By Jennifer Larson

Tonight on JOURNEYMAN, Dan (Kevin McKidd) is sent reeling through time in order to help two brothers who are being abused by their father. This one hit a little too close to home for our time-traveling savior, as he and his brother went through some trying times with their own father. Sadly the once close brothers have drifted apart, due in large part to the fact that Dan can’t confide in his brother about what’s been going on with him. Oh, and there’s also the fact that Dan has married his older brother’s ex-girlfriend. It appears Jack (Reed Diamond) may still be harboring some unresolved feelings for the lady in question. Than there is Dan’s less than stellar past, which includes a few addictions, namely gambling. Being a cop, Jack smells something fishy going on with his baby brother, he just doesn’t know exactly what it is. And as usual, there is Livia (Moon Bloodgood), appearing at just about every one of Dan’s time traveling expeditions.

One of the pluses, or minuses depending on how you look at it, of his new lifestyle is the fact that Dan sometimes ends up in his own past, and those of the people he loves. Tonight, is a perfect example of that, when he and Livia wind up in close proximity of Jack and Katie (Gretchen Egolf) during a very intimate conversation. Remember this is in the past, so the conversation in question happened shortly after the two broke up. I don’t know which is more awkward, listening to your brother and wife’s pillow talk, or listening to it with your ex-fiancé. Whichever the case may be, it’s just one of the many uncomfortable situations Dan has been finding himself in lately. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that Dan has serious business to attend to, and saving people’s lives – literally and figuratively – gives him a high even gambling can’t compete with.



For example, in Dan’s first meeting with the two wayward boys, he ends up saving them from blowing themselves and half their block up. Unfortunately, that’s just the tip of the iceberg where their troubles are concerned. It turns out without Dan’s help these boys will end up in prison or worse. You see, this is why child abuse is so insidious; it has far reaching implications that sometimes can’t be seen or known until years later. Thank goodness these two kids have a time-traveling super hero to help them out. Too bad every kid in need doesn’t have somebody like Dan to save them from the evils of the world. The ironic thing is that Dan’s brother attempts to save the world as well, just in a different capacity. But it looks like he feels the need to start with his own brother, whom he’s sure is in some kind of trouble, so much so that he’s been snooping around Dan and Katie’s bank account.

I’m sorry, brother or not, it just isn’t cool to use your power to poke around family members private lives. But at least Dan still has a brother, whereas the two young boys he’s been traveling around to help have ended up losing touch and leading difficult lives, to say the least. This begs the question, is Dan being sent around time to save these two strangers, or his brother and himself? I guess fate is kind of funny that way, because he can really kill two birds with one stone. It turns out one of the kids decided to take his frustration out on the world by becoming a serial bomber. And this is where we question whether or not Dan is there to save the kid, or the people he intended to kill. And what does Dan do when these people recognize him from their past; meaning, if he’s traveling around different periods of their life, aren’t they going to notice he doesn’t age? Well, tonight that’s just what happened, and even stranger is the fact that the kid figured out Dan is traveling through time. Of course he’d practically lost his mind at that point so nobody really took him seriously.

Oh and that intimate conversation between Katie and Jack; it turns out she was letting him know about her impending marriage to his brother. The part that must have been hardest to take was when Katie told Jack she wasn’t sure if she loved Dan. Ouch, that has to hurt, even if you are a time-traveling super hero. The good news is that Jack has agreed to butt out of the couple’s personal life … for now.