Journeyman: "The Hanged Man"

"Adventurous"
Good, but probably too late.

This episode started on an up beat with Dan and Katie starting to get...intimate when Dan gets zapped away to 1984 in the back of a mom's and son's mobile camper as it's teetering on the edge of the cliff.

Dan helps the two innocents escape, but gets trapped in the RV as it tumbles down a mountain. And, through no fault of his, Dan leaves a digital camera at the feet of the people he saved. Dan completes his tumble down the stairs of his newspaper's office building. He then goes home to regain his bearings, where he meets his daughter, Caroline for the first time. Zack's gone. First clue he did something to change the timeline. Cool.

Dan recounts with Katie the time they conceived Zack, but Katie sets him straight with the story of how Caroline was born. Katie doesn't remember Zack, and she doesn't want him to do anything to "restore" the timeline. Nice conflict. When Dan goes back to the newspaper, his boss holds up a digital video flimsy with info on a story assignment (2nd clue), and he finds a virtual 3D GUI in place of a pedantic solid screen and hard drive tower (3rd clue). I want my own hyperadvanced personal computer, but I expect to wait a decade or two for tech in this timeline to get to that point.

Dan does some research and sees that a computer company has been behind some major breakthroughs for the last 20 years, which everyone else takes in stride.

He flashes back, meets up with Livia, and try to recover the camera, which the son is trying to sell to the computer company his mom just joined. No joy on the first try.

Meantime, life continues as normal with Caroline instead of Zach. Dan's brother, Jack, is dealing with getting his girlfriend pregnant accidentally and Katie's sister, Annette, is urging her to leave Dan before he does something to hurt her. When Dan zaps back, he runs into a psychic, who Katie brought over to the house to ask about life, fortune, etc. The psychic gushes over Dan, saying she never met someone with his aura. Apparently, time travelers aren't too thick on the ground.

Dan sees that nothing's changed, and he's got an uphill battle. When he contacts the mom in the present, he sees that she's blind and her son is missing. Dan and the viewer put two and two together, realizing that the son was apparently offed for the camera.

He flashes back, meets up with Livia, and tracks the son as he mets with a company nerd to sell the camera to get enough money to help his mom, who's going blind from diabetes. It goes without saying that his buyers are dying to get their hands on "advanced technology that people will kill for." The company security chief, one very wooden lady, has some security guards pursue Dan and Livia when they take the camera. Dan tosses the camera into a trash compactor, where it goes CRACK, and he and Livia zap away as the security goons fill the space they'd occupied with lead--and nail their boss instead. The son runs off safe.

When Dan flashes back to the present, his Star Trek PC is gone, the son is on his way to inventing a digital ocular implant that'll give sight back to the blind, and Zach is back. Dan gives his son a squeeze that takes the blood from his head.

And the psychic reappears to tell Dan that he and one other (Livia) were born during the passing of the Joseph Lee Comet (fictional I believe).

Good drama throughout. Regarding the Comet, I would think that if it's passing marked and linked Dan and Livia as special, there'd be others who'd be part of the time travelers club. That angle hasn't been developed in the previous episodes and won't be in the future if NBC doesn't pick up the series' option. I also feel that this sort of info needed to be included in the pilot episode to help new viewers suspend their disbelief and buy into the premise. Too little, most likely too late I expect.

Rightly or wrongly, the show has bled viewers from the beginning, which led to a ratings plummet, and the series' likely death knell in NBC's eyes.

Too bad because I feel this "Quantum Leap"-like show has the potential to improve and overcome its shortcomings, but it'll never be.

Except in the alternate reality where the show's option has been picked up and a full first season is ordered. Being a leaper would be helpful about now.