Journeyman - season 1 thread (1 Viewer)

[KevinGress]

I tend to agree - although both the ex-fiance and current wife were pretty striking

While overall I liked the show, I like QL better. It had a better mix of drama, humor and historic scope (while I do think Journeyman was very good about representing the time he 'journeyed' to - cellphones, TV shows, etc).

I didn't intend to watch it, but since I did, I'll try to continue watching it, but right now, if it were to be cancelled I wouldn't miss it too much.

 

[Doug Wallen]

Good, intriguing but it seems to be a bit to complicated for the regular audience to turn in for. If the wife has problems believing her husband, how much harder for an audience member.

That being said, I did enjoy the pilot and will watch the next several eps before making my decision assuming NBC hasn't already decided for me.

Doug

 

[Scott-S]

This show has promise. If it can hold on to more of Heroes viewers it might stand a chance.

I wonder how the ratings of the first episode are affected by having the pilot available on demand? I watched the Pilot via on demand and so I didnt't need to watch this week at it's normal time. I will watch it next week, but I skipped it this week.

I wonder if more people did that and it affected the ratings? It would suck if the great marketing ploy of offering these on demand, back-fires by giving the show less viewers on it's first week.

 

[Joe_H]

I just watched the pilot myself (been slowly catching up with what's DVRed, and I really liked it, and now that everyone mentions it I definitely see the similarities between the Dead Zone guy and the guy on this.

I love the 'dead' ex, if only for the actress' name, which when I saw it on Day Break, I thought was definitely one of the weirdest I've ever seen (that she's hot doesn't hurt matters either): Moon Bloodgood. Who wants to bet if her parents were hippies

 

[Chris]

I just realized something.


Now I know what the real problem I had is. In QL, he goes to a specific point and stays there through the whole episode. So, you get a setting that is entirely in the past and they are able to flesh out the differences and the realities that changed in between where he started and where he ended up.

I think the thing is, since he popped back and forth several times, it was hard to follow why he was in the past or what the purpose was. If you look at QL, in the first segment (say 10 minutes) you had a basic idea of what kind of things were wrong, and they worked to try and figure out a solution.

Here, the viewer has to "guess" what is wrong, and it is very disconcerting as to how you go from place to place. This creates some significant problems in how you pull that off.. like his car going through a red light and plowing over people. How do you get around that? Or the fact you pop back and forth at random?

The story has to be better developed so the audience has better clues what we should be following. When he "leaped" into multiple different time points in the past, it made it hard for us to realize any changes that had happened between point A and B. And more then that, his mucking around with his own past (like showing up at the party as himself) tend to make it really confusing.. why does no one from the present remember any oddities like that? Or his brother remember being called by him when he was meeting him.. or have it mentioned to him then (so he would remember.. "oh, here's where I call my brother") I was just thinking about all the paradoxes. QL did a good job of avoiding that by saying "you can't interact with anyone who knows you.. major bad things can happen.."

 

[Greg_S_H]

Maybe he'll learn to control things better and will stay in the past longer in the future than he does presently. Heh.

 

[Qui-Gon John]

I was wondering the same thing, if he will learn to control his time jumps. So far, they've been controlling him. But his "dead" fiance seems to be able to control hers, so I'm thinking he will learn this.

 

[todd s]

Regarding his "leaps". It does look like in the previews he gets a heads up (Headache) before he leaps. So it won't be so out of the blue.

Also, he had a cameraphone. While I was back in time. I would have take some video of things. A little extra proof.

 

[Chris]

Still, I can't figure out how he will hold down a job, etc. in the current if he disappears for days.. the "I'll fight for my marriage" bit is going to be beyond difficult if they have no advance notice (in more then a few minutes) you're about to disappear for days on end.

 

[Marty M]

This just might be a hole in the storyline that cannot or will not ever be filled. I think this will be one of many things we just have to accept without trying to apply logic.

 

[Raasean Asaad]

I liked it although I hated the OJ circa '97 looking guy that of course was going to commit a similar crime. Everything else was nicely done even though I had to explain the ending to a few people. I hope it lasts.

 

[KevinGress]

While I doubt they really deal with the subject, he could simply take some money and when in the past invest in stocks that he knows will do well (oil, Microsoft, etc). Probably not very entertaining, though.

