Jericho Spoilers Revealed

The producers of CBS' post-apocalyptic series Jericho invited SCI FI Wire to tour the set of the show, which is currently in production, and offered a few spoilers about the upcoming second season.

Among the new buildings on the freshly rebuilt main street in the Van Nuys suburb of Los Angeles was a cement facade that housed the headquarters of Jennings and Rall, a multinational organization that sets up shop in the town in season two.

There was also evidence of a continued military presence following its arrival in the season finale to suppress the hostilities between Jericho and the neighboring town of New Bern.

John Steinberg, co-creator and producer of the show, said in interviews that the seven episodes of the season will focus primarily on the introduction of these new outside elements to the town of Jericho and how its citizens respond to them.

"The first season was about that sort of invisible force, the government, the law, the financial system, all those things, disappearing, and living in a vacuum," Steinberg said in an interview on the set. "And season two is about what happens when something comes back to replace that vacuum, and it's not what you remembered being there when you left. And so that's kind of the big arc of it, and how we respond to that and resist it or learn to deal with it."

After CBS canceled Jericho in May, fans rallied in support of the show and sent in thousands of boxes of nuts (inspired by a line of dialogue) to the network executives in an effort to convince them to reconsider. The campaign was successful, and less than three weeks later CBS president Nina Tassler announced that the show would be receiving a seven-episode order for midseason.

Steinberg said that because of the abbreviated season, many of the unresolved threads from the finale will be wrapped up swiftly in the season premiere. But the repercussions of those events will be felt for some time to come.

"The practical element of it is going to get resolved pretty quickly," he said. "But the first season is going to bleed story all the way through the second season, especially that finale. It's stuff that they went through way too much, and it was way too terrible for them to get over it in seven episodes. So it's all in there."

Before the cancellation announcement, the writing staff had already mapped out a 22-episode season. But Steinberg said that they managed to condense it down by approaching the seven episodes as an extended movie that will lead into a potential full third year.

"In changing it from 22 to seven episodes, we sort of broke it like a movie," Steinberg said. "And so I think we want to find the best end of this movie that we can come up with. And I think we have a pretty good one. ... You're going to feel satisfied, but you're also going to know that there's a lot more story coming down the road and that it's not tied up in a bow in any way."

Jericho does not yet have an air date, but is expected to return sometime late this year or in early 2008. —Cindy White