Beware the Spoilers

The Hanged Man

I’m sorry to say this will be the last time I get to review this show. It’s been a fun ride and I really hope to see another show that’s this refreshing some time in the near future. Journeyman continued to be a model of smart, realistic storytelling and character development, and it was more interested in creating depth to the people in its universe than telling rehashed sci-fi plots with static, archetype characters. Here’s what I thought about the last two episodes.

There’s nothing I appreciate more than a series that wraps up at the end. So you can imagine how impressed I get when a series is canceled after only 13 episodes and it wraps up at the end. I have no idea how the producers knew this show would end early enough to give us a true finale, especially with the writers’ strike on. The final two episodes play out similarly to a two-hour finale, although they are certainly two different, contained stories. “The Hanged Man” does a plot I’ve been waiting for, and it does it extremely well– new technology Dan leaves in the past makes major technological progress happen years before it’s supposed to. Dan leaves a digital camera behind in the 80s and when he gets back to 2007, his computer at work has nanotech!

This chain of events also makes him at a different place when he and his wife originally conceived Zack, so he ends up with a daughter instead. I thought this idea was bizarre, very interesting, and handled extremely well. I don’t know if I buy that this is the only thing that really changes in Dan’s life, but it was worth it to see his argument with Katie, who makes him swear that he won’t change anything to make their daughter disappear. Of course, he does, and Katie never knows the difference, which begins to give us an idea of both how cursed Dan is and how incredibly powerful he is. At the end of the episode, we finally understand more about his condition than the series has ever let on, when a psychic (in a bit of a contrived plot device, I’ll admit) tells Dan that he was born during a rare, mystical comet passing that only occurred twice in the last 100 years– the other time being Livia’s birthday. The one thing I really could have done with out in this one was Katie’s sister who, from this episode into the finale, tries to convince Katie to sell the house and hints at her leaving Dan. Why didn’t they just keep Dan’s mother around for the last couple episodes? Katie’s sister is serving the exact same purpose, and she isn’t good for much else but being the nosy, bitter sister and getting on my nerves.

The Hanged Man– 3.5 out of 4 points

Perfidia

“Perfidia” does a nice job of introducing Evan, another time traveler who lives in a psych ward because he insisted a little too long that he could move through time. He claims that the sedatives they give him inhibits his ability and that he had to change time so that he and his wife never met, in order to save her life. Dan doesn’t believe him for about half the episode because when he harasses his “former wife,” she doesn’t recognize him. Then he provides video proof that they were married, and it turns out that everything he told Dan was the truth! This is Journeyman storytelling at its finest– I wasn’t sure who to believe either, and when we discover that Evan isn’t crazy, just very depressed because of how upside down his life has become, he goes from a very familiar, stock character to a very interesting, three-dimensional, and sympathetic character. No matter what Dan and Livia do, they can’t keep him from dying on a particular day, and they decide it’s ultimately his day to die. It seems that they were tracking him only to find that the exact moment he died, Dan started traveling.

Is the conclusion of the series satisfying? Yes and no. There are many unanswered questions and some contradictions, but what makes it a good ending for me is that Dan and his wife, arguably dual protagonists in the series, both make major choices in the final scene. It looks as though Katie is going to leave him, and even when he realizes this, Dan still tells her that he will go on traveling because it’s the right thing to do. I love that, with Evan’s sedatives, Dan is actually given away to stop traveling and have a normal life, but just when he has this option, he discovers how much good he can do with his gift. Evan tells him that he’ll change more lives and help more people than anyone on the planet. And then his wife bookends the entire series by reminding Dan that in the first episode, he said that he would always come home. And when he promises this, she agrees to stay with him. This gives the show a beginning, middle, and end, and both characters change significantly by that final scene. It does what every good story should do and what was a failed TV show now looks more like a novel on the small screen. I’m really impressed. We’re left at the very end with the image of Katie finally seeing Dan time travel, and I thought that was quite appropriate.

Of course, there are holes to be pointed out. If you look beyond the finale, every time traveling relationship we know of has failed, so we almost have to assume that Dan and Katie can’t last despite this fabulous choice in the last scene. The theme up until then seemed to be that relationships just don’t work if you’re a time traveler. It didn’t work for Evan, and it didn’t work for Livia with Dan. Plus, she’s late for her own wedding because she’s tracking Evan along with Dan, which doesn’t bode well for that relationship, either. However, I think Dan knows this and he’s playing against the odds. He basically decides to treat his ability like a super power, and I don’t know if he could really keep his life together beyond these six months, but I respect that.

