FlashForward 1.12 parts 1 and 2

FlashForward came back on ABC tonight with a double episode - two new hours (Episode 12, Parts 1 and 2 - Episode 11 was the recap) - of which the last 20 minutes or so were superb.

Let's talk about that first.   I wrote in my review of the premiere episode about the "mysterious hooded figure who did not black out (he's caught on a video taken at a stadium - I suspect he's the character played by Dominic Monaghan, by the way, but that's just a guess)".   I was glad to see tonight that I was right - he is Simon, played by Dominic Monaghan, indeed.

I also enjoyed Simon's story, and the good twist at the end of the two hours.   His story is that he is being run by the nasty character played by Ricky Jay, who arranged for Simon to be at the stadium with a magic (ok, quantum entanglement) ring that kept Simon and Ricky (who also had a ring on his finger) from blacking out and flashforwarding.   When I say Ricky is nasty, I'm being kind.   He kills Simon's father and teacher (two different people), has Simon's sister kidnapped, tortures Simcoe (Ricky's guys did the kidnapping of Simcoe we saw in December), and faux-tortures Simon, who nonetheless loses a finger in the pretense.   Ricky reps a group who want to use the blackout for their own benefit - whatever that is (we don't yet know) - and are not all troubled by killing millions of people.  And the twist?   Ricky tries to squeeze Simon into further service, and Simon kills him.  Just like that.  Didn't see it coming.  A fine twist.   And I liked when Simon tells Ricky that he doesn't want to deal any more with just "the middle man".

As for the rest of tonight - I thought that FlashForward had some fine ingredients going in.  Characters struggling to prevent the future they saw, others struggling to make sure it happens, and, with one exception, not being able to do anything to stop it - in fact, for the characters trying to stop it, the more they try, the more they seem to be making it happen.   Mark is the best example of this, trying to keep what he saw in his future from happening, but investigating this case in a way, seemingly beyond his control, which usually makes the very pieces of this future fall into place.  The only character who seems to break out of this is Al Gough, who stops the future he doesn't want - he apparently kills an innocent woman - by taking his own life.

I continue to find these ingredients highly compelling - in particular, why Al was apparently able to  stop his future.   Tonight's two hours made the significant move, late in the story, of establishing that Simcoe in his flashforward in Olivia's house was talking on the phone to Mark in his office, thus tying Mark's, Simcoe's, and Olivia's flashforwards provocatively together.  It was also good to see Sleeper Cell's Michael Ealy continue in his CIA-agent role on the show.  But 1.12 otherwise did little to advance the central stories, and instead introduced a new character, a window cleaner who survives the blackout and finds the Almighty.   I think an intelligent discussion of faith and how it could play in the flashforwards could have added a significant element to the story.   But the born-again window cleaner's voice-over narration just didn't do that for me. 

FlashForward has had two show-runners replaced since the Fall.   The show is still based on a tip-top novel by Rob Sawyer, and has taken that story in powerful directions.   But we need to see more of Simon - or stories that have the punch of his - and less of the window cleaner's.


6-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

Listen to 40-minute interview with Robert J. Sawyer

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The Plot to Save Socrates



"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book 

FlashForward Meets Shaft and House in 1.4

A tip-top episode 1.4 of FlashForward tonight, which provides yet another proof that the visions of the future are true. In fact, so far, all we've had are confirmations - Agent Gough's meeting with his London counterpart, the death of the Utah agent who had no vision - with the exception of Demetri's fiance's vision of their marriage. In fact, tonight we had two confirmations, as Lloyd Simcoe confirms that he was in Olivia's home (though he didn't see Olivia, only heard her voice).

But the Shaft part is especially neat and convincing. A white guy's vision on a bus under water sees himself cool, on-top as never before, and African-American in the future, like "Shaft or Bryant Gumbel," as he puts it. Further, he's calm as can be when he wakes up almost under water. He even heroically saves someone.

But how can a white guy change into a black guy in six months?

Back in the present, he ends up in Olivia's hospital 14 days after the blackout, complaining of pain. It's more serious than that - Olivia's says he needs an operation. He's still incredibly calm. This gives Dr. Varley an idea. Like House, he realizes that Addison's disease could account for both the white-to-black transformation, and the smooth calmness. Addison's disease affects the adrenal gland, making it pump melanin instead of adrenalin. A nervous Caucasian can turn into a calm African American...

In one of the most significant interactions of the series, Olivia resists Varley's diagnosis. Of course she does - she does not want her future to be true, just as Varley hopes that his is. The patient almost dies. But Olivia accepts the patient's future and Varley's analysis just in time, with a take away that moves her a big step towards thinking her future may be inevitable.

And so the only opposition to the flashforward visions - the only outright conflict of visions - comes from Demetri and his fiance. Accordingly, he wants to move their marriage up to an earlier date - prior to the date of his murder reported to him by Behrooz's mother, last week (that is, the Iranian agent, who played Behrooz's mother in 24 a few seasons ago). But how can he succeed? If he's able to change the date, that means Zoey's vision was wrong - how could she see them getting married in six months, if they were already married - which pitches them and us right back into the paradox.

And just to up the ante, Dominic Monaghan's character Simon puts in a brief appearance at the end of this episode .... and he seems far more sinister than Charlie ...

6-min podcast review of FlashForward
See also FlashForward Debuts and Oceanic Airlines as a Portal Between FlashForward and Lost and 1.2: Proofs and Defiance of Inevitability and 1.3: Conficting Visions and Futures

Listen to 40-minute interview with Robert J. Sawyer

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Oceanic Airlines as a Portal Between FlashForward and Lost

I mentioned in my review of the FlashForward’s fine premiere last week the Oceanic Airlines billboard that appeared in a Los Angeles scene. I said it was a nod to Lost. I think it’s worth another blog post to say it’s much more.

