Epistle to Jeremiah

I just thought I'd put up a little shout-out to what has become one of my favorite television shows in the last couple of years - Jeremiah.

The show has been plagued by troubles -- nasty critics who decry its ageism (the show is set 15 years in the future after a plague has killed everyone on earth over the age of puberty), ridicule about its former child star stars (Luke Perry and Malcolm-Jamal Warner, with Sean Astin in the second season, plus a guest appearance from Jason Priestly in season 1 as a truly creepy messianic head case), head-up-their-asses Showtime executives who had no idea how to promote it or schedule it, a nearly year-long hiatus in the middle of the second season, and the fact that MGM is so, again, head-up-their-asses meddlesome that show runner J. Michael Straczynski has left in disgust, even if they do get picked up for future seasons or other projects.

But at the core of it Jeremiah is so dense with intertwining storylines and unexpected twists that it calls to mind JMS's biggest success, Babylon 5. Jeremiah deals with philosophical, social, personal and political issues in the way that only the best science fiction can, because regular fiction is too close to the truth for comfort. It is profound in its implications and emotionally deep in a way that even Babylon 5 failed often to reach. And in the second half of the second season, which wraps up next Friday night, it seems that JMS finally, as he did with the uneven Babylon 5 followup Crusade, said 'Fuck it,' to the powers that be and went forward making the show he wanted to make.

It's like watching a big, powerful truck, pedal to the metal, heading for the edge of the canyon. It's only getting faster, and you can't help but wonder if it'll jump the crevasse or plunge to its doom ... even if you know the good guys always win in the end. But with JMS, even when the good guys win, its not without cost and it's almost always in unexpected ways.

This week's second episode ended with Daniel's army at the gates of Thunder Mountain. I'm on the edge of my seat. And I have too much homework to do; I shouldn't even be watching TV at all. Kudos to the Jeremiah crew and a big fat freaking raspberry to Showtime and MGM and everyone else who, because you can't pigeonhole good television, stick the knife in it every time.

Oh, and a related shout out to Wonderfalls, too.