Jericho: Revenge of the Peanut Gallery

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Jericho: The Return could easily be subtitled “Revenge of the Peanut Gallery.” After diehard fans flooded CBS with thousands of peanuts (by some counts, 40,000 pounds worth) protesting the show’s cancellation, Jericho got a seven episode reprieve. It’s do or die time now for the post-apocalyptic series set in Kansas, and it’s returned as a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream.

It appears now that the “September” attacks launched against 23 cities and resulting in some 15 million deaths didn’t originate in North Korea and Iran, after all. Nope—it was an inside job plotted by some kind of shadow government in collusion with equally shadowy corporations. And they were so meticulous in their machinations that the dim-witted American public was utterly clueless. Nukes have that effect on people.

What made the first season of Jericho a ratings fiasco was its mom and apple pie version of the apocalypse. The premise of a small town in Kansas cut off from the world, struggling for survival in the face of unimaginable destruction, was never explored in anything resembling reality—or even satire. The kind of uncertainty that was the premise of the series breeds either panic or ennui, but in Jericho, a lets-pull-ourselves-up-by-our-bootstraps speech by Gerald McRaney’s character invariably brought the town together. Admittedly, in the second half of the season, a bit of paranoia was brought into play, mostly in the form of the town’s feud with the neighboring town New Bern, but even that came across more as high school rivalries than survival instincts. Even as they warring factions prepared for their final showdown at the season’s finale, it came across as a crosstown rivalry.

If the first season didn’t hold up to scrutiny, Jericho nonetheless built a small, but dedicated fanbase. Perhaps the campaign to save the show was based on economics, or maybe they just didn’t know that peanuts are more akin to beans than nuts. Either way, they’re unlikely to notice that the amped up, albeit abbreviated, Season Two takes the series more deeply into the valley of the lowest common denominator.

Where Season One focused on survival, however naively, Jericho now claims to focus on rebuilding and reconstruction. Taking its cues from everything to the American Civil War to the war in Iraq, with a little bit of the American Revolution thrown in for luck, the series now goes for a play at relevance to current events. It ends up being a series of clichés we’ve seen too many times before. Even more sadly, any “statements” it makes come off more as comic book morality than three-dimensional realism. Things take an ominous turn to be sure, but they presuppose that Baghdad and Jericho are interchangeable.

What was America is splintered into three different regions—west of the ‘blue line” (defined as the Mississippi River), the newly formed Allied States of America, based in Cheyenne, Wyoming has set up a decidedly right of center government, replete with revisionist history, an appointed president and a drive for a constitutional convention designed to redefine inalienable rights. East of the Mississippi is the tattered remains of the United States, now headquartered somewhere in Ohio. Which side will win apparently depends on an alliance with the reformed Republic of Texas. For reasons that may have logic in a parallel universe, Jericho becomes the focal point in the struggle for America.

To be sure, there are any number of allegorical allusions the series could have touched upon with such a setup. The show’s producers failed to hit on any of them. In a rush to either put the dog to sleep or keep it on life support. They’ve opted for the latter, crueler option. Rather than actually tackling the issues they’ve set themselves up to confront, they’ve fallen back on the future as Old West cliché, thrown in the inevitable Big Brother on a big screen TV, thrown in a renegade secret agent and a sympathetic military commander, dashed in equal parts conspiracy and romance, and tossed it to the viewer like so many table scraps.

The days of Jericho are numbered. Hokey romance and daft conspiracies can only fuel the imagination so much. Having seen three of the seven episodes, I see very little hope for either a satisfactory conclusion, or a promiseof a third season.

Then again, I hate peanuts.

David Bowie as Elder Revolutionary

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There was a time, mostly when I was in my teens and twenties, when I really believed that rock music could change our world, politically and culturally. It wasn’t naivete so much as it was a sense of wonder that fueled that belief. Those three chords, in all their permutations, shaped my adolescence, and became my evolving mantra. Whatever was happening in the world could somehow be translated into the music of Dylan or Lennon or Lou Reed or any number of other musicians—some that were embers in the wind, and others who continue to burn brightly even now.

I was always around music. My father taught me all he knew about country music and its relationship to our Irish roots, my mother waxed on and on about Elvis and American Bandstand, my grandmother fostered an appreciation of Sinatra and swing, and my aunts slipped me soul and Brit rock. As a result, commercial radio always seemed lacking to me. Maybe that’s part of the reason I didn’t play well with others as a child. I had my music and comic books and TV, and all was right with the world.