I like Chris' post about why he likes QL better. While I think a little guesswork on what needs to be fixed is good, it does help to drive the story if it's known what needs to happen and have the drama/comedy be driven from how to get there.

But, right now, I think QL is better because I like the Sam character better and the interaction between Sam and Al give a nice comic element to balance out the drama.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Were we watching the same show? The Neil Gaines thing was the McGuffin of the episode. It was almost completely beside the point. You weren't supposed to care about it. You were supposed to care about the hero and his plight. Yeah, he was interested in solving the puzzle and understanding why he was bouncing around in on man's life, but that wasn't supposed to be the focus for the audience. Unlike all the characters in the series we knew, going in, that this wasn't going to be his one and only Journey.
I liked it a lot. And I particularly liked the fact that they didn't spoon-feed us all the rules in the last five minutes of the first episode. If we get to figure this stuff out along with Dan, so much the better.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Greg_S_H]

I hope it's not too much of a spoiler, but the DVR summary for next week says he undergoes tests because he doubts his trips are real. Hello? What about the stuff from the future ending up buried under the seven-year-old deck?

Oh, well. I'd probably doubt the evidence of my own eyes if I was jumping backward and forward in time, too.

 

[Joseph Young]

The trick with writing about time travel is to strike that balance between too simplistic and 'too much plot.' I didn't have a problem with the overall idea of making sure the son of Neil Gaines lives, but the execution of that mystery was not interwoven with Dan's personal dilemma very well. Given that the viewer must spend much of the episode just processing Dan's crazy dilemma, the side story just pushed it a little too far for a show that's trying to win the viewer over.

Don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed the show, and I very much want it to succeed. I want the actors to get a chance to flesh out their characters (they're all likeable).

The period music and detail were extremely fitting for each era, even moving in some spots, I liked Dan (although the characterization has not been fleshed out very well yet), and the premise.

I'm also an old school Quantum Leap fan and that premise allowed for much more conventional - and therefore accessible - episode arcs. Even thought QL lasted several seasons, one must remember that the network television landscape has shifted pretty dramatically in the last fifteen years and has grown much more competitive. Remember that QL only survived because the fan outrage/petition that followed the near-cancellation of that show was, for its time, impressive and unprecedented to the network. Now it takes nothing short of a miracle (see Jericho for an example of this) to save a show from certain death.

Given the initial ratings as posted earlier in this thread, I agree that the show is toast. I hate to say that, cause I live around San Francisco, I love anything to do with time travel, and the show has a lot of promise. Unfortunately, promise is for spreading on toast, not for keeping good shows on the air.

 

[Mikel_Cooperman]

Well Heroes had a pretty large audience last season and that wasn't exactly reality. People rapped their head around that. I don't know why people wouldn't want to give this a try.
I thought there was some good drama and I liked the characters and I am guessing since his ex girlfriend was in the past with him, there has to be some of this plot line and where he comes from.

 

[Will_B]

I watched the NBC preview disc twice, I liked this show so much. But our house has been watching Rome for the past couple months so I may be biased by already liking the actor who plays the time-hopping guy.

I think it is clear at the end that he will be made less disheveled by the experiences from now on. He's sitting in a chair with his clothes on (rather than his pjs), ready to hop, and presumably he's got power bars, and whatever else he might need to get to the heart of this matter.

As for the likelihood of losing his job in the present day, he just needs to find his wallet when he is back in time, grab his then-current ID, steal a few thousand of his own dollars from his own then-bank account, and open a separate brokerage account somewhere, and buy some stocks he knows are doing great in 2007. And somehow keep this secret from his previous self. Instant paycheck, come 2007.

 

[Hugh Jackes]

Oddly, Bellasario commented at the time that they kept the rules kind of "fluid" so that he could break them if they wanted too (like the time Sam leapt into Al at a time before Sam's lifetime). And I loved QL.

 

[Vlad D]

I really enjoyed this, I'm a big fan of QL and anything having to do with time travel in general. I like the direction, and although I wouldn't have minded a little bit more explanation, I can handle not being spoon fed. Hopefully it will last. For me this caps off my Monday night Trifecta of Chuck, Heroes and Journeyman.

Was also nice to see Moon Bloodgood (love that name) again. Really liked her in Daybreak. She reminds me of a young Tia Carrere.

 

[todd s]

Like I said earlier and so have others. It seems like he will get a bit more warning about when he will "leap". So it won't be while he is driving.