NBC quoted low ratings and played the ‘writers strike’ card to cancel Journeyman.
After the series got cut off at the 13 episode mark, viewers were left in the dark as to where the story was headed. This was particularly annoying since a few different strands of story were developing during the shortened season.
The creator of Journeyman – Kevin Falls, in an interview over on AICN had the opportunity to let some of his plans for Dan Vasser out of the bag. Though this sounds like a good thing, the down side to this is that the interview wasn’t going to hit the ‘net until they knew for sure that we wouldn’t be seeing any more of Dan Vasser…
Crap.
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Here’s where the show would have gone had it stayed on the air…
Katie and Dan were going to split up for a while. Jack (Dan’s brother) and Dan were going to live together and then Dan and Katie would get back together.
Livia (Dan’s time traveling ex-fiancée from 1948) was going to die in episode 20. Dan was going to save her in 21. And in episode 22, Dan would come back to his house in the present and find someone else would be living there. Katie (his wife) and Zack (his son) would be gone and this time Dan would have no idea how to get his family back.
The end game of the series would have had some of the key people Dan had helped in “the past” coming together in a “Rube Goldberg-inspired climax” kind of ending for a big save on a bigger storyline involving everyone. That would have been neat to see.
Through it all, there was something bigger than the government that was tossing Dan and the other travelers around time. The underlying reasons for the time travel leaned towards a good purpose.
Livia’s original travel purpose was to get Katie and Dan together, but then the writers felt that Livia was keeping some secret from Dan that was huge and tragic.
Livia only went forward in time and Dan backward because they each had a specific and separate purpose. One of the side affects was the tragi-romantic notion of Dan and Livia never being able to live in the same time.
Sooner or later in 2008, Dan would have encountered an elderly Livia.
That would have been a great tale to watch unfold.
Kevin Falls went on to lament that he wasn’t so much bitter towards NBC as he was towards the mainstream critics who dismissed the show without a second nod (Screen Rant not included, since we loved the series). He felt they were doing some of the best television out there at the time and he was right.
(Click to continue “Journeyman: Here’s How It Would Have Ended”)
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48 Comments
Yes yes yes ,,,,
Gary I totally agree with you, yes you are correct he was dead.
Sorry JC, but any episodic clues to his reincarnation were strickly inhouse blues.
790 & others, I’m the first one to be spoiler-sensitive, but you don’t have to tiptoe around Tony’s role next season. It isn’t a trade secret, it’s not hush hush or on the down low. Hell no! 24 is looking for a major boost with the well promoted news that Tony’s back, he’s the anti-Jack. From the looks of it he’s Bad Guy for the Day–the next “day” of Jack Bauer’s life.
Hey guys, maybe the discussion about “24″ could be moved over to this week’s open discussion post.
Vic
Bloody hell. Reading these posts, the articles and the interview reminds me too much of the CRAP that NBC pulled with this show, and how good it was. Like the writer I am fustrated all over again!
dOh! Sorry ’bout that!
I am ready to give up on broadcast tv. The networks don’t give shows a chance to build a following. It seems like 2 out of 3 shows I like get canceled after I get involved in it. So this year, I’m going to watch shows I have gotten into, like 24 and Lost, and not waste my time on new shows that are probably going to be canceled anyway.
It’s sad that Journeyman got canceled but at least Heroes is on and the only reason I watch “Chuck” is to past the time.
Speaking of “24″ they’re gonna have to come up with a plausible explanation on how Tony came back to life. Otherwise it could potentially damage the the story arc of the new season.
Journeyman was the best new show on NBC in years. The only other new show that was as well written was “Studio 60″ and NBC canceled that as well… what is wrong with that network?
This is just my take on things, but given how much competition there is these days, especially compared to 25 years ago, most shows aren’t given much time to build an audience. That’s unfortunate, because some of the best shows took a while to find the audience that made them so successful. Cheers and Night Court both come to mind as examples that took a couple of years to become popular, and these days it seems shows have to reach that level of success within the first 4-5 episodes.