What that billboard does is proclaim that FlashForward and Lost are taking place in the same universe. It’s a universe alternate to ours in which there is no Oceanic Airlines. But it’s a universe in which all the strange phenomena of Lost – including Oceanic Airlines and an island and people that can jump through time – exist or existed.

Oceanic Airlines in FlashForward is in effect a portal that connects both ways between the people and events of Lost and the people and events of FlashForward. Since FlashForward takes place in the present and six months into future, and Lost takes place a little and much further back in the past, that can work.

The people part of the portal are especially significant to consider. Jack in Lost could end up in some episode of FlashForward – not just the actor Matthew Fox but the character Dr. Jack Shephard. Mark Benford from FlashForward could appear in Lost.

In some cases, though, it could get a little complicated. Olivia Benford in FlashForward is played by Sonya Walger, who also plays Penny in Lost. So the actress would pretty much always have to be Olivia in FlashForward, and Penny in Lost, lest the viewers get totally confused and crazy. If Simon, played by Dominic Monaghan in FlashForward (we haven’t really met him yet on the series), were to show up in Lost, viewers would have a hard time understanding why “Simon” looked just like the late Charlie Pace.

Fortunately, Robert J. Sawyer, the author of the FlashForward novel upon which the series is based, doesn’t look much like James Sawyer from Lost, so we would be ok on that score.

But whichever ways these two series go, we could be in for some fascinating crossovers, or, who knows, maybe none at all.

See also FlashForward Debuts

Listen to 40-minute interview with Robert J. Sawyer

review of Lost Season 5 finale, with links to reviews of earlier episodes


6-min podcast episode about Oceanic

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FlashForward Debuts: Irresistible Human Stories and Science Fiction

Before I review the first episode of FlashForward - which I thought was splendid - I should tell you, in the spirit of full disclosure, that the novel FlashForward upon which this ABC-TV series is based was written by my good friend, Robert J. Sawyer. That said, I should add that I'm especially delighted that I enjoyed the premiere of this series so much, because I would have had no choice but to be honest with you if I did not, or I might not have reviewed the series at all. And I promise to give you my candid views of every episode that I review.

The second preambling point I should make is that the series story is different in many ways from the novel, and at the same time it draws upon many of its powerful themes, but I won't spend any time here at all with comparisons pro, con, or otherwise to the novel. Instead, as I have been doing with True Blood - based also on a series of novels - I'll be reviewing the television series FlashForward totally on its own terms.

So here goes ... (as with all of my reviews, expect spoilers) ...

Everyone in the world (or, as is revealed near the end of show, everyone other than at least one) blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seventeen seconds. But it's not really a black out, because almost everyone (again, minus at least one, and not the one indicated above), has a vision of the future six months into the future.

The first important point in the plot, confirmed in a variety of effective, emotionally compelling ways, is that the vision is proven as in some sense real, not a mass hallucination. An FBI guy in Los Angeles recalls being in a meeting with his counterpart in New Scotland Yard six months from now, and she confirms it, too, down to the detail of a bird flying into a window.

The most compelling confirmation comes from Mark Benford (well played by Joseph Fiennes), an FBI agent married to a doctor, Olivia. She's played by Sonya Walger, who is always a pleasure to see in any role on the screen, including The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Tell Me You Love Me, and, of course, as Penny in Lost. Mark's vision provides the foundation of the investigative part of this story - he sees himself in the future looking at names on a board as part of a case, and this gets the case started in our present (more on this in the next two paragraphs). Olivia's vision sees her happy and in love with another man - a vision which upsets her, to say the least, since she is very happily married to Mark, and this in effect sets her and Mark on a path of making sure the future she saw does not come into being, even if it might have benefits for other people. A part of Mark is hoping that the vision may somehow not be real - but the hope is dashed when his young daughter asks him in a quietly wrenching last scene to put on a friendship bracelet she made for him. Mark has seen this on his hand in the future.

The issue of pre-determination versus free-will is always on the table when people see the future, either by traveling to it, or somehow viewing it, in science fiction. Indeed, one of the reasons I think time travel is impossible, though I love to write and read and see it, is that I believe in free will. If you know the future, and that has any meaning, that must mean you have no free will - you cannot change what you saw or otherwise know about the future.

An appealing intellectual game for people who like time travel is a future, which hasn't happened yet, causing itself to happen by influencing the past. FlashForward has this intriguing reversal of cause and effect, in Mark's investigation in the present ignited by what he saw in the future, and that in itself makes it exceptional television.

Lost has some of this, too, and there are some similarities - for the good, I'd say - between the two series (as well as a billboard for Oceanic Airlines in an early FlashForward scene). A kangaroo running through Los Angeles, a mysterious hooded figure who did not black out (he's caught on a video taken at a stadium - I suspect he's the character played by Dominic Monaghan, by the way, but that's just a guess), and of course people who know what's going to happen (obviously just about everyone in FlashForward) all have echoes of Lost.

But FlashForward has a multiplicity of powerful stories all its own, including one character, Mark's partner Demetri (John Choe), who has no vision of the future at all. Does that mean he's bound to die? The answer will no doubt not be even close to that simple, but the tableau of conflicting interests, ranging from wanting to ensure to wanting to prevent the glimpsed future, makes for an irresistible story.

The premiere of FlashForward will be on ABC again tomorrow evening - well worth seeing if you missed or didn't TiVo or DVR it. I'll be back here next week and every week it's on - which I suspect will be years - with a review of FlashForward.

You might enjoy my in-depth interview with Robert J. Sawyer from last week.

10-min podcast review of FlashForward 1.1

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another kind of time bending

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