Fall '07: "Journeyman" Takes Its Time
NBC’s new time-travel drama Journeyman is an unexpectedly smart show — a good show, even. But it’s not really a fun show yet, and that leaves me unsure about whether I actually like it, or just respect it.
The notion of a guy getting plucked randomly from his life, ping-ponging back and forth through time in an attempt to change history for the better, should be all kinds of exciting. But for the most part, Journeyman just sort of moseys from plot point to plot point, serving up your standard-issue Quantum Leap storylines (with significantly less cross-dressing or Dean Stockwell). I never felt annoyed or outright bored by the time travel bits or the characters-of-the-week involved in the first two episodes, but I never really got interested in them, either.
It also wouldn’t hurt the show to develop more of a sense of humor. The second episode sort of improved on the dead-serious pilot in that regard, but by that, I mean that I was briefly and occasionally moved to consider almost smiling. Maybe. Considering this show revolves around a guy who frequently resorts to stealing from his own past self just to get by in his trips through time, you’d think someone in the writers’ room would see fit to explore the dark humor in that.
The cast is uniformly solid, with Kevin McKidd doing fine work in as time-troubled journalist Dan Vassar, and Reed Diamond, who strongly resembles McKidd, believably cast as his brother. And there’s no disputing the supreme hotness of the wonderfully named Moon Bloodgood, as Dan’s enigmatic and supposedly dead ex-girlfriend Livia. They’re all just really … subdued. Tranquilized, almost. Even when we’re supposed to believe that the show’s placing lives or families at stake, the characters never seem more than one calm, reasoned talk away from setting everything right.
Still, the characters are unusually well-written for a primetime drama, and the writers — gasp! — refuse to frontload the series with ham-fisted exposition! Viewers are actually expected to piece together clues about the complex relationships between our hero and his friends and family! Important parts of their histories are left mostly or entirely unsaid! It’s enough to give unsuspecting viewers a strange tingling sensation somewhere inside their skulls, as if their brain was actually being engaged. Shocking!
Furthermore, even if he and his writers need a little work on the whole “dramatic tension” thing, creator Kevin Falls has clearly put a huge and impressive amount of thought into all the little details surrounding his premise. Dan can’t really drive, lest he blink into another time zone while behind the wheel. When he disappears from an airliner in midflight, the TSA pitches a fit, and our hero ends up on a no-fly list. (The show does a slyly excellent job of pointing out the many ways in which our society’s become a whole lot more scared and less free in just the past few years.) And as I mentioned, Dan’s forced to steal clunky cellphones and chargers, and period-appropriate money, from his past self, lest anyone assume that his funky post-millennial dollar bills are some weird sort of counterfeit. God bless ‘im, Falls even seems to actively enjoy sidestepping cliches; when our hero promises his young son he’ll be there for the kid’s piano recital, by golly, he makes it on time.
I also liked that, unlike too many TV heroes, Dan has clearly seen a movie or TV show at some point in the past 20 years. When he starts getting bounced around the history books, he doesn’t keep freaking out and wondering what exactly is happening to him. He basically goes, “Oh. I must be traveling in time. And since I keep running into the same people, I must somehow be supposed to help them.” Nice touch, that.
Best of all, the supposedly dead Livia turns up alive and well during Dan’s trips to the past — and seems to be a fellow time-traveler like him, perhaps assigned to aid him in the same way he aids others. (“Don’t travel with citrus,” she cautions, in one of the show’s only glimpses of a sense of humor to date. “It tends to explode.”) And while Dan’s long since moved on in the nine years since her “death,” and very much loves his wife and son, far less time seems to have passed for Livia. It’s the most intriguing wrinkle of the series thus far, and the most compelling.
The show’s got a better-than-average brain, and even the makings of a decent heart. If Journeyman can just get a shot of adrenalin — Pulp Fiction-sized, if you please! — it might earn itself a regular chunk of my time every Monday night.
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