Journeyman is not only entertaining, it's educational. I now know that if I get unstuck in time, I need to carry a bunch of old currency (go writers, for already addressing my main worry from last week) and ancient cellular equipment (although how that would help you if you ended up any time earlier than the mid 80s, I don't know. And besides, would you still have service?) Suddenly, I feel prescient for never having the latest generation of cell phone. Thanks, Journeyman!

Spoil a little dance, spoil a little love, get spoiled tonight.

I'm also having a blast identifying year based on the music playing when poor Dan wakes up in a new time, but I worry about the production designers and costume folks. I know, they have to keep themselves amused, but do they really have to lay on the eras so thick? I'm old enough to remember heavy smoking on planes, but even in the 70s, I can't imagine a kid having a six-shooter on a flight. That seemed like pushing it to me.

Speaking of pushing it: What, Dan sees his son being born and now he's qualified as a midwife? I almost would have preferred the soused proctologist step in. Almost.

I'm actually quite liking the show, though. Dan's confusion at being a time-traveling freak works for me, and I'm buying Katie's reactions: scared, confused, angry, and finally humorously resigned. She wins as the most understanding -- yet realistic -- wife in the world.

This week, Dan seemed to be tracking a pregnant woman, the lady whose baby he helped deliver into the smoke-filled aisles of the plane. He runs into her again in the 80s -- check out the hideous drop-waist dress on her daughter! -- but then she dies. Guess it's not her.

So maybe it's her daughter Dan's trying to save. He follows her into a mortgage seminar, where she's trying to meet her dad for the first time. Daddy dearest turns out to be an unfeeling ass, and poor little Tanna runs away, crushed. Huh. I guess he didn't help Tanna much at all.

Flashback again, to a couple years later in the 90s. He's on a plane again, and he runs into Tanna's father again. The evil old ass is dying of leukemia, and needs a bone marrow transplant. So apparently Dan is around to convince Tanna to save him. He brings her to the hospital, they start to talk (and daddy dearest acknowledges his assitude, which is nice) and Dan wanders off with another cancer patient. When he wakes up in the present, he does a search for Trevor, but Trevor's dead. Huh.

A quick search for Tanna (thank god she has an unusual name and is the only Tanna in all of San Francisco) reveals that Tanna's bone marrow wasn't a match for Trevor's -- but it did match Billy's, the cancer patient Dan talked to. She saved his life, and now he's flying relief missions to Darfur. Go, Billy; go, Tanna; and go, Dan!

We also meet up with Livia again, but she's not giving us any answers. She may be tracking Dan. Is she his mentor, his guardian angel, the person who got him into this mess? No clue, but it's an intriguing mystery.

Dan's got other things on his mind, too. First, he goes in for an MRI to see if something shows up in the unstuck-in-time area of the brain -- ok, actually, he just tells the doctor about headaches, not time travel. Baby steps, I guess. Then, he disappears off a plane (the better to deliver a baby thirty-odd years ago), which makes all sorts of terrorist-prevention warnings go crazy. Poor Katie has to bluff her way through where her hubby went, and she performs admirably. Still, that little stunt gets the couple on a no-fly list. Doh.

Dan and Katie had been flying to Portland so they could start working on kid number two. (Really? They had to go to Portland for that? Just drive down the coast, dude! Big Sur is plenty conducive to babymaking!) Dan discovers that Katie is still taking her birth control pills -- she's not sure having another kid is the best idea at the moment, what with the unstuck in time thing. I'm with Katie -- no way would I want another kid if my husband could conveniently disappear into another decade when the kid was teeth or had just soiled its diaper.

Dan, of course, thinks this means Katie wants the marriage to be over, which, way to overreact, dude! Or perhaps he's projecting -- he loves Katie, but Livia was the original love of his life, and she's suddenly back in the picture. Sort of. From time to time.

In the end, Katie and Dan seem to be doing ok. Jack is none to happy to keep getting phone calls from Katie asking for help, but maybe he'll come around.

