The shortened season worked for me. Things became a lot tighter, and whereas you can justifiably say that there's padding in the opening year, you can't really say that for season two. Kind of like B5's fourth season where everything had to be rushed through, season two of Jeremiah, for me, is a great season of television.
Whereas I think they went from holding what amounted to town meetings to all out war far too fast for believability in the shorter season. I'd've liked to see Sims fleshed out a little more and maybe even some scenes of the 'Daniel conspiracy' council manipulating things. Oh, I agree it's a great season of television, I just wish it could have been a few episodes longer. Jan