That, combined with the fact that most viewers seem to want entertainment that they don’t have to think about, something they can just watch while turning off their brains, means that most of the best shows aren’t going to find an audience that quickly, and these shows are going to be canceled before most people realize how good they are.
This is the down side to having so many different channels to choose from: Quality entertainment doesn’t usually stay around very long.
I’m backing FlameStrike on this one.
The studios have their test panels and ratings numbers.
These days, folks want something now, not invest in something like Flame says.
I remember the day when something would happen to a character and it would take 1/2 a season or a whole season to resolve the issue. It’s no longer like that. I’ve watched shows where they interject an awesome challenge that I see could take all season to resolve, and it’s done in one episode. Sad and shameful.
Yet we live in a time where the consumer can only see what’s in their hand, not what’s out ahead of them.
The only way we can make an impact is by supporting the great shows and buying their product when it hits shelves, and maybe, if there’s enough of us, an eyebrow will be raised somewhere about something.
The bottom line: No matter how good it is, it has to make money somewhere in the pipe.
-Bruce
I also would have to agree with FlameStrike on this point. It’s absolutely pitiful what they’re doing to TV these days.
The only shows I’ve found worth watching now are Heroes, Lost, and Spooks (or MI-5).
I personally think that 24 has become a joke. Though, I’ll probably this season anyway. For Tony.
I’m still watching SGA, hoping that they’ll come up with something new, figure out what they’re doing with it, and eventually end the show.
YAY! for the Firefly and Studio 60 mentions. I didn’t watch Studio 60, but I heard it was great. And Firefly was just plain awesome.
And, since we’re on the topic of excellent shows that didn’t make it… Crusade deserved more than it got. Especially after the way that Babylon 5 left us hanging.
-_-
Smith:
In regards to SGA, see:
http://screenrant.com/stargate-atlantis-final-season-brusimm-3482/
Does anyone know where I can buy the Journeyman episodes? ITunes no longer has anything after Episode 1 and Amazon Unbox no longer has any episodes at all. I know they’re viewable on Hulu but as I don’t know how long that will be I want a hedge to buy my own copies.
This was the best show on TV in at least the past five years! There is nothing on that comes even close in quality and that “wrote up” instead of dumming down to the audience.
Jay: I can’t find anything either and at the moment, all I can find is that there are no plans for a DVD… but I bet in time it will happen.
Download them through isohunt, or watch them on hulu.com. They have the entire series on there. I wouldn’t normally recommend downloading them, but since they are not even offering you a chance to purchase it on DVD, if you don’t want to have to be connected to the internet to see it on hulu.com, just download them.
Me personally, I think it does resemble Quantum Leap. But that’s not really a bad thing, I liked Quantum Leap but it was a little before my time, so it would have been nice to have a more modern version of it.
I liked the concept and the actors for the most part, but there were things I didn’t like about it. Like I felt they could have kept it more politically neutral, but it had a pretty clear liberal tone to it. Primarily I didn’t like how they represented the FBI or law enforcement in general. That comment made by the newspaper editor guy to the FBI agent regarding our security policies was completely unnecessary.
Anyway, it would have been nice for it to have gone on, but I honestly think it could have done much better.
Bruce and Ken J -
Thank you both for responding. I am disappointed, but appreciate, that you have confirmed, Bruce, that they are not available for purchase. I don’t understand their logic for that as they are not planning on selling a DVD!
I am afraid to use something like ISOhunt, Ken J, as my understanding is that it opens my PC up to getting viruses, spyware, etc. from wherever I’m downloading the episodes, and there isn’t any way to guard against that. But I appreciate your suggesting it.
Just go to http://www.hulu.com then. It’s a legitimate website and they only show things they have the rights to. They show short commercials during the episode, but it’s less than what you would see on tv. So it’s not bad.
They have the entire season on there last time I checked. I watched it because my Rome man Kevin McKidd is in it, lol.
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