Now we’re getting somewhere! This episode felt like it was moving much more quickly, even though the action covered barely more than a single day. It was thoroughly enjoyable, full of surprising twists and reveals. We still don’t know what the Visitors are up to, but they’re scary smart when it comes to manipulation.

We start with a “previously on V”, where we get to relive – again – Erica bashing Dale and discovering his reptilian reality. It’s a little soon to tell if the scenes selected for “previously…” are indicating the theme or focus of the episode to come the way they do on Lost.

“Previously…” segues right into the current episode…it’s Anna against a white screen and she’s getting her picture taken for her nifty new traveling visa. Chad’s voiceover tells us it’s a Bright New Day, as we see several other Visitors smile for the camera, then Anna waves her ticket to freedom for the cameras. As Anna ascends, angel-like, inside the Peace Ambassador Centre, Chad’s assistant tells him, “You made this happen.” Chad agrees, but appears to struggle with whether or not this is, in fact, a good thing.

Meanwhile, Father Jack hears confession from humans who are struggling with the ramifications of this alien invasion. They give voice to his own inner turmoil. In spite of the Bright New Day, people are confused and scared – lost.

Then we zip over to Erica’s house; our favorite FBI agent has gotten her groove back. Gone is the shaken and uncertain woman of last week. She’s filing, sorting, hectoring Tyler about staying out of the city’s chaos. She’s disgusted with her government’s malleability: “It’s like 9-11 never happened!” But a knock at the door interrupts. Father Jack has come calling.

Erica and FJ speculate on the V’s motives. The Visitors need us for something, Erica foreshadows. Meanwhile, FJ can take over the filing while duty calls for Erica – there have been death threats against the V’s, and Erica recognizes the importance of humans not being seen as the bad guys.

Ryan’s also nervous about this Bright New Day, warning Val about being careful now that the V’s can travel freely. Val reassures him that it’s normal for people to fear change and then teases him about keeping secrets from her.I wonder if Ryan intentionally sought out a girlfriend who was a psychotherapist to get an education about the human psyche. But Ryan’s got an agenda today. He meets with a very scared Georgie and tells him about the mythical John May, former leader of the Fifth Column and the very first group to betray their leader. Georgie declines accompanying him to see Cyrus. Georgie’s carrying some deep scars, and after the tragedy at the warehouse he’s reluctant to join forces.

Back to the Mother Ship, where Anna’s creepy sidekick Marcus (played by Christopher Shyer) gets an update on Dale’s condition from Joshua, a Visitor doctor whose uniform of flowy white invokes an image of New Age healer. Dale comes to as Joshua watches. “You’re a hero,” Joshua tells the amnesia-stricken Dale. Turns out Dale’s survival can be credited to the fact that his heart’s in the wrong place – haha. Where IS his heart? That’s something our resistance fighters may have to learn as they battle the V’s in the future.

The FBI has arrived at the Peace Ambassador Centre. There are the dots and dashes symbols that indicate the V’s have a language of their very own. It’s a dash of nostalgia for original fans. Erica is teamed – reluctantly – with a Visitor agent, and assigned to find the baddie who’s issuing death threats. Erica requests a tour of the V’s surveillance room, and is surprised at its simplicity. “It was like this when we got here,” her V partner tells her. Three weeks on Earth, and he’s already mastered blaming the US government. Erica glimpses a V entering the real surveillance room, and you just know she’s getting in there eventually.

Ryan finds Cyrus, who seems surprised to see him. “29 guesses why I’m here,” says Ryan. In case anyone forgot the significance of 29, the camera cuts back to the Mother Ship, where Anna’s issuing orders to the captains of all 29 Mother Ships. She lectures them on the impact of popular opinion among humans and encourages them to monitor and shape it when they can. In a new and improved version of beam-me-up, the holographic captains vanish one by one.

The protest movement has a figurehead, Mary Faulkner, whose F16 pilot husband was killed during The Arrival. We learn that 642 others died that day, and Mary’s determined to avenge them all by encouraging everyone to hate on the V’s. Anna is really worried about Mary Faulkner and explains to Marcus that hatred is contagious – they’ll have to make an example of Mary so she doesn’t infect others.

Left with the FBI weirdo list, FJ finds Georgie and heads off to his last known address. FJ is clearly new at keeping a low profile – the name of his church is printed on the side of his car. Inside the house, he finds newspaper clippings about Georgie’s murdered family. A woman – a neighbor? – tells FJ that Georgie went off the deep end after the murders. Choosing not to remain anonymous, FJ leaves his calling card.

Ryan’s told Cyrus what he’s after, but Cyrus isn’t going to play ball. Pulling a gun, Cyrus presses an alarm button and tells Ryan the V’s are coming. Turns out, they’ve promised Cyrus they’ll “reconnect” him if he turns in enough Fifth Column. “They’ll skin you alive,” insists Ryan. And what, turn him into a nice pair of boots? But Cyrus is crazed – he misses “the bliss” that Anna can provide. What’s this mysterious “bliss” going to turn out to be? A drug, or perhaps a mind-altering operation? We’re not given more than that. But it must be pretty special and powerful since Cyrus seems to think the end justifies the means. Ryan, however, is not interested in bliss – he tackles Cyrus and disarms him. When the V’s arrive, they find Cyrus and Ryan gone and a message spray-painted on the wall: John May Lives.

