So, what was the worst job you ever had?

Me, it was probably my first “professional” newspaper job.

It was for a weekly paper near my hometown, the summer after my freshman year of college. In fairness, I should probably confess that I had little to no idea what I was doing, and I was named the paper’s assistant editor and sole full-time reporter for the summer because the woman whose job it was had gone away for two months.

I felt a lot better after I read this article from The Washington Post and saw what our boy Skeet had to say.

I worked on a pig farm when I was 10. My job was to put the piglets in a five-gallon bucket, and if (we) didn’t get all the sows in … to run like hell because they will try and kill you.

Yikes. That sounds almost in character for Jake, though.

Anyhow, Jericho executive producer Carol Barbee appears to be the belle of the ball this week, with interviews popping up all over the media — traditional and blogospheric (plus a guest chat tonight in Jeritopia’s Town Hall).

Premium Hollywood had a lengthy chat with Barbee, in which she dropped various tidbits, including this:

Everybody is back that you saw last year. Everybody is back except Gerald McRaney … and we tried to get McRaney, but he was doing a play in New York, and he literally had one day off, and it would’ve meant flying him out and flying him right back. And it just couldn’t happen. But everyone else comes back.

After the break, an unspecific spoiler. (Unspecific because it reveals something major that will happen, but not when it will happen nor to whom it will happen.)

Barbee was very careful not to spill the beans on anything important, but when the interviewer revealed that he knew “a very recognizable citizen of Jericho is not going to make it out of the season alive,” she — very carefully — talked about it.

Now let me see if I can say something without saying something! Um … we needed our town to turn against, to resist, and to become a revolution against this new government, and we thought, “Something really bad has to happen to spur these people into that kind of action.” And a lot of bad things have already happened in Jericho, so we needed the worst thing to happen, and the worst thing we could think of to happen was … that. We needed something that would really go to the heart of this town and make them fight against these overwhelming odds, and that’s what we did.

I have to admit, I’ve always respected shows willing to take that kind of risk. But given how hard we all fought to bring the show back (and how much we’re all still mourning Johnston), I’m not so sure I like that.

And then there was this great info about Heather:

… what we really felt in the first of last season was that we had not set up that character in a way that gave her a lot of legs in the show. She didn’t really have a purpose in the main A-story, and what we wanted to do was send that character away, make her go through some really bad things, bring her back, and play to the strengths of the actress, because Sprague Grayden is a great actress. She’s got a depth to her that we weren’t using. We were just using sweet little tomboy Heather. And she’s still sweet little tomboy Heather. But she’s been through some things, and she comes back on a mission, and I think she’s much more integral to the series. It’s a really good story for her, and she’s really part of the action.

Unfortunately, that leads us to a moment from last night’s Jeritopia chat (thanks, Clarke! oh, and remember that Carol Barbee will be tonight’s guest in Jeritopia’s Town Hall, at 11 p.m. EST), in which Karim Zreik dropped this bomb:

But, as i’m sure you guys have already heard, we made the decision to put jake & emily together from the start of these 7 eps, until the end.

I didn’t realize there was no hope for Jeather in Season 2, having only seen the first three episodes so far. But as I’ve said previously, Heather’s totally rockin’ so far and Emily has very little of worth to say.

Anyhow, here are some other tidbits from the interview:
• Barbee’s “thrilled” with the 10 p.m. slot.
• Esai Morales filles the “vacuum of awesomeness” left by the death of Johnston.
• Jennings & Rall not only is somewhat FEMA-like, but also somewhat Haliburton-like.
• Darcy Hawkins is much more of a partner to her husband this season; she’s integral to the story.
• In her usual classy way, Barbee also had this big, wet kiss for you, the fans:

Well, I will say that coming back the way we did, being razed from the dead the way we were, was because of them. So we came back, and this season … we were fueled in a way that I’ve never been fueled before while doing a season of television. We came back not for the ratings, although we need and want good ratings, and not in search of a Season 3, although we want to get Season 3 … and we will! But we came back to say “thank you” and to pay off the fans who saved us, who brought us back. And we were so filled with such … it was so excited to be there doing a show that you knew so many people cared about. And there was also this feeling where it was, like, “What are they going to do, cancel us? We’ve already been canceled! Let’s just do the show we want to do!” And it was a really fun seven episodes to shoot, and I really believe we said “thank you” to the fans. And I hope they feel that way, too.

My personal opinion, having seen the three first eps?

I think y’all will feel that way, too. Even the Jeather fans.

Today’s other tidbits from the ethernet:
• Read this Associated Press story about Jericho’s resurrection that ran in Canada. Barbee says that three days into a trip, she got an e-mail from Nina Tassler: “When you’re back in town, we really need to sit down and talk because this is a huge fan revolt, and we want to figure out a way to make them happy.”
• To-be-announced Jericho cast and crew will be on stage at the Los Angeles Comic Book and SciFi Convention at 2 p.m. Feb. 17. After the presentation, some of the stars will sign autographs. Which actors? That’ll be announced sometime next week.
• A great season 2 preview on UGO.com’s TV blog.
• Matt Roush at TVGuide.com had an OK article about Jericho. I say OK, because he does call the plotting “often simplistic,” which I disagree with. But he’s entitled to his opinion. He still gives it ink, and that’s the important part. (Thanks Jericho-Kansas, Inc. for the heads up.)

Oh, and Chocofishie, in yesterday’s comments, found a good Australian peanut site to use to send nuts to Network 10, and a better address:

Mr. Grant Blackley
CEO
Network Ten
1 Saunders St
Pyrmont, NSW 2009
AUSTRALIA

Send those nuts, keep the links coming and happy Jericho countdown!!!

Photos courtesy of CBS.