“Friendly Skies”

Right away we see how entering Katie into the knowledge of Dan’s storyline pays immediate benefits.  Dan and Katie have planned a vacation so they can go away and “have lots of sex” and possibly create a sibling for their son.  Unfortunately, as could be predicted, Dan journies from the plane leaving her alone to cover for him.  The disappearing passenger doesn’t go over well, so the plane has to turn around.

Dan on the other hand journies back to a plane in the 70s.  What I love about the show is the use of timely music to showcase where Dan is, usually just before they give visual clues…clues that this episode goes a BIT overboard on as they show pretty much EVERYTHING  you wouldn’t get to see on a plane nowadays — smoking, a toy gun, etc.  But you can look past it.  While there he helps to deliver a baby.

Dan returns and Katie is somewhat shocked at trying to figure out what’s happening and more importantly how it affects their lives.  She has second thoughts about having another child given their situation with Dan.  Dan doesn’t seem to understand it.

He jumps back almost immediately and after a brief guiding conversation from Livia, meets the woman again and her almost teen daughter fighting.   It turns out the girl has never met her father and Dan thinks that might be the clue.

Meanwhile Jack is upset that ex-girlfriend Katie is using him as her first phone call when she has marital problems with her brother.  It’s a palpatable tension that again the show chooses to underscore to its credit and benefit.

Meanwhile Dan sees Katie has been taking birth control pills.  When he later confronts her she doesn’t deny it, saying as she said on the plane that she had been having second thoughts, but Dan jumps to the wrong conclusion that it’s his marriage in trouble.

Jack goes back again and steals his old phone charger from himself and almost runs into the foursome of himself, Livia, Jack, and Katie.   He then runs into the woman’s daughter who is trying to meet her scumbag father who destroys her dreams by completely dismissing her.

On his next journey he meets her father again on a plane in the 90s and he is dying.  He tries to track down the girl again but mistakenly gives the cabbie a $20 bill from the present causing a stir of counterfeit claims and is chased down by the cops, but the girl offers a getaway.

In a nice twist, the cop that’s chasing him?  His brother Jack.

Dan brings the girl and her father together and she reluctantly offers to save her father’s life even though he doesn’t deserve it at all.   While there he finds a man named Billy, who was overhearing the conversation and he takes him away just before he jumps back to reality.

Dan understands though that now they can’t have a child, but when he tries to find out what happened to his charges, he can’t find much.  He does track Tanna down and she’s a successful artist.  It turns out that Tanna wasn’t a match with him, but coincidentally she was a match with Billy, so the whole thing was about Billy instead.

As Dan and Katie try to go on vacation, they find out that they are on the no-fly list.

Their lives are getting harder and harder, but the set up of all the possible storylines and emotions to explore is endless - the hallmark of a great show.

At this point the only real weak point is the amount of stretching credibility that Dan can skip out all the time on his job and miss deadlines and there seems to be no problem for him. It is somewhat mitigated by the good relationship he has with his boss….but it’s still a bit much.

A-

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