Nobody is in Charge

sneezewhiz

I'm fascinated by this show partly because I am a big fan of post-apocalyptic fiction (Alas Babylon, The Day After, Testament, The Last Ship, Threads, On the Beach, etc). I recommend "Threads"(BBC 1984). After viewing it, you will wonder why someone hasn't done a good book or movie about Hurricane Katrina using it's premise.

But back to "Jericho." A town of five thousand in western Kansas, most of whose residents have no visible means of support. Where is the big employer, like a shoe factory or a plastic-extruding plant? You can't tell me the town is one to two thousand farmers and their families.

Farmers would be too busy and too far away to hang out in a bar all day, they'd have supplies of gasoline and food at their farms, plus old agricultural machinery and other equipment that doesn't require gasoline and there would be people who would have the knowledge to operate it.

A town of five thousand would have a courthouse, a bank, and leading citizens. There would be power dynamics and struggles that were in place before the catastrophe.

In the most recent episode we learn that the Greens have a ranch out in the countryside with a barn full of horses. A barn full of horses is a time-consuming high-maintenance endeavor, not some place you visit in the fourth episode because you need to get Jake Green worked up.

We also learn that the people of Jericho turn to the mayor and police when their utilities stop working. There does not appear to be an electric substation anywhere near the town nor anyone in the town who appears to know where the electricity came from.

It looks like the creators of this show got their concept for a small town from their experience with suburban bedroom communities. Jericho appears to work as if there were a large city no more than 20 minutes away by car, not like a town in the middle of nowhere.

If you take a look at the IMDb cast & crew page for this show, you will note there are no credited producers, directors or writers. You see executive producers, art, sound, SFX and miscellaneous crew, but just like the town of Jericho itself, there are no responsible adults to look to or blame.

score 3/10

sneezewhiz 29 October 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1509990/