Today, at long last, is the day (the last ordinary day….). That also means that lots more newspapers out there ran stories yesterday and today about our favorite post-apocalyptic drama, so I’ve tried to round them all up here. As with yesterday, this list isn’t comprehensive, but it is long.

But, first, a bit of news:
• The list of stars and producers who’ll be attending the Comic Book/Sci-fi CON Sunday in Los Angeles has been announced. At 1 p.m., there will be a screening of the second episode, “Condor,” and at 2 p.m. there will be a panel with: Esai Morales (Maj. Beck), Kenneth Mitchell (Eric Green), Brad Beyer (Stanley Richmond), Alicia Coppola (Mimi Clark, soon to be Mimi Richmond), Jonathan Steinberg (co-creator), showrunner Carol Barbee and  co-executive producers Karim Zreik and Dan Shotz.

• Next, over at BuddyTV.com, read and listen to an exclusive interview with Stanley Brad Beyer. Here’s a taste:

Moving forward with the Mimi relationship, at the end of last season Stanley says he’s going to propose to that girl. Where does that relationship go in the second season?

Well, it definitely keeps evolving. There’s all kinds of twists and turns that happen in the second season, there’s things that I can’t talk about right now. But I can really say that, especially with Stanley’s character, there’s a lot of changes that occur throughout the season.

• The Chicago Sun-Times’ online features editor says the show made his family into survivalists, stocking water, a crank radio and a decent first-aid kit. “Just in case something crazy, like the plot of a TV thriller (or even the TV news), should happen.”

• The Philadelphia Inquirer urges folks to check it out and eats a little crow. Check it out:

Jericho is a rare example of what can be a pitfall of newspaper TV criticism. Geniuses like me watch an episode or two, make portentous pronouncements, and move on to the next course in the never-ending dinner party of television entertainment.

“Dumb,” I called it.

Wrong.

• CTV.ca talks to Jeff Knoll, a Canadian politician who worked with Jeff Braverman to coordinate bulk shipments of nuts to CBS. Here’s a smidge of what he had to say:

People really got into the mythology, and have discussions online sparked by things presented in the show, like fallout or emergency preparedness, or the role of contractors in military situations. It’s not your typical, formulaic 42 minutes of television programming.

• BostonNOW interviewed Mimi herself, Alicia Coppola. turns out Skeet called EVERYone. Check it out:

So I was driving in the car, coming home from a Lifetime movie I was doing, and I said to myself, “my goodness. This is so crazy but I feel like something is in the air, that something is going to happen.” No one ever really calls me after 9 p.m. because I keep farmers hours.

My husband and I go to bed early because we are up at the crack of dawn with our daughter. So I get a call at 9:30 and I don’t pick up. Then my cell phone goes off and I don’t pick that up either but I am thinking, “something bad has happened.” I listen to the voice mail and it’s Skeet saying, “you have to call me, you have to call me right now.” So I call him back and he tells me, “We’re back.” And I’m thinking, “what do you mean, we’re back? Where are we? Where were we?” And he says, “You dummy, the show! The fans brought us back!”

He came over and my husband and he and I drank till 1:30. We called everyone from my kitchen, sitting at my kitchen table drinking whiskey, gathered around the speaker phone. It was great. It was the perfect night. It’s been unbelievable because it doesn’t even feel like our fans are our fans; it feels like they’re our friends and our family. We talk to them on the internet, they’ve come down and visited the set. It feels like one big family.

And I found this quote very touching:

What I think a lot of people don’t realize is that they just didn’t change my life by giving me a chance to go back to work, but that paycheck is putting my daughter through school. They gave me the ability to do that, to pay my mortgage, to do all of that. They touched my daughter’s life, they gave her swim class and piano lessons. That’s what they did and that’s the most important thing in the world.

• The Kansas City Star has a little tidbit today reminding folks that Jericho’s on tonight, both on SciFi and CBS.

• South Coast picks up a portion of the Newsday story, talking about how television viewing habits have changed and how Jericho was the wakeup call to the networks that that was the case. Quoting Nina Tassler:

“We’ve really said to the fans, ‘You have got to be our “Jericho” Rangers. You’ve got to recruit more viewers.’”And if they do?

“I think we are looking at a shift and a change” in viewers’ impact on network decisions.

• IF Magazine has two items. First, Jericho is its top pick of shows to watch this week. Second is a review of Reconstruction, which is quite positive:

How the rest of the season will play out is still to be determined, but the quality of writing and direction is still top notch during the season premiere, the cast at the top of their game and the spirit of  McRaney’s character, still very much hovering over the lives of Jericho.

Photos courtesy of CBS; “motivator” courtesy of kricka; promo postcard by RubberPoultry.