Journeyman – Season 1, Episode 13 – “Perfidia”

Why God, why?!  Why must another great time traveling show featuring Moon Bloodgood come to an untimely end?!   Why?!  Sadly, last night marked the last episode ever of Journeyman, most likely.  Due to so-so ratings, NBC has not ordered a full season of the program, nor have the made any plans to renew it for next year, so this will likely be my last post on this series…ever!
This post will not only look at last night’s finale, but at the short-lived series as a whole, as well as the implications for any, um, future time traveling shows.

1. The Finale — Thank you, Kevin Falls.  Thank you for knowing what it means for a viewer to have closure.  While we didn’t have all of our questions answered (more on that later), we did end the season (series) with a sense of finality, of satisfaction.  Dan finally embraces his abilities as a calling, not a curse, and decides he doesn’t want to try to go back to the way things were before he could travel.  And God bless her, his beautiful, supportive wife Kate, in a poignant reference to the series premiere, promises to leave the light on for Dan as long as he always comes home.  Tear.  We had a sweet goodbye between Livia and Dan, the two time-crossed lovers (more on their unique relationship later), which, thanks to the “I have a feeling we won’t be seeing each other for a long time” addition, left us with a nice sense of closure there.  Jack has finally become the supportive brother that Dan needs (plus, he’s going to be a father!), Zack is no longer Caroline, and all is well with the world.

The meat of the episode, Dan’s interactions with Evan (played by Don McManus, who you might recognize from his work as the sleazy car dealer on Dexter), was very intriguing stuff.  We learned a lot about the way time traveling works from Evan’s insight.  We learned that if present Dan Vasser were to bump into past Dan Vasser, it would be a disaster, as Evan wound up in a mental institution because of such a run-in.  We learned that certain sedatives can stymie one’s ability to time travel, and more importantly, we learned that, just like the episode of The 4400 where Maya is taken back to the past, the right trigger can cause someone to remember events that happened to them in a different timeline (as the salsa dance does for Evan’s former wife– who by the way, is BEAUTIFUL.)

Aside from the addition of Kate’s sister, who was simply added to give Kate someone to talk to while Dan was off doing his thang, I loved everything about this episode.  If the show is not renewed, this episode allows the 13-episode season of Journeyman to stand as a solitary, closed mini-series with a full arc and resolution.  Questions are left unanswered, yes, but this show has always been more about the characters than about plot points, and this episode provided complete closure for all the characters we have come to love over the past 3 months.

2. The Series — What a terrific series this turned out to be.  Action, emotion, suspense, GREAT acting/writing/directing– this series had it all.  And it was smart too!  This show succeeded in a way that Day Break never did because of what I mentioned above: this show is about characters and human relationships first, and time travel second.  We love to watch Dan on his adventures through time, but in the end, what we truly care about are Dan’s relationships with the important people in his life.  Each of the major relationships on this show (Katie/Dan, Livia/Dan, Jack/Dan, Jack/Katie) is realistic, truthful and compelling.  Katie and Dan are my favorite television couple after Coach and Mrs. Taylor of Dillon, Texas.  The struggles they face and the conversations they share seem so organic, so unforced and are a joy to watch.  First and foremost, they love each other and they love their son.  Bam, that’s it.  Katie is the perfect wife, but without being a 2-D cliche perfect wife.  Yes, she loves and supports Dan despite his crazy power, but she isn’t without doubts, desires and dreams of her own.  Usually on tv, you’re other the totally unsatisfied wife who wants to cheat on her husband, or the head over heels devoted wife who would withstand any punishment happily.  For Kate, though she loves Dan and ultimately supports him, it’s a constant battle to remain so consistently supportive, and I can’t recall ever seeing a woman portrayed this way (read: realistically)  on television before.

I also really love the dynamic between Jack and Dan, for the same reasons.  Both men have their own agendas and their own ways of doing things, so they butt heads from time to time.  But deep down, everything they do is out of a fierce love for one another that no time traveling could break.