When I was sixteen, maybe seventeen, two almost concurrent events made it all begin to gel in my mind. I read Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions collection, and I saw one of those Columbia House ads, this one featuring an album called The Man who Sold the World, by some guy named David Bowie. Between the “inner space” of so-called New Wave science fiction and the oh-so-cool apocalyptic soundscapes of Bowie, my own worldview began to take shape. Bowie, like Ellison, inspired me to absorb every viewpoint I could find. Between the influence of the two, I found a common ground from which I could think, and more importantly, write. It goes without saying that Ellison and Bowie have left an indelible imprint on pop culture. And it’s equally obvious that while their output is not as prolific as it was during their fiery days of the seventies and eighties, they make whatever statements they make, count. It’s the price of being an Elder Statesman of one’s chosen genre.

David Bowie Box, as its nondescript title suggests, makes no apologies for Bowie’s less than hit-worthy output during the millennial transition Consider it more an inside nod to the utilitarian titles of his last five albums—Outside, Earthling, ‘hours. . .’, Heathen and Reality. The last ten or so years have found Bowie retrospective more than anything else, reconsidering his status as “rock royalty,” and pondering how preposterous it is that we came to this. Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, the Disco King and the Man Who Fell to Earth all came home to roost in this collection, albeit with mixed results.

After the debacle that was Tin Machine, followed by the relative dance floor success of Black Tie, White Noise, Bowie tried his hand at duplicating the cyberpunk world of William Gibson with Outside. Originally envisioned as the first part of a series of non-sequential narratives following the exploits of police detective Nathan Adler Outside reunited Bowie with his “Berlin Trilogy” (Low, Heroes, Lodger) collaborator Brian Eno. While many at the time thought Outside signaled a new direction for the ever-changing Bowie, the project never went beyond this effort. Even at that, it managed to put Bowie at the forefront of industrial dance floor music for a time. Disc Two is testament to that, laden as it is with remixes, most notably Trent Reznor’s alternative mix of “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson.”

On 1997’s Earthling, Bowie expanded on the industrial-techno framework of Outside, imbedding it throughout with the “drums ‘n’ bass” mix wildly popular in London dance floors. It was his first self-produced album since Diamond Dogs, and it was something of a techno hit. But Bowie found himself overshadowed by the Nine Inch Nails remix of “I’m Afraid of Americans” the “Dead Man Walking” version mixed by Moby, both featured on Disc Two. Bowie, however inadvertently, had found himself in the position of being source material for the next generation.

Bowie bade farewell to the end of the last millennium in 1999 with ‘hours…’ a transitional work that was steeped in introspection, as evidenced by “All the Pretty Things Are Going to Hell.” After the experimentation that marked most of his work in the nineties, this album seemed almost like Bowie’s swan song, and in some ways, it was. With it, he severed his ties with Virgin Records, and ended his relationship with Reeves Gabrels, his guitarist and musical partner since the Tin Machine days. Disc Two veers away from techno remixes as well, concentrating more on mixes that were adapted to film soundtracks, or were paeans to the man himself.

With the release of Heathen in 2002, the Thin White Duke was redefined once again, this time as a culmination of all the themes and personae Bowie had explored throughout his career. If some of his work in the nineties suggested that he had fallen prey to Aging Rocker’s Syndrome, Heathen dispelled such assertions. His first album on his own ISO label (distributed by Sony Legacy) found him working once again with longtime producer Tony Visconti, who had worked on and off with Bowie since the early seventies. The resultant album was a work that found Bowie at last comfortable in his own skin, and was his highest charting work since Let’s Dance. The entire album exudes a confidence and power borne of acceptance of aging. In fact, it takes a second listen to realize that his versions of “I’ve been Waiting for You” (Neil Young), “Cactus” (the Pixies) and “I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship” (The Legendary Stardust Cowboy) are covers. Disc Two features a Moby remix of “Sunday” and a 1979 outtake (deservedly so) of “Panic in Detroit.”

Reality followed in 2003, and continued the premises laid forth in Heathen, once again finding Bowie being Bowie, relishing his past while living in the present. Besides a diverse wealth of original material, it features Bowie’s take on Johnathan Richman and the Modern Lovers’ “Pablo Picasso”, and a haunting version of George Harrison’s “Try Some, Buy Some.” The centerpiece of the work, though is the nearly eight minute song “Bring Me the Disco King,” a loopy lounge lizard piano and sax piece of subtle self-deprecation that also encapsulates the failed invincibility of the eighties. Disc Two features several nuggets, most notable being “Rebel Rebel” and updated versions of same, appropriately titled “Rebel Never Gets Old.”

