"Cancelled? You don't say."

This is it, the end of the line. While much more comprehendible than the end of Quantum Leap, I can’t say that this show was particularly satisfying as a series ender… even to a series that I grew to despise. I will give the showrunners some credit though, as this was certainly the most interesting episode that I have seen since the pilot. It’s almost as if cramming in all kinds of “satisfying” answers and stuffing the show to the brim to make up for a truncated season finally gave the plot enough substance to carry it through a whole forty some odd minutes. There was no time to waste on excruciating exposition, as they barely had time for the plot itself. But besides removing the absolute waste of time that most scenes in this show seem to be guilty of, it was almost as if the episode didn’t give us time to dwell on all the aspects of the show that don’t work. The domestic scenes weren’t up long enough to truly annoy, Jack was boiled down to his essentials, the scenes got in, made their point and got out again. But don’t get me wrong, I’m still pleased that I’m finished with this series and no amount of over-stuffing the plot was ever going to smooth out some of the wrinkles that the writing still left in the show. Oh, and damn Journeyman for their Back to the Future II moments and for making me go back and actually read my recap of the pilot. It sadly reminded me of where this show began and all that could have been. If you continue to read the run of recaps, you can actually watch my bile grow as if it was a time-lapse shot of fruit rotting in a bowl. It’s true that maybe networks don’t give a show enough time to find an audience and I know the best of shows have started out extremely rough (Buffy), but looking back, I stand by my critiques of the show and I’m furious that the creative team behind the series didn’t strive for something much more than what they were presenting us with.

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.

"Dan, what's this clashing choirs thing that is so popular in 2007?"

Oh, Journeyman, how I missed you. That’s full of sarcasm for those of you at home. As if I didn’t know that this show had already veered into the schlockiest realm of domestic drama, this week the storyline for this show about a time traveler hardly needed to have anything to do with time travel. Oh sure, Dan went back in time and met up with ex-fiancee that moved forward in time (all three timelines taking place on Christmas eve for no real logical reason – but it’s a Christmas episode!), but the storylines had no real need for time travel. Sure, Dan talked to his father and his boss in 1979, but essentially Dan got an opportunity to express his childhood pain to his father (albeit as Dan Carson) and he gathered some information to help save his job and those of his co-workers (but won’t the paper still be running a deficit?). Dan didn’t really do anything in the past though that he couldn’t have accomplished on some level in the present, and in fact didn’t end up changing the past much at all (although Jack now remembers chatting with his father about how “he felt like a freak”) On top of that we got all the worn-out traditional familial dramatic situations: the mother-in-law harping on the wife, the stress of the holiday party (which was bizarrely lavish), an unexpected pregnancy, an engagement and… a healthy dose of post-traumatic stress focused on an apron that magically keeps reappearing. Oh yeah, and Clash of the Choirs starts next Monday.

"I would hide from the episode too, if I were you."

Alright, so maybe there is just something here that I’m missing.  I read people on the internet moaning and wailing about the impending doom of this show like they were losing Arrested Development all over again.  I read this interview with Kevin Falls (as well as the condensed stories and talkbacks at AICN) where people rave about this show and promise that “Blowback” was going to be the best episode yet.

Well, they were wrong.

This episode was easily the blandest piece of dreck that this series has produced to date.  I feel like I have to justify my opinions in the face of so much support for this show and I keep repeating that I enjoyed the pilot plenty and I wanted to like this and I wanted it to be really good.  The resulting product though has left so much to be desired in every arena: plot, time-travel twistyness, character development, dialogue and even just simple logic and motivation controlling what is happening on screen. In that same interview, Kevin Falls reveals that he’s not much of a sci-fi geek and admits that he struggles with the basic concepts of time travel.  Maybe a time travel show wasn’t for you buddy.

Worse than that though is this frakkin’ episode.  Falls and company should have heeded the advice that Livia gave Dan last week and not strayed off the rails.  But because they did, we got an episode that seemed to break several of the series own rules and structures with a meandering plot that seemed to only exist to kill time until the hour was up.  This was supposed to be a whirlwind second half of a two-parter, but it felt more like a budget saving bottle episode. I found myself more frustrated at this series than ever before because these forty some odd minutes were touted as the best that they had to offer to date.  If that’s the case, they deserve their cancellation.

