MindsBase

Or Visitors — whichever meaning you espouse for ABC television series “V”. I had high hopes, but just haven’t felt the need to keep up with it. Yes, it makes for an interesting allegory of terrorism and guerrilla warfare, but the individual stories feel a little lackluster and the characters seem cardboard.

So I want to point you toward two other shows I’m just starting on DVD.

Jericho

This CBS show only made it through a partial second season, and I’m just a few episodes in on season one, but this is a show that is tugging at my emotions already.

But let’s back up. Here’s what CBS says Jericho is about:

Returning for a second season as a result of one of the most unprecedented and impassioned displays of fan support on behalf of a television program, JERICHO is a drama about what happens in the aftermath of a nuclear explosion in the once peaceful town of Jericho.

In other words, it is near-future post-apolcolypse sci-fi. This could have gone very grandiose and epic (kind of what V is doing) but instead, the episodes have featured small, immediate problems, like a little girl with a bruised windpipe and a stranded woman getting picked up by escaping ex-cons. How people deal with these immediate problems — rather than the obvious one of the apocolypse itself — is great storytelling!

Also, it has a rather charming small-town-pulling-together-in-crisis thing going on. It’s a great exploration of how a town would have to transition from denial (people still trying to go to work) to survival (everyone pooling resources and sharing tasks).

Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles

Another show that has already hit the skids — (when will the networks learn?) — is Fox’s Terminator series. This one is more small-cast and personal, dealing with Sarah and her teenaged future-leader-of-the-resistance son some years before the world is taken over by machines. An artificial intelligence called Skynet, to be precise.

Same brand of fun as the movies — hand-to-hand action, some explosions, some suspense. It does aim a little higher, though, with some thought-provoking tie-ins through Sarah Connor’s voice-over narration. Perhaps it must dig a little deeper to compensate for the TV budget, but I think this is a good thing. Sarah wrestles with whether she should kill one man to help save humanity, or how to protect a son who is destined to risk it all to save the world, and so forth. Keeps it interesting.

I also enjoy strong female leads, and Sarah is good, but Summer Glau as the girl terminator is perfect. They have fun playing off the idea that people would underestimate small-statured women. Not unlike Sydney of Alias, now I think on it. By the way, this is one complaint I have with Jericho, at least in the few episodes I’ve watched. There is a fair amount of “help the poor girl” going on. In the early episodes that featured young women, both heroines were ultimately saved by Jake, the hero. Ah well, can’t have it all. There may never be another Alias.

What, you haven’t watched Alias? Okay, before you try Jericho or Terminator, GO WATCH ALIAS. If you can get past the occasional fake blood and torturous screaming now and again, you’ll find a smart, exciting mystery/romance with one of the strongest lead women characters ever on TV. Sydney Bristow.*

* And I don’t mean strong as in physical, because that would probably be the terminator girl. Sydney can handle herself physically, but her real strength lies in her quick thinking and her caring and humanity that shine through even the toughest situations. She’s the kind of woman you want your daughter to be as she faces her own demons in life.