The past week has actually seen a whole lot of interesting news items. We’ve seen financial figures from major software companies, Sun Microsystems was bought by Oracle, we found out about Windows XP Mode, Ubuntu 9.04 was released, and it was revealed that the judge in the Pirate Bay case was anything but impartial. This week’s My Take is about Jericho, the short-lived TV series.
Week in Review
The week kicked off with the surprising news that Oracle had bought Sun Microsystems for an amount of 7.4 billion USD. Many quickly wondered what this would mean for the various open source projects at Sun, most importantly the future of MySQL. We ran an item later that same day about some of these concerns.
We also focussed on ARM and netbooks this week. Jordan interviewed several people working at ARM about the subject, and later during the week we found out that a Chinese company will be the first to ship an ARM-powered Android netbook.
On the Windows 7 front, we also had lots of news. We found out that the Windows 7 release candidate had been leaked onto torrent websites, and when it will actually be released – April 30 for TechNet/MSDN people, May 5 for everyone else. We also took a look at Julie Larson-Green, one of the faces of Windows 7 and Office 2007. The biggest news, however, came at the end of the week with the revelation of Windows XP Mode, a virtualised copy of Windows XP for Windows 7 customers to run Windows XP applications within Windows 7.
Several companies also released financial details. Apple has been doing relatively well; even though Mac sales decreased slightly, the company increased its margins to cushion the blow. iPod and iPhone sales also did very well. Microsoft, on the other hand, saw its first year-over-year sales decline in like forever.
This week also saw the release of Ubuntu 9.04 and related distributions, which come with shorter boot times, a new notification system, and several other improvements. Reviews have been very positive.
In the middle of the week it was revealed that the judge who oversaw the Pirate Bay case was anything but impartial. It turns out he is a member of several pro-copyright groups, which obviously makes him a bad fit for this case. He himself doesn’t see a problem, but the lawyers on TPB’s side are aiming for a retrial.
My Take: Return to Jericho
More often than not, good television series get killed off way before their time has actually come. We all know the example of Firefly, which we discussed earlier, or something like Dead Like Me (one of my favourite all-time TV shows). Another example of a killer series that was just oozing with potential, but which sadly got cancelled too early is Jericho.
Jericho is the story of a small fictional town (5000 people) with the same name in Kansas. During the opening of the series, we meet a few of the main characters going about their business; quickly, however, we are introduced to the big premise of the show: the inhabitants of Jericho see a mushroom cloud on the horizon, in the direction of Denver. Not soon after, electricity is lost, communication is cut, and they’re on their own.
The series deals with the people of Jericho trying to find out what is going on. Since they lost all communications (internet, TV, radio), they have to rely on small bits and pieces of information. At first, they believe hope that only Denver got hit, but they soon realise that 23 cities all over America have been nuked – including Washington DC. They have no idea who or why.
Of course, this poses all sorts of problems for Jericho. The series not only deals with trying to find out what’s going on, but also with the struggle to survive. Jericho is really in the middle of nowhere, and they must rely on hard work and careful use of resources to survive. They have to deal with everything from lack of medicine and food shortage, to securing their town and surviving the harsh winter. To make matters worse, as the year goes by, they also take in a group of refugees, and they have to prepare for war with a neighbouring town who weren’t as lucky as Jericho when it comes to resources.
There’s a lot wrong with Jericho as a TV series, such as little details that make no sense and irregular pacing here and there. Some characters feel unreal (the Hawkins family in particular), and for some reason – maybe because of the way everything is filmed – it’s hard to get a good mental overview of the town and its layout.
Still, the series does one thing so abundantly right I easily forgive its shortcomings: immersion. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I myself have been born and raised in a small town similar to Jericho (slightly smaller, but also in the middle of nowhere), but the whole concept really sucks me in. The idea of a small town trying to survive without knowing what the hell is going on outside is extremely compelling. It’s also painful to see the America around Jericho – as well as Jericho itself – slowly deteriorate into lawlessness, darkness, and incredible cruelty.
Jericho does require a love for post-apocalyptic stories. If you love things like Battlestar Galactica and/or the Fallout universe, you’re going to love Jericho. I have always been a sucker for a good post-apocalyptic story, and Jericho is interesting in that it focusses on the events right after the apocalypse (like BSG), instead of most other stories that usually take place long after the apocalypse.
Sadly, Jericho got to see only one season*, a season with a massive cliffhanger that deserved so much more. The whole Jericho universe is just filled to the brim with untold stories – not only of Jericho itself, but also the rest of the United States. I hope the series will be revived sooner rather than later.
In any case, it certainly deserves your attention. The series gets better as the series moves forward, so if you’re a bit unhappy with the early episodes, be sure to stick to it later on.
* Yes, I know there is something that is supposed to be the second season, but I deny its existence. It’s a bastard child that does away with everything that made Jericho enjoyable. It takes the mystery away, the helplessness – everything. I am still puzzled as to why the actors decided to take part in this glorified work of fanfic crap. If I ever had the money, I’d buy the franchise, and start over, redoing season 1 as well to remove some of the Hawkins-related stuff.
I totally misread this sentence. Until I saw “(the Hawkins family in particular)” I thought you were saying everyone in town had the same name. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anywhere quite that redneck
Edited 2009-04-26 23:01 UTC
Another good one was Surface. I think it only lasted one season. Don’t you just hate that? I remember in the last episode, the whole city got flooded with water and that was it.
Edited 2009-04-27 02:52 UTC
was this the show were all the fans mailed peanuts to the studio so that they would renew it?
