Journeyman: "Perfidia"

"Series finale"
The last episode...most likely.

Things kick off when Dan lands in a heap on the courtyard of a mental institution with a cut on his head. As he gets his bearings, it's clear that it's not too serious. I raised an eyebrow when a patient said it was 2007.

Evan, a patient, comes up to Dan, saying he saw how Dan flashed in and said he was a time traveler, too. Evan says he hasn't been jumping since he started taking some prescription meds the people with arm vests made him take. I wasn't sure at first, but I leaned toward believing him. Evan says he has to get out to see his wife. Though Dan isn't sure, he goes along, creating a diversion to let Evan slip out, then flashes back to the present. There he learns that Evan got hit by a car while jaywalking during his quest to see his wife.

As Dan researches Evan, Annette urges Katie to leave Dan and Jack tries to get Dr. Langley to spill what he knows about time travel. Annette served no purpose except to vocalize the doubts that Katie must be feeling. Katie chooses to stay with Dan by the end, but if the series had continued, I'm sure we would've seen more drama in that area.

It was nice seeing Jack work as Dan's strongest ally, but if Langley had admitted to being in on Dan's time travel calling, what would that have accomplished? And his pregant girlfriend is nowhere to be seen.

Anyhow, Dan meets up with Livia on his next trip back to September 2007 (about the time he started jumping?). Livia's extremely unhappy as she's prepping to get married back in 1946. And she made sure not to repeat her faux pas with Dan by telling her next fiance about her time travel calling. Dan wishes her well and decides to continue helping Evan, while Livia wonders if he's the mission and if he has all his marbles. Evan points out that Livia's shoes give her away as a time traveler. LOL.

Incidentally one wonders how Livia appears with modern clothes and hairstyles so often?

When Dan and Livia help Evan get to his wife, she doesn't know him from Adam. Evan then admits to our duo that he made an enemy during one of his missions, who killed his wife. So he changed things to keep them from meeting at Stanford to let her live. Then his past self saw him and things went on steamrolling downhill...

When Dan flashes back to the present, he learns that Evan got shot by the security detail bird dogging the new husband of Evan's new spouse, a San Fran council member. Dan tells Evan on his next jaunt, but Evan doesn't care. He wants to prove to himself that he hasn't been completely erased from his wife's consciousness. Romantic, but then what once he establishes he's right?

Evan triggers a spark with his wife at a fundraising event for her new hubby, who's campaigning for reelection, when he takes her for a salsa whirl on the dance floor. When they finish, the two're giving each other rapturous smiles when Evan spontaneously drops dead. Apparently he's not meant to live no matter what. But this death is more annoying (and contrived) than the first two. And Dan and Livia also have to two-step a couple times to avoid running into the past Dan to keep the timeline on track. It seemed to me that the only reason past Dan didn't see them on at least two close calls was because the show's directors and writers ordained it. Dan and Livia exit when they witness past Dan get into a cab and flash for the first time.

When Dan gets back to the present, he finds Dr. Langley waiting for him at the newspaper. Our resident scientist admits to Dan that he's part of a group that watches time travelers (shades of the Buffy/Angel and Highlander watchers). There's more depth here, but I'm on the fence about this.

The powers that be are unknown to the time travel watchers (and the time travelers and viewers), but the system seems to be breaking down (for unknown reasons) since Dan (along with Livia) is apparently one of the last time travelers on the watchers' grid.

Unknown people are watching the time travelers, who want to exploit 'em. Dr. Langley and his group of watchers want to help keep the secret, and he pledges Dan his unflinching support. The jury's out on whether Langley is who he says he is, but we won't know that since the series is virtually cancelled now.

Dan goes home to Katie, who wants him to take the pills that Evan took to put a kibosh on his temporal sojourns. Only Dan doesn't see his jumping as a curse anymore, but as a calling in which he has the valuable ability to "set right what once went wrong" ("Quantum Leap" quote). Couldn't blame him. I'd make that choice.

Katie then reminds Dan of his promise in the pilot episode in which he said he'll "always come back home." Good nod to continuity. When Dan gives the affirmative, she says she'll "keep the light on." Great show of support. And the final note of a promising series.

When I look back on the series, I feel that a number of things caused potential viewers to change the channel when the latest installment of "Heroes" ended. One is the predictable time travel plots of the earlier episodes and the (overly?) complicated love quadrilateral of Dan, Livia, Jack, and Katie. On another note, Livia was apparently an independent time traveler before she conveniently stayed in the "present" for several years, where she went to law school and met Dan and got engaged before leaping again. Then once Dan started leaping, she apparently leaped only to join him and play a poor man's Al Calavicci to Dan's Sam Beckett.

The second and more major issue was the incongruences througout the show (like Livia's modern clothes) and the lack of a "cause" generating the "effect": Dan's time jumps.

"Cause and effect." A major principal of science and science fiction. And good storytelling no matter what the genre.

The series established the "what" of its premise: Dan traveling through time a la "Quantum Leap"'s Sam Becket to help people.

But the dramatic "how" Dan is sent through time and "why" Dan being born during the passage of a fictional comet makes him a time traveler.

Without knowing the "how" at all and a part of the "why" until the next to last episode, Dan's jumps through time come across to me as contrived.

Only because I'm a SF fan (especially time travel) did I have the patience to stick with "Journeyman" through its growing pains. Unfortunately, the general viewing audience didn't have my kind of patience. Hence the dropping ratings and NBC's refusal to pick up the series' option.

In Hollywood, many self-proclaimed SF film/TV producers and writers say it's possible to do anything with SF. I would point out that the best SF stories work on internally consistent and logical rules that are effectively relayed to readers and viewers.

IMHO, "Journeyman" didn't do this and paid the price with its premature cancellation. Hopefully, others will learn this lesson.

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.