Jouney to a better show: Journeyman Premiere

I am a day late with this one, but Monday nights have a lot of shows to fit into a couple hours. I am a sucker for time travel stories, so I was really looking forward to "Journeyman" – the show about Dan, a journalist who starts taking trips to the past (simply by waking up in a different time, but still the same place), and ends up helping people he meets. In the pilot he makes several trips (over a span of ten years) helping one man and his family. The multiple trips are because Dan’s actions create an additional problem later on. In the pilot, he saves a man’s life, then helps his marriage, then stops the same man from killing his wife and child years later, just so the child can go on to save lives as a doctor.

This could be an interesting premise, but the way the action plays out just makes it boring. Similar shows, such as "Quantum Leap" and "Early Edition," both set up early on what was going to “go wrong,” so to speak, followed by the heroes getting to know the characters and helping them – usually by the end you wanted the bad situation to be fixed. Both shows also set up time limits, so there was an urgency in what needed to be done. With "Journeyman, " Dan just sort of flounders around in the past until he completes whatever he is supposed to do. I didn’t spend enough time with the characters to be invested them, and because we (and the main characters) don’t know what is ultimately fixed until the end, it is hard to care about it getting done.

Thrown into the mix is the fact that while on these trips, he runs into his old fiancé Livvia (who died eight years ago). Livvia, who was/is the love of his life, is revealed to also be a time-traveler, and may not really be dead. This appears to be setting up lots of cryptic encounters between the two that will either be annoying, informative, or slightly romantic. From episode one, I am leaning towards annoying. Back in the present, Dan is already having problems with his current wife, who (along with his friends and coworkers) thinks he is using drugs/going crazy, not time-traveling. While this might be the normal reaction for a person who’s husband starts disappearing for days at a time, it makes her very unlikable.

I am willing to give this show another chance to see if more experience with time travel makes the characters more likeable and the action more interesting. But, going with first impressions, "Journeyman" is dull and not worth the time to watch.