The Year of the Rabbit
Thursday, October 18, 2007 at 01:10pm by GeekBoyAfter two rounds of fighting, Journeyman seems to have easily trounced Bionic Woman in the TMFT ratings. My guess is that Dan simply jumped back to a time before Jamie got her bionics and told her that the outfit she was wearing made her look fat? However he pulled it off, here’s an overdue recap of Monday’s episode …
In a genius stroke of luck that makes me think more than ever that Dan has some subconscious control over the timing of his jumps, he pulls one while doing some plumbing. “Sorry honey, guess I just can’t be trusted to do any home repair projects from now on. What a shame! If you need me, I’ll be over here on the couch watching the 49ers game.” In fact, all of his jumps away from the present this week seem suspiciously, if inconveniently, well-timed — one just before Katie’s big party, and another while getting interrogated by his brother in the bathroom. And so far, we’ve never seen him disappear while somebody is actually looking at him.
Regardless, Dan’s jumps this episode take him back to 1994 (aka The Year of the Spin Doctors), 1997 (aka The Year of the Creepy Dancing Baby), and 1998 (twice). His focal point is a woman who makes a love connection with a guy she met on the “World Wide Web” (yes kids, we used to call it that), who she also then goes on to start a Dot Com stock trading company with, which fails due to some kind of malfeasance on the guy’s part, he gets angry, and he kills her.
What’s interesting is this marks the first time we see Dan change something in the past, then have go back and make a correction. In one jump, he prevents the guy from killing the girl, but she then ends up killing the guy in self-defense and goes to jail for it. So in the next jump, later that same night, he ends up not getting there in time to prevent her from killing him, but is able to plant evidence that makes it clear that she was only defending herself. Equally interesting to me, however, is that there doesn’t seem to be any greater good served by saving this woman. Or maybe there was, and it ended up on the cutting room floor?
In the intrigue department, during the present timeline, Dan reaches out to an old friend of his father’s, a physicist at Berkeley, for more information about tachyons — which as any sci-fi geek worth his/her salt knows are the key to time travel, because they are hypothetical particles that move faster than light. Anyway, this guy, Elliot Langley, calls Dan on the phone in 2007, makes a joke about a time machine, and tells Dan he’ll call him back another time … then proceeds to call him back on his old cell phone in 1998! WTF??? So is Langley also a jumper, or is he something else entirely? Whichever the case is, it was certainly a great hook to guarantee that I’ll be back for more next week!
1. Michael said ( Thursday, October 18, 2007 at 3:04 pm )
Wasn’t that call in 1998 great? You almost saw the light bulb appear above Dan’s head when it clicked what had just happened. That’s a great new twist.
I am almost always tickled by the time stamp things you mention…Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong…that Dancing Baby….
I thought for sure Dan was going to POOF in front of his brother in that bathroom.
2. Jason said ( Friday, October 19, 2007 at 1:21 am )
The 1998 call was awesome. Especially seeing Dan look at that giant phone as he figured it out.
They have totally cold cased the old years by focusing on popular music/pop culture of the year. They have at least done a good job by making the people less of a caricature than Cod Case has done. The admission by the woman that she met the guy on the world wide web in 1994 made me wonder if she was using usenet or compuserve or playing MUDs back then. This is way before online dating was popular.
Nerd love.
I’m curious, though, to see if the cop who would no longer be a suspect in the past become a “Friend of Dan” in the present. At some point he’s going to have to run into people he’s saved/helped in the past in the present.
3. GeekBoy said ( Friday, October 19, 2007 at 9:26 am )
I think they’ve pulled the right balance with the pop culture references so far. It’s kind of like when a movie switches to a scene in Paris, and they show you a quick shot of the Eiffel Tower as a shorthand way of setting the scene. Certain small details also have a way of triggering sense memories, and helping me get into the mindset of the time period. My favorite detail so far was in the second episode, when he walked into a plane cabin filled with cigarette smoke.
As for online dating, I had a Prodigy account in 1994-95, and was very active in the chat room scene. I definitely ended up phoning girls and going on a few dates as a result of that. More in 1995 than 1994 in my case, but the technology was definitely there and being used heavily by 1994. AOL had chat rooms and an early version of IMs as soon as 1993. So even though the phrase “online dating” hadn’t been coined yet, it was definitely happening a lot at the time, and not just among geeks. Keep in mind, the movie “You’ve Got Mail” came out in 1997, which means that somebody had to have come up with the idea for it in 1996.
Good point about the “Friend of Dan” situation. Especially if he’s going to stay in San Francisco, he’ll have to start recrossing his own tracks and meeting the same people, not only in the present but possibly in the past too.
4. Mel said ( Friday, October 19, 2007 at 12:23 pm )
I never got past the first half of the BW pilot. Just didn’t do it for me. Journeyman is keeping my attention thus far But… Pushing Daisies has me completely hooked.
5. Jason said ( Friday, October 19, 2007 at 8:37 pm )
Ahh, Geekboy, you’re totally right about the “You Got Mail” thing. There was a lot of IRC/Chat romance in those days.