Series: Jericho: The Complete First Season comes out on DVD this coming Tuesday, the show itself having survived numerous corporate assaults and a premature cancellation. While Biblical scholars can look for obscure references in the writing to the show's episodes, let's take a quick look at the show's premise before dissecting the six disc boxed set I was sent to review. Never having seen the show for more than a couple of minutes, my two sitting marathon brought me into seeing why so many fans enjoyed the show. The premise is that in contemporary times, a terrorist plot to explode numerous nuclear weapons in large American cities succeeds; approximately 22 of the devices wreaking havoc on the population of the country during a Presidential address to Congress. This actually jumps the gun a bit since the vast majority of the show is dedicated to a small town in Kansas where a single explosion in Denver is seen on the horizon, scant evidence of another explosion in Atlanta being the only other information forthcoming (thanks to a phone call cut off). Without the power grid and satellite communications, all means of finding out what happened are lost and the people of the small community find firsthand what it is like to see the after effects of the situation.

Not knowing if an accident took place or if it was a coordinated attack, the majority of the populace try to seek solace in the comfort of their small town community life; assisting others and hording foodstuffs while hoping for the federal government to save the day. As time marches on, no rescue appears eminent and dark, ominous clouds from the blast sight move towards town; presumably with radioactive fallout that will kill all living things and contaminate the top 18 inches of soil that the farming community needs to grow crops. The logistics aside, numerous subplots are tossed into the mix to personalize the drama of the day; a missing school bus full of children on a field trip worrying parents, escaped convicts on the loose, and a man with a lot more knowledge about events than any "retired St Louis cop" should know, regardless of his post 9/11 training.

The show builds suspense slowly as a result of these rabbit trails, an initial hiatus after the 11th episode looking like the end of the series back in November of last year. The powers that be on both sides of the issue (the creators and the suits at CBS) thankfully getting on the same page to air the remainder, leaving a cliffhanger ending that will hopefully be solved with the limited run ordered up for airing later this season. See, the hero of the semi-ensemble cast is a man by the name of Jake Green (aptly played by Skeet Ulrich); the bad boy son of the long standing mayor, who left town under a cloud of suspicion regarding some criminal activity he was allegedly a participant of. It is now five years later and he is in town for a long delayed inheritance, showing a sense of urgency that is not explained to anyone he knows, the little clues building up as he tells everyone he meets a different story of where he has been (most of them related to the military, though it is a certainty that any military activity he has been involved in has been related to covert operations at best). He becomes the focal point of the entire show, though he has been off for years and some still consider his past as rather shady.

The other alpha male of the cast is Robert Hawkins (equally well played by Lennie James), a black man that just moved to town with his family having paid cash for a large house and claiming to be a retired St Louis police officer. As the smaller and larger crises' of the moment come into play, he offers up his services, providing far more insight than can be easily explained away by his story. The viewer is let on early about his background, though never quite told enough until the The Day Before and AKA reveal more than a little about what he knows, how he knows it, and what he intends to do with his knowledge in his newfound home in small town Jericho. As the show develops, it is clear that all the smaller side adventures and plots are secondary (if not tertiary) to these two men as they each struggle with their pasts conflicting with the present day circumstances that have thrust them into the limelight. Their pasts are always on the near horizon, threatening to come down on them harder than the radioactive rain moving in from the Denver blast, though bounced around for the most part rather than completely let loose.

The other stories that interact with these two men involve the politics of fear, the inadequacy of government to be all things to all people at all times, and the despair of the larger picture which involves horrible refugee camps in the distance, the rise of powerful regional warlords, and the problems of balancing the available resources with the overwhelming needs of the time. In some cases, the secondary threads are artfully woven into the tapestry that fans enjoyed the most (particularly in the latter episodes) while in other cases, the writers clearly had no concept of how the people would react or what they would have to react too (the matter of the contamination is dropped faster than the need for radiation suits and Geiger counters since that would cause too many problems to handle). All the minor quirks aside though, the larger plots were getting especially good as the paranoia crept up in some of the stories and Jericho had to defend itself against known enemies such as the criminal syndicate led by Jonah Prowse (James Remar doing a solid imitation of Willem Dafoe and proving to be the #3 reason to tune in) or old rivals from the town of New Bern; a nearby town that did not have the initial leadership to survive as intact as Jericho has.

