This is starting out verrrrry slow, but has promise. I hope they don't spend too much time on the inevitable power struggle between the mayor and his challenger, although I fear this will be a central plotline.

I'll give this a few weeks to see how it develops.

Every time I see the actress who plays the shop owner, I think "I'm starting to doubt your committment to Sparkle Motion."

State basher! :grunt:

<---lives in Kansas

I was thinking they needed to get Bullock in there to restore some law and order to the town ;)

While I don't really like any of the characters yet, I think the story has some promise. Hopefully it doesn't start out as slow as Invasion did last year.

I also don't want it to fall into the trap that LOST seems to, where people don't ask questions and other's don't answer questions completely.

Agreed on all points regarding how the writers will handle a full season, but I thoroughly enjoyed the setup.

The Jake character has some deep dark secret, I'm sure that will play a prominent part of the storyline when the well starts to run dry.

:thumbsup:

I enjoyed the pilot. Though I cringed when the Roadrunner got smashed.

Turned to my wife and said it as soon as I saw the bus.

Hmmm The premise was slow the build up to the attack to me was chilling to me anyway but this show does have potential to grow. I will hold further judgement until the final episode of the season unlike some others.

The farmland of western Kansas can make a town like Jericho feel as remote as an island. There is an interstate west of Wichita that used to have only one gas station in the middle of a 300 mile stretch.

As far as the storylines:

1) Jake - I hope they explain where he's been during the next episode or two. There's no reason for such manufactured mystery when there is so much else happening.

2) The Mayor and his opponent - could be interesting if they do it right. Instead of opposition for the sake of opposition, I hope they base it on some real issues.

3) The schoolbus - this was just to add tension. Think of the children! I'm glad it was resolved quickly. At least Jake has some useful skills.

4) The prisoner bus - as if they need any more bogey men. Please. A nuclear attack is enough to scare people. Have the writers seen "The Day After"? However, it does raise the point of how do you handle anti-social people when modern civil order and infrastructure breaks down. I bet we have a good old-fashioned prisoner lynching narrowly averted by the mayor in a forecoming episode.

5) Blonde driving to the airport - I liked the dead birds at the end. These details bring home the reality of the situation. Her WTF incredulous reaction is how I think most people would respond.

I truly hope that they focus on the nuclear attack and how people respond to the breakdown of civil order. These silly little stories of missing children and escaped prisoners are tedious at best.

I watched the ep with my 15 yr old daughter, and she thought those two used-and-abused plot points added a real suspenseful layer to things. She was all "Oh my God!" and "Holy crap!".

Go figure...

We were, however, chuckling together over the "character introduction" chunk at the beginning, placing bets on how these stock types would figure into various plot points.

We'll probably keep watching to see what direction the storytelling goes.

Skeet Ulrich, there is nothing good about what you do or who you are.

I had the same thought as the majority here...the delivery did not live up to the concept. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't as compelling as it should have been.

I'll give it a couple more episodes, but if it goes the same route as Invasion (nothing actually happens), I'll drop it.

Jericho is this year's Invasion.

Dark, intelligent and a bit slow.

I am in for the season.

Dammit, I forgot about this. Are they replaying it before the next one?

EDIT: Looks like Saturday evening. Whew.

CBS is replaying both Jericho and Smith on Saturday night, consult your local listings for timeslot info.

I wanted to like this but just couldn't. I was so bored with the main storyline that my wife and I played name that cliche instead. She guessed the prison bus ruse while I was quick to spot the impending emergency tracheotomy. I was also curious as to how Skeet kept his muscle car in an open air parking garage for five years covered by a tarp and had nothing happen to it. And why does he keep a car outside of town if he never comes home? And if he needs money so bad why doesn't he sell said classic car? And if the teacher on the bus only had a broken leg why the hell couldn't she hop around a bit and check on the kids -- not to mention the dead bus driver? And did that deaf girl ever get that pie? Too many questions.

There was a deaf girl? Totally missed that.

What?

I'm guessing Skeet was in prison.

