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I have ordered five DVDs of this show from Netflix and it's for one reason only: so that whenever someone talks about hokey sci-fi TV shows, I can become Chief Brody from Jaws. "I got that beat. I got that beat."
Maybe you hear about JMS creating this and think "hey, he did Babylon 5, this can't be that bad." Let me tell you--the stars are Luke Perry and Malcolm Jamal-Warner. That's right. Luke Perry. I never even watched Beverly Hills 90210 and I still can't take him seriously as a badass wandering hero lone wolf. And Jamal-Warner is the guy from The Cosboy Show. No, the premise of this show isn't "What if the apocalypse happened during a taping of I Love The 90s?"
Oh, and as for JMS? Let me tell you how cheesy this is gonna get. The series has a character named Ezekial who speaks in totally portentous dialogue like "We're brothers--from a different father and a different mother" to the hero. YESSSSS. That cheese is molten.
I'm taking this piecemeal, because there's no way I can sum up how bad this show is in one stroke. But let me just say, whoever was in charge of ordering these episodes, like, choosing which was produced in which order or the airing order or which were put on the DVD in what order? He hates the show. You think Firefly had it bad? No. Firefly got off easy. These DVDs will have one episode in which a character espouses an atheist worldview, then follow it up (the very next episode) with a storyline where that same character has religious leanings. And then there's the DVD I got today.
We have an episode about abstinence. Okay, you're thinking, that might make for an interesting thought experiment. Remember when BSG did an episode about abortion: not whether it was right or wrong, but in the context of humanity's survival, could it be allowed? Same thing makes sense here: in a world where birth control isn't readily available, is free love really the best way to go? So you'd think the episode would just be about a town where premartial sex or just sex period has been outlawed. That's high concept enough, right?
Oh no. Not on Jeremiah. They have a town where people aren't allowed to touch each other, as a metaphor for abstinence. This is introduced with a mother who can't help her son up after he falls off a bike, so she gets a stick and tells him to grab onto it. And this isn't a tradition, or anything. No. It's made clear that this was an order passed down five years ago to a bunch of adults, and they all nodded and said "Yeah, okay," instead of leaving. The stated reason for this rule being to prevent another outbreak of the plague, despite...
1. Numerous people who don't follow the same rule and haven't died.
2. The town allowing outsiders, who you'd think would be more likely to carry the plague than someone from the old homestead, to just wander in and stay a while.
3. The fact that if no one reproduces, everyone's just going to die out anyway.
It's basically as if someone looked at the episode of Star Trek where one guy is half black and half white and the other guy is half white and half black, and thought "I can come up with a hokier metaphor."
Also, fucking Martouf from Stargate SG-1 is the head evil religious scientist guy, who stones a teenager to death for having sex. Magnificent.
But remember what I said about the guy who orders the episodes hating the show? Well, the very next episode is about the hero having an unplanned pregnancy because it's the apocalypse and you can't get birth control.
Maybe you hear about JMS creating this and think "hey, he did Babylon 5, this can't be that bad." Let me tell you--the stars are Luke Perry and Malcolm Jamal-Warner. That's right. Luke Perry. I never even watched Beverly Hills 90210 and I still can't take him seriously as a badass wandering hero lone wolf. And Jamal-Warner is the guy from The Cosboy Show. No, the premise of this show isn't "What if the apocalypse happened during a taping of I Love The 90s?"
Oh, and as for JMS? Let me tell you how cheesy this is gonna get. The series has a character named Ezekial who speaks in totally portentous dialogue like "We're brothers--from a different father and a different mother" to the hero. YESSSSS. That cheese is molten.
I'm taking this piecemeal, because there's no way I can sum up how bad this show is in one stroke. But let me just say, whoever was in charge of ordering these episodes, like, choosing which was produced in which order or the airing order or which were put on the DVD in what order? He hates the show. You think Firefly had it bad? No. Firefly got off easy. These DVDs will have one episode in which a character espouses an atheist worldview, then follow it up (the very next episode) with a storyline where that same character has religious leanings. And then there's the DVD I got today.
We have an episode about abstinence. Okay, you're thinking, that might make for an interesting thought experiment. Remember when BSG did an episode about abortion: not whether it was right or wrong, but in the context of humanity's survival, could it be allowed? Same thing makes sense here: in a world where birth control isn't readily available, is free love really the best way to go? So you'd think the episode would just be about a town where premartial sex or just sex period has been outlawed. That's high concept enough, right?
Oh no. Not on Jeremiah. They have a town where people aren't allowed to touch each other, as a metaphor for abstinence. This is introduced with a mother who can't help her son up after he falls off a bike, so she gets a stick and tells him to grab onto it. And this isn't a tradition, or anything. No. It's made clear that this was an order passed down five years ago to a bunch of adults, and they all nodded and said "Yeah, okay," instead of leaving. The stated reason for this rule being to prevent another outbreak of the plague, despite...
1. Numerous people who don't follow the same rule and haven't died.
2. The town allowing outsiders, who you'd think would be more likely to carry the plague than someone from the old homestead, to just wander in and stay a while.
3. The fact that if no one reproduces, everyone's just going to die out anyway.
It's basically as if someone looked at the episode of Star Trek where one guy is half black and half white and the other guy is half white and half black, and thought "I can come up with a hokier metaphor."
Also, fucking Martouf from Stargate SG-1 is the head evil religious scientist guy, who stones a teenager to death for having sex. Magnificent.
But remember what I said about the guy who orders the episodes hating the show? Well, the very next episode is about the hero having an unplanned pregnancy because it's the apocalypse and you can't get birth control.
