The unlikely fan favorite—about an apocalyptic nuclear event that impacts the otherwise peaceful town of Jericho—got an unexpected second chance to shine after a fan-driven campaign to save the show succeeded. Yet even then, Jericho didn't make the grade on CBS, and was canceled after its seven-episode run.

But that doesn't mean the story is finished, if the show's creative staff has its way. Executive producer and writer Carol Barbee (who penned four episodes of the 20-episode series: "Vox Populi," "Why We Fight," "Reconstruction" and "Sedition") spills the details on what lies ahead for Jericho—and how the production team approached season two.The second-season finale became the series finale—and so much story remains to be told. Have we seen the last of Jericho?

Barbee: I have to be a little cagey, because I can't make any sort of official announcement, because we haven't gotten deals actually, formally put together, but there's definitely interest, and we continue to have meetings and discussions with several parties that are interested in continuing the story. I think the most obvious ones at this point would be the graphic novel; we have a couple of companies who are very interested, and we're meeting back and forth with them. We also have interest in a feature film, so we're in the process of that. The [interest] is very real; it just takes time. Our hope would be that any one of these things, and certainly if we had both of these things going, that at some point they would also bolster the want to put on another TV series.Does it surprise you there's continued interest in Jericho?

Barbee: It shows you the strength of the concept of the show, because it's an ever-widening, ever-expanding idea. It doesn't need to stop. Some ideas run their course; this really hasn't, and it won't in the foreseeable future, which is why it's something we're all hoping to keep going.What do you think it is that really appealed to audiences?

Barbee: I think the first thing is that it gets your attention: It's something that we're all afraid of, nuclear attack. But second of all, I think it got people's attention because it was about ordinary people being affected by something that was beyond their control, but now we're having to live with it, and now how do you behave in that situation? We've always said that the show owed a lot more to [Hurricane] Katrina than it did to 9/11. It was so much about—there's been a disaster, your government can't or won't come to your aid, and you're on your own. How do you behave, do you help your neighbors, how do you survive? I think that's something that captures the imagination of the ordinary viewer. We also hear from our fans that they were captivated by the characters and that they cared about them, and that they wanted to see what happened to them eventually. I think they also wanted to see that America was OK in the show; we never quite got to the point where America was OK [laughs].There are so many aspects to think about.

Barbee: It depends upon where you choose to shine the light. And all of them are interesting; it's just a matter of where you choose to shine it. And that's one of the reasons I think there's so much story left in Jericho. When we talk about doing a comic-book series, for instance, or another movie, or a television series, those are all very different landscapes, and have the opportunity to tell very different stories, so you can shine your light in different places, and say, "What's going on over here?" This is a great story for a comic book. And this over here, this huge story needs to be told in a film, and this story over here would make a great graphic novel. Every platform has its own opportunities, and Jericho is a landscape, it's not just a story about one person, it's a story about a landscape and what's happening, because it's something that affects us all. I think it has great possibilities.How did it feel to come back for another run at the series, after fan support brought it back for season two?

Barbee: It was amazing. I mean, it will forever be a highlight of my career, just that feeling of going from being so proud of a show and having put together such a great working relationship with the cast and crew, it was just such a nice group of people. And then we really didn't expect to be canceled, and then to be canceled, it was such a kick to the stomach. Then, after three weeks of this gathering storm from the fans, to actually have the network listen? It was just amazing. It was some sort of underdog story you usually see in a movie, and here we were living it. We were just so grateful to the fans, we just felt like we were riding that wave. Once you got the go-ahead for season two, how did you approach constructing the story? Did you know you were only going to have another seven episodes?

Barbee: When they brought us back, it was a math problem, literally, because they had already given our stages away, and the show Swingtown, which I'm actually on right now, had a drop-dead date by which we had to start shooting to get it on the air. So [the network] just backed it up, and figured out how many weeks were left with these stages, and they figured out we could shoot seven episodes in that amount of time. We would've taken whatever they had given us. When we found out we had seven [episodes], we [also found out we] had a lower budget. We had lost a lot of our writers, because a lot of our writers had gotten snapped up as soon as we had gotten canceled. So we put back together the staff as best we could, and we were very lucky that some really good people were still available. We got in here and said, "OK, we've got seven episodes and we've got X amount of money,"—which was less money than we'd had the year before, so we couldn't tell as many stories and we had to be careful of locations, and it was a lot more restrictive, but that's OK. I think it also helped us be really creative. We just focused the story on Jake and Hawkins, and tried to tell fewer stories, but tell them well. We had to be very careful about where we spent our money. Since we were only doing seven episodes, we were able to arc out all seven, and pick and choose which episodes were going to get the big budget for special effects money.What did it feel like, coming back after such an extraordinary reprieve?

Barbee: Because of the way we came back, there was a sort of esprit-de-corps around here, everybody, the actors, the writers, the directors—everybody. We kind of felt like we were coming back, and we were kind of giddy that we got to do anything at all. It was a different feeling than you normally have when you're trying to do a television show, where you're just really trying to stay on the air, and you want to get good numbers and whatnot. There really was this feeling that it was all gravy; this was our second life, and we're going to do it as well as we can do it—even better than we did it before, because we are determined to thank the fans for what they did for us, and the network is not going to be as restrictive about things, because they've given us less money and less time—they're going, "Hey guys, knock yourselves out, do what you can do." So in some ways, it just felt like, let's just do the show the way we want to do it, the best way we can do it for the money and the time, and let's enjoy this, because this is a second life, and we shouldn't be here. So it really was fun to be here for those seven episodes.What were you going for with building the mystery around Hawkins?

Barbee: Well, we had set up a mystery about Hawkins and about this bomb that Hawkins had had with him since the pilot. So that became the thing we were chasing through season two. How else would you differentiate between seasons one and two?

Barbee: The first season was a lot about Jericho the town, surviving this attack. And the second half of the first season moved us into broader territory in that we, now we're having conflicts with the neighboring town, and you're starting to see what it looks like on the outskirts of town and outside of Jericho. The first season was largely about a town; the second season became about the country, and what's going on out there, and what's going on with the military and the government. And before we were canceled, what we had hoped to tell was a broader story, showing you the country from different points of view. So we were going to tell a Jericho story, tell a story from New York City, and tell a story from Cheyenne, Wyoming. And you were going to see the breadth of what was going on in the country. But when we came back with less money and less time, we chose to tell the Jericho story—and that dovetailed with the Cheyenne story. [Season two] was really about broadening the horizon, and saying this is now about a country—how does a country survive this? And how do we make Jericho the town important to that story?Which all ties back to Hawkins, right?

Barbee: A lot of it was because Hawkins was here [in Jericho] and Hawkins had that bomb. And Hawkins' team was decimated, and he needed a new team. The most capable guy around was Jake, so Hawkins ends up training Jake to be one of his guys. And so Jake gets more and more involved in the kind of activities that Hawkins is. Had we continued, and in these other platforms that we plan to continue the story, it becomes even broader. Not only is it about the country, it's about the world. How does what happened here affect us around the world? People who watch the world know that the Cheyenne government launched an attack and destroyed North Korea and Iran when we were attacked. So there is damage that's gone outside of the United States. Who survives, who rushes in, and how does the power shift?