The Mosquito Coast 2.5: Hitting the Fan

I thought The Mosquito Coast 2.5 on Apple TV+ was the best episode so far this season, and among the best in the overall series.

Here's why:

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

1. Dina's conversation with her mother Margot finally let it all hang out.  Dina now understands at last how and why she and her family wound up in this jungle.   She's also understandably furious, and in an epic scene tells her mother she wished Margot had slit her wrists, taken her life, as Margot admitted she had wanted to do and still thought about doing from time to time.  To Margot's credit, she didn't crumble under this massive and mostly justified attack.

2. Allie and William Lee working together was sight to see, beginning with their time in the car and the music that was playing, ending with their sabotage of Carter Albrecht's media presentation (good to see Reed Diamond in this role).  Allie stepping up and in front of the kid in the control room to save his life from Bill's bullet about to be fired was a prime moment, as was the very last moment of this episode, leaving both men in quandary: how to get out there, not get caught, as Bautista had commanded them not to do, on pain of losing everything that was dear to them, including Allie's family.  And just to raise the stakes of that final scene even more, Allie clearly not only wants to get out there, but do that without Bill killing anyone.

Indeed, that ending in itself was probably the best in the series.  I'll see you back here next week with my review of how it all turns out.

See also The Mosquito Coast 2.1: Thirteen Years Ago ... The Mosquito Coast 2.4: Motion Pictures on the Cave Wall

And see also The Mosquito Coast 1.1-2: Edgy, Attractive, Enlightened, and Important ... The Mosquito Coast 1.3: Broadening Horizons ... The Mosquito Coast 1.4: Charlie and the Gun ... The Mosquito Coast 1.5: Charlie and the Gun, Part II ... The Mosquito Coast 1.6: What Kind of Brother? ... The Mosquito Coast season 1 finale: I'm Well Bitten

Journeyman Lucky 13//Contest Winner!

It feels really good, exhilarating to be reviewing a great new episode of Journeyman just two days after the last one - two days after the Episode 12 masterpiece - but it also feels a little bitter sweet, and it makes me sad. Because tonight's wonderful Episode 13 may be Journeyman's last.

The show tonight pulled out a lot of the best time travel stops. Running into yourself in the past is the arch danger that every time traveler must avoid, lest he or she cause his or her mind to unravel - into infinite regress. I spent a lot of time tweezing the timelines in The Plot to Save Socrates so this didn't happen, and in the sequel, well...

But future Dan manages to just stay out of sight of past Dan in this episode, which is good, and exquisite, since Dan's past in this show is September 2007 - or, the beginning of Journeyman in our and Dan's time.

That little dance between the present and the beginning of the series will make this episode a classic, too - but I still like that first scene with Dan and Katie and their daughter on Monday best of anything in this series.

There were other fine touches in tonight's show. The split-up of the politician and his wife, three months after Dan's new time traveling colleague gets to dance with her - I love little details like that - they make time travel sing and ring true. Dr. Tachyon Langley's explanation to Dan was good, too. I like cosmic forces moving things, rather than evil geniuses pulling the strings.

The beginning of tonight's story - Dan in a mental institution - was a bit too close to 12 Monkeys, and I think the other time traveler dying of a heart attack was a bit pat, but those are just little quibbles.

What would have happened to Journeyman had the first two shows been as powerful and satisfying as these last two? Impossible to know, unless we were able to go back in time and make that happen....

As it is, we have been treated to the best time travel series ever on television, and a twofer ending which both explained a lot of things and left us hungering for more. Kevin McKidd and Reed Diamond were never better in their acting, and the series reached some real peaks in story telling. I'm predicting that we will indeed see more of Journeyman someday - I just hope we don't have to wait too long...

That last scene between Dan and Katie was pure gold. I can still see it shining...

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Which brings us to tonight's contest winner... the first person who sent me email with the last word that Dan uttered tonight. It was "Katie" - which couldn't be more appropriate...

And Rahul Gupta of Virginia got me that answer within a minute of the show's conclusion! Congratulations, Rahul!

An autographed copy of The Plot to Save Socrates will be in the mail to Rahul tomorrow!

For everyone else: If you've already answered the question correctly - but got it in after Rahul - I'll be happy to send you, via e-mail, a copy of my 1997 award-nominated time travel novella, Loose Ends (first published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine, and widely reprinted, including on Fictionwise.com).

And, further, for anyone who answered tonight's question correctly, I'll be happy to autograph and return to you at my expense any copies of The Plot to Save Socrates that you send to me between now and the end of this year.

My email is Levinson.paul@gmail.com

But Rahul gets the free copy of my novel for tonight's episode.

And this will be the end of this Journeyman-Plot to Save Socrates giveaway. It has been my pleasure to give away autographed copies of my novel to four of Journeyman's devoted viewers.

