Blowback (Journeyman)

Infobox Television episode
Title = Blowback
Series =Journeyman


Caption =
Season = 1
Episode = 10
Airdate = November 26, 2007
Production = 110
Writer = Kevin Falls
Director = Karen Gaviola
Guests = Paul Schulze
Raphael Sbarge
Don Franklin
Eric Lange
Colin Ford
Episode list = List of Journeyman episodes
Season list =
Prev = Emily (Part 1)
Next = Home By Another Way

"Blowback" is the tenth episode of the first season of "Journeyman", and the second half of a two-episode story beginning with "Emily." The episode is named for Livia's warning to Dan concerning the unintended consequences of going "off-mission" in the past.

Plot

After Katie and Zack leave in the morning, a recently paroled Aeden Bennett (Raphael Sbarge) sneaks into Dan's home and shoots him. Moments later, Dan jumps to the past, unseen by Bennett. As Bennett looks around the home for Dan, Dan flags down a passing car in 1980, and manages to get to a hospital. As the doctors ask Dan for an emergency contact, Livia arrives and pretends to be his wife, warning Dan that the shooting is just the beginning.

Dan sneaks out of the hospital before the police can question him, and returns to the place where he arrived. Seeing a face in an upstairs window, he investigates and finds a ten-year-old boy (Colin Ford) locked in his room. He tells Dan that he's grounded, but refuses to leave the house with Dan for fear that his father, a policeman, will hurt him. As the boy begins to accept Dan's help, his father (Eric Lange) arrives home. As the policeman yells at his son for getting out of his room, Dan, hiding downstairs, looks for the address to send police and discovers that the boy is a young Aeden Bennett.

In the present, unable to find Dan, Bennett lures Katie to the house by calling her posing as the plumber. When she arrives, he pulls a gun on her. Meanwhile, Hugh tells Jack about FBI agent Garrity's (Paul Schulze) visit in the previous episode, and warns Jack that his sources show no official FBI investigation regarding Dan. Jack meets with Garrity, who shows him photographs taken in 1975 that show Dan wearing the same clothes that he was wearing when he disappeared from Flight 1680 in 2007. Garrity implies that he knows about Dan's ability, and that Dan is not the first time traveler he has encountered.

Back in 1980, Bennett's father leaves on a call. Dan's wound gets infected and his condition continues to worsen. He confronts Bennett about what he could become when he's older and considers killing him, but struggles with the idea, and finds he is too weak anyway. Livia arrives and gets Dan an ambulance. In the back of the ambulance Livia and Dan discuss the implications of the "test" Dan has been through, and realize the possibility that Livia's mission with Dan was to get him and Katie together. At that moment, both disappear from the ambulance.

Livia appears in the present day "Register" offices as Jack is talking to Hugh. Jack sees her and follows her into an elevator, where she tells him that Dan has been shot. As he copes with seeing her again, she tells him he has to find Dan and disappears before he can ask her anything else. He finds Dan at a hospital, and Dan tells him they have to go home.

At the house, Bennett tells Katie to make him lunch. They discuss his mother leaving his father when he was young, but are interrupted when Garrity rings the doorbell. Finding the front door ajar, he enters the house and is quickly shot and killed by Bennett.

Dan calls home and stalls for time before arriving home himself. He tells Bennett that he knows that he was locked in his room as a child and that his mother left him with his father. He reminds Bennett of their meeting in 1980, and tells him that he believes there's still hope. He convinces Bennett to give himself up and is reunited with Katie and Jack, who apologizes for taking so long to believe Dan's story.