"Maybe our ratings are in here!"

The rumor over at Ain’t It Cool News is that if this two-parter episode doesn’t do well for NBC, Journeyman is going to get pulled immediately. I find that hard to believe as the networks are sucking on the straw, trying to find that last little bit of milkshake that is scripted programming. On the other hand, if there’s a show that deserves to be pulled off, it’s probably this one. Sometimes a rerun of SVU is just the way to go. The ratings are flagging severely and the creative direction isn’t exactly… good. I read the comments over at TivoCommunity.com and elsewhere and I am shocked when people comment on how much they dig this show. I enjoyed the pilot enough and I came into the show really wanting to enjoy it (and I love wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff), but this show is just horrible. Every single episode has more than a few examples of poor story choices, poor acting choices and poor directing choices. Hell, in this episode I even saw a poorly completed rack focus from the camera department. None the less, I am going to continue recapping and reviewing the show until the bitter end and lament all that could have been. Besides, I know I would rather read a critical review than just another rambling post about how much the reviewer likes the show and pondering the direction that it might be going in. And I find my critical recaps so much easier to write than the ones about the shows I love.

"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.

Ohhhh! "Double Down"! Now I get it!

Well, the writers’ strike is upon us, which means ironically that I will have to continue to recap this show for the duration of the thirteen episodes that they produced, since every network is scraping up every last hour of scripted programming that they can find. However, the fact that the ratings are in the toilet pretty much guarantees that NBC is going to air the thirteen episodes that they are able to produce and call it a day.

This week at least started to play with the concept of time travel a little, but I fear that it was far too little, too late. The show doesn’t quite know what rules of causality and continuity that they want to follow, totally avoiding the line so they don’t have to commit to any particular time travel rules for this universe. It’s a shame. And it looked like NBC went a little overboard with their “Green is Universal” theme, with all of 1999 looking a little bit putrid.

Robble, Robble?

I’m positive that if there were no writers’ strike on the horizon, forcing networks to build up a reserve of new material, that this show would have been canned two weeks ago. The ratings are in the toilet, the general public doesn’t seem to be interested and sci-fi geeks like me that should be this show’s bread and butter are left wondering if Journeyman has been hiring out of the writers’ room at Smallville or the The 4400. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect this show to be as complex with time travel scenarios as great science fiction literature, but right now the show lacks the complexity of even a Back to the Future film. But then on top of that, the writers have filled out their stories with characters whose motivations don’t make sense, time travel that doesn’t follow their own rules, dialogue that isn’t even fit for Tom Welling and plotlines that are excruciatingly boring.

"Are those our ratings over there?"

At the risk of sounding like a broken record here, Journeyman is really going to have to decide quickly what kind of show it primarily wants to be or it’s going to get cancelled even faster (the show was still on the schedule as of this writing - snark). This week we have science fiction with Dan dealing with the mysterious man with the timey-whimey cell phone, our Quantum Leap, do gooder storyline and even more of the most annoying unrequited (un re-requited?) love story since Matt met Harriet. I refer of course to the ongoing flirtation of the Shrew and the Jerk. Throw in the appearance of a cast member of The 4400 and this episode suddenly became my Recapist nightmare.

The opening credits are cooler than the show.

I think that if this series is to survive, NBC and the big networks have to lose their fear of science fiction. Right now this show is dancing in some weird middle ground – hell, even here at Recapist the show is filed under drama – but this show is a science fiction series and right now that’s the only thing it’s got going for it. I can’t make myself care about the romantic storylines, especially when a huge chunk of the screen time this week was burned on Wifey and Det. Bro.

The problem is that the show has established (at least to me) that Dan and Livia were perfect for each other, but were torn apart by Fate (with a capital “F”), Wifey has not been established much beyond being a shrew and Det. Bro has only been established as a jerk and a terrible brother. So why would we care if Jerk’s date gets interrupted? Why would we care if Shrew and Jerk get together? Are we supposed to be routing for them or against them? Are we supposed to feel bad for Dan? Because I thought we were supposed to want him to reunite with Livia? I feel bad for her! Anyways, the point is that besides being muddled, none of that is particularly interesting. The strength of the show going forward lies with continuing to exploit the classic time travel issues and what truth lies behind Livia’s actions and why Dan is traveling through time.