I am – Hercules!!

A reader writes:

Hi, tonight is the season finale for Jericho, which has gotten really good in the last few weeks, and there's been no mention of it whatsoever on AIC.

Is it going to be talked about?

Thanks

Greetings from Los Angeles, which is literally on fire and smells like the inside of a fireplace. I had to close the windows to stop coughing. Happily the stores are still stocked with groceries, so Studio City doesn’t have to go to war against Woodland Hills.

“Jericho” is a CBS “bubble” show. We don’t know if it will be on CBS’ autumn schedule when the network announces that schedule one week from today.

I haven’t stopped watching the show; I know AICN editor Merrick, another hopeless sci-fi geek, watches as well.

I’m not sure how much I like it, though. “Jericho,” to me, is a great, bold idea for a series, but an idea squandered on soap opera and shaky logic. (It’s also only one of three primetime network shows that set off a nuclear bomb on American soil this season .) “Battlestar Galactica,” which employs robots and faster-than-light travel, seems to be handling the whole post-apocalypse thing with far more realism.

I think the idea of “Jericho” is if the president and Congress evaporate, we’re all going to start running around like chickens with our heads cut off. The United States apparently doesn’t work like Caprica and the other 11 colonies; there’s no order of succession that would put the Secretary of Education (or whoever else was working outside blast zones that day) in charge. Instead, Idaho and Manhattan and Tampa have all misplaced the U.S. Constitution, and have impulsively decided to elect their own presidents. And armies of survivalists, who apparently now somehow outnumber the National Guard, are trying to round us all up and make us their slaves. These are fun ideas, but they don’t make a lot of sense.

The “Jericho” universe isn’t like post-Katrina New Orleans, where we can all just move to Houston when everything falls to shit (though I think the “Jericho” universe Houston is just fine). Mayberry has to declare war on Mt. Pilot because Mt. Pilot wants unfettered access to Mayberry’s salt mines.

Tonight brings the “Jericho” season finale, titled “Why We Fight.” We hear somebody dies. I hope it’s not the hot deaf teenager. CBS says:

Johnston leads a heavily outnumbered army of citizens from Jericho into battle against New Bern, where one of Jericho's own will be lost during this fight for survival, on the first season finale of JERICHO.

8 p.m. Wednesday. CBS.