Journeyman: "The Hanged Man" (Episode 112)

Dude, don't rock the RV!

You know that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the Cardassians are torturing Picard and demanding that he say there are three lights in the room instead of four (a concept borrowed from 1984 by the way). At the end Picard admits that he almost broke and agreed to something that wasn’t true just to make the torture stop. That’s exactly the relationship I have with Journeyman. I watch the show week in and week out and I’m just stunned when people don’t share my vile feelings towards the show. Furthermore, most bloggers, forums and members of the geek community keep calling for this show’s renewal. I feel myself breaking though… I don’t know that if I have just seen too much crap from this show to where a well-done moment seems like something to celebrate or if the geeks are getting to me… Or maybe it’s just that the writing is on the wall as NBC throws out the last two post-Christmas episodes this week, with the second Wednesday episode not even getting a moment of advertising at the end of last night's, but I find myself enjoying moments of the time-travel aspect of the show (the domestic issues are still excruciatingly boring) but I really think that I’m enjoying the fact that there are only forty some odd more minutes of this show that I ever have to watch again.

We begin simply enough with Dan and Wifey enjoying their post Xmas bliss with mention of the fact that Wifey’s sissy is coming to visit. Dan’s struggling to figure out his new Xmas digital camera that he “can’t figure out” even though he’s read the manual three times. However, he says this as he’s taking snaps of Wifey wearing a big nightshirt. Seems like he’s got the digital camera as figured out as any one else does theirs. They’re flirtatious, but of course, moments before getting into the hanky panky, Dan of course vanishes into thin air. Good thing it wasn’t a few moments later. At least the fates have a sense of decency.

Dan finds himself in the past in the back of an RV dangling off a cliff. It seems that his presence is the only thing that is keeping the RV from going over the edge in the first place. This is a bit odd as he appears in the RV when it’s already dangling, rather in the process of crashing. Whatever, I can’t even expend brain energy any more on caring about this show. It’s like Sean Penn in Dead Man Walking, but NBC couldn’t spare me the agony of these episodes just by sticking them on the DVD. Anyways, Dan talks a boy and his mother through getting out of the RV safely, but just as he’s about to climb out himself, he drops his new digital camera and is pulled over the edge with the crashing RV. Again, the Fates are kind and while the show spend a bunch of money crashing an RV down a cliff, Dan finds himself back in the present simply crashing down a staircase.

Cue crazy backwards credits.

Back at home, the family is prepping a nice dinner for the appearance of Sissy, and even Hugh is there. Dan is on Jack to find out what sort of things FBI Agent Chapelle was investigating and whether or not there are more travelers out there somewhere (well, he knows of at least one). Apparently Jack was paying attention in that previous scene. Right before Jack is about to come clean with Dan about knocking up his girlfriend that we don’t care about, Sissy shows up with complaints about traffic and comments about San Fran’s “gays”. Dan can’t stick around though and he pops out for a moment.

"They told me that doing this would SAVE the show!"In a cubicle farm, we catch up with Livia newly appeared and dressed in nothing but a babydoll. The scene of Livia traveling in her lingerie was touted on the internets, and while nice, I found it overhyped and rather short. She runs into Dan who helps her while not being able to wipe the smirk off his face. He asks Livia about dropping new technology in the past. She tells him that it’s never a good idea. But what does she know from “new technology,” she’s from the forties! If you were traveling forward in time, would you know whether you had something that came from 2053 or 2031? Sigh. She’s concerned about anything that might have changed, but Dan hasn’t noticed anything.

They realize that they’re in a Silicon Valley office (why do things only happen around San Fran?) where they are seriously concerned about corporate espionage and some crap about foreign spies. Despite that no one notices Dan and Livia, but they spot the mother and son that Dan helped. They’re surprised (although not very) to see that Dan is alive. “Thanks for… saving our lives and everything.” The second worst piece of dialogue is where the mother asks “By the way, what were you doing in our camper that night (you dirty stowaway)?” Dan replies with a vague, I was driving by and decided to help and the mother lets it go even though the question wasn’t answered in any form.

Back in the present, Wifey and Jack make excuses to Sissy and Hugh for Dan’s absence from dinner, but it’s rather awkward with Dan’s boss in the room. There is the most incredibly dull conversation between Sissy, Jack and the girlfriend that we don’t care about.

In the past, it turns out that the boy knows he has a fancy camera and is having a guy at the office examine it. Dan demands the camera back and the boy fights him on it. Livia snatches it when the corporate espionage nazi demands it back. Our time travelers give it up even though they know that they are going to blink out of existence in a moment.

"Hi Daddy! I'm the daughter you never wanted!"Dan arrives back home and Sissy asks pointed questions and knows Dan is lying about where he’s gone. More importantly though, Dan’s daughter comes downstairs to say goodnight. What? Zack is gone, replaced by Caroline and of course that’s the way that it’s always been to everyone and no one remembers Lil’ Dan except Dan himself. A well-executed moment, although they haven’t dealt with major changes to the timeline, but when they do a digital camera left in the past leads to son turning into a daughter? They could mess with it a little bit every episode, but I guess this is more dramatic. Hell, Sam Beckett didn’t turn Al into someone else until a ways into the series.