The politics of shortages were a constantly shifting matter handled poorly by the writers too; not a single person in the series EVER looking like they missed a single meal, despite the Chicken Little proclamations of shortages in the food supply driving several of the key episodes; including the resulting war. Perhaps if a couple of dedicated writers were handed the series outline and were the only ones allowed access to knocking out scripts, it would have been a more consistently well written show but as a parable of hope, humanity, and human nature, the basics were covered pretty well from where I was sitting so I rated the show as Highly Recommended. Will the upcoming seven episodes be carefully crafted to take advantage of the momentum of the show being saved from cancellation or just a bit of filler needed to tie up the major plot points? Truthfully, I hope for the former since the concept is not that far fetched (ask me how those lovely survivors from Hurricane Katrina are doing here in Houston, two years later...) and there is plenty of gold to mine without dumbing the show down to a westernized version of your favorite cop show. Several promising threads started toward the end of the first season so my fingers are crossed that all those involved with the rest of the episodes take the show more seriously and drop the multitude of clichés that weakened the earlier part of the series. Who is in charge of the government, will New Bern succeed, will Hawkins be discovered, will Jake take the leadership role more seriously now that his father is gone? All those and more are on the table so any attempts to tie things up too fast in the opener for season two will probably piss off a lot of people, myself included now that I'm a believer in the show myself (trim some of the deadwood characters, lose the unnecessary ensemble wannabe nature of the cast, and focus more time on the two obvious leads as they struggle to do the right thing over the expedient thing while faced with insurmountable odds). That said, here is an episode guide with dates of original airing as provided by the liner notes on the back of the DVD cases:

1) Pilot: The First Seventeen Hours (9/20/2006)
2) Fallout (9/27/2006)
3) Four Horsemen (10/4/2006)
4) Walls of Jericho (10/11/2006)
5) Federal Response (10/18/2006)
6) 9:02 (10/25/2006)
7) Long Live The Mayor (11/1/2006)
8) Rogue River (11/8/2006)
9) Crossroads (11/15/2006)
10) Red Flag (11/22/2006)
11) Vox Populi (11/29/2006)
12) The Day Before (2/21/2006)
13) Black Jack (2/28/2007)
14) Heart of Winter (3/7/2007)
15) Semper Fidelis (3/14/2007)
16) Winter's End (3/28/2007)
17) One Man's Terrorist (4/4/2007)
18) AKA (4/11/2007)
19) Casus Belli (4/18/2007)
20) One If By Land (4/25/2007)
21) Coalition of the Willing (5/2/2007)
22) Why We Fight (5/9/2007)

Picture: Jericho: The Complete First Season was presented in the usual 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen color it was shot and aired in on CBS last year. The colors and other visual queues reflect the troubled times so they were not consistent; a large part of the understated crafting of the show that I don't recall being mentioned much in the forums here at DVD Talk when the show first aired. As the nuclear cloud expands, the entire look of the show darkens as if an ominous warning of things to come just as the bleakness of winter was not filled with happy, cheerful colors. Perhaps the best manner to contrast this effect is to look at the flashback episodes such as The Day Before where Jake and his best friend are partying on the beach or in AKA where Hawkins has yet to uncover what is going on while he reminisces about his part in what took place (these are only a couple of isolated examples by the way). Some of the camera work was done on the fly rather than the static shots usually employed in a show like this, lending it an air of instability as certain characters were more prone to project; but it was something I noticed right away and throughout the series as I sat glued to my TV. There were some minor issues with aliases and edge enhancement, the stark contrasts more likely to have been done on purpose than those; and the rapid paced editing seemed almost an attempt to generate an action feel to it at times but not done so routinely as to weaken the effect. In all then, it showed some need of polishing up but it worked better than average for me.

Sound: The audio was offered up with a choice of either a 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround or a 2.0 Dolby Digital track; both in English with optional subtitles in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The stereo track seemed confined at times but more realistic than the surround track that used so little of the rears as to be effective; even in action sequences. The bass response during the initial explosion and some of the firefights was decent but even then it appeared to me that the audio was the bastard stepchild of the production compared to the interesting visuals. On a related note, the back of the box cover mentioned that some of the music may have been changed and some of the episodes may have been edited though I had no means to compare this to the original (and no one at Paramount seems willing to definitively state what changes were made; probably for fear of getting bombarded with more nuts). The dialogue was decent though and seemed to work well enough for the visuals though a few pop tunes were present that I recognized (I doubt we're going to see a better DVD release than this 6 disc set any time in the future either).

