8 JERICHO
30 episodes • 2006-8 • CBS
Fans managed to get this show resurrected for a second season. Ironically their campaign involved sending over 20 tons of nuts to CBS. Say no more. You have to admire the fans, though. It’s a hard show to love. For a post apocalyptic series, it was incredibly cosy and sterile, as the aftermath of nuclear war seemed to be a return to a Little House On The Prairie rustic idyll. Oh sure, characters occasionally paid lip service to society falling apart and the danger of death by radiation poisoning but the episodes more often than not seemed more concerned with food harvests and overegged melodrama. For the first season, too many characters (to use the word in its loosest sense) struggle for attention in too many half-baked plot lines, and a conspiracy plot is tacked on half-heartedly because, well, conspiracy plots were in vogue… a few years before. Even the writers seemed to realise how dull the show was and tried to pep things up with a war between two new power blocks within America, but they even managed to make that about as exciting basket weaving.
The nadir: Lines like, “The battle ahead isn’t just for our survival, it's for our humanity!” and, “We’ll do everything we can until we can't!” Somebody ODed on the Little Engine That Could, clearly.
Go to worst show number 7
