So there you have it. Possibly the last episode of Journeyman ever. I was pleased that we did seem to get a few answers. Obviously, the writers couldn’t give us everything, because I assume there’s still a chance the show will be picked up by another network. But it was at least enough to hint at the larger picture the writers had in mind. And it was also one of the best episodes of the entire season. Which just makes me all the more sad that it may not ever be back again. Oh well. Maybe the new Sarah Connor Chronicles show can give me my time travel fix in the new year.

Anyway, on with the recap …

Dan lands in a mental institution. Ironically, it’s his shortest “leap” so far, but a critical one — back to September 2007. His mission this time around involves Evan, a patient who claims he is also a “traveler”. Dan helps him escape, and we eventually learn that Evan first jumped about 15 year ago, but went off track when his wife of 20 years died in 2005, as the result of something he had “fixed”. To prevent this from happening again, he went back to the day the two of them met and prevented it — an act he has regretted ever since. Dan and Livia try to help him reconnect with his wife in the here and now, hoping to keep him from dying tragically, but even when they do, he just plain dies for no reason … or so it seems.

It turns out that the day Evan dies is the same day that Dan first jumps back in time — within a hour or so of Evan’s death. So whatever Dan’s ability is, it has transferred from Evan to himself. Some kind of universal “Conservation of Time Traveling” law is in place, I suppose. Livia jumps away again, and just before she does, she and Dan agree that it will probably be a while before they see each other again. (Nice meta touch on the part of the writers.) Dan goes back to the newspaper, and finds Langley waiting for him in the elevator. Have you noticed there are lots of important elevator meetings in this series? I guess it makes a kind of metaphorical sense, if you think about it — Livia travels “up” in time and Dan travels “down” and they sometimes intersect on the same “floor”.

Langley finally tells Dan that he’s part of a larger organization that keeps an eye on travelers like him. For Buffy fans out there, think of this as kind of a “Watcher Speech”. There have been travelers as far back as the Egyptians, historical technological anomalies that can only be explained by time travel, and Dan is one of a unique group whose numbers have dwindled over the years. No explanation why, but the implication is that there are forces working against the travelers. In fact, Langley believes that Dan is that last one. Dan assures him that there is one more, but doesn’t tell him any more than this. Although it does make one wonder why Langley believes this.

Dan goes back home, where Katie is all excited about the prospect of sedating him the way Evan was sedated, so that they can have a normal life again. But with everything that has happened, Dan has already been converted — he believes now that what he does is not a curse, but an important and perhaps vital calling. He tells Katie this and she accepts it, and in a touching moment, calls back to the pilot episode — if he will always come home, then she will always leave the light on. They go to bed, and when he wakes up in the morning, he wakes her just before he’s about to jump again, so she can — for the first time — see it happen. It’s an oddly touching bit of intimacy, as was the moment earlier in the show when she asked him to do it. Then the camera zooms into her eye, and it’s over.

Sad as I am that this might be the end of the series, the episode was very satisfying as a finale. Many technical questions have been left unanswered, of course, and this was inevitable — there’s only so much you can do in 13 episodes. According to a short article I read, Kevin Falls (the show’s creator) would have liked to find a way to bring together all of Dan’s “rescues”, but there wasn’t enough time to do this without rushing it. Yet the emotional plot arc at the heart of the show was wrapped up quite nicely … while still leaving plenty of room to grow if the show gets picked up again. Dan and Katie have come to accept Dan’s calling. Livia is getting married that same day, and has told her hubby-to-be about her ability. Jack has found some happiness. And the newspaper is safe, for now.

It’s certainly a far better goodbye than I’ve gotten from many other shows in the past that have met such untimely ends.