Thursday, June 7, 2007
It’s been a while since I posted here. Life has been busy lately, but that’s no excuse, I know. However, something happened recently that dragged me back to the keyboard. Something so important, so terrible and outrageous and finally astonishing, that it demanded my attention.
CBS announced that they were canceling Jericho.
I know what you’re thinking. A tv show? A show that aired for one measly season, to mediocre ratings, no less, before it was shown the door? You brought me here for this?
Bear with me for a moment. I don’t have time for much television in my life these days, so when I invest myself in an ongoing series, it had damn well better be good. It had better be riveting, can’t-miss-a-single minute, white-knuckled big-as-life must-see tv.
I’m here to say that yes, Jericho was that good.
Sure, it might have started a little shaky. Things were quiet as the first episode opened, some might even say boring. Jake Green returned to his hometown from a long, tense time away and we felt just as awkward and out of place as he did that first hour or so. As viewers, we stumbled along with the characters as they learned about each other on the fly. Early on I caught a glimpse of a couple of different directions the show might go, and I wasn’t quite sure the writers were going to choose the right one.
In other words, it wasn’t exactly love at first sight.
But it didn’t take long before everything changed. They dropped the bombs, you see, and I lived right through it alongside the people from this little fictional mid-western town. I felt the shock, the fear, the adrenaline rush, the sorrow. And then I rallied through the pain as a town sputtered back to life, and families pulled themselves together and decided to stand up and fight. Keep everyone safe from the fallout. Restore power to the town. Find enough food. Keep the peace. Bring back a sense of normalcy to a world gone insane.
I said everything changed, and I meant it. Suddenly I wasn’t a casual viewer having a beer and brushing potato chip crumbs off my lap, one eye on the television and the other on my “to do” list. I was right there with them. Maybe it had something to do with the daily fear we live with in this modern world, when terrorists can fly airplanes into buildings and kill thousands, when we no longer feel safe and secure in the good old U.S.A. Or maybe it was just plain good writing and great tv. But something about this show really hit home. By the end of the second hour, I didn’t want to leave that place and those people: Jake, Eric, their parents, Heather, Dale and Skylar, Stanley and Mimi and Robert Hawkins and family and all the rest. They had come alive for me, and I bought the whole thing, hook, line and sinker.
And that’s what I’m really here to talk about tonight. Indulge me, if you will: I want to talk about good fiction.
For me, it begins and ends with the people. Sure, whether it’s a movie, television show or a novel, without a good story, you don’t have much. But even the best, most action-packed, emotional, tense situation imaginable is nothing without characters for the audience to identify with, to love and to hate equally. We need heroes, we need villains, and we need those who are intensely conflicted and straddle the line between both good and evil.
The bottom line is, if you don’t care who lives or dies, the best story in the world isn’t going to matter.
It’s hard to create memorable characters. The best of them have their own detailed back stories, their own motivations, dreams and nightmares. There’s nothing simple or one-dimensional about them, and who they are can be learned as much by what they say (or what they don’t say), as their actions. That takes a lot of work, and I admire the hell out anyone who succeeds in doing it. I hope I manage to do this in my own fiction, at least the best of it; God knows I try.
Jericho had them in spades, and the bombs dropping gave them a stage to let their emotions show. We got to see what made them tick, and a lot of it wasn’t pretty. But it made for riveting television.
By the end of season one, Jericho had become the one show I could not miss. The season finale was absolutely one of the best hours of television I’d seen in a long, long time. The season ended on a cliffhanger, one town pitted against another, neighbor against neighbor, and the death of a major character provided a heart-rending climax that left me with tears in my eyes.
That, my friends, has never happened before in my life. Sure, a movie or two might get me, but a tv show? Never.
So imagine my surprise when CBS announced they were canceling this show. I was shocked, and then angry. How could they leave us like this? With so many unanswered questions? They said ratings were weak. Not enough people watching. I couldn’t believe it. I starting searching for more information, and quickly ended up on the CBS Jericho message boards. Thousands of people were swarming the boards like angry bees. Rallying cries were already cropping up in post after post–how dare they do this to us! How will we know what’s happened to the people? We can’t let them take Jericho from us!
I watched and I read along as an entire community–all online, thousands of people who had never met face to face and yet shared a common interest–began to fight back. I read posting after posting where fans referred to characters on the show as if they were real people, as they vowed to fight for what they believed in and save this little town from destruction. Ratings were down? Well, CBS had damn near killed the show, people said, with a several-weeks long hiatus in the middle of the season. Nielson ratings? Well, they didn’t measure all the fans who were watching Jericho in CBS’s Innertube service and Apple’s iTunes. Surely there were many more fans out there than CBS realized. The answer? Give these fans a voice.
And boy, did they ever.
They began to organize, to make detailed plans about ways to make their voices heard. And then they launched their attack.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the fight to save Jericho by now. The “Nuts for Jericho” effort? It’s been covered in nearly every major news outlet in the country. Over 50,000 pounds of nuts delivered the the CBS offices, and they’re still coming. The “nuts” reference comes from a story the grandfather of one of the main characters told about his experiences in World War Two, where a U.S. general used the phrase to reply to a request for surrender from the Germans. Jake Green used the same phrase in the Jericho season finale, and a buzzword was born that launched an entire campaign.
