By Jennifer Larson
It turns out that Dan (Kevin McKidd) And Livia (Moon Bloodgood) may have some company in their time-travels. In tonight’s episode of JOURNEYMAN, Dan meets up with another time-traveler, whom he agrees to help reunite with a past love. Now this actually threw me for a loop, after watching Monday night’s episode. If you remember, a psychic told Dan that he was born on an extremely mystical and spiritual day, and that only one other date in history packed such a wallop. I guess it was no surprise to anybody that the other day in question was the one Livia was born on. I suppose I didn’t take into consideration the fact that millions of people are born on the same day throughout the world, because I never considered the possibility that there may be more people being thrown throughout time. Apparently, this whole experience is hard on the relationships these people build. I’m actually a bit surprised that Dan and Katie (Gretchen Egolf) haven’t had more problems due to it.
It must be their example that leads Livia to say yes to her boyfriend and his 1940s marriage proposal. I just hope she makes it back in time for her own wedding. Yup! The poor girl got sucked up by that magic light right before she was supposed to say her I do’s. It’s a good thing she was there though, because Dan might have been too emotionally involved in this one. After finding himself in the middle of a mental institution, Dan wasn’t sure what to think when one of the patients recognized him as a fellow traveler. As much as Dan wants to find others like him, people who can explain how and why this is happening, it wasn’t an easy leap to make. But, when he kept being sent back to wherever this guy was, it became harder and harder to brush him off as a nut. Besides, how could he not help the guy find the love of his life? I mean that’s a subject Dan knows a thing or two about himself.
Even with all that, Dan wasn’t totally convinced of this guy’s ability, especially after they found the woman in question and she seemed to have no memory of him whatsoever. After doing a little digging around, Dan discovered that his new buddy got shot while breaking into the object of his affection’s house to give her a ring. So, while he still didn’t believe this guy was a traveler, he did believe he was his assignment. Meanwhile, poor Livia was swooped up into the whole situation two hours before she was supposed to marry her soldier boyfriend, who knows the big secret and wants to make her his wife anyway. Now that’s a standup guy; either that or he’s imagining all the free time he will have to play poker with the boys while Livia is out correcting mistakes of the past. I guess she learned her lesson with Dan. Maybe if she’d told him what she could do he never would have believed she died in the plane crash that took her away from him. But, by now I think we all know this scenario was probably meant to be. Besides knowing what it feels like to lose the love of your life came in very handy for this mission.
It turns out that Dan and Livia’s assignment isn’t a crazy nut job after all. Once he showed Dan a video of him with the mysterious woman, Dan knew he had found a kindred spirit. The story is that this guy began traveling 15 years earlier, while he was married to the woman in the video. She ended up getting murdered by somebody he had pissed off during one of his jobs. Not being able to live with the guilt and pain of what he had caused, the guy kept going back in time to change it. Sadly he realized the only solution was to go back to the time they met and make sure it never happened. God, there are some memories I’d like to wipe out that completely, but I digress. The only thing this poor man wanted was to reconnect with his wife one more time, which he did right before he keeled over and died of a heart attack. Very sad, but also very informational because right after the guy was carted off, Dan saw himself from six months ago right before he had his first traveling experience.
With Jack’s (Reed Diamond) help, that scientist that seems to know a thing or two about what is going on was convinced to come forward and talk to Dan. Apparently, he was part of a research group that tracked the handful of people who could do what Dan and Livia do. He didn’t have any answers as to how or why it happens, but he did inform Dan that as far as he knew everybody else who time-traveled was dead and that he was the last one. Of course we all know that isn’t true, but sensing there may be some danger in giving away too much information, Dan kept that little piece of information to himself. What we did learn in this episode of JOURNEYMAN, however, is that Dan only came into his abilities after somebody else like him died, and that while there are people who know and track what they do, they have nothing to do with causing it. That still leaves a lot of questions to be answered, and I don’t know whether or not we’ll get them. It seems our little show is on some shaky ground, which means this may be all we ever know.