Erica and her current partner have their suspect in sight and the chase is on. The sound mixing on both broadcasts I watched was off or something for the next two scenes, so the dialogue was meaningless – it’s a testament to the makers of V that the gist of things was conveyed effectively anyway. The shooter pulls his gun and Erica wrestles him to the ground in five seconds flat, saving Marcus’ life. The V’s lead the suspect away; they’ll do the questioning. Erica’s not happy about it, but doesn’t argue.

Marcus thanks Erica for saving his life. “Blame instinct and training,” she says, then smiles to reassure him she’s joking. But Marcus is wary – better keep his eye on this lady!

Now that V security is occupied, Erica sneaks into the REAL surveillance room, where hundreds of live images are being projected from all over the city. By touching them, Erica can zoom in and hear what’s happening. Our clever girl sees herself in one of the images, and moves around the room until she finds the source of the camera. It’s the patch on the V jacket.

Tyler hooks up with Lisa, who has forgiven him – of course, he’s back on the approved list again. The two head to Tyler’s place, where they begin a passionate embrace, only to be interrupted by Erica’s arrival. Tyler strips off his uniform and heads off Erica in the hall. It must suck to be a cop’s kid – Erica sees right through him and barges into his room. There’s Lisa, sans uniform, and for the first time this episode, we see Erica flummoxed. How embarrassing! Erica, of course, has no idea that Lisa is a V.

Joshua is walking Dale through an environment constructed from the memories they found in his brain. It’s the FBI offices. With Joshua’s prodding, Dale recalls living among the humans as a sleeper V: It was smelly, crowded and disgusting. Dale recalls that he was not the only V at the bureau, confirming our suspicions that there are more we’ve yet to meet. Finally, Dale remembers it was Erica that cracked him open and vows to kill her.

But not so fast! Joshua remarks that Erica will make a wonderful ally, as a surprised Dale experiences the illusion falling to pieces around him. “The Fifth Column says hello,” Joshua tells him as he plunges a needle into Dale’s arm, presumably killing him. Yay! for more Fifth Column, but fans were already upset at the thought that Alan Tudyk might not return. Is this the first will-he-or-won’t-he-be-back cliffhanger of the fall season?

Georgie finds FJ and the two empathize with each other, while FJ encourages him to help mount the resistance. Georgie’s still not sure – he’s been there and done that, and “they crush us every time.” Georgie’s obviously a tortured soul; I hope we’re going to get more backstory.

Anna rehearses her sympathy speech for Widow Mary; what a great scene for Morena Baccarin! She plays it with such a serious earnestness it’s almost comical. Anna even manages a tear, just in time to meet the Widow and convince her that hope and trust are the keys to healing. Mary says as much to the protesters gathered outside, while the world and the media watch. It’s a feel-good speech, almost a standard for politicians or anyone encouraging tolerance and understanding: what we share is far greater, yada yada. Anna follows up with assurances that the V’s will not seek revenge for the assassination attempt.

Chad, of course, will get the exclusive interview with Widow Mary. We haven’t seen much of Chad this week, other than commentary about events taking place. I hope he gets a little more screen time before the end of this fall block – it’s been hard to get a read on the character. I’d like to think there’s some depth there. As Chad reports on the events of the day being a PR coup for the V’s, we see Anna thank the assassin – she staged the whole thing! I wonder if Marcus knows it?

Our shaky resistance meets – Georgie, Erica, FJ and Ryan. Such a small group and such a monumental task before them!

The final scene has one more reveal coming – Lisa is Anna’s daughter! Nice to see the V’s don’t eat their young. “Tyler’s the one,” Lisa tells her, leaving us wondering just what’s in store for the Evans family in the future.

Next week’s teaser – the fall finale – makes that episode look as action-packed as this one. Without spoiling too much, it appears as though the writers were very intuitive; the plot could play on the real-life borderline hysteria over the flu vaccine controversies. Now they’re going to have to leave viewers with the perfect combination of enough information to care about what happens next and enough questions unanswered that we have a reason to tune in next March. Feel free to add your theories and thoughts in the comments.

It’s A Small World After All Disclaimer: I discovered last week that Executive Producer and Writer Scott Peters went to university with my brother-in-law – Comm. Studies, which happens to be what my own daughter is currently studying at the same university. Nice to see a local boy done good!

When not leading the Resistance, Shelley blogs at Once I Was A Writer

I’d like to welcome back our newest guest author S. Divnich, who will be covering “V” here on The Disney Blog. – Ed.

It seems like we’ve been waiting forever, but the Visitors finally showed up last night with the premiere of V, ABC’s newest sci-fi offering.

