Journeyman uncovers major clues

With potentially one episode left for all-time, Journeyman stepped up tonight and brought us some serious timeline-changing mistakes and some possible answers to why all of this is happening.

Before I go further, let’s start off by talking about how badly NBC has helped this show along. It’s not had great ratings, but mostly it’s because of poor promoting I believe. With all the millions of self-promoting ads out there on NBC, why nothing for Journeyman?

Case in point tonight: After the episode ended, there was no preview or promo for Wednesday’s final episode. Nope, we had to see Patricia frakking Arquette and Medium get all the hype.

Well, bravo NBC…nice job.

So ahead lies spoilers galore, so no reading if you haven’t seen Monday’s episode, #12 this season and the beginning of the end.

The main travel plot tonight was pretty cool, especially how Dan Vasser shows up in the back of an RV about to go over a cliff. So far, the people Dan is sent to help usually have some unique circumstances and this was no different. A nice place to drop our hero, the additional weight kept the van from tipping over the edge.

But Dan drops his camera, which gets stolen by the kid he saved, who is later killed for it. The camera is of course revolutionary technology during that time and thus Dan returns to a world with killer computers and “live” documents. But the big mistake that resulted from this error was a postponement of a date with “conception” that Dan has with Katie 9 years earlier.

The later act results in a girl named Caroline, not a boy named Zach. It was a pretty spooky sight seeing the little girl walk down the stairs, with only Dan the one ultimately confused.

Now, I’m not going to dwell on the fact that it’s highly unlikely the timeline would have been EXACTLY the same for Dan, Katie, Jack and everyone else in the world even though the Vasser’s have a girl, not a boy. Just the fact that they conceived at a later time changes things.

But time travel plots are hard enough to deal with, and this show has done an exceptional job, so I will cut them some slack here.

Of course Dan fixes the problem with help from Olivia, who is about to get married the next weekend and shows up in her skimpies at one point.

(by the way, I think the writers and producers of Journeyman actually DID travel in time, because that kid they save at the end looks an awful lot like a very young Shia LeBeouf)

Okay, so that’s out of the way, what about our bigger developments?

I usually hate psychics on shows, but this is a mystical, sci-fi universe, so I will ignore it. This lady sees Dan and flips out. She senses everything that is wrong with him and then comes back with some major revelations using his birth date, July 6th, 1972.

There is a phenomenon or occurrence called the Joseph Lee Comet. I think that’s what it’s called, it was very hard to understand the psychic. Maybe I should have read her mind.

Whatever she said, it’s mystical and very rare, happening only twice in the last 100 years.

This event occured on Dan’s birthday and again on March 3rd, 1923.

Olivia’s birthday.

Okay, so that explains something…that this phenomenon causes something to happen in people born that day, or at least, select people.

Now, the second tidbit is a photograph that Jack gets from the FBI files of the dead agent shot by Aeden Bennett. You see a middle-aged man and a blond-haired boy in it, with a bunch of rockets behind it.

Jack realizes the boy is Dan, but no clue who the man is. When Dan sees it, he knows it’s Doctor Elliot Langley, or our Tacheon Man.

Their dad took the picture on a trip to Nasa when Dan was just a kid. Dr. Langley was working at Nasa during that time.

Of course, when Dan goes to confront Langley, he pretends not to know him. Possibly it’s because of the security guard nearby, but mostly I think it’s because Dan is close to the truth and Elliot is worried about it.

So what is going on? Any theories?

My guess is that somehow they knew about this phenomenon, and are able to sense it, much like the psychic did.

And they are able to control it in some way, perhaps via satellite. You activate some field around Olivia or Dan and beam them to wherever you want.

The only problem I see is Olivia. How did they get to her in the past without technology? Unless she knows more than she’s letting on?

What about you? Thoughts? I thought it was a great episode, the plot thickens and I suspect that after next week’s show, we’ll probably have some answers, but be dying for more.

(By the way, come back on Wednesday night to talk about the finale after the show airs)