“Reconstruction”
February 12th, 2008
I have to ponder what it would have been like if Jericho had simply been renewed for another season, and I hadn’t been swept into an amazing fan initiative this past summer, what I would have thought of “Reconstruction,” Jericho’s triumphant return to television for the start of its seven episode second season. Many of the series’ problems remain present, with some of the new storyline’s potential left on the table, and yet I find myself being sucked in more than I expected. I don’t know if the episode was bad or good based on my normal standards simply because they kind of went out the window the second I returned to the small Kansas town.
Having had some time to figure things out, I think that “Reconstruction” is a solid hour of television that relies somewhat too heavily on fans’ nostalgia for the first season, but not so much as to render it unwatchable for new viewers. Those moments of reference to fan efforts, epitomized by the nuts in the show’s opening scene, largely disappear after the first episode, which allows the series’ governmental corruption storyline take center stage in the weeks ahead. Learn how that storyline is unfolding, and how the rest of the citizens of Jericho are faring, by reading the full review.
A while back, I noted how the Writers Strike finally showed one of its benefits when CTV picked up Mad Men for Canadian broadcast: it was a move that probably wouldn’t have happened if not for a lack of new programming, and it was vindicated by the series’ Golden Globes victory. Now, however, an entirely different sort of benefit has popped up that has big ramifications for the little series that could.
Cultural Learnings 