Extras: Each disc had some extras on them, the main ones being the wealth of audio commentaries I'm still listening to. Each provided some background spoiler information so listen to them after you see all the episodes unless you don't care about spoilers. Jon Turteltaub was on the majority of them and provided a lot of the compromises the show went through as well as possible directions the show could go in the future (initially cancelled, CBS promises at least seven more episodes now to satiate the groundswell of support that included fans mailing in nuts as an insider joke to the final episode).

Disc One had some previews to start but the meat of the extras included 5:03+1:48+:45 minutes of deleted scenes with optional commentary by Dan Shotz and Karim Zreik (one of them showing Jericho being about 150 miles from Wichita, for example) for the first, third, and fourth episodes respectively. In a nod to the use of visual clues, there were numerous bits placed in that told more than the dialogue but you can see that for yourselves. The pilot had an optional audio commentary by Jon Turteltaub & Carol Barbee (this being perhaps the single most informative commentary of the set). Fallout also had the duo on a commentary but it wasn't as good (these being the two I listened to in full before writing this review; spot checking the others). I did not find one of the rumored two Easter Eggs on the first disc but would appreciate any assistance by those who did.

Disc Two had more deleted scenes; 1:17 minutes with optional commentary by Dan Shotz and Karim Zreik in 9:02, and the pair talking about stuff from Long Live The Mayor for 1:19 minutes. Rogue River had a commentary by Jon Turteltaub and Skeet Ulrich but it only had a few tidbits of note from my limited experience.

Disc Three had some deleted scenes on Crossroads (same pair on the optional commentary) for the 51 seconds and 1:49 minutes from Vox Populi. Neither really added much meat to the episodes but they did flesh out the ideas a bit more. Lennie James and Carol Barbee gave an episode length commentary for Red Flag; the pair joined by Skeet Ulrich on the commentary for Vox Populi that showed some of the chemistry the men had from the show translated on the small screen.

Disc Four had a mere 58 seconds of deleted scenes with optional commentary by Dan Shotz and Karim Zreik but was another case where I suspected hidden features for those better at finding them than I am.

Disc Five had One Man's Terrorist with 27 whole seconds of deleted footage with optional commentary by Dan Shotz and Karim Zreik; 1:35 minutes of such footage in AKA; and 57 seconds from Casus Belli. The final disc also had a Behind the Scenes making of feature called Building Jericho that lasted 24:31 minutes long. It combined a lot of aspects of the making of and planning that went into the show, including cast auditions, clips from the show, and interviews from cast & crew. This was followed by a 9:12 minute long feature called "What If?" that gave some background about nuclear holocaust scenarios, disaster preparedness, and even some scientific background that was blown off by many of the writers. The final disc also had deleted scenes from Coalition of the Willing with optional commentary by Dan Shotz and Karim Zreik but this one was only 50 seconds long and did little to further the story. There were several Easter Eggs in the set; the first one I noticed being on the final disc called Jericho at Wonderland; a 3:26 minute long short film on the cast and crew members going to a comic convention. It could be found by clicking on the mirror of the special features menu for those who care.

Final Thoughts: Jericho: The Complete First Season had a lot of powerful themes and borrowed heavily from shows such as Red Dawn, The Day After, as well as some ideas taken from more recent events such as the Hurricane Katrina disaster that I saw firsthand. The strength of the show was largely related to the way so many miscellaneous concepts were woven together to create a tapestry where the two leads interacted with a variety of humanizing characters from their respective pasts, growing into their roles as leaders facing some seriously hard times. Jake came across as a youthful Hawkins still salvageable but well on his way to becoming as jaded and cold while Hawkins seemed to re-learn his roots thanks to his formerly lost family and the kinship of so many strangers, Jake in particular, that came together. In short, while flawed thanks to the policies of corporate sponsorship at a major broadcasting company, Jericho: The Complete First Season proved that given the right incentives, it could become the kind of show that fans always thought it could be; providing hope for the future as the show got a third life in large part due to their efforts.