Oct 16, 2009 01:30 PM
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San Francisco, 1:17 AM
Wed Feb 10
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For anyone wondering, this week's FlashForward taught us two things: Firstly, that you can't escape fate even when it's not fate but the plot mechanisms of a television show. And secondly, that Addison's Disease can make a white boy black.
This was a weird, almost inessential, episode after the Big Mythology Moments offered in the previous three weeks: Some small subplots got brought back and advanced, even if it's hard to care about them right now (Yes, Bryce didn't kill himself because of his FlashForward, and now we know that he saw a cute girl in it, and Nicole the Babysitter revealed that she saw herself getting drowned in her FlashForward - What's the betting that D. Gibbons is the man responsible, and that's what Charlie saw in her FF to make her tell her father that D. Gibbons is a bad man?), but in general, this week seemed oddly throwaway.
Olivia and Bryce got their own hospital storyline this week, as we met Ned, a nerdy white man who saved a woman from a sinking-in-a-lake bus as a result of the blackout. Turns out, he needs a dangerous operation as a result of his heroics, but he's amazingly calm about the whole thing, explaining that in his FlashForward, he was "rocking the leather pants" in a club that he'd always thought was too cool for him. Oh, and he was black. "Six months from now, I've seen myself, and I'm this fearless invincible black guy like Shaft or Bryant Gumbel," he explained. "Knowing that has already changed me."
While Olivia and Bryce argue about whether the fact that a FlashForward could be medically useful - It is, of course, because Ned's becoming black turns out to be the result of Addison's Disease, which leads Bryce to diagnose the disease in time to save Ned's life during surgery; it's as if the writers of Grey's Anatomy tried to do House - Demetri and Mark bring back the blonde woman they arrested in the first episode right after the worldwide blackout, and thanks to some pointless misdirection, arrest a drug dealer who saw himself driving "the pimpingest ride around, yo" in his FF as a result. Demetri admits to Mark that he's been told that he's going to be murdered in March, leading to Mark telling him that their awesome JoinTheMosaic website will help them solve his murder before it happens, and derail fate - even though the only way the Mosaic website can work is if the future everyone saw comes true.
Pretty much immediately after telling Demetri that he can't listen to the blonde prisoner because she just messes with their minds, Mark listens to her tell him that he doesn't have the balls to find out the truth behind the FlashForward, and decides that it's time to get in contact with a hacker to break into the CIA's database and get more information on last week's Somalian cliffhanger because, obviously, that's going to go well.
Really, the only interesting part of the episode was the very last scene. After a few aimless scenes of Olivia and future lover Lloyd continually meeting cute and bonding over his son/her patient Dylan, the episode ends with Lloyd getting a phone call from "Simon," who tells him "Talking to me is just one of those little inconveniences you're going to have to put up with, now that we're responsible for the greatest disaster in human history." Is Lloyd behind the FlashForwards? Is this mysterious Simon? And more importantly, look who Simon is:
OMG CHARLIE FROM LOST IS THE BAD GUY FOR THE SERIES! But is he Suspect Zero? Or D. Gibbons? Or is there an entire network of people who didn't black out, and are all of them going to have secret drug-abuse-hobbit-Britpop pasts? Suddenly the show has a way of holding my attention.
Send an email to Graeme McMillan, the author of this post, at graeme@io9.com.
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