Journeyman: A Love For A Lifetime (Pilot)

By Heather Cee 

Kevin McKidd’s face looks like it’s gone ten rounds with the wrong end of a big, meaty fist – and I love it. I love the way his flesh sits on his skull like a mess of flesh-colored Playdough, clumped up at his brow and on the bridge of his nose, all elastic and begging to be touched and molded. I love how, when the light hits him just right, everything goes slack and his huge blue eyes look like they’re resting in a mask. It’s a face that’s earned every crag and line the hard way.

McKidd’s Lucius Vorenus was my utter favorite on HBO’s Rome – the weary and loyal officer of Caesar who actually looked as if he’d been on the front lines in sandals. So it’s strange to watch him as San Francisco Register reporter Dan Vasser in Journeyman – a nice-enough guy with a nice-enough wife and cute-enough kid, who just so happens to start tripping through time on his wedding anniversary. And he doesn’t stab or beat anybody for, like, the entire episode. Okay, there’s one kick, but the rest is dodging trolleys and not-dodging buses.

But let’s back up – is Journeyman a Quantum Leap rehash? Yes, and no. Dan does seem to be leaping into the lives of specific people for a specific purpose, but he is always himself (which, sadly, limits the potential of some hilarious cross-dressing, but we can hope!) and lacks a handy guide to spell things out for him. He’s operating on instinct – survival and a reporter’s. While he seems to catch on quickly to the who and the what of the person’s timeline he’s jumped into, Journeyman decides to throw a few more interesting wrenches into the works, mainly involving Dan’s complicated personal life.

You see, Dan’s smart and super-hot fiancee died in a plane crash several years before. And now he’s married and has a kid with the former girlfriend of his estranged brother. And with the time-traveling business causing him to disappear for days at a time, things in this timeline are going straight to hell: his boss thinks he has a drug problem, his wife thinks he’s moving headfirst into a mid-life crisis, and his brother is around to smugly remind him that he’s going to lose everything if the nonsense keeps up.

But you know that dead fiancee? Dan’s seeing her when he falls back in time. And while it’s obvious he’s never come to terms with her death, he has the good sense to act like a weirded-out married man when she puts the moves on him – particularly with his future wife sitting across the table. Awkward!

This is where Journeyman intrigues – the minefield of walking into your past life, into events that you know will eventually end badly and set you on an entirely new path. Time travel stories are notoriously difficult to do well, and while changing the course of people’s lives for the better is all well and good, I like that Journeyman has a bigger picture in mind. Just when you think you’ve got the show’s deal sorted, it tosses in an unexpected left turn at around the 40 minute mark – smart and superhot fiancee? Not so dead. In fact, she’s jumping through time too, and she jumped right out of that plane before she died. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be here,” she says, and McKidd’s amazing face goes half-grated potato.

Next week - Kevin McKidd delivers himself a baby! And I promise not to use the word “fetus” in relation to any of his facial expressions.

Heather Cee has been writing for music sites for several years but genre media is her original fandom. She’s a History major dropout, loves music, Batman, and the color green, and thinks Laura Roslin is the most kick ass woman on television. She currently works as a website editor in Tucson, Arizona, where she lives with her husband and a ridiculous amount of CDs, records, books, and DVDs. One day she hopes to own grown-up furniture and pants other than jeans.

Technorati Tags: journeyman, kevin mckidd

Powered by ScribeFire.

Never miss an update. Subscribe to Pink Raygun by Email or subscribe via RSS

Related Stuff: