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flashorward.jpg

I Don’t Know What You Saw, And I Don’t Care

By S. P. Ashworth | TV | October 19, 2009 |

By S. P. Ashworth | TV | October 19, 2009 |


Previously on “FlashForward”: Oh y’know. Black outs. Whining. Stuff like that.

Fade in - “14 Days Ago.” Clarinets coo Bjork’s “It’s Oh So Quiet” as we watch L.A. citizens stroll in slow-mo through a park before crumbling in slow-mo to the ground. A cyclist eats some concrete; a bus careens into the lake. It’s all very awesome and dreamy. And inside the bus, a man wakes and calmly helps himself and a woman escape.

We then morph to present day as Bus Guy talks to Dr. Olivia and Dr. Bryce (suicide guy from the first episode). Bus Guy explains how he didn’t think anything was medically wrong with him until now, so he wanted to get checked out. Olivia is smarmy and dubious, Bryce is keen and genuine. Yin and yang. Salt N Peppa. And because everyone insists on discussing their flash forwards, Bus Guy describes his: he was wearing leather pants at a club and lovin’ it. Oh and he was black. “Like Oprah.” Jesus.

FlashForward!

Aw. NotRalph is playing with his daughter, pretending an egg has a British accent and subsequently winning points with this here Recapper. He now stands a solid -999,999,99…8.

In the meantime, Aaron and the babysitter, Nicole, chat by the water. She’s all broody about going AWOL on the Benfords, wondering why they’d let her continue babysitting, only Aaron latches onto this opportunity to bring up his dead daughter. Again. But Nicole doesn’t bite, so Aaron suggests a surrendering to a higher power. Like ice cream! I loves me some ice cream. You and me, mint chocolate chip. You and me.

Back at the hospital, Bryce ponders how Bus Guy’s pigment could change. Only Olivia snarks at him to A) put the CT scan through for Bus Guy and B) go back to his psychiatrist, since four weeks ago he had a gun to his head. And then Lloyd arrives to remind everyone of Olivia’s flash forward of the two of them together. Because do you remember? How about now? Now? I thought so.

“You wanna go to Somalia?” Stan asks NotRalph. Yeah, well … maybe. Stan is super unimpressed, thinking the Germany thing sucked (it did), so maybe NotRalph should stopped hounding the CIA for information and work on something relevant. NotRalph is all NotRalphy about it, but loses the argument. Hah.

Not that he’ll stop trying, though. He asks Al about tapping into the CIA mainframe to get deets on that 1991 crow stuff, ‘cause that’s not a Federal offense or anything.

So remember the blonde bombshell from the first episode? Hangin’ with the terrorists, workin’ on some bombin’? This is Alda Hertzog, and Demetri questions her about the blackout. After some witty banter she gives-up the name “Customer Choice Restaurant Group.” But before Demetri can run with this very convenient piece of information, Alda hints to him, all elusive-like, that she knows about his murder. And then Demetri’s all, “‘Cause I haven’t thought about that in the last five minutes.” We know, Demetri. We know.

So now Demetri and NotRalph bitch fight to Stan about whose lead they should follow. The verdict? Demetri for the win. Theys is headin’ to Indio, yo.

Blech … the hospital. Having had yet another awkward conversation with Lloyd, Olivia tells Bryce to transfer Lloyd’s son to another ward. Pip-pip! Done and done.

Indi-yoooooo, California. Inside a fast food joint, NotRalph rubs his forehead, looks bored. I guess the restaurant lead isn’t working out for them. But just when they’re about to leave the scene, a sketchy dude in the kitchen jets out the back. And chase scene! You know how I know it’s an intense chase scene? Because of the intense chase scene music. Violins!

And chasing. Chasing. More chasing. A dog! And skidding! Aaaaand the grab. Looks like Sketchy Dude was slingin’ weed, not black market materials. However, Demetri now has an excuse to get to the heart of his motives, revealing his future-murder to NotRalph, and bringing everyone up to speed. Thank god for that.

“So what’d you see?” says Dr. Bryce to Lloyd, ‘cause no one actually does any fucking work at the fucking hospital. However, now we get the scoop on Lloyd’s side of his and Olivia’s shared flash forward. The details? Not that great. He was at another person’s house when he got a phone call, and then a woman who he understands he is intimate with calls out to him. He turns his head and voila. It ends.

