Journeyman: "Winterland" (Episode 108)

"The past smells funny." "That's the hippies."

This show is simply not good. I’m not usually so blunt with my criticism of television shows, knowing the work that has to into every aspect of a series in order for it to come together as a whole. Sometimes even hard work doesn’t come together and this is one of those cases. I love time travel stories, I love complicated mythologies, I love show continuity and I can certainly stand relationship driven drama. However, it seems like no aspect of this show can come together. This show just does not work due to a variety of issues: odd performance choices, characters with no motivation, scenes that have no purpose, bad dialogue, show logic rules that get broken every other week, poor special effects and color timing that makes the picture look like something that you’d find in a diaper. The good news? Those of you that are digging this show for some reason are probably going to get the full run of thirteen episodes, since the networks can’t afford any cancellations with the WGA strike, and I’m going to get to recap all of them.

"Us co-workers only appear when it's convenient."We start with a bit of sneaky direction with Dan being asked “What year is it?” and he answers “2004.” But it turns out that he’s talking about the cheap wine that he just bought and the paper’s food snob tells him that he got ripped off. Hugh’s got news for Dan, and after Dan makes the strangest “uh-oh” sound, Hugh tells him that he needs to pay attention to his work. There’s going to be layoffs and the food snob is probably on the list.

The past is sexy...Dan flashes to the past to a seventies key party where the swinging is in full effect. Only both Dan and Livia are too dense to recognize the situation at first. Did they never see The Ice Storm? Turns out that Livia has an excuse, as we find out, but that just means Dan is slow… and for a reporter, that’s pretty pathetic. The owner of the house is one of the Duke boys (or Pa Kent) and he wanders off with Dan’s 2004 wine, but of course he thinks it’s just a gag. Even though sex is in the air, Dan is only interested by Nixon’s speech on television. I don’t see why it’s so fascinating. Live would be one thing, but a TV broadcast is still just that. Ma and Pa Kent’s daughter comes home from school and Dan naively sends her to her mother’s bedroom to find her mother in coitus with some other man. Of course it scars her and she bolts out of the house. Apparently that was Dan’s mission for this leap, because moments later he’s gone.

Cue crazy backwards credits.

Next up, pointless scene with Wifey Shrew’s friends just to show that they are jealous of Dan. Was that really necessary? Are they padding for time? This episode barely tops forty minutes. Later, Dan and Wifey discover that the 2004 wine is terrible. Is this related to the exploding oranges thing? Dan and Wifey get comfortable since Dan Jr. is nowhere to be found. Wifey is just happy to be “normal” again, continuing with the theme that seems to be omnipresent in NBC shows ever since Surface dealing with men with complicated lives and their wives who are desperate for them to be “normal”. “Why can’t you be normal!” complete with southern accent, is frequent cry around my house hold to mock these sort of schlock scenes on television.

Elsewhere, we attempt to pay attention as Jerk Bro deals with the FBI about Dan’s magic counterfeit money. The whole case that the FBI is building in this episode is questionable at best. The agent questions Dan about a 32 year old hijacking and tries to connect it with Dan disappearing off of his plane earlier in the season. It’s one thing if he was testing how to pull of the McCleen job again, but somehow the agent wants to tie Dan into terrorism and hijacking. It doesn’t really make much sense. Who does a dry run under their own name? What would he want to hijack a plane for? It’s a stretch.

Dan goes to find the satchel of money, which is, for some reason, hidden in a different place in the same oddly unfinished closet. Dan and Wifey get to awkwardly discuss the box of Livia’s belonging that he’s still holding on to.

"That Dan should really ask me a few direct questions next time..."Dan gets an unexpected call from Langley, asking Dan to meet him at Café Luna since it’s the only restaurant in all of San Francisco. Has the production designer on this show never heard of redressing a set? Langley meets on a steam filled street (San Fran guys, not New York) instead of at the café for no discernable reason whatsoever. He tells Dan all about how he’s studying quartz now. All…right. Langley continues to speak even less veiled than The Marked on The 4400, telling Dan to beware the government as they’ll want to control his “ideas,” like they tried to use his work to fight terrorism. He doesn’t tell Dan, even though it’s obvious that he means time travel. Moments later, Dan vanishes and Langley doesn’t even bat an eye.

"It's okay, Abby, hippies are very responsible..."In the past, Dan finds himself in the same spot where the young girl from the party, Abby, disappeared many years ago. He intervenes when a pickup driver tries to help Abby with a flat tire. Abby doesn’t have a spare, so Dan helps her to fall in with a group of hippies since the pickup driver is still hovering nearby. The sequence just reminds me that the show hasn’t bothered to do anything with The Zodiac killer, which seems like it would be a natural for a leap. Hilariously, when Dan asks the hippies for the year (why does he always do that), they get it wrong themselves.

Back in the present, Jerk Bro is in the house and tries to apologize, as if there’s much he could say now that he turned his brother in. Somehow Jerk Bro still thinks this has something to do with gambling debts, but I don’t see how. Dan kicks him out again and that’s that. And he finally tells Wifey Shrew to shut up about Jerk Bro.

