Journeyman

One of the things that's quite different in American television from International programming is that in the United States, a show could run forever, provided that a network renews the show season after season. In other countries, shows tend to focus on one story arc, and it's shown in a format that usually consists of 10 to 13 episodes, each being about an hour long. In large part, American television is normally episodic, as network executives fear that too many serialized elements might hinder the show, because as people miss episodes, the ability to catch up to what's going on is harder and harder.

Journeyman was one the casualties of this past Fall season, executives, worried in the Nielsen decline by the sixth episode, chose not to renew past the initial 13 episode order. This early decision by NBC, did allow the show's production to create a much more structured finish to show, and by the final episode, Journeyman is able to function as a standalone series, with many of the questions introduced throughout the series answered. I didn't take to Journeyman right away -- while I found the writing clever and the quality of acting high, I don't think the series really came together for me until about halfway through the series, it definitely takes time to develop the characters and episode 7 is where they actually start to break from the pattern established in the first 6 episodes.

While I think the series wraps up pretty well, I wouldn't mind seeing more episodes of Journeyman, and it seems a lot of fans of the show feel the same way; they've started a campaign to Save Journeyman by sending boxes of Rice-A-Roni to NBC. The boxes sent to NBC are donated to City Harvest, a food rescue organization in New York City.