So now Dan's just got to worry about (1) involuntary time travel at awkward moments, (2) being a suspected terrorist or "person of interest," (3) having some punk kid blogger on the newspaper staff discover his time-travel secret, and (4) losing his job, because there's no way he's meeting deadlines when he keeps disappearing all the time. And since the writers addressed the new-money problem in the second episode, I'm confident he'll be dealing with all of these issues very soon. It's good stuff, people. Keep watching.

Comments

Good call on the currency thing... I thought of you as soon as I saw it :) This show is awesome, and the humor is well done (like when the wife is at the MRI place and thinks he has disappeared but he's just changing)... I really hope it doesn't get cancelled :)

AC | Oct 1, 2007 9:49:10 PM | #

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don't even say things like that!!! this show can't get canceled it's my new favorite show! LOVE it!

Laura | Oct 1, 2007 10:59:02 PM | #

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This episode cleared some things up for me for which I'm grateful, but his wife is not looking very supportive to me. I want to know why they are keeping his brother in the dark. Is it because he is a detective or because of the relationship he had with his brother's wife years ago? I liked this episode better than the pilot and I hope it will be able to explain the ex-fiancee's involvement in his time travel someday. Next week's episode with a San Francisco earthquake in 1980 looks interesting.

Penny | Oct 1, 2007 11:03:32 PM | #

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This show is great! It is a nice break from some of the other dramas on right now-very refreshing. Of course I liked Quantam Leap so go figure.
We got more background on the brother/wife relationship too. She said they broke up and then she married his brother. So it is good that she didn't cheat on the brother. I need to hear more on Olivia's life. That is a bit strange for me. Why did she never come back?

Bo | Oct 2, 2007 4:18:14 AM | #

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But the brother ended up with the future $20 he passed the cabbie - maybe he will someg=how tumble to the time travel now

cm | Oct 2, 2007 5:31:25 AM | #

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You don't remember the 70s well enough. I can personally attest to dueling with other kids on planes.

Dan's qualified to be a midwife is the writer's technique to convince the audience that he cares for his wife and his family. It works doesn't it?

The writers and actress behind Katie are amazing. Even if for the line "We were going to Portland to have lots of sex... And I'm being serious."

What's with the scanner beeping around Dan's chest?

I liked his brother ending up with a futuristic $20; very Daybreak... too bad that show got canned. And so did Quantum Leap. And so did Early Edition. And so did... I really would like to see this show finish out this season, but I doubt it'll see a second.

| Oct 2, 2007 7:37:14 AM | #

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Thanks for the well deserved good review. This show needs fans right now. I love it and hope it can keep afloat.

John | Oct 2, 2007 7:52:21 AM | #

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This show is truly one of the best so far this year. I hope that enough people watch it to keep it afloat. I hope they go way back to the Old West or how about the 1908 earthquake?

steve | Oct 2, 2007 7:59:26 AM | #

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Journeyman is certainly a pleasant show and it reminds me of a more advanced Quantum Leap. Dan's wife not giving him concrete answers is really annoying me. Anyway I can see how people would enjoy this show, but I'm afraid I have to cut my journey short.

Craig C. | Oct 2, 2007 9:23:17 AM | #

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Weird thought, but my brother proposed that Dan's acting as a guardian angel, and that's perhaps the "secret" to his travels?

Casper | Oct 2, 2007 10:20:34 AM | #

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I enjoyed this one better than the premiere after it got hyped up a bit by Amy here. Like others here I find the girlfriend in time with him annoying. Why wouldn't she just tell him and stop disappearing. Maybe it'll make sense later on. I'll continue to watch the show and I liked Kevin in "Rome" prior to this series. I with some others again as I don't think it's going to last long.

opuscat | Oct 2, 2007 1:50:52 PM | #

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My only problem with this show to date has less to do with the concept or any of the actors. There is one glaring mistake that the writers/creators are going to have to address sooner rather than later: if, by going back in time, Dan is able to fix one person's life (or several people's lives) by correcting an error or whatever, what happens to all those around those one or two or a dozen people that would not have been affected otherwise? I honestly hope this show gets moved to a better time slot, because it is quite good and is effective in the way it jumps between decades with apparent ease (even up to showing the anachronism that would occur if 2007 money got dropped in 1985...nice inclusion of that). I will have to set aside my study of various sciences (both traditional and theoretical) in order to completely enjoy this show, though, or the majority of my viewing will be taken up with me starting several sentences with, "But what about...".

