The art of a cliffhanger is a very precarious craft. The audience must be wholly invested for the unsolved ending to capture their interest and leave them wanting more, or it will risk losing them to disinterest and annoyance. Traveler has walked this fine line since the first episode, sometimes succeeding and other times leaving me rolling my eyes as an episode left off on a suspenseful note. Unfortunately, last night, on the finale, the suspense was too much to be captivating. It was just irritating.

After joining forces and ditching Marlowe in the back alley, the three boys are reunited for the first time since the pilot episode. They bicker, Jay throws a couple punches, they stare in awe as Will displays his knowledge of gun shots and hotwiring cars. Basically, it's all filler time for Will to reveal that the painting everyone wants so badly is in Tyler's car, and they need to retrieve it in order to have a chip on Jack Freed.

My TV has been very good to me this summer. I didn't watch the Grey's Anatomy finale on it, so I've really had no reason to get angry. But this past Wednesday night, I found myself yelling at my TV set. Not in frustration, or disgust, as I once thought Traveler would make me. No, instead, as the final scene of the episode flashed onto the screen, I compulsively screamed, "BADASS!" Because that's the only way to describe this past week's episode.

Split up from each other for the first time, Jay and Tyler do what any red-blooded young men would - they get themselves some lovin'. After Tyler VERY narrowly escapes from the FBI foot hunt (though, was anyone else wondering why they didn't just shoot him?), he goes to a bar, dejected and thinking of Jay. He gets totally sloshed, but somehow manages to hook up with the bartender.

As much as I certainly didn't want to see Tyler get caught, the ineptitude of the FBI in pursuing him is getting a little ridiculous. He walked through Times Square, drunkenly stumbling, they watched him on traffic cameras, and they still couldn't capture him? That does not say much for the security of our nation. Nor does Agent Chambers' acting skills, which were so atrocious in this episode that I refuse to even address his scenes.

As I've noted before, Traveler has its on weeks, and it has its off weeks. Given the triumphantly suspenseful episode last week, it only makes sense that this week was incredibly boring. However, instead of throwing random unconnected events at the audience, the writers took this week to restate the obvious, and repeat things that we simply already knew.

Tyler and Jay returned to their anxious and angry arguing, dispelling the team image they had begun to cultivate in the previous episode. When they arrive at the office of the mysterious backer for Will's college career, all they find is a gutted apartment with shredded paper in bags. But Tyler realizes all the shredded paper is watching one specific ticker of the stock market, HOL - the very same company that Carlton Fog mentions in the first episode. Holloway is the company that insured the Drexler, and tons of its stock moved before the explosion. Wouldn't you think the idea of the shredder would be to eliminate that incriminating detail?

Traveler, the show, is much like the world's most obnoxious boyfriend. Every week you say to yourself, "I'm going to end this. He's too closed off, our fights are so circular, and even though he was better last week, this week he's being terrible." He says the right things, but it takes him weeks longer to say it than you wanted. And then he does something so sweet, and you figure you might as well stick it out another week to make sure he really is as awful as you think. Before you know it, you're in a committed relationship.

Traveler, the person, is, as we learned this week, also not the best boyfriend. But he is definitely a complete and utter badass. The episode picks up exactly where it was left the week before, and after some back and forth between the boys and the Porter With No Purpose, we follow Traveler to some warehouse, where gunfire breaks out. Though the Porter With No Purpose stays behind to fight the gunfire, my money's on him for coming back again at some point, with no specified purpose, of course.

I am just going to come out and say it - I have no idea what is going on with Traveler. The past weeks set us up for some kind of explanation, but this week's episode only asked more questions and confused the given pseudo-answers. It's not just the new pieces of unclear evidence that murk up the plot, but the continual deception. If nobody is who they say they are, and everybody is trying to kill Jay and Tyler (except maybe the Porter), there is no feasible way that they're getting out of this mess. More importantly, I am getting altogether too confused to care.

I'm glad that Traveler is on at 10 PM. That way, when it's over at 11 PM, I don't feel badly going directly to bed. Because the uniting characteristic of every episode, brought to a fever pitch in the third, is that Traveler is exhausting. This week, Jay and Tyler very narrowly escaped capture not once, not twice, but three times in their hour-long allotment on ABC. But thankfully, they also brought some answers too.

Jay opens the episode by acting as shady as humanly possible in a flea market in upstate New York, and in turn getting spotted by a watchful citizen. The Feds knock down the door of their motel to find, of course, that they have just missed the boys. Jay and Tyler have a very circular fight as they run through some kind of orchard - hey, at least it's not the woods anymore - the upshot of which is that they're going back to New Haven.

The first episode of Traveler had me literally on the edge of my seat. Not having seen any previews, I actually jumped when the Met exploded. And I was really annoyed when the episode ended, only because I wanted to see more. But after watching this week's episode, I realize why so many watchers were wary of the new series. They were Lost fans.

I never got into Lost. I saw part of one episode, maybe, while I was cooking dinner one night, and I had absolutely no idea what was going on. So I lack the jaded consideration of serial dramas that so many others have honed with Lost. This week's Traveler gave me a peak into what that disillusionment must feel like.