Journeyman - season 1 thread (1 Viewer)

[Greg_S_H]

That raises a question for me. Livia took the money away, but wasn't it back last night? Dan handed it down and told Katie to burn it, right? I guess the simple answer is that they hid it in the past for a short time and then brought it back when they figured they were safe.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I still hate these weekly throwback "missions" because I find them uninteresting.

I predict Dan will bounce back to 1948 and actually see Livia in her own timeframe.

 

[TonyD]

he's just as well known now for Smallville.

 

[Joseph Young]

Short of prognostication, I can confidently assert that their father - in fact, the whole famned damily, is going to play a huge role in this mystery, posthumous or otherwise.

Jack's being in the dark about his brother's time hopping has actually created a lot of great dramatic tension, but I can't help thinking: why doesn't Dan try to tell him again? I mean, when Dan told Jack he saw Livia (in S01E01), Jack ridiculed him ("Why doesn't he use his 'wayback machine?') but things have gotten considerably stranger since then. Instead of yelling at him about 'I tried to tell you, but you didn't believe me!' why not just lock yourself in a room with him and let him see for himself? I mean, he tried telling his brother ONCE. It seems to me like Jack is someone Dan needs in his corner and it's pride that's ultimately preventing either of them from reconciling this.

Television writers often endow their characters with so much baggage and pride and repression, not just because it's dramatically interesting, but it also happens to be dramatically convenient. Sometimes I prefer shows that go for the jugular... secrets get thrown out regularly and the real drama comes from peoples' reactions to discovering the truth - or refusing to accept the truth.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

As I noted earlier, I think Livia only took the ten or twenty grand that Dan needed to get into the poker game. My perception of the scene with the bag is that Katie transferred the cash that was left to Dan's jacket pockets. He was surprised that the bag was empty (and equally surprised that she had handed it to him with the FBI looking on.) She wasn't. When he stuck his hand in his pocket (probably looking for his keys) he felt a brick of cash and said something like "I love you" to Katie. It was still in his pocket when he was in the store, which is why he was able to toss it in the air to distract the robbers.

Regards,

Joe

 

[John_Lee]

Speaking of 'throwback' missions, anyone have insight concerning the connection between Mr. Tachyon saying he's shifted to working with Quartz, and the hippy's infatuation with quartz crystals?

 

[Patrick Sun]

I find the missions dramatically uninteresting because Dan seems to put his life in peril far too easily. It's always rung false for me and this show. Maybe if his background wasn't just as a journalist, but something more action-oriented (military or law enforcement), it might be a little more believable.

Obviously, whoever is pulling the strings has almost pinpoint accuracy with pairing up Dan and Livia in time and space, almost frightening so, because why would someone with that kind of power care about these "touch by an angel" scenarios. I supposed he/they are entrusted with making sure the timestream is preserved (a la Timecop), but the macro story had better be a humdinger because these smaller episodes' dramatic tension levels just feel too artificially ramped up for a time-traveling journalist.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Could the hippy be Langley?

 

[Jason Seaver]

Are you sure he didn't say "quarks"?

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure he did.

Sure, go ahead, spoil our fun. We could have spun this "quartz" thing out for at least a week.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

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

 

[Patrick Sun]

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.

 

[Greg_S_H]

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.

 

[Patrick Sun]

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.

 

[Greg_S_H]

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.

 

[Will_B]

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.

 

[Will_B]

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.

 

[Greg_S_H]

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.

 

[Patrick Sun]

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

 

[Qui-Gon John]

Maybe feudal Japan???