Carol Barbee will never look at TV viewers the same way again.

Last May, CBS canceled her freshman drama "Jericho." But after receiving more than 40,000 pounds of peanuts from outraged fans, the network reversed course, picking up the post-apocalyptic drama for a seven-episode second season.

"We had nothing to do with it," said Barbee, the show's executive producer. "The fans all did it themselves. I think it will probably be one of those things that will always be one of the highlights of my career."

In the first season, Jake (Skeet Ulrich) and his fellow citizens in the small Kansas burg of Jericho are forced to fight for survival in the face of nearby nuclear attacks. The action stays focused on the town and its surrounding areas; residents (and viewers) are unaware of what's happening in the outside world.

"Jericho" debuted to respectable viewership numbers in September 2006. But by the May 2007 season finale, the series had lost more than one-third of the audience.

When word began to circulate that the series wasn't going to get a second season, Shaun Daily, who hosts a radio show on www.blogtalkradio.com, urged listeners to ship nuts to CBS headquarters in Los Angeles and New York.

"I said, 'I don't know if it's going to work, but we've got to try,'" Daily said.

Why peanuts? In the first-season finale Jake retorted, "Nuts," when the leader of the neighboring town of New Bern demanded surrender. (That's the same retort that then-U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe made to the Germans at the Battle of Bastogne in World War II.)

"Skeet found it very difficult to deliver that line," Barbee said. "He was like, 'I just feel so silly,' and then he did it, and he did it well. But none of us thought that somebody would think about it as peanuts. It's like this perfect storm. It's one word. It's kind of funny."

Lennie James, a British actor who made his U.S. television debut as the mysterious Robert Hawkins, had been warned that many American shows don't make it to a second season.

"What I had been led to believe was that when a show is canceled, it's canceled," he said. "There was no coming back. I believed we had no power to do anything about it."

But as the weeks progressed, the nuts campaign reached a fever pitch — and achieved success.

"The campaign was a staggering piece of ingenuity, so incredibly well-organized, so dignified and considerate," James said.

Barbee said her "north star" in plotting the second season with the show's other writers was to pay the fans back.

"Show them what they want to see, tell them this amazing story," she said. "We promised this to the fans, and we're not going to let them down because, you know what, what (is CBS) going to do — cancel us?"

A shortened season also forced more streamlined stories.

"There's not time to tread water," Barbee said. "Every episode has huge plot turns, huge character reveals. The arc of this season is Jake and Hawkins going on a mission together to save democracy. ... This season is all, 'What do we stand for? What do we believe in?' It's about personal responsibility, which I think will really resonate during the season of elections."

James calls Season 2, which features Esai Morales in a recurring role, "a roller-coaster ride."

"The premise of the show is a great 'what if' story," James said. "Last season we were trying to save a town. Now we're trying to save a nation."