in the open space: God & culture

A few days ago, I posted an entry on the last few episodes of Jericho , a CBS apocalyptic series about folks in a small town in Kansas after a series of nuclear explosions take out a dozen or so American cities—and interestingly, that post’s received more hits than any other post I’ve ever written. And while I really resonate with the things I wrote about, I don’t think it’s that exceptional of a post; I’ve written better ( much better). I’m thinking the attention has more to do with the series itself than my thoughts about it. And that makes me start musing on exactly what it is about this series that gets a mediocre post and a blogger like me so much attention. The series was recently cancelled for the second time, but now the same groups of fans and folks who got the series renewed for a second (albeit short) season—a noteworthy event and rarity in CBS as well as television history—are campaigning to get the series either a third season or a home on another cable channel. As part ...

CBS apocolyptic series Jericho wrapped up with its final episode this week, and while I was ready to let this series go at the end of last season, now I gotta admit I’m actually going to miss the townsfolk and their stories—and all the God-talk it put into these open spaces . Jericho centered on the lives of folks in a small Kansas town after a series of nuclear bombs destroyed key American cities. The first season focused on the townsfolk coming together as a community, and the second on their growing awareness that a new national government competing with remnents of the old one and run by a self-proclaimed president is corrupt to its core. The townsfolk started mobilizing to stand up against it—which brought with it some interesting threads and themes. In the last few episodes, it was intriguing to watch the unfolding of a revolution. The series drew direct allusions to both the American Revolution and her Civil War; watching the struggles of the Jericho townsfolk lent insight int...

Well, I’ve caught up on Jericho and must admit the series is definitely playing with some interesting issues in its coda of a season.* Jericho has picked up the pace (with only seven eps with which to wrap up the story, it would have to)—and it’s shifted its focus in more ways than one. But the one that’s got me hooked is its swing from how a community forms to how that community embraces a mission outside of itself. Last season, the focus was on how a small town in Middle America deals with an apocalyptic event that cuts them off from the outside world: nuclear bombs (which we eventually learn are connected to a shadowy home grown organization) detonated in a handful of American cities. It was an often flawed but very interesting look at how we human beings react to situations—both individually and as a community (as our individual actions ripple far and wide)— that wreck the world we think will last forever . By the end of the first season, after working through issues of confronta...

This weekend, I watched my TiVo’d recording of “ One If by Land ,” the latest episode of Jericho , the CBS apocalyptic drama about a small town in Kansas after a series of nuclear bombs were detonated around the country. The episode was one of the series’ better ones, and it’s got me thinking. The episode mostly centers on patriarch and former Jericho mayor Johnston Green who goes to a nearby town to look for sons Eric and Jake, who’ve been jailed for trying to sabotage its factory which is being used to make explosives and mortars for an attack on Jericho. When Johnston gets to New Bern, it doesn’t take long for him to learn of his sons’ whereabouts—or to confront the town’s dictator/sheriff Constantino (above photo), who rules his town with a ruthless and ambitious hand. Heh, I must admit I’ve become a bit enamored with Johnston Green lately. Early on, I sorta boxed him up as a flawed version of the father in the prodigal son parable , but his character has really deepened and devel...

CBS’s Jericho —the apocalyptic drama this blog’s been following —took some steps forward (in more ways than one) with last Wednesday’s episode, " Federal Response ." (If you haven’t seen the episode and are still planning to, you might want to skip this post; you can watch this or any other episode here or read detailed summaries here .) The apocalyptic-ness took a dizzying step forward at the end of the episode, with the ground rumbling and the townsfolk gazing upward at the night sky, horror-stricken as the contrails of two just-fired-from-the-ground ICBM missiles continued to lengthen across the skyline as they fly away from Jericho. That scene resurrected those eerie vibes I carried around with me as a teenager growing up with The Late Great Planet Earth , Red Dawn and The Day After as the prophecies for our future. Seeing those missiles in the air was unexpected (perhaps a tribute to some good plot structure) and quite chilling. On the character front, while we don’t ...

Last night, the second episode of Jericho aired and I woke up thinking about this morning. In “ Fallout ” (read about the pilot episode here ), we watched the town scramble to protect themselves from a radioactive thunderstorm moving in from the Denver area (where the mushroom cloud was seen in the pilot). We watched the mysterious Hawkins secretly transcribe Morse Code from a short-wave radio and then, at the end of the show, eerily poke one red thumbtack after another into a map of the U.S. (according to Wikipedia , the list of nuclear explosions has grown from Denver and Atlanta to include Philadelphia, Chicago, San Diego and three other cities we weren’t privy to see). We saw two high school kids from opposite social strata bond over their missing and most-likely dead parents (one set in Atlanta and the other in Denver) with plastic-covered taped-up windows in the background. Why was I running through all these scenes in my head? Heh, that’s what I wanted to know. What’s the deal?...

CBS’s Jericho —a kind of Red Dawn (a film me and my college mates feared would play out in the streets of our small college town) meets The Day After (another film we found particularly terrifying in that our college was in Kansas, where the film was set)—premiered Saturday night, and (while it stretches credibility ) has me interested enough to give it a Season Pass . The series is centered in a “quiet and peaceful” small Kansas town of the same name, which is “plunged into social, psychological and physical chaos” when “a baffling explosion occurs in the distance.” In the first episode, the residents see a mushroom cloud rising over the very distant Denver area and later deduce (from a cut-off answering machine message) that something similar has happened in Atlanta. Phone, television, and radio contact are cut off—the townsfolks are in the dark (literally, when the sun goes down). The towns good-intentioned but embattled Mayor struggles to provide leadership and pull the town toge...