When I first heard of NBC's proposed idea for a time-travel program, my immediate response is "Didn't we just do that with Quantum Leap?"

The response is - yes, we did. There are some glaring similarities. It can't be overlooked. He has to go back in time and figure out why he's there and what he has to do in that time to change the outcome in order to "set history right." Okay. Aside from the moral question - do we even have the right? Send me to 1938 for chrissakes!!, there are some gems in this story which make it uniquely its own and genuinely endearing to watch. Okay, not endearing enough to scare away the guys cause there's lots of action, guns, cops, beatings,, nearly escaped deaths and all sorts of danger to avoid in the present and the past, but it's the human relations that really hold this whole thing together.

First we're introduced to Dan Vassar, played by Scotsman Kevin Kidd from HBO's ROME, and - co-incidentally enough, "Hannibal Rising" - a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. Vasser is married, to the ex-girlfriend to his brother (ouch, mind taking that Ginsu out?), and is a recovering gabling addict. It was a bad addiction. And his first wife, Livia (Moon Bloodgood) died years ago. But now Dan has the picture perfect life, a son who adores him, and a wife who thinks the moon revolves around him.

Except he starts getting these headaches. And waking up 20 or 15 years ago. On some kind of mission he has no idea. Now THIS, boys, is what they call "Black Ops", when even YOU don't know the mission. After a while he gets sent back to his own time where he tries to explain to his very plain-looking but incredibly loving wife and as you can imagine, she has more than a few problems with it. Then she learns that Dan sees his ex-wife - the one they thought was dead for all these years - he sees her and interacts with her in these alternate time dimensions. I would've kept that one to myself but...that's just me. But it puts Wife #2 through the roof (Gretchen Egolff) Katie Vassar, and she predictably falls into the ever awaiting arms of her husband's brother whenever Dan isn't "available" to perform some task. Like he has a choice.

Brother Jack (Reed Diamond) is filled with jealousy and rage. You can actually smell it through the TV. He makes a perfunctory act of a pretense of dating but we all know that he's waiting for Katie to come running to him after the last straw on the camels' back has broken. He's really a rather smarmy character and one I wouldn't mind busting up the head with a draft glass in a bar-fight. 

Jump head a few months and Jack seems to be learning from his lessons in the time streams. Although he bought a bottle of 2004 wine, went back and brought it home again and it had gone completely bad...I guess physics does rule. But Dan is starting to have moral dilemmas about what it is he's doing back in time. At one point he says to Livia, "Let the Higher Power do His Own dirty Work." This suggests Jack is beginning to feel like a pawn in some cosmic chess battle and there is a showdown coming.

All this is going on while Dan's young son is at home blissfully unaware that life as he knows it is falling apart around him. Oh wait. Until that one time that Dad disappeared right in front of is eyes. Cool! Dad's got a secret power! Aren't kids great?

And the money that was received in a previous time that can't be used in the present because its registered to a bank robbery committed in the past but Dan can use it when he goes into the past before it became "hot". Except his dimwit brother somehow gets the FBI involved and now Dan's under suspicion for everything he does, including disappearing on a plane once... Gee - thanks bro! Merry fuckin' christmas!