The episode opened with an attempt to make it personal – captions reading “Where were you when JFK was assassinated? Where were you on 9/11?” led into “Where were you this morning?” So right off the bat, anyone who has not seen any advance info about this show is going to know – something big’s about to happen.

Tuesday, 6:30 a.m. Having asked “Where were you?” the first block shows us where (and who) our main players are. FBI Agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell) awakens to her house shaking. She finds her son Tyler (Logan Huffman) is not in his bed and gets him on the cell, to find he’s in the ER, and barely feeling bad about it. This theme is going to play strong on this show – Erica wants to protect her son, but he’s not going to make it easy for her.

Newsman Chad Decker (Scott Wolf) is showering and heading into work. Ryan Nicholls (Morris Chestnut) is buying an engagement ring. Father Jack is opening the church doors. Val, Ryan’s girlfriend, is at home. It’s difficult to show simultaneous action on a TV show, and the pace felt a little off. We get a shaking water glass next to Erica right off the bat, but it’s several minutes before we see Val’s shaking coffee cup, FJ’s shaking light fixture, Ryan’s ring jumping around on the counter. Regardless, things start to shake, rattle and roll, and you can tell they’re not earthquake-savvy Californians – rather than run to the nearest doorway, Val seems to try to stop her bookshelves from falling over first.

In the street, Ryan does what so many of us have done since 9/11, what must be second-nature to New Yorkers by now – he looks to the sky to see what’s falling. The writers don’t disappoint – the fighter jet falling out of the sky gave me a lurch of déjà vu that was most unpleasant. Eight years later, and not even American, and I can recall the footage from 9/11 in a heartbeat. It brings a tear to my eye every time.

The giant Mother Ships darken the sky and all hell breaks loose. They could have saved some money by inserting footage from movies past – as one onscreen citizen put it, “This IS Independence Day.” And Deep Impact, and The Day After Tomorrow, and so many other running-from-the-end-of-the-world scenes. Conveniently placed TVs show newscasters reporting similar Mother Ships hovering over 29 major cities around the world.

The introduction of Visitors is very cool compared to the 1983 version (more on the comparison later). The bottom of the Mother Ships morphs into a giant movie-screen type thing. On the ground, we see Erica’s maternal “get behind my arm kid, I’ll protect you” gesture with Tyler. Erica’s a mother bear, through and through. And then, like a benevolent supreme being from on high, Anna’s smiling face gazes down on the planet.

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First, if you missed “V” last night, you can now download it as a free video on iTunes. Second, if you did see it, you weren’t alone. Almost 14 million people watched with you. That’s a good sign for ABC which has three successful Sci-Fi shows right now (LOST, FlashForward, and “V”).

The question is can ABC sustain, or even grow, those numbers. There are just three more episodes before the series goes on hiatus until March (to avoid the Winter Olympics and American Idol). During that time, the show will get retooled. This week they added new show runner charged with speeding up the pace of the show.

USA Today talked with Elizabeth Mitchell about the show before last night’s premier.

Mitchell, who plays hero FBI agent Erica Evans, says the resulting changes merely speed the pace of storytelling to pack a bigger wallop, including big cliffhangers in the Nov. 24 episode. Filming on that episode is set to wrap today, giving actors another unexpected 10-week break as the show is retooled. (Mitchell will trek to Hawaii to shoot new Lost episodes.)

“They didn’t do anything different. They heightened it, they took it up,” she says. The changes are meant to recapture the big-event appeal that started V in a different era. “The idea is to make it a movie, something where we are on the edge of our seats, wondering what’s going to happen.”

From what I saw last night, “V” will make sci-fi geeks very happy even as LOST draws to a close.

Our secondary characters get a little more illumination this week as we find out why the babysitter vanished, a little more of what Dr. Bryce saw, and an ominous twist to our young dad’s background.  Plus FBI partner angst, medical drama, and more terrorist connections than you can shake an ebony waterfowl at.

1) Nicole the babysitter’s place in the story is still a little undefined, even with her disappearance somewhat explained.  She’s revealed at the beginning of the episode talking to AAron, our favorite loosely connected buddy of Mark’s – is Nicole his other daughter? He speaks of his missing daughter as having babysit Nicole when they were younger, but the whole connection seems disjointed as if some exposition was cut somewhere along the way.   Regardless of the connection, she is beholden to the Benford family and ashamed of having walked out on them.

Mark’s relationship with her is fatherly, which is nice to see in an age when almost any television father/babysitter relationship is automatically telegraphed to be creepy.  She explains that she saw herself being deliberately drowned in her Flash-Forward, and she felt the emotion that she deserved it.  She’s not able to remember the face of the man who’s drowning her but she did see him.

