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I was an instant fan of the television series that debuted last season titled Jericho. I watched each episode with rapt attention, often going back and re-watching each a second and even third time. My family said I was obsessed, and I will admit I was to an extent. Part of the draw I think had to do with the state of the world that we live in. Actively at war, and with September 11, 2001 not so far in our past, Jericho stepped onto the television screen with what I felt was a viable, if not very accurate look at what we might be headed for lest we learn to come to some very broad agreements with the countries we call both friend and foe. Add to the story background enough personal drama to rival the best soap opera, and I, and many others, were admittedly hooked.

With news stations and cable channels, carrying often graphic descriptions and views of the war many of our friends and family are actively part of, some people questioned the practicality of airing such a show. And I often wondered myself how the shows creators approached the higher ups who had to make the decision on whether this was not only a show that could engage viewers, but if it was a show that was even politically correct to air. If I were to have been in that room, my question would have been is it politically correct for the ones we loved and lost to not air this show. While though it is strictly fictional and one would hope it would never, ever come to fruition, the sad facts remain that on some levels, this show has been put forth as a warning of what might still be to come. When you consider the idea of nuclear war, and that if the world leaders can not get their acts together and once and for all, agree to disagree on some subjects, and agree to work on the subjects that can better the world as a whole, a doomsday scenario is something that many of the worlds population believe could happen. In addition, it is not only something that might happen to a future generation that is yet to be born, but also a valid worry, for the generations that currently call this world home.

Most television shows, which are chosen by those in command of the airwaves, are predominately chosen on the merit of whether they will attract viewers and make the studios money. This one most likely came through the door with both that obvious question attached to it, along with a completely separate element of discussion and decisions at a time that the subject at hand could actually be too close to home. Am I saying that I think we could potentially be exposed to the same terrors that strike at the start of Jericho? I would certainly hope not, but the truth remains that nuclear technology does exist. Along with that technology are cultures that clash violently, and with the many clashes, access to each other like no other wartime on this planet we call earth. Plane travel, coupled with borders into and out of countries that are not as secure as one would hope they would be in this day and age, and the groundwork for a real life Jericho is not that far fetched, and I think that is what the draw is for so many viewers of this show. We see our potential selves layered between the fictional characters of Jericho. We see neighbors, and family that live next door to each other and close by towns, business people, farmers, rich, poor, all mixed together with one common goal, the goal to survive and have some sort of semblance that we take for granted. We see good people and bad, and a fine line drawn between the two. When survival is the object of the day, that line can quickly become clouded. Jericho affords viewers the luxury of working out some of our worst fears in the safety and comforts of our recliners, popcorn bowl beside us, and in a time when a real war is literally at our own doorstep.

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Review by Garnet Brooks

By Season Five the long running series had developed a complex mythology about aliens and governmental conspiracies. These themes are developed across the years at times becoming so intricate that only loyal viewers could easily understand them. At the end of Season Four the X-Files project is being discredited and Mulder is presumed dead.

Season Five begins with a two part-episode. The action is picked up where the last season cliffhanger left off. In it Mulder seems to be dead. Having been surveilled by a man upstairs, Mulder has found the location of the surveillance and confronted the man. This man who is an employee of the Department of Defense is then killed in a struggle. Mulder places the body in his own apartment and asks Scully to lie to her superiors gaining the pair a little more time to investigate. Another government employee named Kritschgau has become a whistleblower and is instrumental in convincing Mulder that the alien invasion theory is a lie and that a supposed alien body is actually the fulcrum of a hoax. While Scully has cellular material tested Mulder goes to a DOD facility looking for a cure and he finds multiple alien bodies which appear to be housing growing alien embryos. Scully finds that the cellular material is a chimera hybrid which is neither plant nor animal and is not identifiable. Mulder finds a sample labeled with Scully's name hidden among many others and delivers the sample to his three friends who publish the Lone Gunman magazine. Mulder makes it known that he is not dead. He returns to find that Scully is hospitalized and near death. Mulder finds that a chip is in the container he found and that it may be the cure for her cancer. He persuades her to try implanting the chip. For whatever reasons, Scully's cancer goes into remission.

