I'm not going to spend much time writing Hubs on TV or movies, (maybe an occasional book review), but I thought that since we're all missing original TV programming due to the WGA strike, we could all use a little quality entertainment now and then.

What would you do if civilization as we know was violently ripped out from under us without warning. How would you get get by if suddenly the groceries stopped coming to our local stores, the fuel stopped coming to our gas stations, and the 1's and 0's that represent our financial security became meaningless electrons on some hard disk that may or may not still exist? As much as some people would say that CBS's "Jericho" is about a series of devastating terrorist attacks, it's not True, the event that sets the story in motion is a series of nuclear (or possibly smaller atomic) explosions in virtually every major American city, but the basic premise of the story is the loss of what we call our civilization. The same result could come from a natural disaster (imagine a magnitude 8 earthquake in the midwest, or a tsumani speeding from the Canary Islands to wipe out the Eastern seaboard, or the stray asteroid impacting the earth). Of course, a natural disaster does not have the inevitable question of "Who did it?" It does not provide an antagonist for the heroes of the story. Once things stop collapsing and blowing up, where's the fun?

And so with Jericho, midway through the series pilot (aired in Septeber 2006), the various residents of Jericho, KS to whom we have been introduced find themselves staring with disbelieving eyes from their small western Kansas town as a mushroom cloud rises above Denver to the west. By the end of the pilot, we learn that Atlanta is gone as well. What's more, we also know that these events happened as a presidential address to a joint session of Congress was knocked off the air, due to the destruction of Washington, DC as we learn throught the tantalizingly sparse bits of information about the outside world we learn throughout the first season.

But the story of Jericho is not about the United States, not really. It's about this small, isolated community and how it deals with the local consequences of events with national, probably global significance.

The story is set in what I like to call "the near now." (If you can identify where I got that term, you get a gold star.) I've seen comments on fan sights that say it's 2009, but the point is that it's the world we know. The president giving the address is neither democrat nor republican. He appears to be a white man in his 50's or 60's, and the language we see him using is clearly ambiguous enough to make his ideology irrelevant. But current events are not irrelevant. Characters ultimately reference service in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you've been following the controversy surrounding the use of contractors like Blackwater, in the real world, elements of Jericho's plot will seem familiar. It's clearly a timely show.

It's well written, with plot mysteries that draw you in and very human conflicts. The story darkens over time. Initially, we see the townspeople living as if all will be set to right in a few days, They take actions that are designed to hold morale together for the three days that DHS tells us to be prepared for. As the story progresses over a cold winter with dwindling food supplies, the scope of the challenge faced by the characters becomes clearly visible. And it's visible in the production details. The makeup is less polished. The sets are dressed to show increasing wear and tear. And just to remind the viewer, they use flashbacks that show a Mayberry-like town and quickly fade to potholed streets with abandoned cars. And of course the first season ended with a classic cliffhanger.

Less than a week after the season-ending cliffhanger, CBS announced that Jericho had been cancelled, presumably due to low Nielsen ratings. Jericho fans quickly rallied, using the network's own fan message boards to orgainze an impressive campaign to save Jericho. At the centerpiece of this campaign which included email, snail mail and phone calls, was the shipment of tons and tons of nuts to CBS headquarters in New York. If you watch the last episode, the reason for nuts becomes crystal clear. It's almost as if CBS handed fans the weapon they needed to do exactly what they needed to do to save the show. Through a partnership with an online nut company that got wrapped up in the effort, Jericho fans even raised a significant amount of money to help the town of Greenbelt, KS which was devastated by a tornado during the campaign.

Eventually, CBS bought seven new episodes that will begin Tuesday night at 10PM. The idea is that the seven episodes will result in a satisfactory "ending" but higher viewership could lead to a longer future for the show.

Jericho was an interested experience for me. The show aired Wednesday at 8 PM. The problem with that time slot is that my then 5-month old son's bedtime was roughly 8:00. Either my wife and I were putting him to bed, which could take time, or they would come home from a playgroup right in the middle of the show. I'd frequently miss the beginning or the end of the show. But CBS did something that I was very pleased with. They put full episodes on the internet. I was able to catch up any time wanted. They also put full episodes On Demand. So I was able to watch the show even if the actual time slot was problematic. This made me a loyal viewer who was able to stay caught up with Jericho. The lack of comparable alternatives has kept me away from highly serialized dramas (Heroe's, Battlestar Galactica, 24) that I would not be able to keep up with because I had more important things to do.

I was clearly not alone in this experience, but the only viewers that were counted were those that watched in the actual time slot, thus resulting the "low" ratings. CBS had gone through a lot of trouble to go farther into new media than any other network, but it did not accept the spoils of their efforts without a massive campaign to save the show. It makes the conspiracy theorist in me wonder if the cancellation was a test of the effectiveness of these efforts. Regardless of CBS's intent, it, like the industry that has been impacted by the WGA strike clearly has learned that the entertainment industry can't just use new media without accounting for the results in its use.

While some fans have decried the shift in time fro 8:00 to 10:00, I applaud it. Jericho is a unique show that portrays likable, everyday people in conditions that are simply brutal. As a result, while you don't have the sex and brutal violence of a typical 10:00 cop show, you have everyday people coping in an increasingly darkening world with realities, some horrifying, some heartbreaking, that are just not suitable for a family hour audience. Yet still, the heroes are just that, everyday heroes. I said earlier, that Jericho is not about terrorism or politics. What it is about is the choice that we, in our communities have to make when catastrophe strikes. Do we give in to fear and put our own survival first (in my opinion, making us individuals more vulnerable to those who believe that might makes right) or do we pull together as communities, protecting and providing for our neighbors who in turn protect and provide for us.

If you want to see this choice articulated in fiction, check out Jericho this coming Tuesday, February 12 at 10:00 PM (check local listings). Then think about what that choice looks like in our own communities, our own lives, even our own political choices.

And on that note, I will be getting back to politics in my next hub.