Mark promises to use his resources to help her, and I would be they will involved a sketch artist.  I thought the man drowning her could be Simon, aka LOST’s Charlie (who we will get to again momentarily) but his vague face through the water doesn’t appear so.  My theory at the moment is that she is being drowned by D. Gibbons.  I’m thinking at some point in the future D. Gibbons comes to kill or kidnap little Charlie for some reason and Nicole thinks he’s harmed the little girl.  Overcome by guilt and grief, she feels she deserves to be drowned.  This would tie into Charlie’s vision that “D. Gibbons is a bad man”.  I can also see, based on later revelations, that on April 29, 2010 Nicole will be in charge of watching/protecting Charlie and young Dylan Simcoe (which would explain how Charlie knows him when she sees him in the hospital).  Dylan also knows Olivia because at some point he and his dad will become close to her and her family.

2) Bryce, Olivia’s intern, takes an unusual interest in a man named Ned who survived a bus crash during the blackout and later develops a medical condition related to the accident.  Because of whatever revelation he saw in his own flash forward, he has begun incorporating those of his patients into their diagnosis and treatments.  Olivia is skeptical and reluctant to believe in them due to her fear of her own vision of being with Simcoe coming true but comes around after Bryce’s insight during surgery allows her to save Ned’s life.

First of all, Bryce’s insistence on calling her “Dr. B.” all the time is very annoying.  Dude, either call her Dr. Benford or Olivia – reducing “Benford” to “B” isn’t really saving you all that many syllables.  Anyway, we catch a glimpse of Bryce’s flash in a rough sketch he’s made of a young woman.  He still is unwilling to share all the details (we have to have something to stretch out the suspense over a season) but the vision of this woman was apparently enough to completely eliminate his suicidal mindset.  We still don’t know why he was suicidal in the first place, although he puts off seeing a hospital-ordered psychiatrist.  I would imagine his tendencies are still there and will manifest themselves again given the right stimulus.  I’m betting the young woman may be Janis Hawk from the FBI, and she is pregnant with his child.  Maybe Bryce is standing across the room, watching her ultrasound and confident in the knowledge she’s his wife (or whatever) and they’re having a baby together.  I’d have to watch the episode again to compare the sketch to Janis to be more certain, but I’m fairly sure the  two characters haven’t met.  Yet.

3) Our mild-mannered Lloyd Simcoe is not who he seems.  He’s consistently been shown to be overly caring, gracious and filled with guilt about not being there for his son over the years.  Despite Olivia’s constant efforts to move his son Dylan to PT and out of her sphere of influence, he and his bad penny dad keep showing back up.  (Ha! Penny! Olivia! I made a funny).   Then Lloyd receives an interesting phone call from “Simon” (finally, our favorite Drive Shaft guitarist shows up) informing him they need to meet, and informing us that Lloyd is at least knowledgeable of, if not partially responsible for, the global blackout.  I’m interested to see how many more of the cast have ties to the conspiracy, even if they don’t realize it.

4) Finally, the “main” plot.  Demetri continues to be haunted by his own impending demise.  He interrogates our resident blond terrorist Alda from the premiere, who teases them with just enough information to seem suspicious and send he and Mark on a wild-terrorist chase through a trailer park.  The man they catch was concealing pot in an old radioactive material storage case, so it’s unclear what Alda’s angle was except to muddy the waters.  Mark (who by the way looks worse and worse each episode as if his nerves are gradually fraying – which will lead to his drinking again) gets to slap some sense into Demetri’s funk about his supposed future murder and soon secures his partner’s cooperation.   Alda takes on the Benjamin Linus role as the smug, frustrating prisoner with all the enigmatic answers, spouting off about “Black Swan” events and how they’re involved in things they don’t understand and can’t control.

5) Meanwhile, Mark still wants to travel to Somalia to investigate the dead crows incident mentioned by the Nazi Rudolph Geyer last week.  His boss and Demetri both think it’s a waste of time, but Mark begins to show some obsessive tendencies by enlisting a hacker to break into CIA satellite photos of the area from 1991 that they are reluctant to share.  This obsessive behavior would not surprise me to eventually cause a strain or even a break from the FBI in the future – which would make his flash forward of being in his office, chased by bad guys, not quite as it seems.

For the second week in a row, the subplots have outweighed the main plot in both time and substance.  I find this a little odd, as the Mosaic investigation seems to ought to be the main focus of the show. I wonder if the producers found it difficult early going to create main plots that didn’t give away too much too early, so we get to spend the first half of the season establishing our sub-characters and their stories.  It’s not unusual in an intricately plotted story like this, but I would expect the main characters of Mark and Demetri to have a little more to do.  No big deal.

The “Black Swan” event is a carry-over concept from LOST that most fans of that show will recognize, if not in name at least in concept.  The “Incident” on the island was termed one such event, something of such momentous importance its ripples were long and widespread.  I think it’s obvious  the Global Blackout is one such event, so I’m not certain why it was important to give it a tag and highlight it as such.

