By Jennifer Larson
It looks like Jack (Reed Diamond) just can’t help himself, when it comes to interfering in Dan (Kevin McKidd) and Katie’s (Gretchen Egolf) lives. Thanks to his investigation into the mysterious money he found in Dan and Katie’s closet, the feds have stepped in. And now, the whole thing is out of Jack’s control. Because of his meddling, Dan and Katie may end up becoming suspects in the infamous Dillon McClean case from the 1970s. I don’t know about you, but that’s not what I call brotherly love. And with Dan being busy saving people from the past, it may end up all falling into Katie’s lap. And now that Katie has stumbled upon something interesting from Livia’s (Moon Bloodgood) past, she has even more to worry about, where her husband is concerned.
Meanwhile, Dan is busy attending a party in the past, where he meets a young hippie woman with ties to a murder. Nobody said time-traveling would be easy, but honestly, couldn’t the reason he’s sent to the past be spelled out from the beginning? At least that would limit the amount of time he has to spend fixing what went wrong. And with the feds looking into his family, Dan really needs all the time he can get to concentrate on the present. Be that as it may, there is no rest for the weary, and if Dan doesn’t figure out why he was sent to this mysterious woman in the past, he won’t be able to help his wife fight for their family. And if we don’t get an explanation with regards to Livia and what her part in this whole mystery is, I think the show is going to lose a lot of viewers. That’s always the tricky part when a TV program takes itself too seriously. But as long as it’s still on, I have high hopes that the writers will deem us worthy of knowing what’s really going on.
Turns out that party Dan got swept up into was one of those freaky key swapping things that used to be so popular. When the college-age daughter of the couple giving the party walked in on her mother in a compromising position with another man, she took off, and according to Dan’s investigations, she was never seen from again. So I guess she’s the one he’ll be following throughout time. But he’ll have to find time to give the feds the information they are fishing for, because I don’t think they’re going away anytime soon. With Dan in so much trouble, does this mean somebody from our future will be coming to save him? I mean it stands to reason these people are floating around all over the place … don’t you think?
Meanwhile, that scientist that appears to know something about the mysterious tackeons Dan believes have something to do with his time-traveling has popped back into the picture. Maybe that means we’ll get some type of explanation, because after he sees Dan disappear right in front of him and he doesn’t even bat an eyelash, it seems pretty apparent that he has some inside information about what’s going on. And according to the ominous warning he gave Dan, it has something to do with the government and terrorism; why doesn’t that surprise me? Man, Dan has the government crawling all over his case, which is kind of ironic considering the news during the time he keeps going back to is all about Watergate. Ok, it may be a stretch to believe there is some kind of subtle message the producers are sending here, but than again, this is liberal Hollywood we’re talking about, so I’m gonna just go with it. And I have to say, for a show that purports to be all about time-traveling, they spend an awful lot of time in Dan’s present.
When this episode finally does get around to going back to the past, it seems to be focused on the whole Richard Nixon thing as much as does on the missing girl. Speaking of that girl, Dan apparently saved her from being abducted from her green gremlin, but helped her turn on and tune out by encouraging her to get in the van of a bunch of college drop outs. And that association ended up landing the aforementioned girl in jail for 30 years. And to think these chain events got started by watching her mother in the middle of a swinger’s party. But I think we know by now that Dan ends up saving the day in the end, and tonight was no exception.
But the big news in tonight’s installment of JOURNEYMAN was the fact that we finally got a piece of the puzzle. It turns out Livia doesn’t jump around in the past, she gets sent to the future from her real time, which is the 1940s. Apparently she got sent to the late 80s, but had no assignment, or so she thought. So, she thought it was safe to start a new life, until the past called her back again. Something tells me Livia really did have an assignment back then, and it involved Dan in a big way. Now that my appetite is whet, I can’t wait for more.