Always just one step behind… or two…

Or three… or, in this case, maybe a couple of decades.

Anyway, Vicky and I finally settled down to watch the season finale of Jericho last night. Did I say “season finale”? What the producers didn’t know was that it was the SERIES finale, so they left us with this great cliffhanger, hanging right off the edge of mediocrity! Jericho was a good idea for a show whose writers couldn’t quite get their shit together. It looked like they were about to get a story together, rather than making us wait even longer for one to start, and the truck was pulling up with the script when –

It ended.

One of the funniest cliffhangers I’ve ever seen, because they’ll be left there in perpetuity (unless certain squirrels get their way).

One storyline I wasn’t too fond of had to do with one of the girls from Jericho finding her way into an army camp. “Who do you represent?” she asked.

“The United States,” a colonel tells her.

It isn’t until the closing moments that we see the American flag flying overhead… or is it? It’s a twisted reminder of the flag – something only Hollywood could come up with. Somehow, in the months after the series began, everyone (except the people of good old Jericho, of course) has forgotten exactly what the flag looked like… sure… I believe that…

It reminded me – far too heavy-handedly – of a 1987 miniseries with Kris (Kross) Kristopherson, called Amerika. It was a miniseries about people in the US being stripped of their liberties, forgetting what freedom was, and… wait a minute! They’re the same show! Okay, maybe not. In Amerika, the US was taken over by Soviets. In Jericho, the US is taken over by bad writers. Basically, though, the same thing.

Both of these shows preach the same gospel: Don’t take your liberties for granted. The hilarity of this concept, TV telling us to be mindful, is only eclipsed by the fact that Jericho was cancelled after subterranean ratings. Not only was TV the worst media through which to teach that lesson, no one wanted to hear it.

And so, we bid farewell to Jericho and hope some of the actors, who weren’t that bad, find work somewhere in a better show… just be wary of anything by Sorkin. The man kicks motherfucking writing ASS… but people would rather watch crap.