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Get this town someone competent, STAT!
So I've seen episode 9 through 12 of Jericho, and I'm quite sure that the SPN crossover plot-bunny is nibbling at my heels because I want to put people who are actually competent in the series. Someone who has actually considered 'what do we do in case of the Apocalypse?' would be really useful, considering how many of the townfolk are acting headless chickens. Admittedly, the Winchesters were probably not considering a post-nuclear Apocalypse instead of a Zombie Apocalypse or the actually Book of Revelations Apocalypse they got, but I feel that Sam and Dean (and Bobby, and the other Hunters) had at least considered their plans for the End of the World.
The characters on Jericho, however? Seem to be genre blind to a man (did no-one at all read post-nuclear war disaster fiction in this town ever?), and several of them who have various levels of authority or standing in the town, are people who crumple in crises, instead of rise to challenges.
This is, of course, the point of characters like Gray Anderson, who is elected mayor during these episode. I am quite sure he is going to a disaster, because he is reacting primarily out of fear, instead of planning, and he's already tried to get Jonah Prowse, local grey-marketer and gang boss, killed under the guise of 'moving to a more secure location'. What he was going to hold up as more secure than the cells at the sheriff's office I'm not sure, considering the town of Jericho isn't even in communication with its neighboring towns, let alone the county seat or any part of the state government. He's really good at rallying people by fear, which turns people into mobs -- of course, he says that he's trying to avoid mob mentality, but he's going about it exactly wrong.
Then there is the misuse of characters with backstory -- it's mentioned casually in ep 12 that Eric Green, formerly deputy Mayor, has a law degree, and presumably a license to practice. Did no one think to get him to work organizing all the legal options for things like food rationing? How about a functioning justice system -- they lost all access to the court system, but it's not like they're going to run out of people committing crimes. Do you think possibly someone with legal training could be useful in setting up a system for jury trials, considering that the town is worried about bandits coming in and stealing supplies? Wouldn't it be useful to have a way to make operations against bandits, and rampaging mercenary have at least a scintilla of legality? Maybe someone who can figure out how to appoint a new Sheriff, considering the two surviving deputies come in the flavors of 'Amiable Marshmallow' and 'Xenophobic Twitchy Terrier.'
And I'm still rolling my eyes at the idea of the biggest farm in the area is being run by only three people, one of whom is a teenager, another is her scatter-brained-to-the-point-of-missing-an-IRS-audit-notice older brother, and the third is the IRS auditor who came to audit the farm's books for back taxes. If the town has only a limited supply of gasoline, and all vehicles built after they started putting microchips in are not working, all the farmers should be hiring farm hands and trying to buy up trained draft horses.
There is no mention of people being out of a job,or not getting paid for their job -- given that an EMP weapon in the first weeks destroyed any electronics above the complexity of an electric razor, it's a weird oversight. That killed the bank (no computers to check on accounts) and the ATMs, and people have been reduced to bartering for goods... but no banker or accountant has stepped forward to develop a local currency scheme. It's not even been proposed -- even though there are teachers, firefighters and deputies still to pay, and it would be pretty useful to actually be able to exchange cash for goods and services, like 20 lbs of pesticide that Stanley needs to kill the corn worms that got into his crops.
In other words, I think most of the characters on Jericho are dumb (by authorial fiat) and kind of want to put the Winchesters in there just to shake things up. At least Sam and Dean would ask sensible questions, instead of Deputy Bill (what *is* his last name) and his stream of embarrassingly clueless ones. (Seriously, I know the writers needed someone to ask questions for the audience, but I don't think it should be *law enforcement* that is that clueless.)
The characters on Jericho, however? Seem to be genre blind to a man (did no-one at all read post-nuclear war disaster fiction in this town ever?), and several of them who have various levels of authority or standing in the town, are people who crumple in crises, instead of rise to challenges.
This is, of course, the point of characters like Gray Anderson, who is elected mayor during these episode. I am quite sure he is going to a disaster, because he is reacting primarily out of fear, instead of planning, and he's already tried to get Jonah Prowse, local grey-marketer and gang boss, killed under the guise of 'moving to a more secure location'. What he was going to hold up as more secure than the cells at the sheriff's office I'm not sure, considering the town of Jericho isn't even in communication with its neighboring towns, let alone the county seat or any part of the state government. He's really good at rallying people by fear, which turns people into mobs -- of course, he says that he's trying to avoid mob mentality, but he's going about it exactly wrong.
