The parrallels betwen Jericho and Lost that foreshadowed the post-apocalyptic drama have all but vanished, which is good news for producers of the current Wednesday night mainstay. Jericho's unwarranted reputation as a Lost wannabe caused a bit of confusion and dissapointment in the beginning of the show's run; where's the weird?
Sure, there are some mightly strange things going on... people that know more than they should, a total lack of radiation (no matter how spread apart, that many nukes should have turned the jet stream into a microwave oven), and things maybe working out a little too well for certain citizens. Heck, after this weeks counter attack launched by whatever is remaining of the US government (if anything at all), who knows what things will look like a few weeks out. Yet, all-in-all Jericho remains what it was intended to be: a story about how a small town would react in the face of a global catastrophe. It is the story of these people that keeps bringing the viewers back, not strange doorways found buried a few feet under the top-soil. What is interesting to me, as a fan of both shows, is the initial misperception of the shows intent. Is it a little odd to anyone else that in a day where crazed zealots crash airplanes into tall buildings that a television show might come along to give us a taste of what the worst case scenario might be, and wouldn't that concept alone be enough to keep the shows title in the headlines? In the years since Americans came to know terror first hand, have we become so reliant on our cathode friend as an escape from the horrors of real life as to deny anything of real importance be laid there? You can take my world trade center, but leave my escapism alone? For many, the still of the child on his roof fixated on the distant blooming mushroom cloud was intriguing enough to form at least a hard core of an audience; to hear the critics of the series' underwhelming launch, however, this just wasn't enough if you wanted to live in the same neighborhood as Lost. It is refreshing, however, that over the weeks the fact that Jericho really is just a survival story about people coming together to confront mysterious and forbiding odds has enough appeal to find its own place in the universe without the shadow of Lost-like expectations, if not as a parable than just as an adventure.