“Nuts to CBS. Save our show.”
That wasn’t all, of course. For weeks on end, CBS’s main offices were overwhelmed with thousands upon thousands of emails and phone calls. Someone got hold of the cell phone number for one of the main executives, and posted it online. The voicemail box was overrun. Letters poured in. A full page ad was taken out in Variety Magazine, paid for by donations from the fans. Compilations were posted on YouTube. Websites cropped up all over the place: Jericholives.com, savejericho.com, and many more.
And the nuts kept on coming.
Not since Star Trek had anyone seen fan support like this. Through it all, the fans remained civil. They did not threaten or scream, they simply asked that their voices be heard. Bloggers, then larger media outlets began to pick up the story, and it gained critical mass. And the actors who portrayed the characters in Jericho started posting messages to the boards filled with gratitude for the fans’ efforts, all of them repeatedly stating that this set was the most amazing experience they had had as actors. They had bonded while working together, and that bond had clearly shown itself on screen. These messages received hundreds of responses from fans refusing to let their show die.
In a way, the entire effort was a strange echoing of what had been happening on screen. Jericho was fighting for its very life, with a small but dedicated group of citizens who refused to surrender. And so it became in the real world, a group of very different people banding together around a single cause.
Incredibly, CBS began to listen. Nina Tassler, President of CBS Entertainment, released a statement saying they were overwhelmed by fans’ responses, and were calling an emergency meeting to try to find a way to provide an ending to the “compelling” story that was Jericho. Rumors of a tv movie or a final online episode to wrap up loose ends began to circulate.
But that wasn’t enough for the fans. They demanded a new season, and declared that they wouldn’t stop until they got it. The nuts, calls and emails continued to flood the CBS offices. The story was picked up by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
Days went by without any word. Then, finally, this:
June 6, 2007
To the Fans of Jericho:
Wow!
Over the past few weeks you have put forth an impressive and probably unprecedented display of passion in support of a prime time television series. You got our attention; your emails and collective voice have been heard.
As a result, CBS has ordered seven episodes of “Jericho†for mid-season next year. In success, there is the potential for more. But, for there to be more “Jericho,†we will need more viewers.
A loyal and passionate community has clearly formed around the show. But that community needs to grow. It needs to grow on the CBS Television Network, as well as on the many digital platforms where we make the show available.
We will count on you to rally around the show, to recruit new viewers with the same grass-roots energy, intensity and volume you have displayed in recent weeks.
At this time, I cannot tell you the specific date or time period that “Jericho†will return to our schedule. However, in the interim, we are working on several initiatives to help introduce the show to new audiences. This includes re-broadcasting “Jericho†on CBS this summer, streaming episodes and clips from these episodes across the CBS Audience Network (online), releasing the first season DVD on September 25 and continuing the story of Jericho in the digital world until the new episodes return. We will let you know specifics when we have them so you can pass them on.
On behalf of everyone at CBS, thank you for expressing your support of “Jericho†in such an extraordinary manner. Your protest was creative, sustained and very thoughtful and respectful in tone. You made a difference.
Sincerely,
Nina Tassler
President, CBS Entertainment
P.S. Please stop sending us nuts
Wow, indeed. In the history of television, the number of shows that have been revived after cancellation can be counted on one hand. Fan outrage is not uncommon, and sometimes they go to great lengths to try to save a show. But it almost never works.
Except this time, it did.
So what does all this mean, really? Why take so much time to write about a television show? What’s that got to do with the important things in this world?
The very best fiction is about more than just a story. It has something to say about the world we live in, and even though it might involve monsters, or space ships, or wizards, something essential to the story hits us where we live. The people come to life, we begin to identify with them, and along the way we learn something about ourselves.
Jericho is about survival. It’s about losing all the cell phones and websites and bringing us back to our roots, our neighbors, our families. It’s about celebrating life in the face of the many horrors we see today, from famine to war to the deaths of our loved ones to terrorist plots and nuclear bombs. And it all plays out on the smallest of stages, that all-American mid-western town that doesn’t really exist, and yet echoes thousands of similar small towns across the country.
The very best fiction allows us to face our fears in a comfortable setting, to examine what makes life important and stare down those dark corners and real-life monsters until they don’t frighten us anymore. It gives us heroes and villains, and most importantly it gives us people who try their best to do the right thing, even when they fail. Jericho was particularly good at this, and that was a big reason why it worked.
It remains to be seen how the future will play out; will a summer of reruns, DVD sales and more word of mouth bring enough viewers to the show to keep it alive beyond next season? I’m betting it will. I know I’ll do my part by watching every week and telling everyone I can about the “compelling” story that is Jericho. I’m sure the rest of the rabid fanbase will do the same. They’re fighting for more than just a tv show, you see: they’re fighting for the people they fell in love with along the way, and the town they just won’t let die.
And “nuts” to anyone who tries to stop them.
Stay tuned for a sample chapter…
