Alas, Jericho
Oct. 28th, 2006 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuMy lovely and talented wife and I deleted our Tivo season pass for Jericho tonight, after watching the most recent episode. As she explained in her own livejournal recently (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snippy ), she started watching the series hoping for Alas Babylon but what she got was Nuclear War Survival for Dummies.
Or, actually, more like Nuclear War Survival BY Dummies. We knew it was a bad sign when we realized we were rooting for the survivalists (who I'm pretty sure are going to recurring antagonists) as the only people on the show who deserve to survive. Why?
Because they're not morons! They seem to be one step ahead of the townsfolk at every turn, but that's not because they're superhumanly capable. They're simply normal, intelligent human beings. Which, you know, puts them head and shoulders above everyone else.
Farmer Guy has acres and acres of corn. Quite possibly hundreds of acres of corn. Corn that, ordinarily, he'd sell after he harvested it with his insanely expensive combine harvester. Only the EMP two weeks earlier put the kibosh all things electronic, which I'm pretty sure includes $300,000 - $500,000 combine harvesters. But more to the point, he's growing corn and only corn.
He's very posessive of his corn (which, to be fair, everyone seems to want a piece of), but realistically, he can't possibly harvest it all even with the help of the townsfolk. Given that it was presumably being grown for sale, he probably doesn't even have on-site storage for it. Plus, say he successfuly prevents anyone from taking it from him. Then what? Man cannot live by corn alone. He's gonna look pretty silly trying to eat all that corn with no teeth after they've all fallen out due to scurvy (I don't think corn has Vitamn C in it).
He ought to be trading access to some of his many, many acres of corn for other foodstuffs and other things he and his family will need.
And that assumes the corn is safe to eat. Given that Magical Negro Guy told the townsfolk earlier that they'd have to scrape away the top 18 inches of topsoil to eliminate radioactive fallout particles (once it was safe to come out of the shelters), I'm pretty sure the corn wouldn't be safe anyhow. But anyway....
The cops in this town are useless. Nobody (except possibly Magical Negro) seems to grasp that The Rules Have Changed. FedRepGal is cruising for a broken neck or a knife in the kidney if she continues to think that the world (or at least the town) owes her a living as the Living Embodiment of the Federal Gummit.
The survivalists seemed to be the only people who grokked that in the absence of working motor vehicles, horses are the only form of transportation (or heavy labor) other than human muscles. They're also smart enough to grab a barnful of undefended foodstuffs.
And...and....it could have been such a good show. But the characters are idiots.
snippy ), she started watching the series hoping for Alas Babylon but what she got was Nuclear War Survival for Dummies. Or, actually, more like Nuclear War Survival BY Dummies. We knew it was a bad sign when we realized we were rooting for the survivalists (who I'm pretty sure are going to recurring antagonists) as the only people on the show who deserve to survive. Why?
Because they're not morons! They seem to be one step ahead of the townsfolk at every turn, but that's not because they're superhumanly capable. They're simply normal, intelligent human beings. Which, you know, puts them head and shoulders above everyone else.
Farmer Guy has acres and acres of corn. Quite possibly hundreds of acres of corn. Corn that, ordinarily, he'd sell after he harvested it with his insanely expensive combine harvester. Only the EMP two weeks earlier put the kibosh all things electronic, which I'm pretty sure includes $300,000 - $500,000 combine harvesters. But more to the point, he's growing corn and only corn.
He's very posessive of his corn (which, to be fair, everyone seems to want a piece of), but realistically, he can't possibly harvest it all even with the help of the townsfolk. Given that it was presumably being grown for sale, he probably doesn't even have on-site storage for it. Plus, say he successfuly prevents anyone from taking it from him. Then what? Man cannot live by corn alone. He's gonna look pretty silly trying to eat all that corn with no teeth after they've all fallen out due to scurvy (I don't think corn has Vitamn C in it).
He ought to be trading access to some of his many, many acres of corn for other foodstuffs and other things he and his family will need.
And that assumes the corn is safe to eat. Given that Magical Negro Guy told the townsfolk earlier that they'd have to scrape away the top 18 inches of topsoil to eliminate radioactive fallout particles (once it was safe to come out of the shelters), I'm pretty sure the corn wouldn't be safe anyhow. But anyway....
