User:Thefreemarket/Traveler

Traveler is a short-lived drama-thriller television series that ran from May 10, 2007 until July 18, 2007 on ABC in the United States. The series was produced by Warner Bros. Television.

Traveler was officially cancelled after eight first-run episodes on July 18, 2007. Fans then tried to save the show but were unsuccessful. Dave DiGilio, the creator, posted an "answers blog" on September 28, 2007, which officially ended the show.

Plot
The series follows Jay Burchell and Tyler Fog, two Yale University graduate students who become suspects when the fictitious Drexler Museum in New York is bombed while they are pulling a juvenile prank. It appears that their friend, Will Traveler (aka Daniel Taft), set them up to look like the terrorists who did the bombing. After the bombing, Traveler disappears and there is no evidence that he ever existed.

As Jay and Tyler flee from the FBI, which believes them to be domestic terrorists, they uncover secrets and clues, including the fact that at least two organizations have knowledge of the conspiracy, among them the Department of Homeland Security.

In DiGilio's blog, he revealed the backstory and overal story arc of the series in detail. The sections below contain the revealed information, such as planned story arcs.

The Fourth Branch
The Fourth Branch is a secret society comprised of the oldest families in the United States of America. When the U.S. was founded, democracy was not a proven, accepted form of government. There had not been a successful Western democracy since Athens. And in many ways, the United States was viewed as a great experiment. The Founding Fathers wanted independence from Great Britain, and they needed to unify a fledgling country populated by a multinational constituency to win the war. What better way to rally a disparate army against the oppressors than to promise the common man a voice in the new government? This was the great promise of early American democracy.

However, the Founding Fathers were also scared of the common man's power and as a result put safeguards into place; a branch that sits above the people's three official branches of government. That body is the "Fourth Branch." The group implements checks and balances on the U.S. government to guide the true course of America. And while the Founding Fathers believed in using the branch to foster a youthful nation, today the branch has become a shadow government that uses economic, political, social and legal influence to maintain strict control.

The Painting
The "signing" depicted in Trumbull's Declaration of Independence was a complete fabrication in regard to the document itself, and historians have always wondered why there are five people in the painting who were not actual signers of the Declaration of Independence. The truth is that the painting does not depict the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but rather it captures the formation of the Fourth Branch. And looking into the families of the men present in the painting holds the key to finding the current members of the branch.

At the time of series, rumors of the Fourth Branch had increased in the corridors of Washington, D.C.. Jack Freed and others had decided to start a campaign to increase their control of the U.S. with the Drexler bombing. The purposes of the bombing were to strike a new chord of fear in the American public, as suddenly young, well-educated white males would be seen turning against their own country; and to destroy a piece of evidence, which if discovered, could expose the existence of the branch itself.

The Porter
The Porter (portrayed by Billy Mayo) is actually a rogue CIA officer named Jon Anselmo. He ran a CIA black ops team in Pakistan and was taken out because someone in the Fourth Branch did not want a certain high-level terrorist captured just yet. Anselmo was furious. Not only did he lose five good men, but he could not get answers about what went wrong. Despite being told that he'd wandered into a mystery well above his pay grade, Anselmo kept pushing. Eventually, he heard whispers about the Fourth Branch and tracked the conspiracy theories to a Colorado real-estate baron. Rather than hide the truth from Anselmo, the Baron saw an opportunity to gain an important ally in returning the branch to its proper purpose.

The Fourth Branch had fractured due to infighting. After a lengthy battle from the 1960s through the 1990s, two factions emerged: One, led by Jack Freed's family, wanted to completely wrest control of America away from the people. The other, led by the Baron, had hoped to return the branch to the benevolent presence it held at America's birth. And if that did not work, the Baron was ready to disband the branch altogether. In exchange for compensation to the families of the men Anselmo lost, Anselmo became the Porter, a man bent on destroying the corrupt side of the Fourth Branch. His first mission was to follow Will Traveler to the men who were giving him his orders.

It was the Porter that killed Jack Freed via the limousine bomb. He killed him because the Baron had given him orders that once he had identified the tyrant, the cancer had to be removed before evidence of the branch could leak to the public.

Will Traveler
Will's real name was Stephen Mailer. He was raised by a single mother in a small town in Arizona. Not the biggest kid in the bunch, he learned to defend himself early and was aided in this by his uncle, who moved to the small town when Stephen was 12. This uncle gave Stephen's mother money. Soon, they'd upgraded from a trailer park to a two-bedroom condo. This uncle also knew martial arts. He taught Stephen the fighting style of Krav Maga and young Stephen Mailer eventually became the one to be feared on the playground.