1) The buying out of Sun by Oracle I have speculated about for years given the close relationship between Sun and Oracle. I do feel that in the future they’ll continue to support alternative platforms but you’ll find that Oracle will be able to offer big deals to large customers who go for the whole enchilada.
I can see a long term future for their x86 side of the business along with the multi-core monster they’re selling (the T2/T1) but the interesting question will be where their traditional side of the business will with the Fijitsu SPARC processor being used instead of their own. I’m surprised that the move to Fujitsu’s SPARC hasn’t resulted in a massive cut in costs when it comes to processor design and fabrication.
What Sun needs in the long term, as their processors become more complex, is more volume to bring in the cash; maybe some investment into their UltraSPARC IIe to get it used in more embedded situations.
2) One show I quite liked was “believe nothing” with Rik Mayall – too bad there were only a couple of episodes because I thought it was pretty damn funny
I can’t speak for Jeriko, but I thought Firefly was vastly over-rated.
Well that depends what you mean by overrated. The fans think it’s great (duh, they’re fans) and the network thought it sucked/didn’t make enough money.
As far as I’m concerned (note that this is MY OPINION, not necessarily the truth) the 11 aired Firefly episodes were each better than any and all of the Family Guy episodes ever aired (all 126 of them).
For this tv season I’m keeping my fingers crossed for The Sarah Connor chronicles, please don’t cancel
Fair point in terms of far worse on the TV schedules.
As overrated as I think Firefly was, I do think it deserved more than 1 series and that it needed a 2nd series to really get going.
Jericho also got me hooked on the show too.
The worst part of it all was the mid-season break. That was probably the single biggest reason for the decline in Jericho ratings.
The web-based tie-ins was also very intriguging – as was the morse code at the start of each episode (hopefully this isn’t a spoiler).
Season 2 definitely was a mere shadow of season 1. The J&B story line can be so much more – and – at the time it echos the going-ons with the events with the big security companies in real-life Iraq.
I guess shows like this one (recorded mostly by the TiVo generation) will always get the cut based on the old model. Maybe it’s time that the TV execs change their metrics
I absolutely hated Jericho. I watched the first four episodes, but I stopped there. It was just a set of the stereotypical all-american small town clichés thrown in with (a surprisingly little) post-nuclear catastrophe spice thrown in, and a very feeble storyline.
It was a great release. Unfortunately GNOME disappointed me again with dumb-headed Nautilus… but in general GNOME just seems so out-dated… it’s like I am seeing this same double panel for a thousand years… I tried KDE 4.2 and I am switching to Kubuntu. KDE 4.2.2 is very polished and ready to go. Please KDE guys no fiascos anymore! Now I keep waiting for all KDE applications to be ported.
I really, really should not bite the bait, but… I cannot resist.
I am definitely not a Gnome evangelist I have used KDE in the past, and might be using it again in the future. But definitely, I won’t be using it now.
I tried KDE 4.0 and felt alpha quality. I tried 4.1, and it felt beta, but it sort of did work. But 4.2 still does not cut it.
It is all very confusing. There is a mishmash of configuration options spread about different menus. There are unspeakably obscure options galore in any configuration menu (third level keyboard accelerator for keyboard mapping?).
The main menu is all but clear, with that sticky category selection which zooms you out of the general view (the same idea is reused in the main configuration system, although it works better there — if only all the config options were there…)
Internal product codes or technologies tend to float to the user’s view, who is confronted with ridiculous and obscure terminology all the time. “Akonadi has stopped working”, “This is the notes plasmoid”, “Change background — plasma app”.
The package manager sucks big time. I still don’t know if it is possible to browse the packages, or I do have to have an idea of the package name I’m looking for in order to start a search.
And it all looks so ugly! I expected the much vaunted KDE4 good looks to blow my mind, but those pale blue panels look like a Java swing app.
And Konqueror has its merits, but it really is no Firefox or Safari. And installing Firefox drags in most of Gnome libraries, so I went the whole hog and went back to Gnome for the time being.
Qt4 is great tech, but KDE4 is lagging FAR behind. Unmanageable, confusing, inelegant. Is Gnome dated? I don’t know why: it works, it is fast, it looks sedating, it is easy to manage. Is Qt better than GTK? Probably. Maybe with Qt, Gnome software would be a lot easier to write and maintain, but even with that barrier, Gnome programmers have done a far better job than those in the KDE side, I’m afraid.
I’ll be trying KDE again when 4.3 comes, but by now I’ll stay with my dated and comfy Gnome.
I no longer trust the “big three” to deliver on connected-episodal stories. Even Lost and Heroes has been on the chopping block brink a couple times.
Perhaps they need to go back to the mini-series method for shows like Surface, Jericho, etc… and I mean the REAL mini-series shows, not these wimpy 2-2hour shows they call a “mini-series” now. I’m talking where they stretch it out over seasons like Blue & The Grey, and others in the 80s were done. 2 or 3 2 hour episodes in the fall, followed by another 2 or 3 in the spring, etc…
Bbbbbbbut that would require for actors to *gasp* take a paycut and go back to being paid per episode again instead of the stupid guarenteed paychecks like the stars from Friends demanded. Those yuppies are single-handedly responsible for destroying television because now all the actors just want steady contract weekly income at exorbitant rates instead of per gig.
Until that happens I’ve given up on network tv because I’m sick of being left in suspense when they jerk the show just because it didn’t bring in the same money as a Friends episode or worse: Biggest Loser/American Idol one.
Yay! I’ve just watched Jericho for the first time. I’m a huge fan of anything PA. For me, it was slightly spoilt by some of the cheesy “family moment” stuff. By the end, I began to wince every time I heard the echoey piano music.