Below The Beltway

Before this week’s episode of Jericho aired, Producer Carol Barbee was saying that it could be a make-or-break episode in determining if CBS gives them a third season:

Carol Barbee, executive producer of CBS’ post-apocalyptic drama Jericho, told SCI FI Wire that this week is make-or-break time for the resurrected show–though she will try to find a new home for it if CBS goes ahead and cancels it after its current seven-episode second season runs its course.

“I think this next airing will probably tell the tale,” Barbee said in an interview at WonderCon in San Francisco on Feb. 24, referring to the upcoming Feb. 26 episode, “Jennings & Rall.” “Our numbers have been OK, [but] not great. Our [demographic] has been very good; they’ve been very happy with that. But we’ll see. … If we trend up this week, I think we’ll look pretty good. If we don’t trend up, or if we stay the same, I think we’ll have to wait and see what they want to do with us. I mean, they’re going to air all seven; it’s just a matter of how they feel about producing more.”

Well, the preliminary ratings are out and it’s unclear where things stand:

Ratings for last night’s “Jericho” actually rebounded a bit from the week before to a 4.3 overnight rating, up from a 3.9.

But don’t get too excited. Those numbers are still pretty weak, and there’s no question “Jericho” received some kind of boost from viewers fleeing NBC’s disastrous special preview of webisode drama “Quarterlife” in the time slot. “Quarterlife,” which pre-empted the usually reliable “Law & Order: SVU,” earned a 2.7 rating, good for under 4 million viewers, according to preliminary reports from Nielsen.(…)

Just consider how many plotlines were balanced in last night’s episode: the return of budding entrepreneur Dale Turner, the Hudson River virus, Goetz’s shady past, the eerily Blackwater-esque Ravenwood, Hawkins bringing Maj. Beck over to his side, Bonnie deciding she can leave her brother behind and two highly satisfying examples of characters doing good deeds in secret: Beck followed Heather’s request to send the military to help out HRV victims in Missouri and conflicted Jennings & Rall employee Trish falsified records and destroyed documents to make sure the HRV vaccine got to people who need it.

Now consider how much of that would make any sense to someone who hasn’t been following the show and you’ll see the dilemma CBS faces in sticking with a show that seems unlikely to bring in new viewers over time.

Just in case things don’t work out, Barbee is keeping her options open:

Just in case CBS does pull the trigger on Jericho, Barbee said she’s already begun looking for a new home on cable television. “There were other people who were interested in us to begin with, and now, I think, with the whole nuts [fan] campaign, and also with the amazing reviews that we’ve gotten for these seven episodes, I feel like we have made this franchise more valuable to a cable network who would want to take us on as a niche market,” Barbee said. (The “nuts campaign” was a successful lobbying effort by Jericho fans, who mailed tons of peanuts to persuade CBS to bring the show back after the network canceled it after the first season.)

“So I think it’s very possible,” Barbee added. “We obviously have a relationship now with SCI FI Channel, because they’re running our previous episodes. So I think that’s a natural place to start looking. But I think that … there are other people who would be interested in the show if it doesn’t continue on CBS.”

In the end, a new life on cable may be the best that Jericho fans can hope for.