자료: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/arts/television/12jeri.html?ref=television
BURBANK, Calif. — “Jericho” may be remembered as the postapocalyptic drama canceled by CBS and only temporarily revived by vocal and Internet-savvy fans. But if its executive producers, Carol Barbee and Jon Turteltaub, have their way, it will be recalled as a television success story that earned a second life.
Major Beck (Esai Morales) has a chat with Jake (Skeet Ulrich).
A short second season of the show — which follows the fate of a small Kansas town named Jericho after a round of nuclear attacks decimate cities across the United States — will start Tuesday night. Sitting in his office at the Walt Disney studio two weeks ago Mr. Turteltaub bristled at the suggestion that the seventh episode of the truncated season would also be the series finale.
“It’s a season finale,” he emphasized, before adding, “Ask me again in a month.”
With story lines shaded by the Iraq war and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Ms. Barbee and Mr. Turteltaub have only a handful of episodes to build an audience and earn a third season.
“I would rather have seven hours to prove it works than 22 hours to prove it doesn’t,” Mr. Turteltaub said.
If the first season was about how Jericho survived the attack, the second season concerns how the town responds and rebuilds. In interviews the producers and CBS executives said that first-time viewers would be able to enjoy the second season without having watched the first. Why? Because “Jericho” introduces a new face in Season 2: that of Esai Morales, once of “NYPD Blue,” who plays Maj. Edward Beck, a representative of troops based in Cheyenne, Wyo., who comes to lead the town’s reconstruction.
Through Mr. Morales’s character, viewers are introduced to the Allied States of America, a new country comprising the area west of the Mississippi River. The town of Jericho essentially becomes occupied territory. The military builds a base nearby to oversee reconstruction. A private contractor is commissioned to provide a semblance of law and order. History books are rewritten.
It intentionally resembles Iraq.
“People, and by people I mean our bosses, probably prefer to not get all political,” Mr. Turteltaub said. “But that said, ‘Jericho’ is not ignoring the political and social landscape.’ ”
Specifically, he said, the show raises questions about trust in government and the implications of having unchecked power in an unstable area. The producers had prepared a plotline about military contractors months before the private security firm Blackwaterwas in the news concerning its involvement in the deaths of Iraqi civilians.
The “Jericho” character Jake Green, played by Skeet Ulrich, dropped hints last season about his time overseas. His experience ends up being a crucial plot point this year.
“I feel like we were really making a statement to some extent,” Mr. Ulrich said. “You always want to hold up a mirror, but you don’t want to let people know you’re doing it. Hopefully it’s just enough for people to draw the parallels.”
Fans have not flocked to recent feature films about the Iraq war. But “Jericho” is different, Ms. Barbee said, because it is not “some big polemic about the war.” If anything, the show draws as many parallels to post-Katrina New Orleans as it does to postinvasion Baghdad.
Mr. Turteltaub summarized the show as an advertising copywriter would: “If the assumptions of comfort, safety and freedom are taken away, who are we?”
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