Journeyman - season 1 thread

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

You don't have to be a cop or a firefighter as a soldier to be willing to put yourself at risk to protect others. Every day in real life people run into burning buildings, take on knife-wielding thugs and dive into roaring rivers to save others. (When he was a young man my own father jumped into a moving car that was rolling downhill and brought it to a stop just before it would have slammed into a brick wall. The kid inside had released the parking brake.)

Some people don't have it in them not to help out in such a situation, but not all of them go into the kind of helping professions you mentioned. The difference is that most of these people don't run into that kind of situation more than once or twice in a lifetime - unless they are cops or firefighters or lifeguards or soldiers. Dan is unusual in that his time-hopping puts him situations where he has to take risks to protect others that he would never normally face. But it is who he is that makes him get involved. And he'd be the same even if he never "travelled". He'd still take risks getting a story, protecting a source or getting an innocent by-stander out of the way of a bad situation he was covering.

It think these episodes reveal character and I don't find it unrealistic that a good man might try to do good when given the chance, even at some risk to himself.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

But Dan is now doing it on a regular basis, and for what reward? (well, beside getting pockets loaded with stolen cash.) How many times do regular folks get that opportunity to ward off the bad guys in their daily lives? How does Dan justify butting into a dangerous situation given that he has a wife and child in 2007? I never really get this sense that Dan thinks he'll ever die in the past on these missions, or he's a true optimist in every sense of the word.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

I'm pretty sure he did *not*. He was talking about quartz, and then the hippy was suddenly talking about quartz. He even fingered a quartz necklace and mentioned its use in clocks. I don't think it was just a coincidence and Langley said "quarks." It was not important enough on its own to merit so much dialog (such as when the other hippy said, "If your next word is quartz, I'll kill you.")


Remember that the hippy is dead.


This show absolutely demands remembering past details and paying attention to what's happening presently. I figured that Katie had burned the money like Dan had asked (in fact, I was thinking of a Stephen King story I recently read where the narrator burned some contraband and put the ashes down the disposer). I would never have figured she transferred the money. I also thought that Livia had taken all the money to keep Jack from finding it, and that Dan knew she had.

The bar scene was hard to read. I didn't take it that he was really tampering with evidence, as he had been accused. I just took the bill as a reminder of what Jack was facing, and more reason for him to get drunk.


He has talked about this with both Livia and Kate, I believe. Katie has asked him what would happen if he died in the past. I doubt if Dan wants to put himself in these situations any more than we would, but if he doesn't, he knows he might end up stranded in time.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

BTW, how far into the future can Livia be sent to, and how far back can Dan be sent to? Any guesses?

A lot of the dramatic "danger" elements are fine to me with a show like "The Dead Zone" but for some reason, it still hasn't never quite gelled for me with Journeyman" yet.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

And how far in space can Dan travel? He's always been in San Fran so far, I think, but rarely does he appear in the past where he is in the present. I wonder if he could end up in Tokyo at some point.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

As a reporter, Dan obviously cared about the human condition enough to hear about it and tell it to others. It seems logical that when pressed into duty he'd have the same interest in people that he had when he was only writing about them. Plus his brother became a cop, so we see their family likes taking action.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

Another small detail I loved from last night: the tension was palpable when Dan's boss hung onto his arm just as Dan was sensing a shift coming on. The terror of what would happen if his boss got flung back in time was conveyed just with the touch and the look Dan was giving. Maybe someone watching the show for the first time wouldn't have even noticed what was going on. But for regular viewers, it was yet another indication that this show is being controlled very well by the head writer or producer or whatever. These stories are packed with this kind of detail.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

I'm practically in a panic every time he's at work. If he got hauled in for questioning, the suspense would be terrible. He needs to ask Livia if it'll ever be controllable to any degree.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

I would have died if they could have also casted Annette O'Toole as the swinging wife for "Pa Kent".

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

Maybe feudal Japan???