We don’t really know what happens to Livia. Dan tells Dr. Langley that there is still one other traveler, but I’m not sure we know if she’ll keep traveling or not. The nature of time travel is still pretty convoluted, even by the end. I really thought Langley had something to do with it, but it turns out he just knows something about it, which was a bit of a let-down. This business about a mystical comet is never really explained, nor is the idea that Evan had to do for Dan to travel. Langley said the “system” is breaking down– if that’s true, even if Dan is the “last one,” how long does he have before he either stops traveling or shares Evan’s fate? Evan seemed to think someone was “pulling their strings,” but Langley acts like it’s completely scientific and he says no one is making them travel. So although the episode is kind enough to tell us some things, I’m left with a lot of questions. It’s obvious the show still had a long way to go before it was ready to reveal some of these things, and had it gotten a regular series run of at least a season or two, this would all have probably made more sense and not been so rushed. As it is, I’m just happy that something was revealed. Dan basically leaves the series a super hero, and that’s good enough for me.

Perfidia– 4 out of 4 points

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

Chuck and Heroes are both over for the season, but Journeyman still has a couple of episodes left, even though it’s getting canceled after 13 episodes. Originally I had read that NBC would only be airing up to the 12th episode, but according to TV.com the 13th episode is supposed to be aired on December 19. I’m extremely sad to see this show go but I’m glad we’ll at least have the chance to see all of the filmed episodes, and perhaps we’ll get lucky (as with Birds of Prey in 2002) and the final episode will still manage to wrap a lot of things up.

Having said that, this week’s episode served only to escalate established conflicts and create new ones. The show is really unfolding like it was supposed to get a full season, and being about half way through, it’s just starting get really interesting. Last week, a man who Dan put behind bars when traveling to the past was released from jail in the present and attacked Dan in his home and held his wife hostage while Dan traveled back in time to talk to the man (Bennett) as a child. I was glad to see that the repercussions of this are addressed in this episode, as Dan’s wife is haunted by the incident with Bennett every time she sees her apron that he made her put on to make him lunch. I was worried about Katie getting too fed up with Dan’s time traveling– I thought the writers might make her leave him without developing the issues far enough– but this episode did a good job of making her more sympathetic and I found myself feeling bad for her. It made it more believable that she would take Dan’s mother’s advice to heart when she says that Katie doesn’t need Dan at all. I think the story is moving toward having Katie leave him, but if it happens, I’d buy it now in a way I wouldn’t have before.

It’s interesting that the last two episodes in a row have had Dan time traveling to save his own skin. The previous week, he had to talk to Bennett as a kid to prevent himself from being murdered in the future, and this week he had to save the newspaper so he wouldn’t get fired. That time travel is sure mysterious, isn’t it? It seems to give Dan whatever mission the writers need this week. Dan’s not in enough physical peril, so his mission will be to save himself. We haven’t dealt enough with the newspaper in this show, so this week, he has to save the newspaper. I’m not complaining– the information Dan got in the past gave him some great blackmail so he could force the owner to keep the place open, and I thought it was a real solid plot. I would, however, love to say it’s unbelievable and a little contrived, except that I still don’t know what the nature of time travel is in this show! And now that it’s been canceled, I’m afraid we’ll never know. If there’s someone manipulating it, then it makes perfect sense. Dan’s just had a rough couple of weeks and whoever is making him do this needs his life to be okay so he/she/it can keep using him to help people in the past. But if it’s something more like fate… well, that’s a little harder to swallow.

One of the more interesting elements in the series is Livia’s life in 1948 and I was happy to finally see a glimpse of it. She’s about to get married to a man back there now, which adds a new conflict into the mix. I liked how the film had a white-washed look to it, giving it a nice good-old-days period feel. One of the best scenes in the episode was when Livia expressed her frustration to Dan that she couldn’t tell her boyfriend about the time traveling, or even little things, like the fact that “TV isn’t just a fad.”

The Christmas party was good and tense, with Dan’s mother there, Dan time traveling back and forth, and the revelation that Jack’s girlfriend is pregnant and afraid her child might have a mental illness because she thinks Dan’s crazy. It’s always interesting to see people try to be happy during times they think they’re supposed to, like Christmas, when nothing is really right at all. One final side note: I’ve never heard any carolers, professional or otherwise, sing that long a version of “Carol of the Bells” in my life.

3.5 out of 4 points

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan