Flash Forward

Alright I started this topic last time, so here I go again.

I am loving this friggin show! Lesbian action. Shootouts. Tonight's episode was particularly good with the introduction of the senate subcommittee bitch and the attack on the team. I really love Courtney B. Vance. The characters he plays are generally thoughtful, intelligent, and smooth. Always a pleasure to watch him.

 

Great episode, lots of new plot threads taking root:

- Clemente's flash forward was conspicuously not shown, though Peter Coyote would still be referred to as "Mr. President" even if he were no longer in office. Maybe she really did see herself as president in April 2010.

- Looks like Agent Lipstick Lesbian might have lost an ovary.

- I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what those towers do.

- And, the garage shootout reminded me why it's necessary to keep range quals, although those desk jockeys were putting a lot of ineffective fire downrange. Still, it was exciting.

 

The question is who and why were people shooting at them?

This show has been amazing so far hopefully it can continue..the failure rate for shows that have long plots and multiple questions that wait to be answered however have a high failure rate. The ability for the showrunners to keep things from being too tangled or to make the viewer wait for the payoff of questions being answered is difficult.

A few things I think from this last epiosode..

1.) I "think" and also "hope" that the female agent is dead, it would change things up quite a bit instead of all flashforwards coming true we could see an instance when one did not, it would change alot of the characters viewpoints on things.

2.) The Senator now VP I think she was just blowing smoke up our favorite FBI Directors ass they did not show her flashforward for a reason I think.

3.) When the President picks up the phone and says "I need you to take care of a problem" there is no way that he is the one who sent the Chinese, I personally think its a cleaver bit of misdirection by the writers.

What do you guys think?

Also I found it very funny for some reason to picture all of the Chinese guys who attacked the FBI agents sitting in the SUV before the attack talking about their flashforwards and them realizing that like 4 out of the 6 of them did not have one realizing that means they were prolly dead. I got a chuckle thing about the hypothetical exchange.

 

I really want to like this show, and its been alright so far but it's losing me.

I felt like the lesbians were a bit contrived, just hot lesbians for the sake of hot lesbians, it didn't really add anything to plot. I was shocked that the one got shot though towards the end. If she dies then that really fucks up everyone's flashforwards.

President with an illegitimate child? I just saw this premise in Kings and we saw how long that show lasted.

The concept is original and compelling, but I'm having a hard time caring about any of the characters. I'll tune in for the next couple weeks, but I think it really needs to pick up the pace.

 

It developed her character more. It definitely showed why she was so leery of the truth of flash forwards, beyond her previous excuse of "I don't even have a boyfriend". I don't think its going to be a major plot point, but it definitely fleshes out her character's skepticism.

And the illegitimate child plot wasn't the whole premise of Kings and it certainly wasn't why it only had one season. I doubt the President having one here is gonna effect anything. Again, it gave some insight into the field director's (not sure how to spell his name) character and I think it will serve to confuse the characters more so than us when he tries to figure out where the hit came from. However, we still don't know if their funding was cut or not. The president's phone call implied a hit was on, but this def wasn't it. Why would the president go after his entire investigation team? By going after the entire team, the writers are pretty much posting a big neon sign saying its the people behind the blackout trying to silence them.

And whoever said that Clemente's flash forward is still possible because Presidents not in office are still called "Mr. President", good catch. I forgot about that and it was making me wonder if someone's flash forward was already being proven false. Could the woman the president was with be significant? He seemed shaken a bit by what his vision was, but from looking at it, it seemed pretty benign.

 

Maybe, but "FlashForward" has the advantage of slipping comfortably into the spot that "LOST" will soon be vacating. ABC seems to be handling the hand-off pretty well so far.

But speaking to your point, I don't think this show would have had the chance for a huge following had it been developed for a different network. Being a "LOST" knock-off is a lot different than being the "LOST" understudy.

 

Here's an interesting dilemma to consider if the FBI lesbian is dead. Had they not had the flash forward, they wouldn't have had that fight, and perhaps this means that the two of them stayed together/got married(it's California)/got pregnant and lived happily ever after.

However, since they had the flash forward, they had a fight they couldn't otherwise have had and changed both their futures, immediately resulting in the FBI agent getting shot rather than being in bed with her girlfriend. Right?

So do the flashforwards themselves alter the course of the future? Or, like in Joseph Feinne's case. are the flash forwards what actually drives the future. I'm confused by my own point here. I'd better stick to the LOST thread.

 

Especially since he knows he's gonna get shot in the chest on March 25th (i think.)

