The Aftermath

The Aftermath
Genre	Post-apocalyptic fiction action drama
Created by	Asher Weinberger
Starring	Dovid Gold Ríona Caldas Natan HaLevi Rochel Lifshitz Yisroel Abramowics More
Country of origin	Belhavia
Original language(s)	Modern Hebrew Belhavian English
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	69
Production
Executive producer(s)	Jeffrey Blatt
Producer(s)	Jennifer Avos
Cinematography	Yitzchak ben Cohen
Editor(s)	Etel Greenberg Yonoson Dershowitz
Running time	49-53 minutes, 2-hour series finales (Seasons 2 and 3)
Production company(s)	Kalian Media Group
Release
Original network	Mesorah Broadcasting Company Channel 17
Original release	January 5th, 1994 – May 28th, 1997

The Aftermath is a Belhavian post-apocalyptic action drama series that centered on the residents of the fictionalized post-apocalyptic town of Kiryat Moshe, New Shelvoy, in the aftermath of a global nuclear holocaust in late 1991 between the Cold War blocs due to escalations during the Seulbyeni Islands Crisis. The show was produced by the Mesorah Broadcasting Company, with the project led by executive producer Jeffrey Blatt. The show was broadcast in more than 20 countries, mostly in Taveria, Lusankya, and the Far East.

It was one of the more successful drama shows in Belhavian television in the mid-1990s. The show averaged between 8-10 million viewers per episode worldwide during its inaugural season one in 1994, with 6.8 million of those viewers in Belhavia. Video releases, along with merchandise and other sales, have exceeded over $4.6 million URD during the show's 3-year lifespan.

By its third season, however, its viewership was dropping off, falling to 3-4 million viewers per episode in 1997. MBC subsequently cancelled the planned season 4 after season 3 concluded in May 1997. However, the show's fandom vigorous protested for several months, even raising enough funds to buy a full-page advertisement in the Provisa Times calling for a continuation of the show. In August 1997, senior MBC executives and producers met to discuss a feature-length film after ruling out any further television seasons of the show, however, by 1999, no plans were pursued and the project was shelved indefinitely.

Although relatively short-lived, the show had an important cult following within Belhavia, especially in the colonies, as well as in several other nations such as Emmeria and Temuair, and has had some noteworthy cultural impact, with several popular phrases from the show becoming common parlance in Belhavian chiloni popular culture.

Famous Aisling actress Antía Vinal guest starred in season 2 as Madame Fleur in episode 7, "To Sieuxerr With Love".

Origin

Aspiring film director Asher Weinberger was studying for his B.A. in fine arts in Port David, Ross Archipelagos during the 1991 Seulbyeni Islands War. Caught up in the nuclear apocalypse media narratives, he envisioned what it would be like to live in the fictional remnants of the Belhavian empire after the fall of most of human civilization. In 1993, he wrote a script and successfully sold the rights as well as a directing position to MBC, which commissioned a pilot. It then greenlighted a full season's worth of episodes, 23 in all.

Plot

Season 1

The first season introduces the Miller family and the townsfolk of Kiryat Moshe living amid the threats and challenges of a post-apocalyptic world. The first episodes establish the relationships and main characters, and the town must deal with a seemingly-never-ending litany of crises, from outbreaks of previously-curable diseases, to food and energy storages, to moral panic and breakdown of the fragile order, all in the background of a mildly unpleasant occupation by the green-fatigued Warlord's forces. The show begins in mid-summer 1992 just six months after the devastation of worldwide human civilization from a nuclear war. The events of the war and before the war are presented in a series of flashbacks in the first arc of season 1.

Controversially, the show explored several taboo and unpopular issues, including on race, power relations, and sexuality. On the other hand, the show was lauded for its realistic and compelling episodes of action and drama, particularly season 1's episodes 14 and 15, "The Red Twilight Part 1" and "The Red Twilight Part 2", respectively, when the town is raided by ragtag Anikatian pirates who dislodge the Warlord's men temporarily and occupy the town. The show won "Best Action Scene in Television" in the 1994 Dakos Film Review for the pair of episodes, which explored race relations, the Communist-Anticommunist worlds' divide, and the clash of normative social relations between Belhavians and Anikatians.