Next week – more angst!  More puzzles!  More strained looks by Mark!  Explosions!  See you then :)

Barry

ETA – I forgot to mention an important dichotomy that is really spreading – those who look to the flashes for hope and reasons to go on, and those that look to them as events to avoid at all costs.  When those two desires start colliding, when one person’s actions to prevent their future interfere with another’s possible future that they feel must happen, sparks are going to fly.  If Olivia feels that preventing her future with Lloyd can be accomplished by somehow preventing or obstructing Bryce’s future with the mystery woman, or if Demetri’s attempts to prevent his own murder jeopardize AAron’s chances to get his daughter back alive, sparks are going to fly.

Also, the sequence at the beginning with the bus crash juxtaposed with against the song was very effective.  I wonder if we’ll be seeing more and more clips of how people dealt with their blackouts.

Variety reports that not only has FlashForward been a big enough hit for ABC to order the second half of the season into production, it’s adding three more episodes to the premiere season. Let’s just hope that those aren’t three stretch episodes as people have accused LOST of doing in the past.

Producers have said in the past that they have the beginning and ending of the show all mapped out like two slices of bread, the question is how much meat do they get to slap in the middle.

So are you on board with FlashForward?

Sorry I’m a few days late in getting this commentary out – real life intervened, not to mention I didn’t get to watch the episode until late Friday night.  Anyway, getting on with the third episode, entitled “137 Sekunden”.

I was a little disappointed with this episode, in that I thought (from the previews) we were actually going to get some interesting answers up front from the strange German man.  In reality we got nothing but more questions.  More on that later…

Three separate subplots were contained in this week’s episode, surrounding Mark and Janis’ trip to Germany:

1) Demetri, who is mostly absent this episode except to investigate the mysterious phone call from the equally mysterious woman about his impending murder, meets his fiancee at the airport and together they spend some quality (?) time together.  She recaps her flashforward, supposedly of the two of them being married on D-Day (March 29, 2010) on a beach somewhere.  Demetri, of course, should have been able to see this as well but sees nothing so is understandably confused.  He doesn’t tell her that they visions don’t match, so we’ll see that secret carry over for a while…  I thought her description of the flashforward and confidence that it was Demetri she saw was a bit vague, like the assumption someone you expect to see in a certain place and time is indeed that person.  I wonder instead if it isn’t Demetri at all, and the visions do indeed match.  A closer examination of her vision might cause her to reconsider who it actually is, but Demetri isn’t about the rock the boat just yet.

2) FBI Boss Wedeck is uncomfortable about leading an upcoming eulogy for agents that died for various reasons during the flashes (I’m assuming car wrecks, airplane crashes, etc).  His wife, Felecia, who we meet for the first time, dishes with Olivia about her flash, that she will be taking care of a young child six months in the future, and we see this child as the son of one of the dead agents.  How this transition from other parent/guardian to Mrs. Wedeck remains a future plot point.

3) Mark’s AA mentor Aaron (notice how AA is part of his name?) continues to investigate his own flash, that of seeing his presumed dead soldier daughter alive again.  He tries to convince the girl’s mother Katie (last seen as Sawyer’s old flame Cassidy from LOST in yet another actor crossover) to have the remains exhumed and DNA tested, which she refuses.  Seems mom is a run down barkeep in a run down bar somewhere ‘cross town… and the two of them aren’t on the best terms.  Aaron enlists Mark’s help to get it done anyway, and the rests are conclusive – the remains of his daughter are actually in the grave.  All this proves to me is that (sorry) some pieces-parts of the girl were blown off during an attack, and she was captured by the enemy.  Whatever was left on the battlefield was recovered by the military and assumed to be all that was left of her, which were buried.  I’m assuming most soldiers maimed on a battlefield aren’t typically captured and tended for by the enemy in real life, but if I were a dad I don’t think I would rest until I was sure my child was dead – no matter what was returned.  Well, to a certain point.  I’m not sure I want to continue thinking about this, so let’s move on…

…To the main plot.  Mark and Janis get a tip through their international networks that Rudolf Geyer, a former Nazi who was only recently captured after fifty years on the lam, has information from his own flash that would aid the investigation.  Since the man supposedly asked for Mark by name, they travel to Germany to question him.  In exchange for information on why the 137 second length of the blackouts is significant (which Mark remembered posted on his big board in his flash) Greyer bargains for his own freedom.   Here Greyer relates his own actual memory of what happened after the flash, when he woke up.  He noticed crows lying dead all over the prison courtyard.  Having tricked the agents into what seems to them to be worthless information, he wins his freedom.

I’m not sure I expected this resolution to the man’s story – I was waiting on something to explain the duration – being used to LOST’s magic 108 number being the sum of the other numbers (4-8-15-16-23-42) – I expected some fancy numerological explanation, but only some vague mystical ramblings about the Jewish Kabbalah are all he provided.  Perhaps it will be significant later, but from what we’ve seen so far (and will see later in the episode’s tag) I believe we’re looking at a technologically-caused event and not one with supernatural implications.