Im actually guessing CIA but he cant tell anyone

Speaking of Smith, I had actually put that show on a Season Pass and gave Jericho the single-episode I'll-see-if-I-like-it-first recording. Now after watching both shows, I've given Jericho the Pass and Smith has one more chance to wow me.

The approach seems to be: take a bunch of cliche situations (prodigal son with mysterious 5-year absence, family tensions, escaped cons, small-town politics, etc.) and wrap it up in a non-cliche (OMG - it's the bombs!)) blanket. Bet the cliches quickly take over.

I noticed the similarities, too, although it's been 20 years since I read that book. It also reminded me of Ray Milland's Panic in Year Zero

It might have been the person the guy was signing to.

I didn't notice any signing. Guess my attention span slips everytime that dreamy Johnny Depp is on screen.

The deaf girl is also on Weeds.

We don't know this was a terrorist attack.

We don't know that Atlanta was blown up.

Witchita, Topeka, Kansas City, Lincoln NE, Tulsa OK, Oklahoma City OK, Colorado Springs CO...there are A LOT of major citys closer to Jericho (whereever in Kansas it is) than Denver and Atlanta...and none of them must have blown up, since they would have seen the mushroom cloud (assuming the one they saw was indeed Denver)...so why is everyone assuming all the major citys are gone? Oh, yeah...poor writing. :)

We DO know that Atlanta was blown up. The kid's mom was in Atlanta when leaving the phone call in which you hear her getting blown to smithereens.

And maybe it wasn't a terrorist attack. Maybe they were 'happiness' bombs set off by the McDonald's corporation, and the good people of Jericho just don't know what they're missing.

We don't know what it was.

Isn't Jericho in western KS (based on the mileage sign you see in the beginning when the son is driving)? If so, it is closer to Denver than any other major city, including KC. KC is the only really major city on your list IMO. Therefore, it is not far-fetched that they would only see a Denver explosion.

They also mentioned a military base nearby. If it is not Denver, perhaps, it was the military base. Also, the plot strongly suggested a terrorist attack as everyone was watching a Presidential address to Congress where he was talking something about a great danger (though that could be aliens!).

Edit: I do get a weird BattleStar Galactica vibe though.

Interesting premise, average pilot at best. The two leads (Skeet Ulrich and Ashley Scott) are known more for their physical attributes than their acting abilities which was pretty evident in the pilot. Thankfully, the show has a strong supporting cast.

I'm a sucker for any type of last man/city/civilization show genre so I'll continue watching it.


I think that is too early to tell.

Missed this, but I'll probably set the DVR for Saturday's rerun. Sounds like I may not be sticking with it, though...

You DON'T know that there was an explosion. You hear the dad go (I'm paraphrasing) "Come look at this!" and the mom go "Oh my god!" and then the phone go static and then dead. All we know is that the power/phone got cut off...we don't know what the father saw or if there was an explosion. Everyone THINKS he saw a missle or the beginnings of an explosion, but he could have saw ANYTHING, including, perhaps, a UFO.

I guess it depends on your definition of "major"...but they are all cities, as opposed to towns. They are certainly all nuclear targets. Denver is big, but Colorado Springs ain't peanuts. Nor is Oklahoma City.

http://www.arac.com/images/locations...do_springs.jpg

OKLAHOMA CITY:
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b2...05downtown.jpg

Actually I think it's pretty clear you do hear an explosion before the phone goes dead.

Just because she can't hear doesn't mean she should resort to marijuana -ohbfrank-.

And both OKC and Colorado Springs are bigger military targets than Denver or Atlanta.

Yeah - I'll grant you that the Springs is a big military target.

We don't know that Atlanta is gone.

The mother may have been in Atlanta, but she seems like the kind of person who goes where the wind takes her - so she may have left Atlanta the prior night and landed in Denver and decided to stay in the "City" overnight.

People around here must really like Atlanta to resort to these twists of logic. :lol:

No matter what city got "tha bomb" there is no way you are seeing any kind of mountains from Kansas. And if it was Denver you aren't going to see a mushroom cloud from Kansas either. Denver is 180 miles from the Kansas border. Details like that are unexcusable. All the writers would have had to do is look at a map.