The cops in this town are useless. Nobody (except possibly Magical Negro) seems to grasp that The Rules Have Changed. FedRepGal is cruising for a broken neck or a knife in the kidney if she continues to think that the world (or at least the town) owes her a living as the Living Embodiment of the Federal Gummit.
The survivalists seemed to be the only people who grokked that in the absence of working motor vehicles, horses are the only form of transportation (or heavy labor) other than human muscles. They're also smart enough to grab a barnful of undefended foodstuffs.
And...and....it could have been such a good show. But the characters are idiots.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-29 04:21 am (UTC)And yet, for some reason, I continue to watch. What the hell does that say about my own intelligence level?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-29 04:43 am (UTC)Personally, I'm all about intelligent characters and smart plotting; I'll overlook wooden acting, cheesy dialogue, flimsy sets, laughable props and costumes, $1.99 SFX and the like as long as the characters are intelligent and plot doesn't have holes.
And yet...I watched Charmed for several seasons. Sometimes eye candy (with a magical-fantasy sugar coating) is enough. Dead Like Me is one of my favorite shows--even though I'm fully aware that there are holes in the basic concept you can fly the Deathstar through. There was enough else that was right to make me willing to overlook them.
Jericho didn't have enough else for me.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-29 06:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-29 07:41 am (UTC)When it comes to realism and even basic scientific accuracy, the screenwriters either a) don't know or don't care, or b) don't think the audience knows or cares, or (most likely) c) both. So fallout, EMPs, and other problems bear no real relationship to their real world counterparts, and people behave with a stunning lack of foresight.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-29 04:46 pm (UTC)And to stop them from wasting what little food was left. :P
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-29 09:26 pm (UTC)Why do they have to...
Date: 2006-10-29 03:38 pm (UTC)Also, I bet they have no idea what a massive job that would be. Assume they need to clear only one square kilometer -- ignoring the radiation that will be in any non-farming land, since radiation apparently Magically Only Affects You when the Plot requires it. Assuming only a density of 2.0 for soil, that's ONE MILLION TONS they need to move.
With just muscle power. For the next planting/harvesting cycle.
I don't THINK so.
Re: Why do they have to...
Date: 2006-10-29 09:38 pm (UTC)Jericho. It sucks!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-30 03:34 pm (UTC)The whole episode about Farmer Guy and his corn bothered me, because at first when Store Owner proposed the trade for the pesticide I thought it was a great idea, and would have been a great little lesson: be prepared to barter what you've got for what you need. Instead, it collapsed into a kumbyah moment of everyone turning out to help with the harvest.
I was also a bit troubled by the fact that after the missiles were launched, someone commented that the nearest silos were about a hundred miles away...and we could practically read the USAF logo on the side of the missile.
Biggest goof that irked me? It was during the encounter at the airstrip. It didn't have to be at the airstrip, there was nothing plot-critical about airplanes being there, they could have placed that conflict anywhere. What irked me...if you still have the episode recorded, play it back and look at the scene.
They're supposed to be in Kansas. And exactly which Kansas mountain range would that be in the background?
That may turn out to be a moment that lost it for me, because that was the moment where I started to question the writers. Do they know what they're doing? Or are they making it up as they go along? Sadly, a team of LA-based writers and producers who are so out-of-touch that it doesn't occur to them that there are no mountains in Kansas doesn't bode well.
For now, I'm still standing by my comment here (http://rjlippincott.livejournal.com/451344.html) and hope that the apparent lack of radiation is more of a clue than a blunder. The fact that the adversaries exploded a high-altitude EMP now unquestionably removes this from the realm of terrorism, and transforms it to an international war.
But after the Kansas mountains, I've got a growing feeling that the writers might just botch it.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-30 04:42 pm (UTC)As for the mountains of Kansas.... Sigh. I've been seeing the mountains of Kansas on Smallville for years now. It's annoying, but I'm willing to cut them some slack on that because of the realities of filming tv programs in California (or Vancouver, as the case may be) instead of actually in Kansas.
I'm much harder on plot stupidities because they could be fixed far more easily. All it takes is caring enough to pay attention.
Mt. Sunflower
Date: 2006-10-30 09:52 pm (UTC)Re: Mt. Sunflower
Date: 2006-10-30 10:44 pm (UTC)No...that was a new one to me. Thanks.