"I went to a place to eat. It said 'breakfast at any time.' So I ordered french toast during the Renaissance". --Steven Wright ... If you are a devotee of time travel, check out this song...

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Journeyman Continues: 9: Dan Unravels His Present//Announcing Contest!

Two intense, important stories are going on in NBC's Journeyman right now. One, as reported in BuddyTV yesterday, is about how much longer NBC will continue the series. The future is stormy - the series could be pulled after next week's Episode 10.

To help keep the series alive, in whatever small way I can, I'm announcing a contest about next week's episode (look for it in this text after I conclude my review of Episode 9). But, first, my review...

Last night's episode was by far the best yet, and I've been pretty much saying that about every episode of Journeyman. It's one of my two-three favorite series now on television, and the best time travel series, ever.

It keeps pushing the envelope - which, in time travel stories, means playing ever more dangerously with the paradoxes time travel inevitably engenders.

Dan strays from his mission last night. Against Livia's advice, he does things he was not "meant" to do (we still do not know who is calling the ultimate shots and thereby the meaning). But, in the process, Dan undermines the crucial progress he has made with his brother Jack - who, on the basis of an event that first took place, was beginning to believe that Dan might really be time traveling, or at least not psycho. Dan's going beyond the plan in the past results in that crucial event not occurring, which leaves Jack in the present back to his doubting ways - which are now so much in the driver's seat that Jack is on his way to trying to get Dan committed ... (I'm reminded of Marshall McLuhan's great quip that the only people who have proof of their sanity are those who have been discharged from mental institutions)...

But this is just the tip of things "not going well" because of Dan's divergence from the plan - as Livia so aptly put it. Once you change just one thing in the past - as Ray Bradbury mapped out so well, so many ways ago, in his "Sound of Thunder" - your whole present and future can crumble around and on top of you...

Which raises an interesting point about Journeyman. Apparently, if Dan follows the plan - whoever is devising it - he's relatively free of paradox. Only if he diverges does he court disaster....

I look forward to finding out more next week, when this two-part episode concludes.

Which brings me to our CONTEST: Here it is: I will send a free, autographed copy of my own time travel novel, The Plot to Save Socrates, to the first person who e-mails me at

Levinson.paul@gmail.com

with the last word that Dan says on next week's episode.

I just want that last word, and I'll send the novel to the first person who e-mails me on gmail - "first" determined by the gmail time stamp.

You can see what the novel looks like, and read some of the blurbs about it, below.

But, more importantly, watch the show! Television will be at lot less compelling if it's taken off the air.

My reviews of other Journeyman episodes ... 1: NBC Quantum Leaps Into Journeyman ...2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6... 7 ... 8. Livia's Story ... 9. Dan Unravels His Present ... 10. Jack's In!... 11. Livia's Beau//Save the Newspaper, Save the World ... 12. The Perfect Time Travel Story ... Lucky 13






The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book


more about The Plot to Save Socrates...

Get your own at Profile Pitstop.com



Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates
.... FREE!

10 comments:

John Muth said...

I've been waiting for your review of last night's episode since the second it was over. I do agree that the show has gotten amazingly better with each episode. (I started off not too keen on it, but I love it now.)

The biggest flaw in the time travel that I've seen so far is the Dylan McQueen money. I had anticipated a divergent time line after Dan and Livia used the money at the end of the episode with the kids in the seventies robbing the store. (Which, would only seem to have worked if the scene in the store took place after the hijacking - or else you'd have the same issue of supposed fraud like when Dan used the twenty from 2000+ in 1995.) But, I thought that would have gotten rid of the FBI issue and also done the same trick of taking Jack back to square one on the believing Dan's story.

That's the only nitpick thing that I have with the show though. And of course, with time travel anything, you're going to have something slip through.

I have to wonder with this new season on TV, how many people have started watching the shows online. This was my first week actually watching JourneyMan on a TV set and not streamed from NBC's site. And whether - with this possibly also tying into the current strike - the networks are taking those statistics into account of viewership.

I love reading your reviews and especially commentary on the media's misrepresentation of Ron Paul - don't remember which of those things brought me to your site to begin with. So, thanks for both of those. :)

MC said...

Do you know what the possible cancellation news indicates to me? That on some level, the network is confident that the new meetings after Thanksgiving with the Writers' Guild will go well. After all, they do start the same day this ultimatum supposedly is decided.

Shaun Farrell said...

I'm not sure why Journeyman's possible concellation is a sign that negotions with the WGA are looking good. Shows are getting cancelled or cut short (Heroes, BSG) because there is no end in sight. If an end where in sight, they wouldn't cancel shows that could be continued.

Anyway, if NBC cancels Journeyman they will join FOX in the "Don't know good television" boat. The ratings are not terrible from what I've seen, and this idea that every show needs to garner numbers like the first seasons of Heroes and Lost is just stupid. Those shows have dropped in ratings as well. At least they gave it 10 episodes, but the show is brilliant and deserves another season.

Paul Levinson said...

John - thanks, it's a pleasure to have readers like you (and Matt and Shaun, too!) I agree with you that the old bills could have been resolved a little more clearly...

Matt - good point.

Shaun - NBC wouldn't cancel any show it thought it was going to be without anything new for months and months ...

I'm going to ask my publicity contact at Showtime if there's any chance that Showtime might pick up the series, if NBC drops it ...

Shaun Farrell said...

They might cancel a show because the strike gives the network a convenient excuse. New stories at www.sliceofscifi.com indicate that the fourth season of BSG might be shortened or cancelled altogether because of the strike. Production has already stopped, and officially the show is on "hiatus," which prevents the actors from getting work elsewhere unless the want to break their contract. Because ratings are low and production costs high, this strike give Scifi a convenient excuse to stop what they see as financial bleeding.

That would be a disaster!

MC said...

The major networks cancelled one new scripted show this season, Viva Laughlin.

I do think NBC is playing dirty pool here though, because the first half of this Journeyman test was up against CSI: Miami and the finale of the Bachelor and yet it is still doing better than some of the other NBC "hits", like Scrubs (a million more viewers and a few tenths of a percentage).

Paul Levinson said...

Shaun: And that's why I think the WGA picked the wrong time to strike, or the wrong strategy to get writers a piece of the Internet pie, which writers deserve.

Matt: But I have no love for the myopic networks, either...:)

Shaun Farrell said...

Yeah, it's probably not the best time, but I don't know if they had much choice. I mean, their contract had expired, so they had to negotiate a new one. Could they have suspended that process a few months?

keppet said...

I actually disliked the last episode. I feel like the Dan/Katie/Jack relationships were static for once. The past-crime was oddly hollow of emotion for me considering the subject matter. The larger mystery of how the time travel happens was not touched upon at all. It seemed a shame that the Fed wasn't in it more, tightening the noose on Dan and creating a more believable threat than Aedan Bennet.

But nevermind. It is the first episode that left me feeling disappointed. Most shows don't achieve that.

Re the stolen money, I assume there is a lot more unaccounted for as Dan only had a small amount passed to him. It is forgetting the investiagtion into the grocery store robbery that bugs me. And Jack's turn from the state he was in at the end of Winterland to the man confident that his brother is crazy at the end of Emily. If the doubts were there then, they should still be there an episode later.

MC said...

Series Creator Kevin Falls believes that episode 12 may be the end of the show.

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