Journeyman: Christmas with Dad

Spoilers for "Journeyman" coming up just as soon as I find a black sweater that I can wear in any era...

And we're back! After a week off to try "Life" in this timeslot, "Journeyman" resurfaced, and it looks like the last two episodes will air next week (one on Monday as usual, the other in the "Life" timeslot Wednesday at 10). So there will be closure of some kind.

Another solid episode. The decision to include some kind of personal stake in every mission was a wise choice. I don't know if it's something that could be accomplished were the show to run five years ("Honey, you'll never believe who I ran into while I was back in 1983. It was my second cousin Frank!"), but in the short term it's made the time travel a lot more interesting than it was in the first few episodes. The trip back to the newsroom's '79 Christmas party was doubly important for Dan, as it gave him a chance to slightly alter his own history with his dad (more on that in a second) as well as a chance to save his job and other people's in the present.

Not sure I loved the blackmail resolution, though. Times are tough in journalism, and real newspapers everywhere are laying people off, regardless of who's in charge; can Dan really hold that secret over the publisher's head in perpetuity? And what's to stop the publisher from admitting that he was in the room while denying that he waited to call for help?

(Also, on a more nitpicky, Gen X-centric level, it was strange to see Robert Pine play the publisher in 2007 and the very shady-looking Anthony Starke play him in 1979, when any "CHiPs" fan worth his salt knows that Pine looked like this in '79. I'm guessing there's not a lot of "CHiPs"/"Journeyman" crossover audience.)

As for Dan and his father, what interested me wasn't so much that Dan was able to change something about his own life without personal consequence. Rather, I was struck by the fact that Dan didn't remember the revised timeline, even after he came back. The show has suggested this before -- Dan remember a conversation with Jack that he later erased from the timeline -- but never this directly. Some time travel stories adopt the theory that if you change the past, you only remember the events you experienced in the unaltered timeline ("Back to the Future"), while others suggest you either remember the new version only or somehow remember both ("Frequency").

Even though Jack is now openly helping Dan with research on his trips, it's interesting that Dan chose not to explain the role he played in their dad's confession. On the one hand, it might have been something they could have bonded over. On the other hand, this is ancient history as far as Jack is concerned; learning the truth behind it all these years later could freak him out, re-open the old wounds, maybe even resent or mistrust Dan again. If you're Dan there, what would you have done?

Finally, we got our first glimpse of Livia's life in 1948 -- and, conveniently, her period dress didn't look too out of place at a disco party. Here's something I wonder about Livia that I doubt the show will have time to address before it runs out of episodes: when she would travel into the '80s and '90s for long stretches to attend college and law school and to date Dan, was she gone for equally long periods in the past, or did she return not long after she left but much older? Either way, I imagine her life back then was a lot more complicated than Dan's is now -- though, as she explained a few episodes back, her trips got longer and longer over time, just as Dan's might if the show were to continue.

What did everybody else think?