Jericho': Who -- or what -- is to blame?
10:25 AM PT, Mar 25 2008
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2008/03/jericho-who-kil.html?cid=108346366
Now that we officially know that tonight's second-season finale of
"Jericho" will also be the series finale, it's tempting to try to find
someone or something to blame for what went wrong.
How did such a hyped achievement -- CBS' decision to "un-cancel" the
series due to overwhelming fan response -- result in a return that faded
away so unspectacularly?
Let's look at the prime suspects:
The strike
Conventional wisdom reckoned that the WGA strike and the resulting
dearth of scripted shows during the winter would help "Jericho" stand
out among weakened competition. But the winter's reality-heavy
environment might have made it even more difficult for "Jericho" to
connect with audiences. Viewers were tuning out in droves and CBS took
one of the biggest ratings hits among all networks, leaving a limited
audience to promote the "Jericho" return to. Even freshly written
episodes of "Late Show With David Letterman" struggled due to the
overall decline in CBS viewership.
The time slot
CBS moved the series out of the family-friendly 8 p.m. hour to 10 p.m.
and there's the possibility that many of the original viewers were
unwilling to follow. In defense of CBS, part of the plan was to give
"Jericho" an established lead-in. Unfortunately (due in no small part to
the strike) that established lead-in was the sleaze-tastic reality show
"Big Brother 9," which had never before aired outside of the
low-expectations summer season. The audiences were, to put it kindly,
completely incompatible and for a few weeks "Jericho" wound up with
slightly better numbers than "Big Brother" anyway.
The network
Everyone's favorite scapegoat. Clearly everything that went wrong with
"Jericho" was entirely CBS' fault! Never mind that they took a big, and
welcome, risk by bringing the show back in the first place. Let's face
it, a serial drama was always going to have a rough go of things on the
network's current schedule. "Jericho" didn't repeat its plotlines every
week, or solve a problem within the hour, and that seems to be the only
way to find success as a scripted drama on CBS right now. Hopefully the
experience doesn't discourage the network from taking similar chances in
the future, but stepping back and looking at the whole picture I'd say
that both the network and the producers tried their best to make an
unlikely marriage work. Some couples just aren't meant to be ...
Alternative means of viewing
Some people will point to how popular "Jericho" is with TiVo users, or
how high it ranks among iTunes downloads, or how well the Season 1 DVDs
sold on Amazon.com. That's all great as an after-market for a show that
draws an audience to its ad-supported broadcast airings. CBS isn't HBO.
The amount of people who watch on live TV (and the age and income level
of those people) really does matter. And if you downloaded "Jericho"
through BitTorrent, it's really not a good idea to go crying to CBS
about how much you'll miss the show.
The fans
A controversial argument to be sure. But if only the "Jericho" fans had
shown a little bit of passion ... oh forget it, no one's gonna buy this one.
The ratings
Last season, "Jericho" averaged 9.5 million viewers and a 2.8 in the
18-49 demo. This season, the show averaged 6.8 million viewers and a 1.9
in the 18-49 demo. The defense may raise mitigating factors, like the
shady way Nielsen measures the audience or everything else mentioned
above, but the bottom line is that those numbers are barely acceptable
on NBC. On CBS, they'll get you a death sentence. Case closed.
-- Geoff Berkshire
==========
A Los Angeles Times blogger yesterday attempted to examine the various
reasons why "Jericho" — the nuclear-aftermath drama CBS canceled and
then brought back for a second try this spring to appease rabid fans —
finally imploded and aired its series finale (for good this time, we
mean it, really) last night. The writer discusses myriad business issues
— the strike, the time slot, network decisions, etc. — but utterly
ignores the one thing we too often overlook in these discussions, and
the one thing that really matters when it comes to ratings: the story.
This kind of practical analysis is fine for the business pages, but
there are artistic elements to the entertainment we can't get into the
habit of ignoring. Simply put, the story on this new "season" of
"Jericho" was weak.
The show was beloved in its first go-round because, I think, it was a
tale of true patriotism and America's core values (and it creeps me out
a little to write those phrases, given how they've been so commonly
co-opted by the right wing as rhetorical weapons). It had (again,
shudder) family values. It was a story of what really matters in
people's personal lives; the political stuff was a vehicle for that. But
when it came back, the political vehicle was a runaway train. It became
just a sub-Tom Clancy political thriller, with a byzantine plot that
involved shadowy figures and conspiracies — absent of the real people
with real motivations that made the first season so engaging.
Last night's finale sealed things off ably enough — even despite what
had become this season's trademark leaps in logic (and, man, travel time
between Cheyenne, Wyo., and Jericho, Kan., must be among the best
airline service in world history) — and ended things on a broader note
of American values (freedom, truth, justice, if anyone remembers those).
It was disappointing only for those of us who wished the show would go on.
But that disappointment set in long ago, and I think most fans would
admit that the loss of Gerald McRaney (his character was killed at the
end of season one) was the real death blow to this show. His character's
son, our hero Jake (Skeet Ulrich), couldn't hold the center, especially
while splitting the moral high ground with his brother, whose personal
flaws overcame his sympathetic qualities too early in the story. And
when they killed Bonnie for, apparently, no good reason, well, the
humanity had clearly leaked out of the story.
(There's actually a business aspect to how that happened: The show's
original writers did not return for this second season. After the show's
cancellation, they moved to another new series, and when the show was
renewed they were stuck in contracts for that other show and couldn't
escape. So the source material in their heads likely was lost.)
So "Jericho" joins the heap of other great series that died prematurely
(see "Invasion," "Sports Night," "Wonderfalls," etc. etc.). It's still
available on the CBS web site and likely will remain there for a while.
Meanwhile, we'll be watching YouTube, hoping the alternate, cliffhanger
ending that was filmed (in hopes a third season would be picked up) is
eventually leaked. It would be interesting to see in which direction
they intended to point the show.
There are rumors, of course, that "Jericho" could find new life on
cable, but the show's high production costs surely will prevent that.
What should really be considered, though, is the route taken by a show
like the clever and funny sci-fi series "Firefly," which misfired on the
small screen for one beautiful season but then was reborn in a
spectacular feature film on the big screen ("Serenity"). No matter who
wins the election in November, an action-packed movie about a divided
America struggling to remember and instill its core values would surely
ring true — and ring box office cash registers.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/tv/2008/03/sifting_through_the_ashes_of_j.html