Hey - if the show comes back in the Spring, or any time, maybe I'll do another contest for either The Plot to Save Socrates, or its sequel.

I'll definitely keep you posted.

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 ... 12. The Perfect Time Travel Story


And Troy Price has a great interview on his podcast with Journeyman creator Kevin Falls!

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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...





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

Continuing Journeyman: 4

One of the key threads in NBC's Journeyman - perhaps the key thread - is how many of the people around Dan in 2007 know what he is doing.

The show started with no one. In Episode 2, Dan's wife Katie had to accept that his stories about his absences were more than psychotic illusions when he disappeared from a plane in which both were passengers. Last week in Episode 3, Dan's boss Hugh may have begun to get a clue, when Dan came up with a nickname for Hugh that he hadn't heard in years.

And tonight, in Episode 4, Dan's brother Jack (winningly played by Reed Diamond), is in a men's room with Dan, when Dan goes missing. The window is closed, Dan didn't fall in, so ...

Part of the set-up of the show is that no one sees Dan vanish - he disappears when cohorts step out of the room, or turn their backs - which results in his wife and brother taking longer to realize that Dan is really disappearing.

But now the menage-a-quatre of Dan, Livia, Kate, and Jack is finally beginning to crystalize into awareness of what Dan is doing, and Livia has apparently been doing for a while. I predict that before the season is over, all four will be players in time, working together and at cross-purposes in some kind of plot that is central to the series. (I'd like to say that I traveled a little forward in time, and saw the end of this season, but ... you wouldn't believe me, would you....)

In the meantime, the missions that Dan is sucked into each week are ok, but I find the impact on Dan's life in 2007, and his relationship with Livia, far more interesting. The plot construct of Dan missing in 2007 for the amount of time he is in the past can't help but have interesting, provocative consequences for the 2007 action.

Most time travel stories don't go this route, and instead have the time traveler returning exactly to the time - and place - from which he or she left. That's what I did in my Loose Ends short story series, and in The Plot to Save Socrates. Of course, in those and like stories, the traveler initiates the travel, and can to some extent specify arrival times. This is unlike Dan, who gets yanked into the past with no warning, other than a headache.

One other touch I very much enjoyed in tonight's show. Dan contacts a scientist in 2007 who is an expert in tachyons - hypothetical faster-than-light particles which could play a role in building a time-travel machine, were such a device possible. Dan speaks to the scientist in 2007 ... and the scientist unexpectedly calls Dan back ... in the past, in 1998 ....

Such touches are the spice of time travel tales - and this one is likely the beginning of an important new thread - bring 'em on!

More details on "Loose Ends" and The Plot to Save Socrates

Reviews of other Journeyman episodes: 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8 ... 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


8-minute podcast analysis of Journeyman

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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

Continuing Journeyman: 2

The second episode of Journeyman crystallized what I was thinking (and wrote) about the premier of Journeyman last week: the new NBC time travel series is really about the intricate, time-entwined personal lives of the central characters, unlike Quantum Leap, in which Sam's personal life only rose into story prominence on very special occasions.

Journeyman is clearly - and, so far, tantalizingly - the cat's-cradle story of four people. Dan (Kevin McKidd) and Livia (Moon Bloodgood) are time travelers, erstwhile lovers, and maybe more. Livia's further along in this time travel business than is Dan, but Dan is the focus of the story.

Meanwhile, Dan's slowly managing to convince his wife Katie (Gretchen Egolf) that he's time traveling. This week, Dan time-vaults to the past from a plane, in which he is seated next to Katie - a nice touch, for this leaves no way she can think he just tripped out on the street somewhere, and that's why he's not home.

And Katie and Dan's brother, Jack, were once a couple. While Jack - a cop (great to see Reed Diamond from Homicide back in the mix) - intersects with Dan in his time traveling, as well as in the present.

This nearly menage-a-quatre is much more than just emotional backdrop for the story. It is emerging as the story, though we haven't seen all that much of it yet.

As for Dan's "missions" - which he is yanked into without warning - we have now seen two. They bear an interesting similarity: the real purpose of the mission isn't revealed until the end, and it's not what we think it to be. Also, at this point, the missions have all been about non-famous individuals - no attempt to save JFK from assassination (which I and I bet half the science fiction writers in the world did in at least one story we wrote)*.

In its individual rather public-event focus, Journeyman is also like Quantum Leap, which only only once or twice a season had Sam figure in attempting to avert a public tragedy of the past.

But next week, Journeyman will take a shot at this, too. The coming attractions show Dan at the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, where he will have to choose which of three people to save.

I'm betting that there will also be an important element of his personal life at stake in this, too. I'm looking forward.

*That would be the "Loose Ends" saga for me - which I actually started writing in 1974, but I didn't get around to publishing until 1997.


8-minute podcast analysis of Journeyman


Reviews of other Journeyman episodes: 1 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8 ... 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

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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