Back in the states, after cross-referencing lists of mass bird deaths in history, the agents find other strange instances where large numbers of birds died.  In particular, we are shown a scene from history of a young child out in the fields.  He hears a strange noise and looks off toward a village in the distance.  Massive amounts of birds (crows from their calls) that were only moments before circling in great flocks all begin plummeting to earth.  The child looks at the village and up to the top of a great spire, from which a shock wave can be seen reaching outward to disrupt the sky and clouds above.

What this seems to indicate is that for many years someone or some group has been experimenting around the world with a technology that will induce blackouts and flashforwards, and a consequence of the pulse (sonic? electromagnetc? psionic?) is total disruption of the neural pathways of crows, causing them to instantly die.

A couple other random thoughts as we progress to next week:

1) Alan Ruck of “Ferris Bueller”, “Star Trek: Generations” and “Spin City” fame, a fairly recognizable face, has a brief role in the beginning as a participant in the AA meeting.  It seems to be a throwaway part and the character does not appear again in the episode, but it’s odd to use such a recognizable actor in a small role – even if he is a character actor.  Sometimes when shows do that it throws me off a bit because I expect to see the character have more significance than it does.

2) Was there ever any evidence that the blackouts affected any animal species other than humans (and now crows)?  Are we to assume that dogs, cats, birds, monkeys, elephants, horses, etc all went on about their business during the blackouts?  Maybe this is why there were so many Missing Pet posters on the wall that Olivia and Charlie saw last week – their owners were out walking them, collapsed for 137 seconds, and the dogs ran away.  Did people who happened to be on horseback just keep riding until they woke up again?  I feel sorry for the poor random zookeeper’s tending the lion cages or shark tanks at the time…

3) Speaking off, the ramifications of a world-wide 2-minute blackout continue to fascinate me.  I’m a bit surprised at the number of random plane crashes away from airports (takeoffs and landings needing necessary full-time concentration) but surely your average plane would survive a 2-minute coast, whether on autopilot or not.  Just don’t call me Shirley.

Also, it occurs to me that every man, woman and child who happened to be in a swimming pool likely drowned that day.  It’s one thing to be caught in the surf like the guys on the beach in the premiere episode where your body can be tossed around in the waves, but swimming a lap at the Y and suddenly plummeting to the bottom for 2 minutes…ulp.  And even in baby pools… ok, again. I’m, switching topics.

But you see what I mean.  Even with a 30-second mass blackout, the casualties from car wrecks and falls would be astounding.  With over 2 minutes you take into account drownings, airplane and chopper crashes, large equipment failures, factory malfunctions, power plant overloads, chemical spills – any dangerous or important job requiring full concentration would be jeopardized.  I’m surprised the world looks as good as it does…

Olivia: “Whatever you tell him, just be sure to tell him you love him.”

Lloyd: “Is parenting really that simple?”

Olivia: “It’s the only simple part.”

Looks like we’re developing a core theme to Flash Forward, that of dealing with a family and its own survival.  Little “Charlie”, the daughter of main characters Mark and Olivia Benford, is understandably freaked about whatever she saw in her flash forward and it’s causing her to pull away from them and the rest of the world.

That and serious questions about the validity of the flashes makes up the content of the second episode of the series, “White to Play.”  Last week Charlie woke up from her nap having had a vision that there were “no more good days”.  Tonight we see she recognizes the little boy in the hospital as well as the name of the enigmatic D. Gibbons.  “Gibbons”, as we see, is also wandering around at the periphery of the event, having been tracked making a phone call to the mysterious “Suspect Zero” who was captured on tape at the Detroit baseball game walking around mysteriously while everyone else slept.

Benford and his partner Demetri Noh track down a suspect to Utah who seemed to play a part in the events of the blackouts.  Hiding in a doll factory warehouse, he utters a strange phrase just as he unleashes an explosive trap, “He who foresees calamaties suffers them twice over.”  Visible near Gibbons are what appears to be a bank vault monitor, a computerized game of chess, and a computer CPU in the liquid tank that eventually ignites.  Gibbons escapes and a fellow non-visioner, a local sheriff, is killed.

Eventually a charred cell phone is recovered and Gibbons is found to have been in communication with Suspect Zero during the blackout.  Just relationship these two have is unknown.

Short Takes

1) Suspect Zero is described as male, 150 pounds and 5′8″.  Dominic Monaghan (Charlie from LOST) is 5′7 and probably close to that weight.  I would bet anything he is our mysterious Suspect Zero.  I would imagine we’ll be seeing him enter the action soon.

2) The concept of the future being immovable – that you can’t change your future – is still an oddly contradictory statement.  On LOST (which this show continues to parallel in terms of tone and feel) relies on the fact that when a foreseen event is changed, the universe “course corrects” itself and causes the same thing to happen a different way.   I don’t know if Flash Forward will follow the same general rules (which, if it does prove to somewhat be in LOST’s universe – based on the Oceanic Airlines sign seen last week in the background – would force the issue).