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

We would have missed you, so good thing they got Anonymous Chick.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

Who's to say that the "throwback" missions are not important? As well as the writers seem to be tying things together here, I expect every mission to have a bearing on the "future".

I suspect that "Tacheon Man" is a Journeyman, living in Dans' future.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

Langley definately said he had moved his focus of study onto quartz. No small coincidence that it was also in the episode as the best "timekeeper" in the world...

You guys know what Gibbs says about coincidences

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

So whats the end game if Dans life spirals out of control. He could easily lose his job, his family and his freedom if the Feds continue down their current path. Does that just leave him free of responsibilities to go on long journey's?

My take of the 20 dollar bill at the bar was that was Brother was drinking the evidence against Dan and possibly washing his career away at the same time. Once the Fed realizes the note has gone or been replaced he is going to know who did it and why.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

I take it that there's a conservation of time w/r/t Dan and Livia, meaning, if Dan bounces backwards in time for a duration 2 days, he returns 2 days from the point he bounced from the present to the past, and would be missing for 2 days from his wife's point of view as well.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

Can anyone confirm that the 20 that Dan's brother paid with is the same bill that the Fed showed him? I can't imagine that the Fed would have left it, so I'm assuming that the brother was simply staring at another 20 and thinking about whether his brother's story could be true. Perhaps a freeze frame of the serial number might reveal whether it is the same bill.

In any case, didn't Dan just throw a pile of the stolen money onto the hoodlum that got shot at the store? So in the past there is now a record that a bunch of unusually violent hippies had the money. Dan should be off the hook simply from the chance that some of those bills would up back in circulation.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

My thought (and it is only speculation based mostly on the way the bar scene "played") is that if the $20 Jack spent at the bar is more than a normal $20 he's just looking at while thinking about the case, then it is the same $20 that Dan gave the cabbie in the past. But (and this is where I may not have been clear earlier) not the $20 that the FBI agent found in the evidence locker.

On this theory Jack would have pulled a switch back in the past (probably by making a photocopy of the fake $20) after he originally got the bill from the cabbie. (Because that bill would have had Jack's fingerprints on it.) So the obviously fake "evidence" bill is still in the envelope with the original seals, and Jack kept the near-perfect bill with the wrong year and Secretary of the Treasury. Which he now sees ws accurate and he spends it to get rid of it. But it also gets him thinking about Dan.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

In a previous scene with the FBI agent, they showed the agent getting up and leaving Dan alone staring at the bill. The assumption a scene or two later with a similar zoom in on the bill makes it probable the intention is to show it is the suspect currency.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

Joe, you're overthinking it. Dan's brother put the bill into a sealed evidence bag at the time, and it remained sealed until present day when the Fed waved it in his face. The only reason why the Fed accused him of having switched it out was because the bill had a signature that defied time.


Ok. I'm not sure they conveyed their intention clearly enough. I guess we'll find out next week.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

I think that is right regarding the time he would be away when he returns from his travels. I guess Dan is living his life "normally", just that 2 days of his life has been spent somewhere else.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

So, how close is Langley to directing Dan's journeys?

That's how I interpreted it as well. The question is whether he is going to put more pieces together of what Dan is actually doing. Or if Dan does tell him the truth will he now believe it?

Neil

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who was slightly confused by the bills' origins and the purpose of the zoom shot of the $20 at the very end of the episode. This, coupled with the already complex dispersement of the hijack bills, and those are a lot of bills to keep track of.

I like that Journeyman doesn't telegraph its more labyrinthine elements and dumb itself down, but there are times (as with House, M.D.) that I feel the writers are a little too wrapped up in their own story arc's internal logic to remember there's an audience of very sleepy people trying to keep everything together. I must admit, I've let a few things slide here and there, but that what this forum is great for - lots of people have filled in the blanks for me!

