"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Friday, March 26, 2010

FlashForward 1.13: Aaron's Daughter, Mark's Gun, and Magpies

Good FlashForward 1.13 tonight, which moved the story along in two important areas.   The story is that, with one exception (Gough's suicide), the future seen in the flashforwards cannot be prevented.

1.  Aaron Stark's flashforward showed him finding his daughter Tracy alive in Afghanistan - she had been reportedly killed there two years earlier.   When she showed up at Aaron's door alive, if not quite well, a few episodes later, this apparently confirmed the flashforward of her being alive.   But what was she doing in California?   Tonight's FlashForward episode nicely untangled this web.  Tracy is drugged, taken from the hotel California back to Afghanistan.   Aaron is in full pursuit.

2.  Mark Benford's gun is one of the centerpieces of the series.  Nhadra (I think of her as Behrooz's mothers - you'll know why if you're a 24 fan) reports from her flashforward that Mark will kill Demetri (who had no flashforward) with Mark's gun.   The FBI confiscated Mark's gun shortly after, so this seemed to foreclose at least that specific vehicle of Demetri's death.   In tonight's episode, Demetri's fiance Zoey is understandably determined to make sure that Demetri is not killed - her vision of the future is apparently one of her at Demetri's funeral (earlier thought by her and me, apparently incorrectly, to be their wedding).   To reassure her, Demetri takes Zoey to the FBI evidence room.  His intention is to melt the gun with a blowtorch.  But it's missing!

So the pieces of a future that some characters want, others hate, continue to fall inexorably into place.  Meanwhile, on the scientific front, an FBI team is dispatched to investigate the death of crows in Somalia, where a blackout apparently also occurred in 1991.   Watch for more of the "mirror effect" - the capacity of a disparate group of organisms, ranging from great apes to elephants, pigs, and magpies (a kind of crow) to recognize themselves in the mirror (in contrast to, say, a dog, which thinks it is looking at another dog in the mirror).

And I'm looking forward to seeing more of FlashForward in the mirror of ourselves and our speculations that is science fiction on television.


5-min podcast review of FlashForward

See also FlashForward Debuts and Oceanic Airlines as a Portal Between FlashForward and Lost ... 1.2: Proofs and Defiance of Inevitability ... 1.3: Conficting Visions and Futures ... 1.4: FlashForward Meets Shaft and House ... Drunk FlashForwarding in 1.5 ... Across the Universe in FlashForward 1.6 ... FlashForward 1.7: The Future Can Be ... FlashForward 1.8: The Nightie as a Grain of Sand ... FlashForward 1.9: Shelter from the Storm ... Olivia Benford at Harvard in Flashforward 1.10 ... Flashforward 1.12 Parts 1 and 2

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1 comment:

TheLooper said...

I saw this ending coming...no pun intended!lol

They mentioned Benford's gun and whether or not Mark could actually kill his own partner so many times in this episode you just could feel it was going to turn up missing. Now the stage is set because no one knows where the gun is and Demetri's fate may be sealed...from another source.

I'm anxious to see what Mark's daughter saw in her flash forward. She's never wanted to talk about it, even though we see her in both Simcoe and his son's flash forward at the Benford's home on April 29, 2010. But what if she sees something else that's even more profound after her brief encounters with them? What if she sees the next blackout happen? Maybe not everyone sees something happening on April 29? Maybe some see further into the future? Just very curious with her since they have never talked about her vision at all really.

But this was definitely one of the better episodes and I look for next week to be even better when they actually go to Somalia and investigate a crime scene on a much smaller scale (than planet Earth).

I'm also curious when they were interrogating Simcoe, the guy said he didn't cause the blackout, he just enhanced it, which I assumed this to mean in order for the wave to effect the whole world. That's really interesting and can't wait to see where they go with that.

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