But if it’s not then there are only two more possibilities.  That the future for these people is set and immaleable, that the visions they’ve seen (or not seen as in Demetri and the Sheriff’s cases) will happen exactly as they were seen without alteration.  The other possibility is, yes, now with foreknowledge of the events they will likely all change as everyone begins taking steps to run from or run toward them.  Like ripples in a pond (or the brush of a butterfly’s wings) all actions people take are now different than they existed before because there’s foreknowledge affecting them.  If Demetri, learning as he did from the woman who called him in response to his Mosaic posting that he would be murdered on March 15, 2010, takes all the knowledge of his murder she will tell him and deliberately plans to be elsewhere on that day, it can’t help but be a different outcome.

But here’s the butterfly in the ointment – Agent Benford saw himself investigating Project Mosaic.  All the pieces on the board were there, the pieces they are now putting together bit by bit.  If they were seeing a future that had no knowledge that they would have a vision of it, how could he be working on the project to determine why there were blackouts?  Are they all seeing a future that indeed includes their new experiences and knowledge?  And if you think too hard, it turns in on itself with multiple knowing/knowing that you know/knowing that you know that you know/etc.  Ouch, I have a headache.

3) I really like the fact that Mark and Olivia are communicating with each other about the substances of their visions.  Olivia has been completely honest with him about running into the man who she seems to be destined to be with, and working through the difficulties that may or may not result.  Mark is close to being completely honest, although hasn’t yet told her about falling off the wagon on that night.  The show could have easily, like so many other soapy shows do, had Olivia keep the info from him.  But her sharing the progress of her visions coming true actually rings more true to real life.  And I like that.

4) Speaking of the stranger in her vision, Lloyd Simcoe – how does he not recognize Olivia?  In the future that she saw he was in bed with her, got up to make a phone call and came downstairs where she eventually saw him sitting on the couch.  Obviously, he would, or will, know why he’s there and who she is so her explanation that he never saw her face in her vision shouldn’t matter why he doesn’t recognize her.  I think his memory of events is a key plot point.  Either a) he does recognize her from the visions and is confused as she is, but just didn’t say anything when they spoke, b) doesn’t recognize her from the visions and actually had a completely different vision – which would indicate the man she saw was not the same man she just met, or c) he is/will be involved in the conspiracy and is keeping their connection to himself on purpose.  As mild-mannered and fatherly as he seems to be, he bears a lot of watching.

5) I still don’t trust Noh – not the person he is now, necessarily, but maybe the person he will become.  His absence from the car wreck during the blackouts still hasn’t been addressed or explained.  Could he have been controlled by those responsible while everyone was unconscious, to do something specific?  Maybe he finds out what happened to him during the course of the show and changes sides.  Or goes into hiding.  Maybe his memory will be protected in the future so that his vision in the past was a blank.

6) I very carefully freeze-framed the “Missing Persons” wall, certain there would be a picture of someone from LOST on it (Zach and Emma were my guesses) but couldn’t find anyone.  I did see a remarkable number of duplications – multiple copies of the same sheets of paper scattered all over the wall.  Either the set designers were lazy and didn’t want to make 500 different “Have You Seen My Family” posters and simply reused the same ones over and over, or perhaps in context of the show people actually posted multiple copies.  Seems like a bit selfish, taking up space when someone else might want to use it.  Also an abnormally large number of missing dogs.  Sparky?  Sparky???

That’s all I have for this week.  As the season progresses I am assuming each week we’ll see another piece or two added to the Fox Mulder ™ Wall of Conspiracy.  Eventually the mosaic will become clearer and clearer.  And the conspiracy will deepen.  I’m looking forward to it…

Barry

Hi, my name is Barry.

For the next several months, at least until D-Day, I will be along with you on the journey that is ABC’s new series “Flash Forward”. And hopefully for a while thereafter. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Before I start my general review of the show, let me preface things by saying I’m a huge fan of LOST. If you’ve never seen LOST, or worse have an active dislike for ABC’s other major sci-fi genre show this may not be the review for you – there are a lot of similarities between the two shows and I’m probably going to be referencing it from time to time. Forewarned is forearmed, and whatever happens happened.

That said…

We start the premiere episode of FF (as I’ll be calling it in shorthand from now on), “No More Good Days” very, very similarly to the premiere of LOST – in chaos. The camera opens on one man, our main protagonist FBI Agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes), upside down in a wrecked car. The scene is quiet with only the tinkle of broken glass and falling oranges (?). He climbs out of the car, into a scene of car wreck bedlam just as Jack came upon the immediate plane crash on LOST. He seeks out his partner who was thrown away from the car, Agent Demetri Noh (John Cho) and together seek to lend aid in the immediate aftermath as well as apprehend the fugitive they had been chasing, Alda Hertzog (Rachel Roberts). Together they realize as they look at a devastated Los Angeles, that something much more terrible has happened than they can imagine.