The relationship I find most compelling is the incredible unique duo of Livia and Dan.  I mentioned how vexing I found this relationship to be way back in the beginning of the season, but it’s only grown from there.  They meet in their time travels as partners, both working to save other people and change lives.  They both love each other, but time has forced them to love and marry other people.  And yet their last embrace ended any debate in my mind: if Dan and Livia were ever stuck in the same time again, you bet your ass they’d fall right back in love.  Yes, we learned that the real reason Dan and Livia dated was so Dan would end up with Kate, but that only adds another level to this already complex relationship.  I can’t shake the feeling that these two somehow belong together, in some other timeline perhaps, some other era.  Who knows?

OK, now for a section called “Questions Still Unanswered.”  Here’s what I’ve got:

1) Yes, Dr. Langley knows about Dan’s power.  But how does that explain the picture of the two of them at the rocket launch?

2) How was Dr. Langley able to call Dan on his cellphone in the past earlier this season?

3) Was Evan born during the same comet as Livia and Dan?  What about the supposed “other” time travelers?

4) What did Dr. Langley mean when  he said there were no other travelers?  Did he simply not know about Livia, or is Livia’s work as a traveler done, now that Dan has embraced the calling?

5) I know the chick who played the psychic. What do I know her from?  It’s bugging me….

6)What did Garrity a.k.a. Ryan Chapelle have to do with anything?  Why was he researching Dan?  Was he one of the bad guys Dr. Langley alluded to?

7) What is Langley’s role in all this?

I think that’s about it.  Did I miss any?

3. What did we learn?  — Will a time travel series ever find a a way to catch fire in primetime?  Or is it simply too complex to ever be mainstream.  Journeyman was a great leap forward from a show like Day Break.  Day Break was too demanding for viewers — the entire show was about the elaborate mystery and a single missed episode resulted in total confusion.  There were dozens of unexplained or dropped issues and the show rested too firmly on Taye Diggs shoulders.  Journeyman had none of these issues.  Yes, the show was serialized, but not so intricately that a new watcher couldn’t jump in at any time with a few moments explanation.  Yes, there were unexplained phenomena (how does he time travel?!), but there was enough explanation that we never got stuck focusing on little unanswerable questions.  And yes, Kevin McKidd (god, I love this man.  I don’t know how he’s going to top the Lucius Vorenus/Dan Vasser line of awesome male characters he’s started) is the central figure, but we know as much about Katie, Livia and Jack as we do about him, so the whole series doesn’t rise and fall with Dan.

I’m going to miss this show.  Of all the new series that debuted this year, Journeyman was definitely my favorite (I’d put Chuck in second, Pushing Daisies in third).  It was an intelligent show that required some brain power and investment to watch.  It wasn’t Lost-level involvement, which can be too demanding for anyone other than hardcore fans, but it was far better than some How I Met Your Mother-esque hour of mindless entertainment.  The acting, above all else, was truly first rate.  The writing never felt cliche, trite or forced, and the San Fransisco flavor of the series was refreshing and tasteful.  You might not have been getting mindblowing stuff every week, but you cared about the characters, you cared about Dan’s missions, and you wanted to tune in each week to see what would happen.  There’s not a lot of shows I can say that for these days.

So what does the future hold?  Will it take some Joss Whedon or J.J. Abrams or Bryan Fuller to get this time travel thing to stick?  Can some creator learn from the mistakes of Journeyman, such as a lack of high stakes episodes (though the last 4 or 5 have been sensational and riveting) a too similar structure from episode to episode, and lack of a villain or truly insurmountable obstacle (Dan never got stuck in the past for more than a day or two)?  Would things be different if the network really threw their marketing weight behind the show (there has been virtual no advertising for Journeyman over the last month, and it’s lead-in, Clash of the Choirs, has been a major bomb).

Will we ever get the perfect time travel series we so desperately want?  Only time will tell…

Grade: A-

Series as a whole: B+

NOTE — Want to help save Journeyman from cancellation?   Take a look around this site, the HQ for all things Journeyman (be sure to check out the “Rice-A-Roni Campaign”).  It’s not too late to change the future!