The season ended on a cliffhanger where Yossi Lanton, a dispossessed rural plantation elite, takes Norm hostage at gunpoint to force Micah to install him as the new mayor.

Season 2

The next season jumps forward six months, as it's revealed Micah caved to save her husband's life and Lanton was made mayor, ruling in a petty, authoritarian, and highly-unpopular way supported by the Warlord garrison. This season, while the challenges of a premodern life are continually explored, such as episode 3's plotline revolving around cleaning polluted water to drink and use ("Beyond the Green"), life-and-death survival issues fade to the background as the show focuses on a budding resistance movement forming around some of the townsfolk against the Warlord and his intolerable proxy mayor.

Antía Vinal appears as Madame Fleur in season 2's episode 7 ("To Sieuxerr With Love"), when a Sieuxerrian freighter pulls into town and the townsfolk learn more about the harsh landscape for the surviving human societies across the world from the sailors. Fleur flirts with, and pursues sexually, Norm until Micah manipulates the Warlord commander, Ginsburg, into ordering the freighter to leave port to prevent Fleur from sleeping with her husband.

In episode 10 ("Karma is a..."), Micah tricks the Warlord into believing Lanton is disloyal and stealing from him, causing Greenspan to execute Lanton and reinstall Micah as mayor, giving the resistance an inside into the Warlord's regime.

In episode 12's "Now is Our Time", the resistance rises up and initially ousts the soldiers from the town and its surrounding area, but is later crushed by a column of Warlord forces with heavy weapons and armored vehicles, as well as airstrikes from functioning old F2 Lioness warplanes, which overwhelm the beleaguered and under-gunned townsfolk. The Warlord himself leads the force and personally oversees the start of the new occupation.

The rest of the season splits the perspective between the Miller and Frankel families, which fled the town before the Warlord returned, and the remaining townsfolk suffering under the harsh martial law-esque personal rule of Greenspan. The Millers and Frankels stumble upon the 1st Company, 1/192nd Imperial Rifles Brigade, an Aisling army unit whose remnants survived the crash of their troop transport against the rocky coast in the hours after the nuclear war erupted. Norm operates on and saves the life of their commander, Capitán Nevan Conall, and the Aisling soldiers agree to help free the town.

The season finale, episode 23's "Battle of Kiryat Moshe", ends with the combined remains of the town resistance and the fresh 1st Company decisively defeating the Warlord's forces, including using antiair weaponry to shoot down two F2 jetfighters, routing the rest of Greenspan's men into a hectic retreat.

Season 3

With the threat of the Warlord neutralized for now, Norm and Micah explore their romance while Hillary remarries to Daniel Harpaz, a widowed banker. The shows takes a more optimistic tone for the first half of the season, with episodes emphasizing shared humanity and the community coming together to rebuild a school, rescue an Anikatian fisherman on a makeshift raft, and other returns to basic life-and-death issues.

In season 3's episode 5 ("Catch Me If You Can"), Norm leads a vigilante force to catch a serial murder who killed two people and is hunting a third. In other episodes, the town fights to survive under a nuclear-tainted rain storm and other travails. In episode 9 ("The Revolution Lives!"), a defector from Anikatia named Lyang (guest star Ma Woo-yeok) reveals that a cadre of senior DSRA leaders survived the nuclear war in a bunker and are trying to rebuild a ruined Azumakya, but that Lyang fled because the Communist hardliners overthrew the moderate General Secretary and are enforcing a brutal idealized form of Anikatian communism.

The rest of the season focuses on the dual threats of the Warlord, who is licking his wounds and preparing to retake the town, and the new DSRA forces, who repaired an old Pokpung-class destroyer and are aware of the town and its strategic value and other utility and ready themselves to attack. Meanwhile, Jonah falls in love with Norm's medical apprentice, Sydney, and after a skirmish outside the town with a Warlord scouting party, Norm saves and befriends a young Warlord lieutenant, Eisenberger, much to the scorn and annoyance of his family and town.