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

Here you guys go!!!
The top picture is of the evidence $20 bill
The bottom one is Jack paying for his beer
They have the same numbers
So I'm assuming Jack is paying with the original bill, and NOT the evidence bill, or else Jack would get in trouble for stealing evidence
The fed told Jack the original bill is missing(which Jack obviously has) Jack must have copied it, to cover his ass

http://www.mypicstudio.com/view.php?...p0001.jpg.html

http://www.mypicstudio.com/view.php?...p0000.jpg.html

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

I agree with Will B.

I wouldn't think Jack would have switched any of the $20 bills. So I fail to see the significance of the zoom shot when he pays for the beer.

Funny if now that those teens got the other money in the 70's, if the bills start turning up all over the place, guess that would take the heat off Dan.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

Sorry. Technical difficulties. Trying to post image.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

Not really. The bill the Jack took wouldn't match the serial numbers of the ones recovered after the robbery, so Dan would still be under suspicion of having contact with the hijacker or of recovering part of the ransom money. Even if Dan had all of the money that had been in the bag, what was found at the robbery crime scene would still be about twenty-thousand dollars short of the ransom - that being the amount he lost in the card game that night.

BTW, does anyone remember when the hijacking took place? How about the robbery where Dan saved the girl from being killed?

I'm just trying to figure out if the local cops recovered all that ransom money before the hijacking took even took place.



Except the photos make it clear that the bill Jack was spending in the bar is that same as that in the evidence envelope. And that only leaves us with three possibilities:

1) He stole the bill out of evidence and spent it, probably ending both the investigation into Dan and his own police career. (And maybe getting a nice obstruction of justice indictment from the Feds for himself into the bargain.)

2) He somehow swapped the evidence bill with a photocopy and spent the real bill, while leaving the copy.

That then raises the question of when the made the switch. If it was in the present he would have to break the seal on the envelope and reseal it, or get another envelope and put the bill in and reseal it without being detected. Neither would have been easy to do.

If, however, he photocopied the bill when he first got it in the past, before he put it into evidence, then the fake bill would always have been in evidence and the real one in his possession. Since his was the next house the feds were likely to search and he would have no convincing explanation of how he had a better copy of the same bill, he spent it.

Here are the pics JohnS provided, with one of them flipped over so that the numbers are right-side up and both contrast-adjusted to make the numbers easier to read:





The Bar Bill




The Evidence Bill

Same serial number.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

I was thinking that as well. And couldn't it potentially mean that now in present time, Dan is never even investigated? Meaning, since a lot of the bills are now "out there" since the 70's, the twenty that Jack got from Dan wouldn't necessarily have been flagged by the Feds.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

The $20 Jack got from Dan wasn't part of the hijack money. It was currency Dan just happened to have on his person that he gave to the cabbie.

Okay, I get you. If the hijacking money is never investigated, they will have no reason to look into Jack's past cases, so they won't ever look at the $20. I don't think the show will resolve it that easily.

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

Nope. See my post above. The bills have been "out there" since the hijacking in 1975, too, that didn't prevent Dan from being investigated. The bills Dan left at the robbery scene were the "missing" bills that have never surfaced. If the robbery took place before the hijacking, the serial numbers wouldn't have returned any hits if entered in any database, and probably wouldn't have been entered in any database themselves as they were not "missing" and were just evidence in a local robbery case. If the robbery took place after the hijacking they would have been identified as coming from the ransom, but since all the robbers were dead, the trail would have gone cold. Dan's bill - which was not left at the robbery scene - would still be evidence in an on-going investigation and put him under suspicion. Leaving the bills in the past changes nothing except that the FBI can no longer discover that the large stash of bills that he was hiding.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Journeyman - season 1 thread

Thanks for the pics. I think we're all on the same page now, which is that:

Jack is paying with the original bill, which IS the evidence bill, and Jack WILL get in trouble for stealing evidence. The fed told Jack the original bill is missing simply because the Fed can't accept the time-defying fact that the evidence bill had a signature from the future on it. Jack never copied anything, and his ass is uncovered.