But more interestingly, guess who’s got a hematoma? Bus Guy, who from here on out is Hematoma Guy. Olivia wants to schedule surgery, which leads to an argument about visions (naturally), thus maintaining Olivia as a bitch-face. Did anyone else get seriously peeved by her character this episode? Hands up if you think Sonya Walger does a really shitty “snot face”? Stick to “Lost,” darlin’. Just sayin’.

But it turns out Hematoma Guy is totally cool with getting surgery, knowing he’ll be alive come April. He smiles, explaining to Bryce that by then he’ll feel like this invincible, fearless Black guy. Because WTF, y’all. What. The. Fuck.

“Jesus is my episco-pal!,” so says a tee-shirt Nicole reads at church. Funny story: I work at a movie store and one day a guy came in wearing this tee-shirt of Jesus strung up on the cross. Beside it read, “Thank you, Jesus,” so I grinned, finding it funny. I then told the guy I liked his shirt, hoping, I dunno, for a, “Oh, yeah — it’s hilarious, right?” No. Instead he goes, “Thank you! Are you a Christian?” I told him very politely that no, I wasn’t, and that his movie rental comes to $5.50.

Anyhow! Nicole is at church, seeking atonement for her flash forward, as if she was being punished in the image she saw. And that’s about all you need to know about that scene.

Over at the hospital, Bryce surfs the web, typing “pigment change” into MEDLine. Seeing something that piques his interest, Bryce decides to find Hematoma Guy because as he tells the nurse, their surgery is “about to kill [their] patient!” Twist! Turns out Hematoma Guy has Addison’s Disease (my dog had it and mother of god she was a pain in the ass.) But Olivia is having none of his antics and shuns Bryce from the O.R. Zang.

And then we watch the surgery, hoping and hoping — just motherfucking HOPING — that Hematoma Guy will die, if only to inject some intrigue into the story. Maybe the flash forwards can be thwarted, maybe we can find a reason to keep watching this ridonkulous show, maybe we can have just ONE question to hold us over for the rest of this $*!^-sucking season. Maybe, please, please-pretty-please you’ll die, Hematoma Guy. Just die.

But he totally doesn’t. He loses his pulse, which forces Olivia to have a change of heart and bring him back to life. He will live. Flash forwards are legit. No Air High-Five, FlashForward. No Air High-Five.

Moving along, NotRalph interrogates Alda about Demetri’s murder and the flash forwards. What does she know? Through a discussion of the “Black Swan Theory” and some parable about a boy and a candle, she essentially throws down the fact that NotRalph doesn’t know the right questions to ask, and even if he did ask them, he’d be too big a pussy to follow through. I like you, Alda. You’re all right.

Feeling spurred on by Alda’s remarks NotRalph tells Al to find a hack named Cheeto Dust to move forward with Somalia. For the record, though, NotRalph? Still a pussy.

And here is the scene where Olivia and Bryce pretend that Olivia wasn’t a total cow for most of the day, and Bryce pretty much bends over. Before Olivia leaves, though, an attending tells her that Lloyd’s son, Dylan, had a spike in his white cell count. ‘Cause guess what? Dylan’s totally back in Olivia’s ward. Freck.

Now at the end of his day, NotRalph chats with Nicole about — you knows it — her flash forward. She was being drowned, but Nicole believes she may have deserved it. NotRalph assures her she’ll do nothing wrong (there’s some false hope for ya) and then everyone eats the one meal that makes all rights wrong: breakfast for dinner.

And now for The Scene. After some cutey-poo time with his son, Lloyd gets a phone call. “SIMON” appears on the display, and Lloyd takes a deep breath before answering. “We need to talk,” a voice says. Lloyd says he’s busy, but Simon disagrees since “[they]’re both responsible for the single greatest disaster in human history.” And in an instant “FlashForward” satisfies 90 percent of their female audience, because Simon is totally Dominic Monaghan.

Air High-Five!

S.P. Ashworth is a fourth-year creative writing student from Victoria, B.C. with aspirations of screenwriting, but realizes that without penning the next Devil Wears Prada, she’s pretty much hooped. You can email her or leave a comment below.