In episodes 22 and 23, "I Have Met the Enemy... Part 1" and "I Have Met the Enemy... Part 2", respectively, the town is under attack independently from both Warlord Greenspan's forces and the hardliner DSRA remnants, who both see the town as vulnerable. With the town being destroyed from the onslaught, and both 1st Company and townsfolk fighters dying by the minute, the show concludes on a cliffhanger where Norm, Micah, and Jonah arm a bunker buster weapon to force the two enemy forces back.

Episodes

Main article: List of The Aftermath episodes

Cast and characters

Main and major characters

Norm Miller

Played by Dovid Gold, Norm is a small-town doctor in Kiryat Moshe when most of human civilization is destroyed in nuclear exchanges between the Cold War blocs. In his mid-40s, he and his wife Micah and son Jonah struggle to survive the brutal post-apocalyptic background of the show's setting. He is meant to epitomize "Middle Belhavia" middle-income values and sentiments, and is the main character on the show. The town looks to him for medical and emotional support, and he carries the burden of rallying public opinion amidst their occupation by the Warlord's forces. In season 3, he later befriends and saves the life of a young and sympathetic boyish Warlord lieutenant, Eisenberger, and this relationship serves as showing the grayness and "two-sides" of the conflict between the townsfolk and the Warlord army.

Micah Miller

Played by Ríona Caldas, Micah is the wife of Norm and mother of Jonah and a well-respected former Provisa advertising executive who moved with her family to peaceful coastal New Shelvoy in the late 1980s after a turbulent and stressful career. She served on the town's city council up through the nuclear war, and afterward the remaining townsfolk appointed her mayor, the position she is in when the show begins. She is the second main character, and must balance protecting her family and the town from the post-apocalyptic threats, mostly notably the ruthless thugs of the Warlord who control the town. She represents the "strong woman" motif.

Alan Greenspan, i.e. The Warlord

Played by Natan HaLevi, Greenspan is a major character who serves as the chief antagonist throughout all three seasons. He is recurring for the first and third seasons, elevated to the main cast in the second season. He was a Imperial Home Guard commander that took power in the devastated former New Shelvoy with his troops over the remnants of organized human society. Cold, calculating, and brutal, he set up his headquarters in the neighboring coastal town of Asherin, the site of a Home Guard armory and a mostly-intact Imperial Air Force air base. As one of the few towns that largely survived the nuclear war, and strategically located, he has garrisoned Kiryat Moshe with a company of his men, now reduced to petty thugs and mercenaries. He has an attraction to Micah Miller, and Micah uses this to extract favorable treatment for the town under his rule, an arrangement that continues until the failed resistance uprising in the season 2 midseason finale, after which he mercilessly occupies the town with a harsh iron hand.

Jonah Miller

Played by Yisroel Abramowics, Jonah is the teenaged son of Norm and Micah. He is noted as a brooding, introverted loner who is bullied constantly by several of the similarly-aged soldier-cadets training to became regular foot soldiers in the Warlord's army that is based in the town. He plays to the theme of the "apathetic bystander" and he persistently irritates his parents throughout the series by trying to stop their plans of active resistance to the Warlord and his men by urging that they passively "keep their heads down."

Hillary Frankel

Played by Rochel Lifshitz, Hillary is Micah's best friend and a widowed housewife struggling to provide for her three young children after the death of her husband Arnold, a maritime sailor, during the nuclear war. Hillary, despite her desperate situation, plays a form of comedic relief throughout the series, largely hewing to the motif of the "bubbly extroverted overachiever". In season 3, she has to overcome trauma of being raped off scene by the Warlord's chief enforcer, Steinner.

Recurring and minor characters

Arnold Frankel

Played by Yaakov Mendel, Arnold is Hillary's husband who is deceased at the start of the show, a maritime sailor who died during the nuclear warfare. He appears only in flashbacks in the first half of season 1. A blue-collar downscale man, he disliked the fact that his wife Hillary was friends with the slick, polished, and well-off Millers.