In Bowie’s case, truer words were never spoken. While a mild heart attack in 2004 cut a world tour in support of Reality short, and may partially explain why he hasn’t released an album in the interim, it hasn’t kept him from the public eye. In 2006, he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. And though he says he’s taking a break from performing and recording, he continues to show up for impromptu gigs with artists ranging from Alicia Keys to Arcade Fire. He’s even rumored to be working on a rock opera adaptation of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel Watchmen. Even now, over thirty-five years since he launched his career, Bowie remains an enigma.

David Bowie Box offers an important, if sometimes overlooked, part of his overall portrait. At this stage in his career, Bowie wasn’t as interested in being a superstar as he was in sharing what he’d learned with a new generation of musical rebels. In the process, he achieved both. Just as Harlan Ellison became the spokesman for a generation of speculative fiction writers, Bowie was a prime mover in the evolution of rock music. The five albums represented here, along with the five bonus discs included, are testament to that. The albums stand on their own, inconsistent though they may seem on first listen. And the various remixes, outtakes and alternate versions may be a bit much to take in at once. Still, this ten disc set is a comprehensive history of Bowie’s continuing influence on the evolution of modern music. It only leaves us with one question: where will the Thin White Duke next take us?

Next. Please.

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Speculative fiction writer Philip K. Dick was the mad genius of the genre, pioneering the concept of “inner space” as a storytelling device. The mind was his alien planet, and it was often more unsettling than the environs usually associated with science fiction. It’s no wonder that he’s become a cause celebre since his death in 1982, due in no small part to the success of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Based on Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it managed to more or less translate his challenges to rigid concepts of reality, and remains one of the greatest films of all time.

The good news is that Blade Runner introduced Dick’s works to a potentially wider audience. The bad news is that subsequent films based on his work usually have little to do with the source material. Next is a case in point. Purportedly based on Dick’s short story “The Golden Man,” Next is actually a poorly conceived action thriller that has absolutely nothing to do with Dick’s original story. That’s not entirely true—in both versions, the protagonist is named Cris, and in both versions, Cris has precognitive powers, but that’s it. Well, there is that mater of golden skin. In the story Cris has golden skin that gives him the ability to seduce others of the opposite sex, and in the movie, Cris (Nicholas Cage) wears a cheap yellow leather jacket, which may explain why Liz (Jessica Biel) is inexplicably drawn to him.

In Next, Nicholas Cage portrays Cris Johnson who, under the stage name of Frank Cadillac, uses his ability to see two minutes into the future (but only where it directly affects him) to do a low rent magic act and supplement his income with low stakes gambling. But he’s haunted by visions of a woman (Jessica Biel) who, for some unexplained reason enables him to see further into the future, but only where it concerns the two of them. So far, so good. Romantic tales have been structured around lesser premises. Still, it raises questions of plausibility.

Plausibility isn’t a major concern of this movie, however. A Russian nuclear device has gone missing, and the FBI has no other way to track it down except to abduct Cris and force him to use his abilities to recover the device before it falls into the wrong hands. The wrong hands in this case are a group of Eurotrash terrorists with no discernible motive or affiliation. It’s not the sort of plot that makes for analysis. In fact, it’s not the sort of plot that holds itself up for anything resembling logic. That would only get in the way of the action.

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As an action flick, Next isn’t too bad, in a videogame sort of way. Actually, it’s structured much like a videogame, with every plot development serving to get the protagonist to the next level of play. As a result, romance falls by the wayside, along with international intrigue, lame attempts at social commentary and essentially everything else that has to do with life as we know it. As a trade-off, we’re treated to Rube Goldberg-style landslides, replete with water tanks, SUVs, boulders and sundry debris cascading upon the heroes. We also get an iron-jawed Julianne Moore in an embarrassing action figure performance as the single-minded FBI agent. We get exlosions, bad guys shot from sniper precipices—hell, we even get a nuclear explosion.

What we don’t get is logic, or even an apology for all the whys the movie never addresses. Instead, we find at the end that the entire “plot” of the movie was just another possible outcome. It’s a cheat to be sure, but not surprising. Considering Next went through at least three complete rewrites and various script doctors, it’s a wonder it made it to the screen at all.

As a standard DVD, Next is an alright purchase. The video quality is excellent and the Dolby 5.1 sound is separated seamlessly. The special features are pretty standard fare, consisting of behind the scenes promo films, a feature on the CGI SFX and a pointless interview with Jessica Biel.

There’s nothing really memorable about Next. Like Cris, we see it all coming long before it happens.