Special Note to the Writers of Jericho
I have given you quite a lot of artistic license on your attempt to dramatize life in a small Kansas town after a nuclear holocaust.I didn't question (too much) why Mutually Assured Destruction didn't happen. I mean, come on! Are you suggesting that everybody was asleep at the switch and nobody noticed multiple ICBMs rocketing our way? And Nobody ordered a counter attack before the bombs hit? Whatever. Such is not the subject of my rant.
No, today I take issue with a glaring inaccuracy that is incredibly unfortunate in the message it sends to the ignorant masses. And, just to be clear, when I say "ignorant masses" I dont' mean stupid - I mean ignorant. They just don't know enough about agriculture to know that you are feeding them bullshit.
Here's the scoop.
Last night on Jericho, the farmer guy Stanley discovered that he had an earworm infestation in his corn field and he went to see if Gracie (the local grocery store owner) had anymore pesticide. (Nevermind the fact that her store has never been billed as anything more than a grocery and you can't buy Restricted Use Pesticides at the Grocery - I'm giving them a pass and saying MAYBE it is also a farm store.)
Gracie has some pesticide left and tries to get Stanley to agree to a ridiculous agreement of going 50/50 on the crop profits for the purchase of the pesticide. Stanley refuses and instead decides to burn the parts of the crop that are infested, presumably to prevent the spread of the insects.
Whatever.
Anyway, long story short, the town comes together to help Stanley harvest his corn that afternoon since the EMP took out his harvesting equipment, I guess.
Only - and here's the problem with the plot - If they were going to harvest the crop green this means it was sweet corn. This premise is emphasized and reinforced by the fact that Gracie wanted to sell it in her store and the fact that Stanley told her if it wasn't safe to eat (from nuclear fallout and radiation) he wouldn't eat it or let his sister eat it. Fine. It is sweet corn, then.
But, if that is so, then Stanley has no use for pesticide. If the crop is ready to be harvested, it is too damn late to spray pesticides and burning the field is stupid. You can't use pesticides within a certain time period before harvest and this is especially true with a product that is going to be fed to people.
There's just no way to get around this fact. I'm sorry, writers, but maybe if you were going to dramatize farming, Kansas life, and agriculture you should have hired someone who knew more than what their Fisher Price farm set taught them. If Stanley was going to spray pesticides that close to harvest, he is either stupid or dangerous and trying to kill everybody in town.
So, to all of you who are now desperately afraid of what comes off the farms, rest assured that this is illegal and the premise is ridiculous.
For heaven's sake! Maybe the writer's would pay me six figures to consult...
