"Journeyman" to Make Final Journey; "Big Shots" Downed?

Things are not looking too good for Dan Vassar.

NBC had until yesterday to give a full-season pickup to its time-travel drama Journeyman but instead quietly let the option lapse, a move which has likely all but killed the Kevin McKidd-starring drama about a family man who discovers that he can travel to the past, where he encounters his dead fiancee, who also happens to be a traveler.

Journeyman did manage to complete production on its 13-episode initial order and the Peacock plans to air the final two installments next week (Monday and Wednesday evenings, if you're keeping score).

The news of Journeyman's likely demise comes just shortly after full-season pickups for fellow freshman series Life and Chuck. (Chuck's Monday night at 8 pm timeslot will be taken over by reality revival American Gladiators come January and NBC recently tested out procedural Life in Journeyman's soon-to-be-vacated timeslot.)

The jury is still out on the fate of Bionic Woman, the last of NBC's freshmen dramas launched at the start of the 2007-08 season. A relaunch of the series, a two-parter planned for January, has been scuttled due to the strike. I don't anticipate this series coming back from limbo, so Bionic Woman fans, prepare to say farewell to Jaime Sommers.

Elsewhere, ABC has yanked freshman drama Big Shots off of its schedule, effective immediately, and will instead fill the timeslot with repeats of Grey's Anatomy spin-off Private Practice.

It is not known if or when struggling drama Big Shots will return to ABC's schedule.

Production on the series' 13-episode initial order was completed and Big Shots still has five episodes in the can, so I'd imagine once ABC starts running low on first-run scripted programming, they could air these episodes as a backup.

Stay tuned.