Nuts! 'Jericho' fans won't accept reality

I should have seen this coming.

Those peanut-mailing zealots are at it again. They're trying to revive the twice-canceled "Jericho."

I say this with all due respect, but instead of wasting money on TV ads and trying to convince people who are never going to be convinced to do something that's no longer possible, maybe you should get behind good shows that are still on the air. Or, perhaps, give they money to a good charity.

Somewhere in their deluded minds, "Jericho" fans — who like to call themselves Jericho Rangers — have decided that running repeats of their show somehow means there's hope that somebody will produce new episodes. There's about as much chance of that as there is that Lucy and Desi will come back and do more episodes of "I Love Lucy."

The CW — which has found itself in desperate straits on Sundays — began airing "Jericho" repeats a couple of days ago. And NBC's Universal HD Channel did the same on Monday.

Why anyone thinks this means there will be new episodes of "Jericho" remains a mystery. And a matter of self-delusion.

After raising and spending the money to buy bring-back-"Jericho" ads in the Los Angeles TV market, the Jericho Rangers are now spending thousands of dollars to air 85 commercials on Universal HD.

It's their money. They can do whatever they want with it. But it would be just as effective to set the pile of cash on fire, because this is going nowhere.

For those of you unfamiliar with the situation, CBS produced and aired 22 episodes "Jericho" — a show about a post-apocalyptic town in Kansas — during the 2006-07 TV season. Ratings were bad and, not surprisingly, CBS canceled the show.

What happened next was surprising. Because of an outpouring of support from vocal fans, CBS uncanceled the show. That outpouring included thousands of pounds of peanuts mailed to CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler, a play on the final episode of the first season.

When an enemy called on the town of Jericho to surrender, Jake Green's (Skeet Ulrich) one-word reply was, "Nuts!" — an echo of the reply U.S. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe gave Germans demanding his army's surrender during World War II.

CBS ordered a seven-episode second season. And Tassler exhorted fans to get their friends to watch the show, because, unless ratings improved over Season 1, there would be no Season 3.

Ratings got worse. The highest-rated episode of Season 2 was seen by fewer viewers than the lowest-rated episode of Season 1.