Who is Will Traveler?

Again, I must apologize for the deafening silence around here.  Summer has robbed me of my creative energy in terms of anything craft or kitchen related.  I'll be a better blogger/dabbler in September, I promise!  That said, I'm excited to introduce you to Whitney of Anything Lime who's my partner in crime for my first ever blog swap.  We were asked to post something related to summer, so without further ado here's Whitney's take on the tragic tv line up of summertime. Take it away Whitney! 


It started as most summer TV show season openers do - with the suspense slightly more intriguing than the acting is awful. It was my first summer living in FL, and as I was unemployed and living with a pro-golfer, Patrick, (who would later become my husband) who traveled all the time, I sought companionship from my dog and my television. And there's something so deliciously wrong about being sucked into the dreadful plotlines and horrible scripting that are the building blocks of summer TV. That particular summer, it was a show called "Traveler" that had me leaping balletically in anticipation. The trailers had me counting down the days, I was playing into their game like a cobra to the music of a snake charmer. Patrick assumed I'd gone mad, talking back to the commercials that bellowed "Who is Will Traveler?" into my living room. And of course I'd reply. "A CIA agent, duh.... or maybe, MAYBE a non-CIA agent pretending to be a CIA agent. A non-spy you're supposed to think is a spy. Or a spy you're supposed to think is a non-spy pretending to be a spy! OR a non-spy you're supposed to think is a spy when he's really a backup dancer on tour with Beyonce!"

I'll save you an entire summer of sitting on your couch heaving wooden spoonfuls of chicken tortellini alfredo straight out of the pot and into your mouth and tell you right now how it always goes. Because having the seamstress bark at you that you've gained "too many pounds" as she's sewing your cellulite ass into the dress you'll have to wear at your sister's wedding in three weeks is a fate worse than death in some cultures. 

"Who is Will Traveler?" The show opens up. There are three friends, one's named Will, (Is HE Will Traveler? Gosh, THAT was easy!") They plan a trip, making references to wilderness and Jack Kerouac and brotherhood and camping and manly things. They bring a video camera, rollerblades and backpacks. They're in a museum; Will instructs his friends to put on their rollerblades while he records video of them causing a commotion. As they speed away, there's an explosion behind them, and in the place where Will stood is now an unidentifiable charred body. And this is the point where, beaming, I announce. "Got it. A spy pretending to be a non-spy pretending to be a spy pretending to be a dead guy, who, because he used an actual body as a decoy, is actually a murderer or maybe he was framed."

I didn't know whether he was a masseur-turned-unicorn tamer who spent his days reading romance novels and braiding women's hair. What I DID know was that he wasn't actually dead, and it wasn't a mystery at all because seriously, that was in the pilot episode and how much worse could it get than, "Who is Will Traveler, ya say? Well, dead now."

So then, back to the enthralling suspense of this show. Because the friends are seen speeding away from the scene of a horrific disaster, they're immediately pegged as the culprits and labeled terrorists and flagged as fugitives of the United States. They draw this out for oh, eight episodes. Meanwhile, guys in suits storm into the house where Will Traveler (alive and well) is staying with a girl he loves named Maya - which, ooooh, is also the name of his boat (eery, right? I know! Coincidences!) and then you KNOW the show has to be legit because, people, they're wearing suits.

"Will Traveler," they say to him in the most intimidating voices the actors can manage to muster, and by this point you're all, "TELL ME ALREADY! TELL ME WHO HE IS!" But they don't tell you, they never tell you. Instead they start throwing out words like "package" and "device" and "targets" and "mission" and "intel" and "transmission" and "extraction" and "acronym" and "vagina monologues" and "soliloquy."

I'm sure the way they prep the actors for this show is like this, "If you forget your lines, just start reciting this list of spy-like buzzwords." And there you have it: crappy writing at it's finest; available on network stations all summer long (and catch reruns of NCIS for poor scripting year round!).

And then the next part is inevitable.

The show gets canceled.

So who is Will Traveler?

I'll never know.

*****

Well Whitney, I can't say I'm sad I missed that one! I agree summer tv is horrible, even though I'm really amused by those crazy kids on Bachelor Pad 2.  Thanks for sharing Whitney!  I'm over on Whitney's blog sharing a few more of my summer reading picks. Wednesday's Wardrobe returns Thursday!