The Fall of Jericho

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

I will take a moment to discuss "Jericho". I have watched this show from when it started, for much the same reason as I watched "Lost": I was hooked on the mystery. (I have also been hooked on the mystery of some other shows that started and were canceled too soon, like the cop who kept waking up in bed on the same morning, and the space shuttle crew sent into the past to try to prevent the destruction of the Earth, even "Babylon V" held me for a while on the mystery.)

What happened (sure, there were nuclear bombs, but where did they come from?), and of course "why". These questions have now been answered, and the answers were, even though I had suspected them, enough to make me ill and seriously disinterested.

I cannot conceive of a conspiracy as large as the one being promulgated being kept a secret long enough to be successful. Even if you posit that the key man heading "the investigation to stop the attack" was in fact one of the chief conspirators. It still requires too many people to be involved to be workable. And it requires a level of stupidity beyond comprehension to carry off a plot like the one presented. (There is little point in taking over the country after you have more or less permanently destroyed it as a superpower, what is the point? Maybe you think the 21 first century should definitely be about China?) "Jericho" right now could serve as a series you watch up to the last couple of episodes before you start watching the Jessica Alba "Dark Angel" series. Sure, different towns, but "Dark Angel" largely admitted that such levels of destruction would make the U.S. no longer a superpower, or even very unified.

How many people were involved in acquiring the bombs from Russia? How many were involved in smuggling them into the United States before giving one to each of the cells that were to detonate them? How many military officers had to be suborned to allow a Junior Senator not anywhere in the chain of succession to order a nuclear strike (who decided to give him "The football" anyway)? How many had to be suborned to falsify the reports of the nuclear weapons? The list of the needed numbers of conspirators just keeps growing.

There are also other details that seem just plain odd. The Tenth Mountain Division was stationed (last I heard) at Fort Drum, New York. What was it doing in the Cheyenne region?

I am not sure I will watch this show much longer. It has clearly devolved into something I do not care to support.

My only reason for watching it any more is curiosity about how much the colonel (played by Esai Morales I believe) knows about the plot, and why he has chosen the side he is on rather than remnants of the previous government. What makes him think he is adhering to his oath to the constitution? That is the only question I even care about any more.