Time travel is a concept that, when done right, can make for fantastic entertainment. It's worked before on television with Quantum Leap and in the movies with Back to the Future and the Bill and Ted movies. It's been a while since a good time travel show has been on the air (and where are the time travel movies?), but now NBC has managed to put one together - and air it after Heroes, so all you really have to do is not change the channel to catch it.
Journeyman manages to offer up something fresh to the time travel sub-genre while treating the traditional elements with respect. It also managed to find the right lead to carry the audience through the more fantastic elements of the story, without Kevin McKidd, the show probably wouldn't work. McKidd plays Dan Vassar, who suddenly finds himself taking unexplained and seemingly spontaneous "journeys" through time. He visits several periods in another man's life, and soon discovers that he has to fix something. In the pilot episode, Vassar is perhaps not as fleshed out as he could be, which leaves McKidd playing more of an "everyman." But McKidd is able to communicate the necessary emotion in fairly complicated scenes and it's through him that we are able to follow the story and keep up with the twisty logic of the time travel.
Moon Bloodgood, last seen in Day Break with Taye Diggs, plays Dan's fiance, Livia, who died several years before. His life becomes even more complicated when he runs into Livia in the past. Dan's wife in the present, Katie (played by Gretchen Egolf) laughs off a suggestion that Dan is having an affair by saying "The only other woman in Dan's life is Livia." It's this previously impossible love-triangle that throws a more traditional time travel formula for a loop and keeps the drama firmly based in the characters.
- NBC
Kevin McKidd as "Dan Vassar" in Journeyman
As with any time travel story, Journeyman is filled with fun moments that either remind us of how silly the 90s and 80s seem now or conjure up a sense of nostalgia. There is also the wish fulfillment of being able to knowahead of time what is to come. It was also a wise decision to make Vasser an investigative reporter. Not only is it helpful that he knows how to find information and be able to think on his feet, but it provides a window into some of the differences between now and then. For instance, one moment you know that Vasser has traveled because his Blackberry suddenly says "No network." He's suddenly robbed of the more technological tools he would use, and has to find other ways of operating. Not to mention that when he jumps, he goes missing for a seemingly random amount of time in his present, wreaking all sorts of havoc in his own life.
There's a lot of information packed into this pilot. There are some very nice character moments between the cast, which also includes Reed Diamond as Dan's brother. While the show is about a man who travels through time to fix other people's lives, it's clear there are a number of things he wishes he had done differently - and whether he'll take the opportunity to change events in the past seems to be an essential question of the series. There are some logic holes to fill, as is the case with any time travel story, but none of them are fatal. And while Vassar seems a little shallow at the moment, McKidd provides him with a compassion and sense of purpose that more than carries the episode. It's been too long since this kind of story has been told on television, so it's good to see that NBC was willing to take the leap.
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