While Stephen's mother was frightened by her son's violent nature, his uncle seemed to foster it, using hypnosis and behavior modification to prepare Stephen for a life of service. When Stephen turned 17, his uncle took him to join the military. Stephen understood weapons, combat and battlefield strategy 10 times better than the officers who taught him and would serve in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, he was never promoted and was never given medals for his heroics. Instead, he simply moved from unit to unit, and with each move, he was given new dog tags and a different name. During his three years in combat, he saw his uncle three times. The last time was in Baghdad's Green Zone, when his uncle arrived to take him home for his final assignment. A man named Jack Freed had started an FBI program called "Operation Hometown." Something that was essential to winning the war on terror.

It seems that domestic terrorism cells were on the rise. People who appeared to be normal citizens were in fact fomenting revolution. Freed had established a covert operation to use human intelligence assets to infiltrate and spy on American citizens. Stephen would be one of Freed's best recruits. He helped bust up a Chechnyan sleeper cell before it could attack the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. He stopped a group of neo-Nazis from assassinating a black governor in the South. And then he was sent to Deer Harbor, Maine to train for what would be his most important assignment. By then, Stephen went by the name Daniel Taft.

Against every rule in the book, he fell in love with the woman who ran the Operation Hometown safe house in the small town that was used to ferry Hometown operatives in and out of the United States. Maya helped Daniel create his new alias. He picked the name "Will Traveler", after the "Have Books, Will Travel" book store that Maya ran. He picked his new name to remind him of Maya, the woman he loved. In the summer of 2005, "Will Traveler" left for New Haven, Connecticut, where he would live with two men with serious bones to pick with President Shears and the U.S. government. He was gradually given his orders, always by his handler, Joseph. He needed to get video of Tyler Fog speaking his true mind about President Shears. Jay Burchell was writing for the law review, and Will needed to make sure Jay wrote about the illegal detention of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay.

Will had been raised to obey orders, not to question them, but even he knew something was not right. In secret trips to Deer Harbor, he began to make preparations to leave Operation Hometown and the country with Maya. And when the final directive came, his worst fears were confirmed. He was being asked to murder Jay and Tyler, innocent American civilians, while framing them for an attack on New York City's oldest art museum. All efforts to reach his uncle were unsuccessful. So, Will decided he would have to improvise. He would let Jay and Tyler live and then blow up the museum. But while researching the plan to blow up the Drexler, Will discovered that the Drexler bomb was to be placed in a gallery filled with paintings by John Trumbull, right below the crown jewel of the Shears' Collection, Trumbull's Declaration of Independence. He began to suspect that the bombing might also be connected to the paintings. Knowing that he'd be punished for betraying his orders, Will decided to steal the painting as a piece of leverage should his plan fail. When Maya was killed, everything changed for Will.

Jay's connection to the Fourth Branch
In Season 2, Jay was going to look into his father's real work for the military and how it connected to the Fourth Branch. He would discover that his father was part of a unit in Desert Storm that was run by Jack Freed. While not a member of the Fourth Branch, Burchell's father had served Freed and his objectives with loyalty. But when the unit became dispensable, and their operations needed to be covered up, Tom Burchell was set up to take the fall by Freed. With Freed dead, Jay will seek revenge from the person they find to be running Freed's half of the Fourth Branch — Freed's mother, a Washington socialite. Rosalind Freed will offer to return everything Jay lost after the Drexler bombing: his high-power life as a New York lawyer, a normal life with Kim and his freedom. But by this point, Jay will have found Kim and will know the endgame of the Fourth Branch, and Jay will refuse Rosalind Freed's offer, ultimately having her arrested.

Carlton Fog
Carlton Fog would be remanded to a criminal hospital — while his case bounced from one appeal to another in the justice system. While recovering, he would be visited by a young veteran in officer uniform just back from serving in Iraq. This veteran would sit at his bedside and Carlton would tell this young man, "we have a problem with your brother." Named Gabriel Fog, Tyler's brother would become the nemesis that would be hunting down Tyler and Jay throughout Season 2. Ultimately, the two brothers would meet at either the midpoint or finale of the season and Tyler would actually have been killed by Gabriel.

Chambers and Marlow
In the Season 2, Chambers realizes that Marlow was the one who called his cell phone, and after a major cat-and-mouse chase through the FBI field office, Marlow would disappear. Three months later, she's gone underground, and the media has been sold a story that she was in fact in collusion with Will, Jay and Tyler, and she helped them escape New York.

Now, Marlow is on her own hunt to find out how Chambers was involved in the Drexler bombing. Meanwhile, Chambers has been promoted to head of the entire New York Field Office. Everything is going great, except for the fact that Chambers' daughter — the one mentioned in Season 1 — becomes suspicious of her father's involvement in the Drexler conspiracy. His daughter, another new character for Season 2, would eventually become convinced that her father had framed Jay, Tyler and Will. And when the boys resurface, she would reach out to them, eventually becoming a new love interest for Tyler.

