Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Sun May 10, 2009 6:58 pm 
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LENNIE JAMES AS ROBERT HAWKINS AND SKEET ULRICH AS JAKE GREEN IN CBS' "JERICHO"

What's going on?

The 29-episode "Jericho" is an excellent, almost great, American TV series. How smart its creators are shows in how skillfully it juggles its huge body of topics, plot-lines, and characters--critics never quite come to terms with it all. (You need to memorize names and faces of at least two-dozen characters.) "Jericho's" ardent fans have provided extensive blogs and keys to the segments, more briefly summarized in a Wikipedia episodes "List." Supporters may go overboard in their devotion, reading details like tealeaves or entrails; but their loyalty and their unusual and successful campaign to get the show extended for a second season show how involving and rich this series is.

"Jericho's" core topic is the fundamental decency of Americans under dire national stress. The true-blue corn-fed citizens of the small town of Jericho, Kansas survive after a nationwide series of nuclear attacks on 23 cities because they're lucky to be outside the range of fallout with supplies of basics to last them a while, but they thrive because they find a way to maintain a functioning democracy even in extremis. They're not all good people, and sometimes it's satisfyingly difficult to be sure who the good guys and bad guys really are. There's always a teasing sense of mystery about morality and loyalties and the wider facts of the world outside. Who is responsible for these nuclear attacks? What is the state of the country and for that matter of the planet? Communications are down. What's the story on the mysterious and pivotal Robert Hawkins (Lennie James), who says he's a former cop from Saint Louis, but knows far too much to be just that?

"Jericho" trades on constant intensity. It begins with the return of the town's wayward prodigal son, Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich), whose father Johnston Green (Gerald McRaney, of "Deadwood," a man born with a soothing Mississippi drawl) is mayor of the town, backed up by stalwart brother Eric (Kenneth Mitchell). Jake comes back after five years away planning only to stay for one day to collect some money he thinks he's owed. Then a mushroom cloud appears in the direction of Denver, and Jake stays on and turns into a hero. Jake's a mystery at first too; this is the game the series plays. Eventually details come out about those five years away that help explain his new accomplishments and moral convictions.

In the scarcity and anxiety that follow because supply lines are down and contact with the outside a matter of rumors of danger and chaos brought back by scouting parties, Jake's dad is eventually replaced as mayor by his hard-nosed law-and-order rival, Gray Anderson (Michael Gaston). Johnston and Gray represent key opposing positions on how to deal with trouble. Another important early figure is Gracie Leigh (Beth Grant), who runs the town supermarket. She's the trader who exploits every situation, whom you may hate but can't do without. Her only employee is the 16-year-old Dale (Erik Knudsen), a town misfit who bonds with rich girl Skylar (Candace Bailey), whose family owns most of the local salt mine. Suddenly, when Gracie fades from the picture, these two kids are rich. The series has something to say about the economics of scarcity. It considers how the power of possession can turn people bad--or force them to become the society's protectors.

When people come from outside to "help," they turn out to be impostors, or simply a dangerous element the town can't absorb. Salvation such as it is comes from within.

This adds up to a vigorous reaffirmation of old-fashioned American values, sort of pioneering Wild West stuff, but with 21st-century technology. There are still communication devices that function, though they're in the hands of only a few and can't always be trusted. And there are TV-soap aspects in the episodes, plot lines about adultery, odd couples, unexpected crisis romances, notably that of Stanley (Brad Beyer), the aw-shucks farmer, and Mimi (Alicia Coppola), the tough DC IRS lady. Meanwhile, largely through the unfolding of Hawkins' doings, the larger scheme of things is explored. The writers are cunning in their ability to reveal more and more and still keep mystery. Iraq and Afghanistan play a part in one central figure's past and Al Queda is mentioned (pronounced both ways), as are Iran and North Korea. Ravenswood, a mercenary army akin to Blackwater (which is also mentioned) emerges as a terrible threat to the public order. While Jericho remains a nice little town, everything else is changed. Yes, there's a terrorist plot, but it's not what you think. It's more complicated and mysterious.

American series like this can be fascinating, but also too open-ended and humorless. How much of this can anyone stand? The episodes never quite take a break, always pushing the message. Though Hawkins and his family and cohort Sarah (Siena Goines) are black, everything else is white-bread, and there's no sex or adult language. The style sticks within conventional guidelines. It's a relief, though, that though this is sci-fi, it steers clear of supernatural elements, aliens, or other such escapes from the everyday. "Jericho" juggles an elaborate global war game with stories about people being people.

Skeet Ulrich as Jake is believable as catnip to women but also makes an appealingly tarnished, struggling savior. His soft voice and good looks carry the day, and there is always a bad-boy edge that fits with his back-story and with the idea that extraordinary circumstances require a new kind of hero. Jake's brother Eric is a foil; he's too stolid and safe to lead. Pamela Reed as Gael Green, Jake's mom, is warm and appealing; there are too many good women to mention. Lennie James, as Hawkins, exemplifies the excessive earnestness of the series; his painfully awkward interactions with his little family are grating. But on the other hand he rarely ceases to convince. You wonder if he's going to come to an ironic end like the black hero of Romero's Night of the Living Dead. James, like Ulrich, deepens into his role as time goes on. Toward the end "Jericho" gets very political and conspiratorial and scarily suggestive of what it might be like if Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, a bunch of Minutemen nut-jobs, and Blackwater (now AKA "Xe") mercenaries teamed up to destroy the country and then came in to take it over and turn it into a thinly veiled fascist state on the pretense of "saving" it. Blending homely endorsements of family values and love with troubling hints of the fragility of our democracy, "Jericho" never lets up and seldom disappoints. It's a sort of rambling Our Town for the post-nuclear age.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


Last edited by cknipp on Thu May 14, 2009 7:31 pm, edited 5 times in total.

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