Yossi Lanton

Played by Adom Horowitz, Yossi is a dispossessed rural noble who properties were destroyed in the nuclear war. He and his aristocratic family withdrew to their "town house", a palatial home inside Kiryat Moshe, after the war. Yossi is arrogant and self-absorbed, but also well-learned and educated, and he serves on the town's City Council and volunteer militia as an officer to keep the peace. He is Micah's chief political rival and antagonist, and he continually seeks to undermine her position as mayor with the townsfolk. The townsfolk largely dislike him but with few well-educated competent leaders left to run the town, his presence and participation is begrudgingly tolerated. In the season 1 finale, he uses the town's anger at Micah's perceived failures of leadership after the brief occupation by the Anikatian pirates along with support from the Warlord's garrison commander, Ben Ginsburg, to forcibly take power as mayor by threatening Norm's life. In season 2's first half, his autocratic and narcissistic rule is highly unpopular, which assisted by embarrassments caused discreetly by the emerging resistance movement, causes his downfall while Micah manipulates the Warlord into believing he's disloyal, and he is summarily executed by a firing squad in season 2's episode 10 ("Karma is a...").

Ben Ginsburg

Played by Joshua Kostler, Ben is a middle-aged former Imperial Home Guard captain who is appointed garrison commander over the Warlord's forces in the town at some point before the show starts. A wearied but loyal officer to Greenspan, he is a strict disciplinarian and but mainly aloof, leaving his men largely free to behave as they please outside of his view. He oversees the town's city council and volunteer militia, but rarely gets involved unless a problem is brought to him. He is an unimaginative "by-the-book" officer who largely fails to stop the insurgency that develops in the beginning of season 2. His instinctive institution of martial law in season 2's episode 11 ("Cracking the Whip") intensifies townsfolk dissatisfaction, causing more to join the resistance. In episode 12's "Now is Our Time", he is outsmarted and forced to flee after a quick gunfight outside the city hall (his headquarters) when the resistance rises up and the Warlord forces hastily retreat from the town.

Appearance

Character	Actor	Seasons
		1	2	3
Norm Miller	Dovid Gold	Main
Micah Miller	Ríona Caldas	Main
Alan Greenspan/The Warlord	Natan HaLevi	Recurring	Main	Recurring
Jonah Miller	Yisroel Abramowics	Main
Hillary Frankel	Rochel Lifshitz	Main	Recurring	Main
Arnold Frankel	Yaakov Mendel	Recurring
Yossi Lanton	Adom Horowitz	Recurring
Ben Ginsburg	Joshua Kostler	Recurring
Sydney	Micah Luzzatto	Recurring
Steinner	Gedalia Steinstalz		Recurring
Nevan Conall	Alistair Cordero		Recurring
Lye Farfino	Donal Estavos		Recurring
Noah Eisenberger	Michoel Stein			Recurring
Daniel Harpaz	Yosef Meyers			Recurring

Recurring characters

• Gedalia Steinstalz as Steinner, the Warlord's chief enforcer (Season 2-3)
• Adom Horowitz as Yossi Lanton, dispossessed plantation elite and later the Warlord's proxy mayor (Season 1-2)
• Joshua Kostler as Commander Ben Ginsburg, the Warlord garrison commander in Kiryat Moshe (Season 1-2)
• Alistair Cordero as Capitán Nevan Conall, commander of the 1st Company, 1/192nd Imperial Rifles Brigade (Season 2-3)
• Donal Estavos as Lieutenant Lye Farfino, Conall's aide and adjutant (Season 2-3)
• Micah Luzzatto as Sydney, Norm's medical assistant and Jonah's love interest (Season 1-3)
• Michoel Stein as Lieutenant Noah Eisenberger, a wounded young officer in the Warlord's forces (Season 3)
• Yosef Meyers as Daniel Harpaz, a widowed banker who falls in love with and marries Hillary Frankel (Season 3)
• Yaakov Mendel as Arnold Frankel, Hillary's deceased husband (flashbacks only) (Season 1)

Guest stars

• Antía Vinal as Madame Fleur (Season 2, episode 7, "To Sieuxerr With Love")
• Ma Woo-yeok as Lyang (Season 3, episode 9, "The Revolution Lives!")