Journeyman is a paradox as far as televisions shows go in this day and age. It is easily the best new character drama on television, but continues to offend potential viewers with it's stinky science fiction exterior. Not that
Journeyman is bad science fiction at all, it's just that primetime audiences by and large have a low tolerance for science fiction that is either too smart, or not overtly fantasy driven (
Lost or
Heroes). I don't know what is worse, the prejudice against the genre in general, or the pickiness of the of target audience.
Last night, for instance, we saw a lyrical expansion of the brother's keeper theme. The episode was a multi layered thematic dynamo of symbolism that hummed off the fuel of the intricate relationship between a brother who marries his older brother's true love, and the subsequent interpersonal structure that develops.
Jack (
Reed Diamond) continues to silently stifle Dan's (
Kevin McKidd) family financially, for their own good of course, but get's no real pleasure from his actions, even if it must feel a little poetic to make Dan's life miserable while quickening his decent. Meanwhile, in his time traveling, Dan enacts an underlying character flaw, coveting his brother's “things,” by snaring an opportunity to drive the hot red sports car his older brother would never let him near, all facilitated by the increasingly nymph-like Livia (
Moon Bloodgood).
Dan's tendency to covet what Jack has seems innate at every level, while Jack's sense of with-holding from his brother for his own good is littered throughout their past as much as it is their presence. It's a plot ballet of parallel themes laced into a topical tale that continues to – albeit frustratingly slowly – advance a story with a wholeness of its own.
Journeyman continues to quietly set the bar for excellence in television writing, while holding fast to it's Monday night niche. Were It strictly a drama, it would surely be one of the most successful of the new season, likewise if it were more of an effects and hyperbole driven science fiction epic. Now if it can just find an audience large enough to love it for what it is.\
- Jon Lachonis, BuddyTV Senior Writer
(Image Courtesy of NBC)