Germany after the second world war. The UN peacekeepers are likely playing a similar role to their current operation at the Kosovo-Serbia border and previously operations like those along the border of Chad and the Sudan. The same role American troops still serve along the DMZ between North and South Korea. That's a pretty fair impression. I think Gray's survival depends on the timeline of the season. Will the secret of the Allied government become public before or after he gets a chance to ask those questions? If after, he's probably a goner. I like the way things have actually developed much better too. Gray is first and foremost a businessman, with the strengths and weaknesses that implies. He brings different qualities to his leadership than Jake's father did, but he has a more pragmatic approach that isn't necessarily so bad. That doesn't really mean anything to me since I'm a couple years too young for the Last Starfighter generation, but I thought he was excellent. I'm finally wrapping up my B.S. in Print and Multimedia Journalism and he reminded me alot of the practicing journalists I've had as professors. The same jaded, fatalistic sense of humor. The irrepressible curiousity for the truth that flourishes even though all his reporting is being heavily filtered and self-censored. Most shows like to trash journalists, and this was a far more complex portrayal than that. You make an excellent point which we rarely address here but is an incredibly important one. Except North Korea and and the Middle East, the impact on the rest of the world appears — based on the few insights we've been given into the outside — seems to be largely null.

The idea that everything would continue business as usual doesn't ring true to me. As the current economic woes make clear, when America sneezes the rest of the world still catches a cold. With the biggest single market in the world by today's standards and almost certainly one of the top three markets even by 2010's standards absolutely and positively destroyed, that would almost certainly send the rest of the world into a depression. China's exports-driven economy would collapse. Europe might fair better, but the reverberations would still be incredibly volatile. So while the rest of the world appears to be largely isolated from the chaos, I remain unconvinced that things continued entirely business as usual.

The way I am interpreting the lack of "help" from American allies such as Canada and the UK is that it's not that they are helping, but it hasn't been shown, but more that America has been effectively abandoned. Well, former United States of America is clearly in shambles and stuck in a state of civil war. And considering that the Allied president made his address from Jericho, it's likely that the town is doing FAR better than average for the Allied States. And, like I said, I think the economic ramifications for the rest of the world will have been profound.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

One final note:

Last night's episode got a smaller share of the ratings last night but held onto the same number of viewers from the previous week. The return of "Boston Legal" expanded the total audience watching television.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

I took it a different way. During the ASA "President" speech, he made clear that the "east of the Mississippi" states were too busy doing research, talking to foreign nations, etc. and did nothing, meanwhile, he authorized an immediate strike on North Korea and elsewhere, to look powerful.

I tihnk the rest of the world is doing nothing because they are taking a civil war "assisting one or the other is bad" approach, not knowing which side will come out of a new US Civil war victorious.

Or, we may find out later that foreign powers have been helping the East where they can, fearful of the bomb-happy ASA. That would be something that doesn't transfer on, since the ASA has a pretty good media blackout (ask a dead reporter) about what news actually slips through.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

That's a lot to extrapolate from the, what, three scenes she was in, each of them playing against someone who was established as knowing ASL. In the first season, her preference was clearly signing, only really speaking when she was alone with Mimi.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

This show looks like it's going out with a bang. Only 5 more eps left.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

Adam, I agree. Their is no way the world would just carry on without the US. Like the US or not. Our economy is so large and globally connected that it would definitely affect the rest of the world. China, while starting to diversify its exports around the world. Is still a major exporter to the US and the loss of this would be devestating.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

True, but if the US is divided, I think a big part of the world would also be -very- worried about who to side with, and be very worried about siding with the wrong one.. more then that, like I said, the ASA has a pretty good media blackout going.. who knows what really goes on in the rest of the world, the locals only see what the media (ASA government) wants them to see..

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

Yes, it looks like this season will end impressively

I think it will be renewed for a third. Everyone agree, or are the ratings not impressive enough for CBS?

