If we had to choose one word to describe the first season of JMS's post-apocalyptic series Jeremiah, it would be "uneven". The season had some notable episodes and a few excellent moments that reminded us why we tune in to watch anything JMS is involved in. But there were also a number of unremarkable episodes and although the early hints of the season's arc made us very curious, the later episodes which should have been the payoff on those hints were less interesting than we had imagined. Finally, there were a few episodes that were quite weak, including one we'd have to call nearly incoherent. This was especially disappointing because one of the things we loved about Babylon 5 was the consistently high quality of the writing. We could tune in to B5 each week without worrying that this might be the night we hit a real dud.

        From the beginning, our hopes for Jeremiah were tempered by that fact that we felt the series' premise was a bit weak. The premise of Jeremiah is that the earth has been devastated by a plague that killed off everyone over the age of puberty. The survivors of the plague are now becoming adults and so it is time for them to shape the new world that will emerge from the ashes of the old. Although there is a lot of space within this premise to do the kind of social commentary that JMS is good at and to explore ideas like God and religion, there didn't seem to us to be a lot of places for the series to go storywise. That concern seems to have been justified, since one of the weaknesses of the first season is the redundancy of several of the episodes that focused on "charismatic leaders" ruling various strange post-apocalyptic societies. Although some of these episodes explored interesting ideas, others were more cliche and run-of-the-mill stories. In the end, they all began to seem a bit boring, like each new episode wasn't really all that "new", it was just one more "cult of personality" story.

        The somewhat unsatifying conclusion of the season's arc seems to also be related to the weakness of the premise. What is the greatest mystery that can be revealed on this show? Perhaps, who caused the plague? It's just not that interesting.

        Finally, the uneveness of the writing was a major factor in our perception of the whole season. Although every series has its weak episodes, too many of them becomes a major problem. Most of the weak episodes on Jeremiah simply seemed a bit boring or cliche. That contributed to our feeling that maybe the show overall wasn't that interesting. Worse were a couple of real stinkers, most notably "Ring of Truth" written by Sam Egan. This episode was almost incoherent. Episodes of this quality are serious problems because when the behavior of the characters in the episode, including the main characters who will be coming back next week, start not to make sense, that can undermine the sense of reality of those characters and of the whole show. We were pleased to hear that Sam Egan will not be returning to Jeremiah for the second season, and we hope that the quality of the new episodes will be more uniform and will rise to the level of the best of the first season shows.

** SPOILER WARNING ** I'd like to address some of the points mentioned in the first part of this review in a bit more detail with examples from the episodes. If you have not seen any of Jeremiah and are interested in seeing it, you might want to stop reading here. Showtime is currently rerunning the season one episodes and we believe that they will continue to do so until season two airs sometime in 2003.

        There were several points when we were watching Jeremiah when a bit of dialog or a small story point struck us as particularly good in a JMSesque way :) This was true right from the beginning of the show. In the premeier episode, "The Long Road", Jeremiah is shown writing letters to his father (who he believes is dead) and throwing them into the fire. Jeremiah's new friend Kurdy asks him when he's going to stop writing the letters. Jeremiah answers that when he throws a letter in the fire and it doesn't burn, he'll know he's written enough. There is some more particularly notable dialog in episode three, "Man of Iron, Woman Under Glass" when Jeremiah is in an abandoned church talking to God. This is great stuff, JMS communicating his questions about God and the universe very powerfully through his main character. These good moments keep popping up now and then throughout the season. There is a notable section in the season finale when Marcus, the leader of Thunder Mountain, is preparing a speech with which he hopes to unite the individual communties that have sprung up in the post apocalyptic world and begin forming a new and better world. Marcus' anguish in trying to do such an important task right and the words of the speech he finally constructs are excellent.

        We also enjoyed the arc element of Jeremiah's first season. There are many mysterious elements sprinkled throughout the episodes, some of which are explained by the end of the season others which continue to tease our curiosity. For example, there is the woman who Marcus keeps in the sealed room who has the disease that caused the "Big Death" but has not died from it. Also, there is Ezekiel who pops up now and then to drop hints about Valhalla sector and Jeremiah's father. Episode eight, "Firewall", was a notable arc episode that we enjoyed a lot. We meet a man who is 50 years old (ie should have been killed by the plague) and comes from Valhalla sector. We get more hints about Jeremiah's father, and we see the ever mysterious Ezekiel. Episode 14, "Tripwire", is another notable arc episode. The unstoppable progress of the forces from Valhalla sector in reactivation missle silos around the country is truly frightening. The season finale, "Things Left Unsaid", is less satisfying than the other arc episodes. Somehow Elizabeth's death and Jeremiah's capture just don't have the power that it seems they should. Even the revelations about Jeremiah's father seem somehow mundane and anticlimactic. We hope that perhaps as the inhabitants of Valhalla sector are fleshed out in season two all of this will become more interesting.

        The weaker points of season one include episode 10, "Journeys End with Lovers Meeting", about a charismatic leader promising his followers that a ship will take them to a better world, and episode 12, "The Touch" (by Sam Egan), about a community whose leaders forbid all physical contact. These episodes fall into the "just another charismatic leader/strange community" category, because their execution makes them relatively uninteresting. "Journey's End" has a notably bad moment when the community leader objects to Kurdy wanting to save his friend Jeremiah because he'll be using violence to do it. This seems like a childish and unrealistic portrayal of a philosophy of nonviolence. When the episodes fail to realistically and deeply explore the communities/philosophies they introduce, they become rather boring - they're just brightly colored stories about some "weird" society - the stories have no real substance. The weakest point of season one had to be "Ring of Truth" by Sam Egan which told a confused story containing willing or maybe unwilling prostitutes, a wrestling match, and an elephant. That was an hour we would like to have back.

        Overall, we did find season one of Jeremiah enjoyable. Although there were more weak points than we would have liked, the high points were better than almost anything else out there. We will keep on watching Jeremiah next season. We do want to find out what happens to the characters we have followed through season one, and we hope that season two will bring us an increasing number of those moments when Jeremiah truly shines.