Media Maven Musings

Whew, busy afternoon here on the blog, but well worth it if it helps you all with your pilot picking this week. So, here we are for part 3 of the preview, the show I’ve been anticipating most excitedly, Journeyman. No, it’s not about perennial NBA back-up point guard Chucky Atkins. It’s about my man Kevin McKidd (best known for his work on HBO’s Rome, one of the all-time underrated shows), who inexplicably and uncontrollably begins to time travel. One moment he’s sleeping at home, the next minute he wakes up in Golden Gate Park and it’s 1987. Weird? Yes. Awesome? You betcha.

Like Chuck, this show gets cookin’ right off the bat. We get the style, the tone, the inner life of the characters, the show’s direction, everything we need for a successful pilot. Now, I’ll start this off by saying that I don’t think this show has nearly as much of a shot at success as Chuck does. I think NBC was very smart in having Heroes as its lead-in, but I’m willing to bet there’s going to be a huge drop-off from the 9 pm slot to the 10 pm slot. Why? A little show I like to call Day Break. Yes, this show has several important distinctions, but in a general sense, they are very similar. So I’m going to break down this pilot not only by it’s own merits, but by the ways it is both similar and dissimilar to it’s canceled cousin, Day Break.

1. Lead character — like DB, (and Chuck and Bionic for that matter) Journeyman rests 100% on the shoulder’s of it’s main man.   If we don’t like Dan (the most boring lead character name ever), we will not like this series, period.  It’s his journey we’re on (pun intended) and if we don’t like our textual surrogate, we certainly won’t care about what happens to him.  I happen to love Kevin McKidd, and his role here is very similar to his role as Lucius Vorenus on Rome (something I’m sure the NBC folks noticed).  He cares fiercely about his family and will stop at nothing to protect them.  He loves them with a deep passion that nothing can break.  He is an ordinary man thrust unwillingly into extraordinary circumstances but he is intelligent, courageous and has the constitution to rise to the occasion and embrace his new role as time-traveling hero.  Let me pause for a minute here to note how refreshing it is to actually have an intelligent hero on television for once (which isn’t a surprise when you consider that show creator Kevin Falls was a co-exec producer and writer on The West Wing).  We often get heroes who don’t discover the obvious until 20 minutes after we do, (think Mohinder on Heroes), but Dan is quick on the uptake and resolute in his actions.  He holds this in common with his DB counterpart, Taye Diggs, who was smart and heroic, though he was a cop, whereas McKidd is just a (journey)man.

2. Love interest– Here is where I think Journeyman’s most interesting conflict lies.  In the present, Dan has a beautiful wife (played by MILF  Gretchen Egolf) Katie, whom he loves.  In the past, where Dan often finds himself, he has the even more beautiful fiance Livia, played by Day Break’s very own Moon Bloodgood.  According to what Dan believes, Livia died 8 years ago in a plane crash, so it’s not as if they broke up on bad terms.  I’m sure he had a very difficult time in his life where he had to move on from Livia’s death and consequently fell in love with Katie, who, from one trip to the past, looks as if she’s always had her eye on Dan.  Can you imagine being faced with this conflict?  The two loves of your life, and you can be with them both within minutes of each other, though it’s actually 10 years apart?  I find this to be a highly unique dilemma and for my money, the most dramatic and compelling aspect of this show.  I don’t think this has any precedent in television, which is always the mark of a good, original series.  As with DB, Bloodgood’s character, as we find out midway through the pilot, has more to her than meets the eye.  Is there a more alluring female on tv?  I think not.

3. Format– The difference here is what I think marks the biggest distinction between DB and JM.  Whereas DB was 100% serialized, JM has the perfect VMars episodic/serialized split.  With DB, if you missed even 10 minutes of an episode, you had no idea what was going on.  Every moment was so connected, to miss one moment was to sever a crucial component of the narrative.  With JM, you’ve got the overall Livia mystery going on, but also, it seems as if Dan will be sent back in time to save a new lucky dude each week.  In the pilot, it was all about saving Neil Gaines (well, not exactly, but I don’t want to spoil anything).  Next week, some other hapless harry will get his life saved by the time-traveling hero.  So each episode will be, say, 50% serialized (maybe less?), which means it will be MUCH easier to miss an ep here or there, or to tune in later in the series.  I think this element, while it made Day Break so interesting and unique, was also it’s biggest downfall.  Hopefully, the semi-episodic nature of Journeyman will make it more popular with the masses and help keep it on the air.

4. Time– While Dan jumps back in time and then back to the present, DB’s Brett was stuck living the same day over and over again.  While both are unique premises, I think for the sake of popular tv, JM’s works much better because Dan isn’t, to use my own word, stuck.  The show moves on to new adventures each week, while keeping the time-traveling bit the same.  With DB, it was always the same one conflict, the same one day, and while I loved this show in it’s own right, I think the more varied nature of JM will render it more accessible to audiences.  However, something both shows have in common as that they require a huge suspension of disbelief.  The transitions from one time to the next are just a big swirling of the atmosphere (on DB there were no transitions at all) and there is no real explanation (unless they surprise me and somehow explain all this time-travel in a future episode) for how the hero is able to do what he can do.  This burden became too much for some viewers as DB went on, so I hope Journeyman can either provide some answers or can find some other way to deal with this device.

5. Drama– Both shows are highly dramatic, though the stakes are very different.  On JM, Dan’s job and marriage may be at risk, but nobody’s life is.  The only people whose lives are at risk are those people Dan meets in the past, and it seems like we’ll only know those people for an episode at a time.  Conversely, on Day Break, failure for Brett meant either his own death, the death of his girlfriend, or the death of his sister.  Fighting for your own life is far more compelling than fighting to help some character we hardly know and don’t care about.  Again, I hope this is something JM is able to remedy in the future, either by raising the stakes or introducing some new twist into Dan’s day to day life.  Marriage squabbles will only get us so far.  If the stakes aren’t higher, the show will be trapped in interesting mysteryland and will never be able to ascend to unmissable thriller status.

6. Tone– The show is edgy, with a hint of lurking darkness, but it didn’t establish itself firmly the way Chuck did.  This certainly doesn’t spell disaster, but a strong showing in the tone/style category always seems to help.

I think I’ve covered the important bases here.  I would absolutely recommend this show, but it’s not for everyone.  This isn’t Chuck; there are no funny best friends or physical hi-jinks.  This is freakin time travel, which is almost always confusing and requires an attentive viewer.  We aren’t in Day Break unsolvable knot territory here, but time travel is always a bit tricky and requires at least a certain level of intelligence from the viewer.  Ultimately, the show’s premise alone will not be enough to carry it through a full season.  The strength of the mystery at the core of the narrative must be totally, unfathomably awesome, or I’m afraid this series will suffer the same mid-season fate as my beloved Day Break once did.  I’m totally hooked by the nice doozy they drop at the end of the pilot, so I’ll definitely be giving adding this show to my Tivo Season Pass.  My advice?  Watch this pilot.  It’s a gripping pilot that immediately pulls you in, and it shows the promise of what could be a truly great show.  I say it could be great, but truly, only time will tell.

Episode: A-   Series Outlook: Unclear…