But it’s more than the two of them and their surroundings in trouble. Mark’s doctor wife Olivia (Sonya Walger) and her whole surgical team black out during a operation. His AA mentor Aaron Stark (Brian F. O’Byrne) loses consciousness while working atop a electrical power pole. Meanwhile, his daughter Charlie (Lennon Wynn), her babysitter, his boss Stanford Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance) and co-worker Janis Hawk (Christine Woods) Olivia’s intern Bryce Varley (Zachary Knighton) all have similar experiences – they all black out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. In fact, the entire world blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. Except it wasn’t exactly a blackout as Mark and his people discover. Everyone in the world had a vision – a vision of themselves and what they were doing six months in the future, on April 29, 2010.

And those visions – good, bad and non-existent – are now the fuel that drive the series.

The rest of the episode deals with the next several hours as the world tries to pull itself back together after the major incident. Theories abound and are discussed, such as radiological attack, natural phenomena and religious event until it slowly dawns on everyone’s collective consciousness that they all envisioned the exact same moment in time, six months down the road.

There are visions of lost children returning, important meetings, inexplicable romances with people as yet unmet, trips to the bathroom and likely millions of mundane other things – yet two types of vision are the most disconcerting. One is Mark’s vision of himself in his FBI office in front of a great Mosaic bulletin board filled with hundreds of clues to the cause of the incident. He is drinking and frustrated, when masked gunmen invade, laser sights swinging all around, to chase him down. The other vision is that of his partner, Demetri – that of nothing at all. An explanation he fears means his own imminent death.

The premiere ends with the two Benfords attempting to reconcile conflicting visions and Agent Hawk discovering surveillance camera footage of a shadowy figure seemingly awake and unharmed during the 2 minute blackout.

Here are some quick observations – realize so far we really know nothing, and most speculation other than the most general is fairly pointless, but here are some points I noticed that may bear scrutiny as, ahem, time goes by:

1) Being the LOST fan that I am (as well as The X-Files) I’m used to conspiracies on top of fiendish plots wrapped into master plans – with the vision of masked gunmen there seems no doubt that a group engineered the blackouts for some unknown reason. Whether the Flash Forwards were a bug or a feature is also unknown, but seemingly one or more of them were able to withstand its effects.

A big contradiction I had right off the bat – just after the initial car crash and subsequent moments of wandering around Mark Benford did, he called Demetri’s name several times. The partner was seemingly nowhere to be found. Then after he has moved several yards from his car, he sees Demetri a good ways away, still looking dazed. Now, it’s perfectly possible the young agent was thrown from the car before it crashed though I’m not sure how – Demetri was across an exit gap in the roadway, and Mark had to jog around and through other cars to get to him. If Demetri had waken before Mark, why didn’t he try to revive his partner? Why wander off by himself?

I think his absence during that initial time is suspicious and may be tied to his inability (or unwillingness) to admit to his lack of a vision.

2) A common theme in the large Mulder-like mosaic of clues in his office are several unknown references to colors. Blue Hand. Red Panda. A Black Swan. The color references were too many not to be significant.

3) I’m sure many people on the web will spend a great deal of time painstakingly dissecting each image on the big board for analysis so I won’t try to do it here as well. However one did strike me and it was shown several times in the Flash Forward – that of a machine of some kind. A mechanical device, fairly sizable, with a large wheel and gear mechanism. At first glance I thought it might be a diagram of a bunker or a (dare I say it) hatch. Possibly with a wheel-turning entrance. Somehow it seemed interesting.

4) Mark’s pupil, as the Flash Forward commenced, was a spiral galaxy.

5) We know that at least one figure did not collapse for those 2:17. Security cameras caught a fuzzy figure walking about while everyone else was having their moment.

So, at the end of the first hour, what do we have? What seems to be a good start for a new mystery/adventure series, where the overarching question will seem to be “What Happened?” But, since the characters’ individual Flash Forwards – what they were, what they mean, what their consequences were and how they will deal with this foreknowledge – will be the backbone of the show. Just as LOST’s mythology is full of smoke monsters, ancient statues, Dharma Initiative and miracle healing, its true value and interest lies in the characters – how their lives inter-twine and how they each deal with being thrust into one another’s lives. On FF, people now know they will know people they’ve never met, do things they never would intend to do, and exist in a world six months removed. Can the future be changed? Is it set in stone, with all our actions merely chess pieces on the board guided by invisible hands? Does knowing the future give one the ability to shape it, change it, even use it to our own ends? Many peoples’ visions included viewings of newspapers and TV from the future which foretell sporting events and Stock Market rises – how could knowing what will happen possibly not affect that very future?

I see a very bright future for this show, as we unlock the mysteries week to week, discuss the possibilities and pitfalls, and more importantly learn who these people are and why they are the main characters in our story. Why do we need to know about this particular group of people? Why are the important or special? It may be that we learn all we need to know soon, because April 29, 2010 is not that far away – likely the first season finale. What could happen on the show after that real-time date passes by? Could be nothing, could be everything.

What are your theories?

Barry watches FlashForward from the safety of his internet bunker — Inn At The Last Home.