Something Bugs Me About Journeyman . . .

NBC has a new show starting Monday night at 10pm, Journeyman. Seems like it might be a decent, Quantum Leap-ish sort of show, but with a more angst-y edge, and Kevin McKidd makes a good lead, he was great in Rome, and I don't doubt he'll be good in this show.

But, if I were to find myself back in 1997, I don't think my first inclination would be to work on personal issues or mysteries. I'd be trying to figure out a way to convince the right people to take Al Qaeda far more seriously than they did at that time.

That in of itself creates a quandry. How would you convince a skeptical CIA or FBI agent regarding the possibility of four successful simultaneous plane hijackings, with the intent not to land the planes, but to use the planes as weapons? While the idea of simultaneous hijackings was already known and feared, the concept of using those planes as weapons wasn't something that was being discussed in intelligence circles (at least if my understanding of all the 'Monday night quarterbacking' in the aftermath is correct). If you were Joe Schmo off the street, seems like you'd have a very tough time getting information to the right people. Even if you tell the right people, those people would have a very tough time convincing their superiors that greater measures than were already being taken needed to be done. To this day the various Clinton admistration folks defend the postures they took during the 90s, and many of those same people are top advisors for Sen. Clinton. The thought of Madeleine 'Dances with Dictators' Albright having the ear of another President Clinton is a scary thought. Sandy 'Pants' Burglar being in a prominent advisory position is equally unthinkable, yet there it is.

Also, you might want to remind Pres. Clinton to keep his willy to himself, or at least use extremely discrete and well vetted prostitutes, rather than an emotionally needy intern. Seems like an awful lot would have gone a lot better had that whole mess never happened.

Back to Journeyman, can they have the protagonist proceed without even thinking about stopping 9/11? I hope they address this issue in some way. Or not, it might end up being unwatchable soap-y nonsense (they seem to focus on soap opera type plot devices in all the press material, but that might be a cynical and misguided ploy to drive a female audience towards a sci-fi type show, or it might really be the night time soap the press material makes it out to be), so a small matter of whether or not to put personal issues over global security won't ever arise, or matter.