Journeyman"Winterland"
Original Airdate 11-12-07
Jeff L - TwoCents Staff Writer
Dan Vasser’s got a bottle of fancy wine for date night with Katie. He Quantum Leaps into The Ice Storm starring Bo Duke. He’s still got the wine and Bo Duke thinks it’s a gag gift of wine from the future. Livia is there (as always when Dan leaps) and they watch Nixon giving his “I’m not a crook” speech live as it happens – which is sort of cool since the speech took place on 11/17/73 exactly 34 years ago this Saturday.
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Journeyman
ReplyDelete"Winterland"
Original Airdate 11-12-07
Jeff L - TwoCents Staff Writer
Dan Vasser’s got a bottle of fancy wine for date night with Katie. He Quantum Leaps into The Ice Storm starring Bo Duke. He’s still got the wine and Bo Duke thinks it’s a gag gift of wine from the future. Livia is there (as always when Dan leaps) and they watch Nixon giving his “I’m not a crook” speech live as it happens – which is sort of cool since the speech took place on 11/17/73 exactly 34 years ago this Saturday.
This is the swinging 70s though and just as Bo Duke’s wife has gone off to her bedroom with another swinger, but there’s trouble afoot since the couple’s daughter Abbie has come home from college to surprise her parents. Dan and Livia point her to her parents’ room to find her mom, but mom is busy getting down with some strange and Abbie freaks out. Wouldn’t a college age girl in the early 70s be a little hipper about her parent’s swinging? I mean it doesn’t look like this is the first time they’ve done this sort of thing. Bo Duke even has the swinger’s gold medallion and everything. Well she’s not hip to the swinging and she runs out. Vasser grabs his bottle of wine and goes Back to the Future.
Katie is having after work cocktails with her new co-workers and they are gossiping about how the workplace is a hotbed for extra-marital affairs. She laughs it off and tells the girls that she has to go home for date night. Back home, Vasser pours the wine and tells Katie about the swingers and his trip to the 70s. The Leap has had a negative effect on the wine and Katie tells him he should have left it back in the 70s. Date night goes very well and everyone scores.
The next day Vasser starts digging and find out that that Abbie went missing after the party. Police found her car, but Abbie was never found. The feds show up, after being tipped off about the Dylan McClean money by cop Jack last week. The agent wants to know why Dan had one of the bills from the McClean hijacking and why he is on the no fly list (after his disappearing from the plane incident from earlier this season). The feds think Dan might be planning another airplane hijacking and that he may be Dylan McClean. Dan wants a lawyer and the feds back off.
Back home, Vasser grabs the money and he’s about to burn it when he gets a phone call from the mysterious Mr. Langley. Langley wants to meet again to discuss Dan’s time travel “book.” He tells Vasser that he’s working on quartz crystals (the kind used in watches – watches which tell time). He warns Dan not to tell anyone about the time travel stuff especially those with guns and Dan Leaps. Langley doesn’t seem shocked.
Vasser wakes up on the beach and there’s Abbie with her broken down car on the side of the road. She’s about to get picked up by a suspicious character but Dan shows up and the guy takes off. Abbie’s car has a flat tire and she doesn’t have a spare. A busload of hippies shows up and they’re on their way to see Neal Young at the Winterland. Abbie joins them and Dan jumps back home.
Jack shows up to warn Dan about the feds but it’s too late. Dan is Pissed. You’d think his wife had a child with another man while he was off fighting the war in Gaul or something. I don’t know why Dan won’t just tell Jack about his time traveling, but I guess he’s taking Langley’s warning to heart and since Jack has a gun he can’t be trusted with the knowledge of Dan’s trips into the past.
The next morning the Feds show up with a warrant to search the house. Vasser hasn’t gotten rid of the money yet and Katie has slipped the money into Dan’s jacket. He leaves the house and jumps into a restaurant in 1974. Nixon is on the televison giving his “I hereby resign…” speech. Livia is waiting for him at a table and next to them is the busload of hippies. Abbie is with them and the Charlie Manson-type guy who’s in charge has taken control of her. The hippies steal some money off one of the tables and run out. Dan saves them from being shot by the restaurant guy and bang he Leaps again.
Back in the present, the search is still ongoing. Jack shows up to give the feds a piece of his mind. He’s trying to act like a good guy in front of Katie and the head-fed (Paul Schulze, The Sopranos) sees right through him. He agrees to continue with the “dinner theater” if that’s what Jack wants but I guess Jack has put on a good enough show for Katie so he storms off.
Katie is looking through Livia’s stuff that was in a box in the closet and finds a picture of her from what looks like the Cival War, but is supposed to be from the 1940s. Dan is at the office and he calls Bo Duke to ask after Abbie. Bo tells him that his daughter is in prison for life for murder and hangs up on him. Katie shows up and shows Dan the picture. Meanwhile, back at the Halls of Justice, the head-fed is grilling Jack about another little incident involving money. This time he wants to know how a bill from 2003 is sealed in one of Jack’s evidence bags from 1995. That’s the bill that Dan used to pay the cabbie in 1995 earlier this season.
Dan leaps again and it’s just in time too. It looked like his editor was going to give him a hard time or possibly fire him since there have been rumors about more layoffs at the paper. Dan finds himself in a robbery this time and it’s being pulled off by the hippies. Livia is there too and she’s also a hostage. Vasser tries to talk Abbie out of doing the robbery and offers the hippies all the Dylan McClean money. Abbie, tired of being bossed around, takes off. While their being held hostage, Dan shows Livia the picture and she tells him that she is from 1948 and while he’s traveling to the past, she is traveling to the future. She explains that she was traveling and got stuck in the late 80s. She didn’t know what to do, but eventually ended up going to law school and becoming a lawyer. Then she met Dan and they fell in love. The cops show up and Dan and Livia make it out before they shoot or arrest everyone in sight. The Charles Manson-esque hippie guy is gunned down in a pile of Dylan McClean money.
So Vasser got rid of the Dylan McClean money, but did he really? Because Dylan McClean hijacked the plane in 1975 and that hippie robbery was taking place in the mid-70s. Perhaps that’s all the same money that McClean will hijack later that year. Back in the present, Dan sees a copy of his paper proclaiming that Abbie Armstrong has been elected representative for the 13th district – a far cry from serving life in prison. Dan is telling Katie about how the trips could get longer and how he could get stuck in the past like Livia did in the future. Katie is crying and the phone starts ringing. They let it go to voicemail and we see Jack with his phone in the bar drinking and he’s paying his tab with that suspicious $20 bill from 1995.
I’m really enjoying how the stakes are getting bigger and the mythology of the show is really coming together. 4.5 out of 5 stars on this episode.