The New York Times gives a generally positive review of Jericho’s second season:
“Jericho,” which stars Skeet Ulrich as the local vigilante and peacekeeper, has survived and improved this season as an exploration of conspiracy extremism. The bad men are spectacularly evil; the show is scarier. Yet it never feels routinely exhausting. It breathes by making room for the mundane messes of life. On “24,” a series to which “Jericho” is often compared, no personal relationship is sustainable. But here love, marriage and family are invested with as much narrative currency as finding food supplies, developing windmill power and getting vaccines for horrible new viruses.
“Jericho” is a paranoid vision playing out on Laura Ingalls Wilder soil. It is both futuristic and folksy; technology has been largely obliterated, townspeople gather to pick corn, and women still bake pies.
At its core “Jericho” is a thriller. Its submission to emotionalism has been both its deficiency and its value. It tends toward too much sentimentality. There have been dream sequences lighted as if they were advertisements for New Age religions. But ultimately “Jericho” is very human, in some part because it begins with the premise of failure: one man could have stopped the bombs and didn’t manage to do so. The series reminds us that people are people no matter what happens, that epic tragedy doesn’t get a man to stop cheating on his wife, or the woman he’s been dallying with to wonder why he hasn’t separated. This feels like both folly and truth.
“Jericho” picks fights and takes stands, and even when it overdoes it, you applaud the effort. It aims to make the nation’s current cultural factionalism palpable, pitting the values of the agricultural middle class against the materialism and power mongering of urban bureaucrats and demons.
It’s good to see the joy getting a positive reception. Hopefully that will translate into ratings, and a third season.
If you missed the first episode of Season Two, you can watch it here for free. And don’t miss tonight’s second episode, 10pm on CBS.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:05 am
GREAT show….never miss it!
Come on people, please give it a try?
I REALLY want a 3rd season.
Please?
Tues. 10 p.m. EST on CBS.
I really think you’ll love it too if you give it a chance.