Save Journeyman
For years it seemed as if there was nothing good on television--nothing that seemed to capture my imagination anymore. In recent years, I’ve discovered a handful of shows that I enjoy such as Lost and Heroes. This year another show piqued my interest, and after watching the pilot I was hooked. That show is Journeyman.
If you’re completely unfamiliar with the premise, here is the synopsis from NBC.com:
From Emmy Award-winning writer-producer Kevin Falls ("The West Wing") and Emmy Award-winning director-producer Alex Graves ("The West Wing"), "Journeyman" is a romantic mystery-drama about Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd, "Rome"), a San Francisco newspaper reporter and family man who inexplicably begins to travel through time and change people's lives. Along the way, he also must deal with the difficulties and strife at work and home brought on by his sudden disappearances.
However, his freewheeling travels through the decades reunite him with his long-lost fiancée Livia (Moon Bloodgood, "Day Break") -- which complicates his present-day life with wife Katie (Gretchen Egolf, "Martial Law") and their son. Reed Diamond ("Homicide: Life on the Street") and Charles Henry Wyson ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") also star.
Yes, there are shades of the old show Quantum Leap in Journeyman; however, that show was primarily episodic with very little continuity between episodes. Journeyman presents a mystery that gradually unravels more and more through each episode. We don't know why Dan is disappearing through time. Is it God? Is it an unknown scientific project that has focused its attention on him? I've also read comparisons between Journeyman and the book, The Time Traveler's Wife, but having not read that book, I can't really comment. All I know is that the writing is good; and the characters not only have depth, they have complicated relationships, made more so by what's happening to Dan.
If you're a fan of the show, it's time to step up to try to save it. The first ten episodes have aired, and there are two more to go. After that there's nothing. Part of this is because of the current writer's strike in Hollywood. The other reason is that the ratings haven't been quite what NBC wanted and they have yet to order what's called the "back nine" of episodes that would complete the entire season. The next episode will air December 10 on NBC at 10PM EST, and it's important that you watch it.
But there's more you can do in the meantime. First there's an online petition, and I encourage you to sign it. Second, NBC pays attention to who is viewing what on the internet (that's a lot of what the writer's strike is about). Download episodes or even the whole season of Journeyman through iTunes (Journeyman is still on iTunes in spite of NBC pulling all of their shows over the weekend because 10th Century Fox produces the show). Also go to NBC's websites and watch episodes there. This is a great show. Good writing is rare on television these days, and perhaps in a junk food culture, good writing is working against it. But I could really see it carry its story through multiple seasons if enough people watch it.
Even if you've never seen Journeyman before, please check it out.
Links of importance. Sign the petition. Watch/download episodes:
- Journeyman on iTunes
- Online Petition to Save Journeyman
- NBC Journeyman Page
- NBC Direct Journeyman Page
- Amazon.com Unbox Journeyman Episodes (see box to the right).