dan talks with a plot point in journeyman 1.2.
grandfather paradoxes. i frakking HATE grandfather paradoxes. they make my head hurt. and maybe that's the reason i hate journeyman as much as i do.
the premise of the show is...simple? dan vassar, a reporter for the fictional san francisco register, gets headaches, passes out, and hops to another time period in order to make sure certain events play out. only he doesn't know what he's supposed to do and who he's supposed to save. also, he keeps on running into his not-so-dead ex-fiancee, who's also a time hopper, and ends up in situations where he almost interacts with his past self or tries to pass himself off as his past self.
see, that's why my head hurts.
in the first episode, he follows around this one guy and keeps saving his ass, only he's supposed to eventually let the guy get killed so that he doesn't kill his son, who's apparently supposed to be important in the present. in the second episode, he helps deliver a baby, then follows her around, thinking he's supposed to help her make amends with her estranged father and be a bone marrow donor for him, only it turns out she's supposed to be a match for another patient who is an armed forces pilot in the present. bah.
one thing that got old really fast in the first episode (and even older in the second) was the overuse of popular music from the time period dan jumped to. because seeing a calendar or newspaper with the year on it isn't enough of a clue. no, we need to hear sarah mclachlan, oasis, etc., to fully get it. only no, we don't. give us viewers a little credit, ok.
dan's relationships are pretty front and center all the time. his wife, who used to date his cop brother, is having problems with his new side job, what with the not letting their little son know what's going on and having to cover for him with co-workers and friends. cop brother thinks dan's crazy. oh, and, there is dan's not-so-dead ex-fiancee who has the same side job as him and isn't dead, even though everyone thinks she is. then there's his editor at the paper, who thinks dan is a drug addict and is also not very happy with him, which, well, honestly, the guy's missed every deadline he's had in two episodes. his ass should've been canned.
on a sidenote, dan, a newspaper reporter, has an iphone?!? this really is fiction.
the only sub-sub-plot that actually has me interested is, in the second episode, dan hopped while on board an in-flight airplane. airport and federal officials weren't very happy about that. wifey came up with a lame story that dan must've unboarded while they were still on the ground. dan's editor thinks this is newsworthy, so he assigns a reporter to write a story about fellow reporter dan who apparently found a whole in airport security. only the reporter finds out there's security tape footage of dan and wifey getting on the plane, but not of dan getting off. now there's a story i'd read in the newspaper.
so really, if they could avoid dan almost interacting with himself and stop playing popular time period music, the show may not be that bad. it seems to have a pretty straight-forward plot, which may or may not be a good thing. it works on medium, which i love. but maybe it's too much like medium? i guess only time (ha) will tell.
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