Hey Harold, moron, just wear a fucking bulletproof vest that day. Maybe put an iron plate underneath it. Try to stay someplace safe. Problem. Fucking. Solved.

 

So wait a minute...weren't we led to believe that the little girl's flashforward was some kind of terrible vision? Apparently on 4-29-2010 she's just going to be hanging out at home, eating cookies with her new autistic stepbrother. What's so bad about that?

 

Well I don't believe we've seen her flashforward, just the few seconds of Dylans that she happens to be in. Remember they lasted over 2 minutes. Also during the flashforward Dylan's dad, who is obviously a big player in whatever caused the blackout is in the other room on the phone and Charlie could have very well picked up something about D. Gibbons from there. Another thing is there seems to be a connection between Charlie and Dylan that goes beyond the flashforwards.

 

Well last night's episode was certainly a mind-fuck. I think the Schrodinger's Cat/Heisenberg explanation Chaaahlie gave the girl on the train a couple episodes ago is going to become more and more important.

Assuming Zoey isn't lying (or mistaken) about knowing that Demitri was the man she was marrying in her flash-forward, there's obviously a situation where two distinct possibilities exist for what happens in the future. Considering Gough committing suicide essentially rules out what he saw in his flash-forward, we know that whatever people saw in them can be changed if people directly act to prevent them.

This completely flies in the face of the entire FBI investigation into the flash-forwards, considering they're working to ensure that the investigation unfolds as it did in Benford's vision.

Unless they throw the whole Lost "universe course-correcting" thing into the mix, in which case who knows..

Any thoughts?

 

I, for one, hope they leave that out of the mix. "LOST" has no problem interjecting the supernatural and mysticism into its internal mythology because it was established very early on that the Losties arrived on the islands with all sorts of crises of faith among them. The notion of a unseen, inexplicable hand manipulating the island's timeline and events to ensure some kind of outcome isn't outside the realm of that series' possibilities.

"FlashForward", on the other hand, established with the arrival of Merry Brandybuck that it is throwing its mythology into the scientific arena. I'm no quantum physicist, but my understanding of "decoherent" theories gives the writers a lot of latitude when it comes to "changing" the possible futures the characters have seen. Don't cite this in any research paper, but basically what Al Gough saw in his vision DID happen (or WAS GOING TO happen, if you will) and barring some deliberate and irrefutable act on the part of the observer its outcome was inevitable. One of the big themes we're about to start seeing (I'm guessing) is going to revolve around how badly the characters want or don't want their futures to come true. After last night, Noh is probably going to do everything his power to ensure that his blank vision doesn't come true; Benford, on the other hand, seems like to force his to happen though completely unintentional means.

And I have to get this off my chest: Very rarely do scenes on television shows stick with me the way one scene did last night. I mean, I have a pretty good memory and a knack for remembering the trivial. But most of those memories are purely academic and stick in my head with no "commentary" attached. But the sight of Gough alone in his apartment eating a modest meal did more to establish my feelings for a character than five years of "LOST" has managed to do for Kate Austen. But it didn't start there. It started earlier in the episode when we learned that he and Noh used to spend a lot of time together playing video games, and that he thought wearing a cardigan to an underground party was a normal thing to do. We got it: he was kind of a nerd. And the voiceover during the teaser - in the form of a letter to a woman he didn't know - told us what kind of man he was. In the span of 40 minutes, we got to know Al Gough better than some characters that have been on the air for years. I watch a lot of television people and I can promise you that is not easy to do. We got to see - without a lot of exposition - that Al Gough was a nice, lonely guy with a big heart who was tearing himself apart with just the idea of what he might have been responsible for. If you are anything like me you were probably silently pleading to the guy through your TV screen to not jump...but you knew full well he would. There was going to be no deus ex machina to reassure him that anything less than this sacrifice was the only way to ensure Celia wouldn't die.

Nice work, Lee Thompson Young. And nice work, "FlashForward".

 

Think it's time to revive this thread as it comes back tomorrow night with a 2 hour episode. Did anyone else watch the one hour recap last night? I forgot how awesome this show was and I'm looking forward to getting back into it.

 

I don't think "FlashForward" has had an intentional laugh-out-loud moment all season until last night, and it was a good one:

(Demitri and Janis are discussing the possibility of making her pregnancy flash-forward come true the old fashioned way...if you know what I mean.)

Janis: I'm gay.
Demitri: I will make you gayer.

 

Bye bye Flash Forward This sucks, it could have been SO good.

 

I freaking loved this show. It had a little bit of everything. Of course, a new show that I get into ultimately means it gets canceled.