The Fourth Branch would learn of Chambers' daughter's indiscretion. And Jack Freed's mother, the woman now pulling the strings, would tell Chambers that his daughter would have to be removed. Through flashback, we would learn that Chambers faced the same situation when he was stationed in Israel. His wife discovered he was pulling off covert raids, kidnapping Palestinian soldiers on behalf of the branch. And that time, he sacrificed his wife in hopes that it would help return his family to prominence in the branch. This time though, Chambers will choose his child over his loyalty to the cause, allowing one of our great villains to end his arc on a redemptive note.

Kim
At the end of Season 1, we left Kim as she was about to experience "rendition" firsthand. She has spent the past three months in a Central American prison. She is a broken woman. But not broken enough to stop believing in Jay.

Jay has attempted to find her, risking everything to return to New York City and reach out to Mr. Doherty for help. Unbeknownst to Jay, Kim was pregnant when he was forced to flee New York. And while in custody, being tortured, she miscarried. A major storyline for Season 2 was to be Kim's struggle to stay alive, while Jay slowly and surely tracked her down.

Season 2
In the Season 2 premiere, after the limo is blown up, Jay, Tyler and Will would then escape Freed's forces and New York City with the help of the Porter. They would end up at a train yard, with Will boarding a freight train as it picked up speed. Jay would reach a hand out for Will's help. But Will would tell him, "It's better if we split up." "You don't honestly believe that?!," Jay would answer back. And in a moment of decision that would determine the fate of Season 2, Will would stretch out his hand and help the friends he betrayed onto the train. They will search for the truth together. As the train rolls away from the New York skyline, we FADE TO BLACK...And when we fade up, it is three months later.

In a mining town in Colorado, a news report in a locker room would reveal that another month has passed without any sign of the Drexler bombing suspects, and officials now believe that the three "Ivy League Terrorists" have surfaced in the Middle East. Amongst the workers getting ready to head into the mine, we find Will Traveler. It turns out that Jay, Will and Tyler have not left the country. They have laid low in a middle-of-nowhere town. And now that people have moved on to other current events, like more domestic bombings and the approaching election, Jay, Will and Tyler are ready to start their search into uncovering the truth behind the Drexler bombing and the Fourth Branch.

Throughout Season 2, the driving question becomes: "What is the Fourth Branch?" The Season 2 flashbacks reveal how Will was raised and groomed to become a leader in the secret society that has now turned against him. It would have been revealed that Will is in fact the heir of the Colorado Real Estate Baron. And Jay, Tyler and Will set out on a journey to find and expose members of the society, and this time they will have the help of Agent Marlow, who wants revenge for her partner's murder. The return of Tyler's brother leads to Tyler's murder. And Marlow will ultimately fall at the hands of her former boss Chambers.

But in the Season 2 finale, Will and Jay are miraculously saved from a brutal beating at the hands of Fourth Branch forces. When they wake up, they find themselves in the middle of the Oval Office. President Shears enters and they reveal everything they know. Unfortunately for them, it's here that we learn that Shears is not just America's head of state, he's also the heir apparent of the Fourth Branch.

Season 3
In Season 3 we learn the truth about the Fourth Branch's plan. They have used the bombings against the Shears family interests (and there would be more bombings besides the Drexler) to instill fear throughtout the U.S. and create sympathy towards the administration. And just as they hoped for, a movement has arisen to change the United States Constitution, allowing President Shears to stay in the White House for good.

In order to stop Shears, Jay and Will pretend to turn sides and effectively infiltrate the Fourth Branch on behalf of the Porter — Jon Anselmo — and his unknown boss. But in the Season 3 finale, their efforts are thwarted when Anselmo is killed and President Shears successfully wins election for a third term.

The End
In the final episode of the show, Will sacrifices himself to save Jay from the corrupt Shears administration. And as the series closes, Jay Burchell is the only one left of the three friends who started Traveler on a seemingly innocent road trip. With Kim's help, Jay completes Will and Tyler's legacy, exposing the lies and deceit of Shears, Carlton Fog and all the privileged few who have tried to make America their private kingdom.

Episodes
ABC originally ordered the season with 13 episodes. But on October 28, 2006, the network scaled it back to eight episodes. The pilot episode aired at 10 pm on May 10, and repeated on May 30, 2007, immediately followed by episode "The Retreat" in its regular time slot of Wednesday at 10pm Eastern/9pm Central. "The Retreat" was shown again on July 4, 2007, and then a new episode the following week due to The Fourth of July holiday.

Nielsen Ratings

 * All rating information is from Your Entertainment Now

Seasonal Ratings
Seasonal ratings based on average total viewers per episode of Traveler on ABC:

* Because Traveler aired during the summer it was not included in the seasonal ratings. However if it did air during the regular fall season it would of ranked 117 of 142 shows.