Overview:
Echoing typical husband-wife dynamics, Katie seems to be growing more annoyed than concerned over Dan's time traveling episodes this week as they begin to interfere with a black tie fundraising event she is hosting. Further echoing those same dynamics, one wonders--despite what she claims--if her concerns are more over Livia and her telltale watch from last week than the event.

Despite some inconveniently timed trips back to the past, Dan eventually makes it to Katie's event. He does so, however, sweating through his tux, painfully clutching his side, and hiding a gun in his pocket, having barely survived a fight with the bad guy of the week minutes before. He struggles to push all of that aside and play his husband role for Katie's big night but fails miserably, making something of a scene before finally coming clean about just how much time he's been spending with Livia.

In an emotional moment, Katie bolts, despite Dan's plea that it didn't mean anything--a plea I am convinced even he didn't buy. Later, with emotions calmed, Dan and Katie meet up again at the coat check room, where she tersely tells him she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. The episode ends with Dan and Katie sneaking into the back of the coat room for an emotion avoiding roll in the minks.

The "putting right what once went wrong" subplot was a bit more morally ambiguous than in previous weeks. Dan's first trip back has him playing matchmaker as he convinces a woman to give her blind date a chance before preventing her jealous ex-boyfriend from interfering with their meeting with a well timed right. On subsequent trips we learn that internet man is a budding web-entrepreneur who sank all of the woman's money into an E-trade like startup--which goes badly.

Dan then has to stop the internet man--who she would never have met had he just let her leave the bar back in 1994--from killing the woman, which he does only to reverse history such that she ends up killing him and going to jail. Going back one last time, Dan enlists the jealous boyfriend (the guy he punched in the first trip back) and plants a gun on the dead internet guy, paving the way for a tidy justifiable homicide defense. Jealous boyfriend (who'd apparently been stalking the woman for the better part of a decade) and the woman presumably live happily ever after.

The episode also offers a teasing wink in the form of the mysterious professor. Dan contacts the professor (ostensibly a theoretical physicist at a local university) to ask about tachyons, subatomic particles that appear to travel faster than the speed of light. The professor returns his call while Dan is in the past--on his decade old analog cell phone.


Thoughts:
One wonders how much time has past for Livia since she left (that seems the best way to put it) Dan. It was interesting to see a little jealousy flair up as she was distracting past-Katie. I am personally starting to root for Livia and Dan ending up together--and not simply because Moon Bloodgood is ridiculously hot, though that helps. In a show about putting right what once went wrong, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch that their relationship fits that category. There is so much we don't know yet, though. I won't be surprised if I am pulled back and forth across this point as the season progresses.

I loved the moral ambiguity of the "putting right" sequence this week, especially after it was set up by Livia's coaching that anything done in the past was fair game--almost as if there is a rule book somewhere Dan hasn't seen yet. I am still anxiously awaiting Dan to fail at one of these assignments, as Livia alluded was possible in the pilot episode.

Speaking to the back story, I scoffed just a bit at the woman Dan goes back to help recognizing him on the street after two years had passed. They've used this before on past episodes, but here it seemed especially unrealistic. I'll begrudgingly buy that a woman would instantly recognize the hero who delivered her baby on a plane several years before, but in this case there was only a two minute conversation at their first meeting. I seriously doubt the woman would even remember him being there.

So...tachyons. I had been quietly hoping over the last few weeks that Journeyman would stay more in the realm of fantasy than sci-fi, but this week seemed to begin to lay the groundwork for a hand waving scientific explanation for all of this not-so-random time traveling. I'll reserve judgment on this--especially considering the clever and subtle use of the mysterious professor-- until we get more information, but if midochlorians or their distant cousins come into play, I may have to cry foul.


Great Moments:

• After coming clean to Katie about the time he is spending with Livia--and watching her pull away in betrayed horror--Dan growls, "This changes nothing! I still love you!" One wonders who he is trying to convince with that emphatic plea.

• The mysterious professor calling Dan in the past (the strangeness of which doesn’t even dawn on him at first) was a perfect tease. A nice, well placed little wink to the audience that didn’t fall prey to a bloated exposition scene--though I am sure the writers were tempted. That kind of discipline is sure to pay off later in the season.

• Livia jumping in to distract past-Katie so that Dan can sneak around her was well done. The barely contained flash of jealous was a nice bit of character development.

• Dan telling Livia that he can't have a drink because he is "working" was a nice touch. It was nice to see Dan growing a little more comfortable with his new role in the universe.

• Dan frantically scrawling "Sorry" on the bathroom mirror just before disappearing, and Katie's heartbroken reaction to it. The look on her face seemed to suggest that heading to her big event on her own was the last thing troubling her.

• Katie and Jack's quiet discussion at the table over how nice it might be to travel back in time--framed nicely by Jack's comment about a song defining a moment in time--revealing that perhaps Katie is jealous of Dan as well as Livia. In that quiet moment with Jack, it seems there are few things she might go back and change.

Journeyman airs on Monday nights at 10:00pm on NBC