Below The Beltway

If Jericho hadn’t been canceled by CBS, then Tuesday’s finale would have ended differently, and Executive Produced Carol Barbee gives us a hint of what it might have looked:

TVGuide.com: Will viewers have any burning questions coming out of the alternate ending/series finale?
Carol Barbee: Let me see…. I can tell you that in the original ending, Hawkins has to sacrifice himself to let Jake get away with the bomb and get it to Texas so it can be tested and prove that they were telling the truth. Texas would then swing their support to Columbus and defeat Cheyenne.

TVGuide.com: Does Hawkins mortally sacrifice himself, or just let himself get captured?
Barbee: Well, he gets captured but he’s also shot…. He’s pretty messed up, and Jake feels like he’s leaving him for dead. So we show you where he’s taken and you see that the mission for the next season is, “We have to go rescue Hawkins and we have to stop these [bad] guys.” When they see the alternate ending, it certainly completes the story from this season and tells you everything you need to know to have understood Season 2. It just doesn’t point to that next mission. You meet John Smith, the guy who’s been pulling the strings. It’s [played by] Xander Berkeley (24). You’ve heard him on phone calls, and Hawkins is surprised by who he is and where he is. So you know who John Smith is, you know who planned the attacks, you know why, you know how….

TVGuide.com: Now it’s just a matter of making things right in the United States?
Barbee: Right. We would have moved on to the next level of a civil war between the Cheyenne government and the Columbus government. But if your readers do have any more burning questions, let me know!

Barbee goes on to say that they will build on the finale that actually aired on the chance that the series gets picked up by another network, which Barbee talked about in an earlier interview:

TVGuide.com: Let’s talk about that “possible other life.” What are the chances of that happening, of a cable network picking up Jericho? And why it isn’t as easy as the fans would believe. A lot of fans are saying, “A cable network would kill for six million viewers.”
Barbee: I wish I knew…. I really don’t know what [the cable networks'] business models are. We get compared a lot to Friday Night Lights, but Friday Night Lights shoots in Texas and their budget is much lower than ours. Even with the restrictions that were put on us for this second season, we cut it pretty much to the bone. We might be able to get [the budget] a little lower, depending on where we are shooting…. I would imagine, though, that people would be thrilled to get our audience! We had eight million for our premiere, and even if we retained three or four million for a cable station, that’d be a good audience. I’m hoping these talks work out, but you never know.

Good luck with that one, I guess.