Dan checks with Wifey and is extremely slow on the uptake. It turns out that everything that he’s done on the series still happened, but he has a daughter. How? Well, it turns out that when Zack was conceived, the events went differently. Dan didn’t conceive a son at that moment, but instead was called away due to problems with the nanotech at the office. Wait, what? If technology was slightly different and started a chain reaction, wouldn’t there be all kinds of changes that Dan would notice?

Nanotech means "hologram". Look it up.Dan pops by the office and it all looks the same. Where’s these “nanotechs”? Hugh hands Dan a liquid paper display(?) with information about Dan’s story. Oh, there’s a holographic display for Dan’s computer, even though the internet looks the same and there’s LCD and CRT monitors in evidence in the background. With a screen that big, everyone can just see when you’re visiting Recapist instead of doing your work.

At home, Sissy wonders what is going on with her sister. Is Dan having an affair (after all he is a Vassar)? Does that mean that Jack cheated on her and that he effectively ended the relationship, not her? She suggests that Wifey meet with a psychic. Oh kay…

At work, Dan looks up information about the mother and son and tries to figure out how to get his old life back. He calls up the mother (on an actual corded phone, natch) and when he drops that he’s the one that saved her life, she begrudgingly agrees to meet him.

On a firing range, Jack meets with his FBI contact and convinces his buddy to let him take a look at the file on Dan. The FBI agent was rogue and looking for time travelers, but he still filed all his information with the home office?

The mother shows up to meet with Dan and of course, she’s blind now, preventing her from noticing that Dan hasn’t aged. Her diabetes made her go blind. Dan inquires about the son, who has gone missing and is most likely dead. He also inquires about the lab geek who was messing with the digital camera in the past. The mother says “I don’t know what happened to him. He started his own company, I think. Did quite well.” Well, I guess you did know then, lady. Jeez.

At home, Sissy, Wifey and daughter chat about Dan and how the paper is still laying off people because the internet is where it’s at. What nanotech didn’t affect that area of the world at all? Wifey is thinking about having a boy, Sissy makes comments referring to a diaphragm as a goalie and the daughter is curious. Ha ha ha, ho ho ho. Fart.

Aww! Lil' Langley and actual Lil' Dan!Jack reads through Dan’s file and the FBI buddy dodges questions about whether or not there were other people that were being illegally investigated. More importantly though, he discovers a photo of Elliot Langley with Dan as a child. Intrigue!

At home, the psychic has come to visit and gives Wifey a tarot card reading and turns over “a hanged man”. The card shows that things are in disarray. Dan arrives home just in time for the psychic to have a freak-out on him. She "I'm not psychic, I'm just a huge "Saved by the Bell" fan."knows that he’s missing something and that he’s searching for something… Zack. She calls the boy by name. Nice touch. Dan actually drops Wifey an “I told you so” look.

The psychic asks Dan his birthday, but before they can talk much more, Wifey freaks out and Jack shows up with the photo of Dan and Langley. They figure it was taken by their father at NASA. Dan tries desperately to get in touch with Langley, thinking that he might be able to help him. The daughter hears him "And I don't really exist, but Wifey saw me anyway!"and acts all cute, but the show doesn’t bother to address the problematic morality of choosing to make this little girl cease to exist in favor of his original son. Moments later, Dan closes the door and a time-flash emanates from the crack below the door, catching Wifey’s attention in direct contradiction to what the show has bothered to establish thus far.

Dan catches up with Livia and in some terrible dialogue, catches her up on the story and she tells Dan how she’s about to get married. There is no real reason why Livia and Dan’s storylines have to happen in order in relation to each other, but not only do they, but time seems to pass at roughly the same rate, even though we’ve established that it doesn’t in Dan’s timeline. They head out to get the camera back.

In the present, Sissy drills Jack on Dan’s situation and partially as a deflection, he tells her how he knocked up his girlfriend. I don’t care.

In the past, Dan and Livia confront the boys. They try to take the camera back, but when words don’t work, they physically take it. The security nazi shows up again and Dan questions what she’s doing there on the graveyard shift. Somehow, he makes the leap in logic to the fact that she’s a foreign spy. They call her bluff, because they’re not going to call the cops. She sends the goons out to kill them when they’re out of the visual range of all cameras. Rather than take the camera with them, Dan throws it in a trash compactor (it didn’t work in Terminator 2). The goons attempt to shoot Dan and Livia, but they blink through time and they shoot the security nazi instead.

In the present, Dan wanders back into his office, finding the pictures of his son restored and discovers on the internet that the son is on the way to curing his mother’s blindness. At home, Sissy continues to be snooty and drops the knowledge that Jack’s going to be a father. Wifey is offended. Dan comes home to give Lil’ Dan a huge hug. Moments later, the psychic walks in with information about Dan’s birth chart. But I call shenanigans, because in this timeline, Zack has now always existed and the psychic wouldn’t have sensed half of what she did in Dan. No acknowledgement whatsoever. Turns out that Dan was born during some comet phenomenon that was very rare. "Do I have all the answers next week? Probably not."The only other time it occurred in the last hundred years was on Livia’s birthday. Of course, how many people were born on those two dates? There could be thousands of travelers out there.

Dan pops over to the university to visit Elliot Langley and ask him about the photo of him as a child. He either doesn’t know Dan or at least claims not to. Could it be that this Langley is earlier in the timeline?

NEXT WEEK: NBC doesn’t seem to care about anything except Medium (abusing a song by VAST no less), but on Wednesday is most likely the final episode of this series. (Cue chorus singing “Hallelujah”)