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Is Journeyman running out of time ?

By fred | November 26, 2007

This has actually become a real question for this show, and in more than one way. First, there’s the question to know whether or not the last episode made, episode 12, will be the last one of the series, ever.

This question might very well be answered by a yes, I’m afraid for all fans of the series. Creator Kevin Falls said that “episode 12 is the end of our order. And let’s not kid ourselves. It’s a long shot that we would get a back nine, given the strike and our questionable numbers.”

Falls was referring to the additional nine episodes NBC could order to pick up the show for a full season. But this year so far NBC is being the worst of all networks - personal opinion here - because while other networks like ABC have shown support for some of their new series (yes, both Pushing Daisies or Dirty Sexy Money have received a full season order already), NBC is in a completely different “strategy”.

Basically, in the eventuality that the writers’ strike would go on, their intention is to let all the new series die by the end of the year, so that they could start fresh. I guess no old told those morons that they actually needed some good series to put on the air if they wanted to get people to tune in. Anyways. As Fall explained himself, “I think the idea is that NBC, what they want to do is tie up all their loose ends. Like, Heroes and Life and our show, have all that stuff done by the first of the year, so that they can, if there’s still a strike, air new programming or mid-season shows like Medium and Lipstick Jungle or another Law & Order and a ton of reality wallpaper, so they can start fresh. I think that’s [NBC President Jeff] Zucker’s thinking.”

It sure looks like that is the thinking going on at the moment over at NBC, which is only another reason why we hate those morons. This is not only a terrible idea, but also shows a total lack of respect for their series as well as those both working on them, and watching them. Did I mention I hate NBC already ? Okay, good.

By the way, I got my hands on a Lipstick Jungle screener a few months ago, and watched about 30 seconds of it. Then I had a choice to make : either pull my eyes out of my head with my bare hands and smash them up to make sure I would never ever watch that crap ever again, or burn the tape and hope every single copy of it burns with it as well. I went with the later. Yeah, it’s bad. No in fact, it’s even worse. But that’s not the question here.

So it seems obvious, I’m afraid, that chances for Journeyman to receive a full season order are close to none. 12 episodes have been written and produced and are now fully completed and ready to air, and we should be calling that episode 12 a season finale, because that is what it will be. In fact, it will most likely be more than that, and also be the series finale.

Fans of the show, you can find some good in that whole mess : while not made with such an idea in mind, the episode was written so that it could work as a season finale anyways, should it have to. “It wouldn’t answer every question, but it would give you a lot to chew on. We would give you some answers, and we’d withhold others.”

Of course they let a few things opened, and not all questions were answered, in the hope that the more episode would be ordered. “We didn’t want to turn over every card“, Falls declared.

“When we wrote the 12th episode, we were hoping to come back for a back nine. I can’t say everything’s going to be answered, because if we would’ve answered all of those questions, then where would we have gone in our back nine ? And, also, I think it would just stuff an episode with too much information, and I think it’s better when you can dole that stuff out, so I think people will get a lot of answers and half-answers that they can debate.”

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Shows: Journeyman