Dark Disciple | Oct 2, 2007 5:16:12 PM | #

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Good review. Only one thing bothers me about this program; it is too much like Quantum Leap, only without the super computer and the live action hologram. Someone hit the nail on the head with the paradox of changing the past affecting the future. At least with Quantum Leap, there was a scientific reason why he was traveling around, and the machinery to make it happen although he had no control over where and when he showed up next. But still, I do enjoy this take on time tracel, and I am just conveniently ignoring the paradox problem for the time being. At least Stephen Hawking thinks time travel into the past is possible. He said words to the effect that he would not take a bet against a time machine as his opponent might have seen the future and know the answer. If one of the most renowned theoretical physicists thinks it possible, who am I to argue?

rowlfe | Oct 3, 2007 1:31:18 AM | #

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I like this show because it makes me think and leaves behind a warm satisfaction - just the kind of show the networks cancel after about six episodes!

Even worse, while I consider myself the type of viewer this show is aimed at, and while I do like it, I must say I am not overwhelmed by it. I hope I am wrong, but I think it will be short-lived.

Expecting the worst | Oct 3, 2007 9:30:28 AM | #

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We officially call this show Quantum Leap 2.0 in our household. Both loved that show when it was on (although I think I was in Jr High so my outlook on things may have been skewed!) Overall I like how they've addressed some obvious issues (i.e. $) but certainly a lot of sticky things that would be associated with time travel can't be addressed. Otherwise the whole show would have to be around what happens to the people who know the people who know the people that Dan helped. My head is spinning at the thought!

Sarah | Oct 3, 2007 11:06:55 AM | #

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I am surprised people have not made the obvious connection to the science fiction fantasy film and novel, Slaughterhouse 5, where Billie Pilgrim was unstuck in time and kept wandering through different sections of his own life. Of course, it had all to do with aliens from another planet. Billie had even been to the futre to the day he was killed.

Dean L. Kaufman | Oct 3, 2007 2:56:36 PM | #

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You could drive yourself crazy thinking about the time travel business. Just think about Hiro on Heroes on that note and if you'eve ever watched Star Trek of course when they go back in time, arghhhhhh! On a similar theme I've just started reading The Time Traveler's Wife. I luv it so far but again, drive yourself crazy thinking about the what if's

opuscat | Oct 4, 2007 7:21:56 AM | #

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I like this show quite a bit. While I acknowledge the confusion with the "Butterfly Effect" (not the movie, this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect), it doesn't bother me. I have no problem suspending belief with a show that I enjoy.

One little fear I have is that every episode will have a red herring. What I mean is that Dan will think he is supposed to save one person and then he figures out in the final act that he was there to help someone else. I understand the fact that you want to build some tension in shows like this, it can get pretty monotonous if it is like this in EVERY episode.

I hope it sticks around for a while.

Sean | Oct 4, 2007 3:03:02 PM | #

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My issue is how can Dan stay employed missing so much work? The '89 quake episode may have addressed this issue by having his wife fill in for him.

Stan - Emeryville | Oct 9, 2007 11:22:56 AM | #

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There was an anachronism in this one, when he is pulling up in the cab and pays with the 2007 $20 behind him across the street is a FedEx Kinko's which didn't exist in 1995 (there were Kinko's but they didn't become FedEx Kinko's until 2004)

Dave | Oct 10, 2007 10:29:51 PM | #

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