This season begins with speculation about whether or not the aliens are real. What emerges across the season is the nature of the alien physiology. Often in the series the thing in question is glimpsed briefly and is vague, half-hidden, or ambiguous. But the aliens are real-they just have a complex etiology and genealogy. They are transmitted in black oil. They can grow in a human host. They have more than one stage of adult development. By the season's end we see that there is actually a way of communicating with them. This is through a little boy named Gibson Praise, a boy who is telepathic. He can read their thoughts. For this reason he is extremely important to the Smoking Man who schemes to take him for the leaders of the governmental conspiracy to use as an experimental subject. When Mulder and Scully find the child he is guarded and hidden away. But while a friend of Mulder's, Diana Fowley, is guarding Gibson she is shot and seriously wounded. Gibson is taken. Through an intricate set of maneuvers, the Smoking Man is able to discredit Mulder and Scully and by season's end the X-Files are shut down.

This season is one which contains a number of extremely good stand alone episodes. One of those is "Unusual Suspects." This episode is a flashback to 1989 where Mulder first encounters the three men known as the Lone Gunmen. The episode is focused on Byers, the most traditional of the three. We see Byers in a three piece suit attending a trade show as a representative of the FCC. He is enamored of a mysterious blond named Susanne Modeski. She tricks him into hacking into a governmental database and retrieving and decoding a secret document. She persuades Byers that Mulder is a psychotic and abusive ex-boyfriend who has kidnapped her child. The child is nonexistent. Modeski is really a chemist who has fled a top secret project when she finds that they plan to use her work to harm the public. A newly developed drug which makes people paranoid is to be tested on a sample of the population by distributing the medication in asthma inhalers. Modeski is able to persuade Mulder and the trio to help her find the shipment of dangerous chemicals. There is a showdown in the warehouse in which they are stored. Two mysterious men threaten Mulder then try to kill him. Modeski shoots them. In the process some of the medication is released causing Mulder to hallucinate. A clean up squad comes in taking the evidence away leaving the trio standing there alive. Modeski flees. Mulder and the trio are picked up by the police where the trio spend time in a jail cell till Mulder is well enough to verify their story and get them out. Byers sees Modeski one last time as she is attempting to get newspapers to print her account of the whole incident. As she leaves the men who were responsible for the clean up take her away in a car leaving Byers with his regrets. This is the beginning of the friendship between Mulder and the trio and is apparently the point in time that he changes directions looking into conspiracy theories and a little later finding the X-Files.

Another great stand alone episode in the season is "The Post-Modern Prometheus." This is one of the darkly comic episodes that punctuate the X-Files gloom from time to time. It is the story of a mad scientist type called Dr. Pollidori in homage to Mary Shelly who wrote Frankenstein. This silver haired scientist is played by John O'Hurley. His experiments in genetics have produced a mutated human whose distorted appearance makes him a social outcast. He lives in secret in his grandfather's basement. The grandfather loves him and protects him. The local people see glimpses of the boy from time to time. One of them Issy Berkowits a budding comic book writer and illustrator has already immortalized him as "The Great Mutato" in his comic book. Mutato is obsessed with Cher probably because of her role in the movie Mask. In this film she is a good mother to a boy whose appearance is like that of Mutato's. He craves a mother like this but has only his grandfather. In a very unrealistic fairy tale scenario Mutato impregnates lonely childless women including Issy's mother presumably because Issy is eighteen and about to leave her. Its tragic-comic plot mirrors the plot of Frankenstein, at least the film versions of it. Done in black and white, it evokes the feel of those early films. The plot builds to a conclusion as an angry mob pursues Mutato to his grandfather's barn where instead of burning the monster they decide he is not so bad after all. Mulder's character insists that the sad ending which must necessarily include loneliness and isolation for Mutato be rewritten. Issy is the ostensible author inside the story and its real author Chris Carter makes a nicer ending-one in which Mutato gets to go with the FBI agents and some of the townsfolk to a real live Cher concert. At least briefly, the mutant gets a good mom.

These two outstanding episodes are not the only ones in the season. Other stand alone episodes include "Kill Switch," "Bad Blood," "Mind's Eye," and "All Souls." Each of these deserves repeated viewing. "Kill Switch" is a cyberpunk episode authored by William Gibson. In it a cyber vixen named "Visigoth" is part of a plan to create a cyber intelligence. It becomes willful and gets loose on the net. "Bad Blood" is a rarity in the X-Files universe: it is a vampire tale. Scully becomes fascinated by the sheriff vampire played by Luke Wilson. "Mind's Eye" is about a blind woman played by Lilli Taylor. "All Souls" is a venture into Scully's Catholicism and in some ways echoes the themes developed in the second season of Millennium, also a Chris Carter creation.

The DVD boxed set of this year contains the usual features. The commentary is quite good especially Carter's. This is the year that precedes the X-Files movie. It takes up where the last episode leaves off and by the beginning of Season Six the FBI agents' artic adventure is over leaving them to try again to explain to their superiors why they believe in little grey men.