The Hanged Man
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 09:50am by GeekBoyFirst, a reminder: the last episode of Journeyman (possibly ever) will air tonight, instead of the usual Monday. So if you don’t have a TiVo watching your back, be sure to look for it!
Now the recap of this week’s episode, which was a classic time travel story …
Dan goes back to 1984, and in the process of saving a mother and son from death by cliff, drops his digital camera. This then results in 32-bit technology being created much sooner, so that by 2007, things like nanotechnology and digital paper are already common. An indirect result of this is that Dan and Katie don’t end up conceiving a child on the same day that they originally did, which results in Dan’s son Zack becoming Dan’s daughter Caroline. What’s more, the son who Dan saves at the start of the episode ends up getting killed by the tech company who takes possession of the camera.
An agonized Dan and his lingerie-wearing sidekick Livia manage to go back, destroy the camera before it can be reverse engineered, and everything goes back to normal. The son who the company killed in the alternate timeline goes on to become some kind of ocular implant specialist, motivated by his mother’s deteriorating eyesight and perhaps a bit by the glimpse at future technology he got in the form of the digital camera.
My favorite detail from this episode was the fact that both Zack and Caroline spent the day making a butterfly for Dan. As in “Butteryfly Effect” — a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan might cause a tornado in New York City. With Aeden Bennett, we saw the effect of Dan directly and willfully screwing with the timeline and getting punished for it. But now we see that even the most casual error in judgment can have huge personal and historical ramifications.
We also learn from a psychic/astrologer/whatever that both Dan and Livia were born under the “Joseph-Lee Comet”(?) — something that has occurred only twice in the last 100 years. So I’m not sure exactly how the math works on that, but I’ll assume it means that some other people out there the same age as Dan (30-something) and Livia (84) are also bouncing around in time.
Jack gets a chance to see the file of the FBI guy who was on Dan’s tail (before Aeden Bennett killed him), and finds a photo of a young Dan posing with Langley at a NASA rocket launch. Armed with this photo, Dan rushes to confront Langley, only to find that he either doesn’t remember Dan or is acting as if he doesn’t. I really hope we get some closure on the whole Langley thing in the last episode. What’s his deal? Considering his age, I’m wondering if maybe his father or mother was a time traveler?
Oh, and Livia needs to get married soon, because her fiancee is shipping off to war. And pretty much everybody knows now that Jack got Theresa pregnant.
1. Jason said ( Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 10:18 am )
The increasing sci-fi material is so interesting. Maybe the rice-a-roni thing will give it some kind of Jericho rebirth.
Not mad at Livia in lingerie.
One of the things a friend of mine wrote about Journeyman is that for the non-time traveling regular characters, there isn’t much movement in their stories and that is kind of annoying.
While I disagree with that, I get why someone could feel that way with Kate. Although the psychic pretty much explained that her being kind of stuck in time while Dan jumps in and out of time is an intentional plot/story device, if Kate is the character you identify with that isn’t a very compelling reason to watch.
She seems too smart and independent to not be doing more with this situation. She’s a journalist but doesn’t do any investigation (that we see) on time travel or Dan’s adventures or getting out. She just lies for Dan to increasingly painful/awkward degrees.
That’s one of the weak points of the show. One of the very few.
I’m bummed we won’t get a Livia episode before the first 13 are done.
2. MonkeyLover said ( Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 3:16 pm )
Loved the episode with the exception of the sister-in-law. What a freakin’ annoying character. It was like having an extremely rich bitchy Gilmore Girl make an appearance. I just wanted her to STFU.
3. Michael said ( Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 7:48 pm )
I just watched. I DID NOT make the “butterfly effect” connection. Thank you, GB.
Boy, that moment when their daughter comes down the stairs was stunning and well done. Kinda heartbreaking to hear Katie pleading that she doesn’t want him to change her life. Later when he promises that he won’t, he’s not really lying, is he?
RE: Livia’s wedding
Dan’s seen himself in the past, which is like a memory really, but I wonder how often Livia has seen herself (and her husband? kids?) in the future. Dan changes something in the past and it has ramifications for his present, but what about seeing how your life plays out before it happens?
So now it seems like the journeying phenomenon is courtesy of some astronomical event. I was thinking maybe it was engineered somehow. Do you think the journeying is totally under their control? Sure seems like Dan is now deciding when to go (and possibly when he’ll show up) and when he’ll return. Earlier I was leaning toward some Powers That Be with a master plan for the journeymen and women, but maybe not.
Obviously there are those that aim to control or exploit them, though. I hope we get at least a taste of that in tonight’s episode. No complete or satisfying answers I’m sure. Which is fine…I’d like to find out over a few seasons!
4. Jason said ( Thursday, December 20, 2007 at 8:16 am )
I’ll wait for the recap but I did want to say that I really liked “Perfidia” and was quite satisfied with how much detail they gave us.