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

If it were NBC, it would be a lock for a third season. Its ratings haven't improved from last season, but they're a bit more tolerable in the 10 PM timeslot. I'm not getting my hopes up, though. CBS has a very competitive schedule, and there are few holes to fill with new series.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

Here is some interesting information posted by Jericho producer Karim Zreik over at another forum, concerning the show's future (paraphrased):

• He and Dan Shotz do the final edits on the episodes...no one from CBS has called them or any one at Junction/Jericho Productions and asked to have the "alternate" ending put on episode 2.7.
  
  
• Sci-Fi has not yet contacted Junction about picking up Jericho for a third year.
  
  
• CBS has not cancelled Jericho -- in fact, they are calling the producers with support for the remaining five episodes, continuing to run ads on CBS, going to WonderCon, and other things.
  
  
• CBS is promoting the hell out of these next episodes.
  
  
• As a part of CBS's belief in and commitment to Jericho, the network is doing a tie-in with Big Brother this coming week with the Jericho episode airing on Tuesday (2/26)...BB house guests will have a task to do, related to Jericho. This is a major deal -- CBS wants to promote Jericho however it can, and wouldn't do this if it didn't believe in the show.
  
  
• CBS's numbers for ALL of its shows on Tuesday night are down -- and Big Brother is doing horrible (on MANY nights).
  
  
• Because of all of us and the "Nuts" campaign, more reviewers and journalists are watching and reviewing the show than ever before (critical reviews are MUCH better than in Season 1). The reviews are coming back AWESOME for this season. This is a lot of good press that we all helped make happen.
  
  
• A lot of the points about new media and alternate viewing platforms we have been making are coming to light -- Jericho's position on the iTunes chart is great (for episodes 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3). The numbers CBS is seeing from views on innerTube are very impressive.
  
  
• The DVR numbers are very encouraging -- Jericho continues to perform well as one of the top DVR'd shows on television, which they knew from Season 1.
  
  
• Finally, Karim said that he, Dan, Carol, and others talk every day, and have been extremely busy. CBS is behind Jericho and committed to promoting it so it can succeed.
  
  
• And he wanted to thank everyone for all the efforts to get the word out about the show and everything else people are doing.

...So, there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth. I wouldn't worry quite yet about cancellation. (Of course, we said the same thing last spring, but I digress.)

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

Over at ISN News: The Zocalo Today there is an interesting piece from a recent interview with the executive producer:

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

What's with CBS? Just how great do the numbers have to be? Virtually everyone I know who has known enough about the show to tune in was immediately hooked. Where is all this advertising for Jericho I keep hearing about??

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

For CBS, the numbers have to be pretty darn good - they have a lot of popular crime shows that have the advantage of being eminently re-runnable. The stuff at the less popular end of the spectrum, even though other networks might happily take those results, might get turned over just some turnover in the schedule is necessary.

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

Boom! Now we get to eps I haven't seen But this is one of those eps that I thought ended the promotional really strong - it's now VERY clear the government in charge is NOT NOT the good guys. And they may, in fact, be at least partially responsible for the spread of the disease as a means of controlling the masses.

The methods are brutal dictatorship basically; the first two episodes kept shadowing the subtle changes; history books being altered, changes in how the government treats it's citizenry (rushed into office with no votes, basically through a hunta/coup of sorts) and a deep desire for it to eliminate anything that can tell the story.

Now it's basically a race against time. Can they get word out to others to stop the Cheyenne government?

And, even better (only if this series gets greenlit for the future) you could set the stage by this years end for a continuous battle of the states, a true civil war; an understanding of whether or not the globe is brave enough to pick a side, and how well the veil of disinformation is amongst the "true believers"

Re: Jericho Season 2 thread

I do wonder the impact of having these three episodes online so far in advance had on the ratings. It could be especially damaging since Episode Three was the episode after which CBS was to make their decision.