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
