Jericho opens with the biggest of all disasters, a mushroom cloud that could mean the end of the world. The folks in Jericho don’t know for sure though, because they’re completely isolated. The show’s writers will enjoy playing with these ideas throughout the run of the series.
Jericho
“Will we ever learn [what happened]?” asked writer Jon Steinberg, “Hopefully we’ll learn that. It’s definitely a part of our mythology and it’s definitely a part of the story and I think early on, we’ll be as much in the dark as our characters are and I think that will be part of the fun is we’ll be learning as they learn in a blacked out environment.”
Writer Josh Shaer added, “Very slowly, the story of the outside will sort of seep into town and we’ll see what’s going on through the lens of Jericho, through our characters’ eyes. We talked to a lot of people about a show like this and the first question they ask is who did it, what happened? And my first response is always that’s an interesting question but the real question is when do we get the power back on? How do we keep meat fresh? How am I going to take care of my family tomorrow, not my country in a year. It all melds together. Everyone’s asking different questions in the show and that’s what keeps it interesting.”
The first few weeks will deal with getting the town up and running again, but then greater social issues come into play. “There’s definitely sort of the survivalist element of it,” said Steinberg. “What would I do if I was out of everything? But again, that’s sort of the appetizer. I think the real meat of it kind of comes when we get to that next step: the whole world. It’s not about what happens when the Frosted Flakes are out. It’s about what do you do when all your left with is corn and how do we sustain ourselves? How do we rebuild a society from basic principals?”
Shaer specified the human drama. “There’s a lot of conflict out there. It’s conflict over a sort of people being selfish and people being selfless trying to maintain the American ideals of civilization versus making sure that my family and only my family will survive this catastrophe. That’s going on in town, right in front of our town as well as going on outside of town which we’ll hear little bits and pieces along the way.”
Executive story editor Stephen Scaia elaborated. “We have a lot of really interesting long discussions about like well what happens when money is no good?” he said. “Does money even really mean anything? Is gold the new standard? But who has gold in their house? Money is backed up by silver but who’s got silver? So what is currency now? Is it food? Is it goods? Is it services? Is it Monopoly money because let’s say I’ve got X amount of money in the bank but we can’t get into the bank to get your money out, you’ve got to have something to represent the money you’ve got in the bank for when the lights come back on and everyone gets their stuff out. So what do you use? How do you buy things and how do you work things out and who are the people that are just going to get tired of trying to work out a system and just start stealing? And then how do you stop those people who steal? What happens when you catch a criminal? What do you with a criminal? Do you throw the criminal in jail and then he’s now drinking your water and eating your resources? Or if he killed somebody, do you let him rot in jail for 30 years or do you banish him or do you maybe do something a little more extreme because who wants to have this guy who’s not going to contribute to your society using your resources? Because they’re finite now.”
Some social structures will remain intact. “Do you put the kids in school?” said Scaia. “Part of us says yeah, yeah, you put the kids back in school because you want them to be normal. You want them to maintain a normal life but what’s normal now after this has happened? Whether people are coming or not coming it doesn’t matter. You’ve got to do something with these kids so they don’t lose hope. So do you send them to school and make them learn about Shakespeare, or do you send them to school and now an English teacher is replaced by the guy who’s the eagle scout in town and he teaches you how to build fires, and he teaches you how to rebuild an engine and you learn those practical things because I know I can barely change a tire.”
Jericho begins airing September 20th at 8PM on CBS.
Add to Heffee!
