Stream-It Saturday: Jericho (TV)

I am so enjoying this "stream-it" series. All I want to do it post about things you can stream, but I am exercising restraint and just doing so once a week.

You can check out the rest of this ongoing series here. 

When Hulu first became a thing, I became completely addicted. There wasn't a ton of content on there, but there was some show called Jericho. I've always been a survivalist/post-apocalyptic story junkie (which is amusing, given how ill-equipped I am for such a scenario), so I queued up the first episode and proceeded to give up sleep in favor of watching the two seasons in an embarrassingly short period of time. (For the record, I'm fairly certain that I watched a few episodes on CBS' Innertube service. Does anyone else remember that?)

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At that time, Jericho's fate was uncertain. CBS was waffling on whether or not to continue the series and there was talk of the SciFi (I will never call it "SyFy") Channel picking it up if it were canceled. Unfortunately, the way things shook out neither scenario occurred and we were left with just two gripping seasons of a small town trying to survive a massive nuclear attack on the U.S. and the wayward son, Jake Green, who returns home and finds himself entangled in family tensions, the chaos of a lawless town and a maybe-conspiracy involving the bombs that caused it all. 

Stephen Chbosky (author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower) co-created Jericho and unlike so many action-oriented television shows, this one really paid attention to the story-arcs and character development.

The writing mattered on this show, and really kind of saved it from being ridiculous because Jake, played by Skeet Ulrich, isn't the most compelling action/drama hero. But the secondary stories and characters and town drama, mixed with the intrigue were well-crafted, and so Ulrich's lack of screen presence doesn't really impact the watchability of the Jericho. (I've sold that well, haven't I?)

While Jericho ended prematurely after two seasons, it does actually have a conclusion, unlike many shows that ended too soon. And, I recently discovered that the show has continued on in graphic novel form, guided by the original writers. I haven't checked them out yet, but I'm pretty excited at this discovery, because there was a lot of story that could be told with this series. 

Stream It: Netflix | Amazon