Then there is the misuse of characters with backstory -- it's mentioned casually in ep 12 that Eric Green, formerly deputy Mayor, has a law degree, and presumably a license to practice. Did no one think to get him to work organizing all the legal options for things like food rationing? How about a functioning justice system -- they lost all access to the court system, but it's not like they're going to run out of people committing crimes. Do you think possibly someone with legal training could be useful in setting up a system for jury trials, considering that the town is worried about bandits coming in and stealing supplies? Wouldn't it be useful to have a way to make operations against bandits, and rampaging mercenary have at least a scintilla of legality? Maybe someone who can figure out how to appoint a new Sheriff, considering the two surviving deputies come in the flavors of 'Amiable Marshmallow' and 'Xenophobic Twitchy Terrier.'
And I'm still rolling my eyes at the idea of the biggest farm in the area is being run by only three people, one of whom is a teenager, another is her scatter-brained-to-the-point-of-missing-an-IRS-audit-notice older brother, and the third is the IRS auditor who came to audit the farm's books for back taxes. If the town has only a limited supply of gasoline, and all vehicles built after they started putting microchips in are not working, all the farmers should be hiring farm hands and trying to buy up trained draft horses.
There is no mention of people being out of a job,or not getting paid for their job -- given that an EMP weapon in the first weeks destroyed any electronics above the complexity of an electric razor, it's a weird oversight. That killed the bank (no computers to check on accounts) and the ATMs, and people have been reduced to bartering for goods... but no banker or accountant has stepped forward to develop a local currency scheme. It's not even been proposed -- even though there are teachers, firefighters and deputies still to pay, and it would be pretty useful to actually be able to exchange cash for goods and services, like 20 lbs of pesticide that Stanley needs to kill the corn worms that got into his crops.
In other words, I think most of the characters on Jericho are dumb (by authorial fiat) and kind of want to put the Winchesters in there just to shake things up. At least Sam and Dean would ask sensible questions, instead of Deputy Bill (what *is* his last name) and his stream of embarrassingly clueless ones. (Seriously, I know the writers needed someone to ask questions for the audience, but I don't think it should be *law enforcement* that is that clueless.)
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A lot of the problem is they wanted to do a conspiracy drama with a Apocalypse setting than a science fiction show about the aftermath of a nuclear war. A lot of handwaving, and just not very well thought out.
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A lot of the problem is they wanted to do a conspiracy drama with a Apocalypse setting than a science fiction show about the aftermath of a nuclear war
Well, that is obviously Hawkins' storyline, but the rest of the characters should have storylines like 'bring in the harvest before the snows', 'organize a rationing system', 'set up a judiciary', 'get a replacement Sheriff', 'contact neighboring towns' or most importantly 'avoiding starving to death in the middle of rural, farming Kansas'. Running around like headless chickens isn't helpful to any of that.
I'm thinking of cannibalizing my Gabriel's-Vessel-was-a-10th-century-Icelander story just so that Sam and Hrafn can get hired as farm-hands by Stanley and inject some much need comptency into town.
I mean, Battlestar Galactica managed to involve an After the End premise with political storylines and Baltar's secret, so it's not like it's impossible.
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LOL. I'm kind of agreeing with you, actually. I think I keep watching because I keep expecting these people to wise up and actually start thinking.
Possibly also I have read too much nuclear SF and have a dear love of competence.
Well, you'll find very little of *that* in Jericho, to my utter bogglement. It's like never them has even seen a copy of Alas, Babylon or something.
I mean, I mean, look at the background scenery on that show; those morons are using their last bits of gasoline to MOW THEIR LAWNS
Well, I do blame the production crew/staff writers for some of the things that drive me nuts about the show. Not the least of which is the fact that people are *driving* everywhere when they have no more gasoline -- and they canonically have *horses*.
As of episode 13, when they finally show the Blackboard of Doom -- there is a blackboard where they have a tally of the town's resources -- just made me laugh. 800 bushels of corn and 500 wheat in the entire town just a week after Thanksgiving? Only if the entire crop *burned*, considering that corn yields about 180 bushel per acre, and wheat 30-50 if it's not irrigated. Kansas farms average about 700 acres -- there's no way that there is not more food... these idiots are going to starve among full fields. If they were complaining about not being able to harvest the crops without gasoline to run the tractors, that'd be one thing, but to say they don't have *food*... omgwtf?!