Ah, out with the old, in with the new. The television season is dead, long live the next television season. And to prepare for it, I’m going to review new shows as the pilots become available.

Jericho; CBS, Wednesday 8:00 PM

This is the year of Lost. What I mean is, there are a whole lot of new shows trying to emulate the long-form storyline, without considering what’s going to happen when the shows are canceled or (even worse) allowed to go to pieces by their producers when they are seduced by other projects (anyone remember how good Alias was before the first season of Lost?). Jericho begins another saga, with no bets on whether the story will ever find any sense of conclusion…and I really want to know how it ends.

The beginnings of a very bad day for Jerico

The prodigal son Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich, Miracles) returns home and runs into former girlfriend Emily (Ashley Scott, Birds of Prey and the original Alex Garrett on Joey this time a blond) who has found another, and wonders where Jake has been. He’s home now looking for money left to him by his grandfather, but his father (Gerald McRaney, Major Dad) refuses to give it to him. As he leaves town after visiting his grandfather’s grave with his mother (Pamela Reed, Pepper Dennis), and as we establish a bus filled with school children on the way home with teacher Heather (Sprague Grayden, John Doe), televisions, radios, and other electronics go hinky, and a boy who’s climbed to the roof of his house sees in the distance a mushroom cloud rising ominously into the air.

From here on out, we follow the separate groups searching for answers and loved ones; Jake’s father the Mayor trying to find out how serious things really are, Jake himself in an accident now stumbling injured through the desert, the childrens’ bus stranded without a driver, Emily driving to find her intended, parents apoplectic over their missing children…the script is tight and exciting, the acting well above the average with everyone working to keep the suspense up as it’s discovered there was more than one explosion in the country. Jericho is cut off from the rest of the country, the townsfolk even squabbling among themselves fighting over gas and supplies.

I thought it was a bit convenient that Jake becomes the town hero, but the second bus was a stroke of genius I wasn’t expecting (but did explain the presence of one of the characters met earlier in town), and anything that surprises me in a television pilot is a major plus. I was annoyed by the cardboard-cutout antagonist (Michael Gaston) who’s sole purpose is to undermine the Mayor at every turn to generate artificial tension. The pilot ends on an up, then a down beat, with Emily discovering large numbers of dead birds littering the road, and asking the same question we have: “What’s happening here?”

Those who follow the reviews here may be surprised that this old curmudgeon enjoyed this pilot so, but I did. The only fear I have is the one I mentioned at the outset…what happens when the show is finally cancelled (be it this year, next year, or ten years from now) and we are left with no satisfying answers? I can only hope someday someone on network television follows the example of J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 - “I have a five year story to tell, no more.” Just when I’m giving a guy a compliment, I find this article. It’s no wonder I’m a curmudgeon.