Ain’t It Cool News reports on TV Week’s article about the return of CBS’s post-nuclear show “Jericho”. After the big fan-based “nuts” protest, CBS renewed Jericho for a seven episode second season which they plan to run as a mid-season replacement. The problem with “mid-season replacement” is that it depends entirely on the success or failure of CBS’ current crop of shows, like “Kid Nation”, “Cane” and “Moonlight”. The sooner one of them gets cancelled, the sooner Jericho is likely to return to the tube.

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As part of my fascination with variations on the word “Apocalypse”, I couldn’t help but be drawn in by the word “Atacopalypse”, which I can barely say or even spell.

“Atacopalypse” showed up in the recent “Lucy, Daughter of the Devil” episode “Escapeoke”, an equally difficult to say or spell word. Lucy is - the devil’s daughter - and is a charming, alterna-21 year old who appalls her father the way that many charming 21 year old women do. Her father is really the star of the show, and is off doing things like opening a Mexican restaurant, buying a Dildo factory or - going to burning man. He frequently bumps into DJ Jesus, and crosses paths with the three special functionaries from the Vatican who are off looking for the Anti-Christ.

In the first episode of the season, “Escapeoke”, the Devil opens a Mexican restaurant so that he can sell “Atacopalypse”s to people. He also decides to call the diet margaritas “diaritas”.

The devil is voiced by H. Jon Benjamin, whose voice you may recognize from “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist” and “Home Movies”.

They had me at “daughter of the devil”, but “atacopalypse” sealed the deal.

“Lucy, Daughter of the Devil” airs on Sunday nights on the Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” block of programming. You can also pick up the first few episodes through the iTunes Store:

Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil - Escapeoke

Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil - Dildo Factory

Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil - Temptasia
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Jericho’s second season is still not scheduled, but it has been written and is being produced. The writers have condensed their original 22-episode plan into seven episodes. SciFi Wire covers it at the link below; despite their statement about spoilers, they discuss the season in only the most general terms.

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Since the “nuts” campaign saved Jericho for at least seven more episodes, CBS has put mildly renewed effort into promoting it, including rerunning it skipping most of the slow first part of the season and making the pilot available for free at the iTunes Store.

CBS Entertainment’s president, Nina Tassler, has also admitted that the long winter hiatus for Jericho likely contributed to its decline. I still think that if the episodes preceding this break had been stronger, the break wouldn’t have hurt it as badly. Being scheduled against American Idol couldn’t have helped much, either. She remains clear that if fans want CBS to continue running the show that they need to bring in more viewers.

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Apple’s iTunes Store has made the pilot episode for Jericho available for free download. Just follow this link to get it.

Free downloads on iTunes don’t stay free forever, and I can’t predict how long this one will stay free, so you might want to grab it while you can.

If you’re not familiar with downloading from iTunes, the first thing you’ll need is iTunes itself. You can download iTunes for free from Apple. It runs under MacOS X or under Microsoft Windows, and you don’t need an iPod or any other Apple hardware in order to use it to play music or watch videos.
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Just a note that reruns of Jericho begin tonight, Friday July 6th on CBS. Tonight CBS airs the first episode of Jericho, followed next week by the recap episode that summarizes the boring first half of its season, followed wisely by the less boring second half of its first season. If you want CBS to run more Jericho after its seven-episode second season order, watching it (and buying it on DVD when it comes out will probably make more of an impression than continuing to send them nuts.

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CBS is airing reruns of the pilot and second half of the first season of Jericho starting on July 6th. I suspect that before deciding on its limited renewal they weren’t going to rerun it at all. Keeping with the second half of the first season seems a wise idea… that’s when the story picked up and became more interesting.

Ain’t It Cool News’ article on the subject (link below) talks about the implausibility and general boringness of the first half of the season - which, combined with the winter break, is probably what sank the show - and how the show improved when it stopped being about life in a small post-nuclear-war town.

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Possible congratulations, Jericho fans… rumor has it that CBS is caving to the pressure applied by almost 20 tons of nuts being sent to CBS in protest of the show’s cancellation.

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Nuts Online has now received orders for almost 19 tons of nuts to be sent to CBS. They’re now donating part of the proceeds to Greensburg, Kansas, the town that was destroyed by a tornado recently. While I’m sure that this “save Jericho by sending nuts to CBS” campaign has been a windfall to Nuts Online, it’s great to see them helping out others as well.

I haven’t seen any hint of a response from CBS yet. There may never be one.

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Every time I check how many nuts Nuts Online has shipped to CBS for Jericho fans I find I’m a ton or two out of date. The total as of morning on Memorial Day is a little over twelve tons ordered, and they’re about 3 tons behind on shipping right now. They’re in on the holiday working to ship more peanuts out. These guys have really found a niche…

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