One commercial later though, Dan is apologizing for the previous scene. Just then Ryan Chapelle shows up to search the house. Dan tries to sneak the bag of cash past him, but after some pointless bantering, he ends up showing the agent the contents. It’s empty. Wifey pulled a fast one and loaded up Dan’s coat pockets with the remaining cash instead.

Is Angela a more of a hippie name than Abby?Skipping back to the past, Dan finds himself in a diner with Livia, sitting next to the hippies from before. Abby has fallen in with them, but they’re not the best influence. The diner owner doesn’t much like the dirty hippies being in his shop either. Rather than dance around the issue, Dan just out and tells the hippies that they’re time travelers from the future. One hippie has weird statements to make about quartz and time-keeping. Dan tries for a moment to stop Abby from going with them, but instead, it’s all Dan can do to stop the diner owner from shooting Abby as she steals money off a table. And like that, he’s gone.

"Seriously, it could turn out that my death was a ploy... and I could have a soul patch..."In the present, Jerk Bro tries to be less of a jerk and stand up for his brother. But Chapelle used to have to deal with Jack Bauer, so the dead cop from The Shield is nothing to him. He cuts Jerk Bro down to size, laying out how ridiculous this whole love quadrangle thing that Journeyman has going really is. Chapelle wishes that Bauer never shot him in the head, but hey, if Almeida can come back, why can’t Chapelle, right?

Did they really need Toto to sell that it's 1948?Wifey goes about setting the house right again, including the box of stuff from Livia that Dan had been keeping in the closet. She of course finds something suspicious: a photo of Livia in old-timey clothing. Of course, it could just be that she was playing dress up, or maybe she was on a leap when the photo was taken, but Wifey for some reason makes the leap that this is where (or when) Livia is from.

Meanwhile, Dan tracks Abby by calling Pa Kent and discovers that Abby ended up in jail for murder. Good for her. Dan saved her only to turn her into a killer. Wifey shows up and explains about Livia and how she’s actually from the past, but not before saying things like “Sorry, I didn’t hear your answer. My query was perfunctory.” … Can I somehow cancel this show on behalf of the network?

Meanwhile, Jerk Bro is being sucked into Dan’s mess since his reports have been compromised (sort of) by Dan’s time traveling. Chapelle brings out a report that Jerk Bro wrote about his run in with Dan (unknown to him) while passing a counterfeit (future) twenty dollar bill. The report is correct and the evidence is untampered with, but now that it is obviously a bill from the future, Chapelle thinks that Jerk Bro replaced the bill with a current one to protect his brother. But how would counterfeiting tie in with the rest of the crimes that he’s accusing Dan of? Jerk Bro is utterly confused. Yet, does Chapelle know the true situation here and is simply gathering evidence so he doesn’t sound like a crazy person when he makes his case?

Dan and Wifey continue to discuss Livia and try to understand how Livia can be from the past. Hell, is there an old Livia around in 2007? Dan and Wifey have an awkward scene with Dan co-workers, but he makes an escape to the past, directly into a robbery in progress. The hippies are robbing the joint, but the trigger man is so high that he doesn’t even understand that Dan appeared out of nowhere. Then Abby doesn’t notice when Livia appears out of nowhere right in front of her.

If you don't understand time travel, just kill it!Dan and Livia try to talk Abby out of doing this robbery and the murder that she’s about to commit, but Livia and Dan still have time to discuss when Livia is from. Livia traveled from 1948 and was never meant to be with Dan. But how does she “correct” things if they are all in her future? They haven’t happened the “wrong” way yet. Dan distracts the robbing hippies by throwing them all the McCleen money that he has on him. It doesn’t change the hippies’ minds, but it changes Abby’s. Abby takes strength from Dan’s comments and walks out on the hippies, even at gunpoint. Moments later, the police arrive as Dan and Livia make their escape. The rest of the crew (minus one) is shot dead, McCleen money scattered on the floor. Dan decides that there is definitely a higher power behind this and he’s tired of doing its dirty work. Livia finishes her backstory by telling Dan how she arrived here in the late eighties and decided to stay. She didn’t know what her mission was, so she adapted and utilized advantages that she didn’t have in her time, like being able to go to law school. She was happy with Dan and wanted to stay with him. But someone had different ideas…

Back in the present, Dan picks up an extremely convenient paper and learns that Abby became a successful politician instead. Dan levels with Wifey and tells her how Livia went back to 1948 (then how does she keep a stock of future clothes and money?) and that she told him to expect the leaps to last longer. Wifey is distraught and Dan tries to comfort her. Maybe this show would be better if it pulled a Millennium and just killed off the wife… ooh, or makes it so she never existed.

Elsewhere, Jerk Bro is drinking his cares away, spending the “counterfeit” bill, signifying… what? That he’s starting to believe that his brother is traveling through time?

NEXT WEEK: Dan’s going to do things his way, dammit!

"What year is it? ...1969?"