I'm starting to think my TV shows are becoming incestuous. On this third episode of "Flashforward," I saw Zoe Washburne/ Jasmine/ Anna Espinosa/ Cleopatra (wow, Gina Torres... you and I go WAY back!) and Cassidy/Mrs. Saracen. I also thought I saw the chick on Heroes who used to fashion roses out of tomatoes and called that her special skill (I think her name was Monica?) but it turns out Gabrielle Union just looks a lot like that actress. At the very end we saw a boy in Somalia herding goats and he had a giant scar that bisected his face... I couldn't help but think, if this is 1991, what's the possibility that we see the boy as a present-day man and he's Omar from The Wire? (Oh... please please please please please....) I thought this episode was excellent once again, if a little clunky at points. My husband and I actually paused the show at one point to discuss how maybe the reason network TV is starting to get shafted at awards ceremonies and they're all going to HBO is because HBO doesn't have to play to the lowest common denominator the way network TV thinks it has to (with the exception of Lost, which clearly does NOT do that). Why, for example, do we see the little boy turn around and look at Felicia, and then we're flashed to FIRST Felicia's flashforward where she's tucking the boy in and THEN (as if that wasn't obvious enough) the scene of her telling Olivia that she saw her own son? I mean, that scene flashed 20 minutes earlier... you honestly think we weren't going to remember it? Geez... Lost will flash something for half a second in season 2 that will become epic in season 5 without so much as a reminder. They just assume we're smart and savvy enough to put it together. And that was the second time it was done in the show; earlier in the episode, they announced they were going to fly to Munich to Quale Prison to meet the Nazi, and then the screen flashes "Munich, Germany"... and just in case THAT wasn't obvious enough, it says moments later, "Quale Prison." Really? You think we wouldn't have figured out it was Quale Prison by the fact they're in Munich, meeting with the Nazi? A minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.
There were a few other things that didn't mesh for me:
-I don't care if the Nazi had his attorney present; no judge is going to allow a Nazi war criminal who escaped justice for 50 years to just go free based on a trick. I don't believe that for a second.
-I also don't think you can skirt the mother's consent to exhume the body of her child, no matter where you are in the FBI. But that one is less of a nitpick, and could happen.
This week's Lost comparisons:
-Anyone else notice that the parents of Tracy are named Kate and Aaron? Heehee...
-"That's why they call it a leap of faith." Helen says this to Locke; Locke says this to Jack; Eloise says it again to Jack in S5.
Highlights:
-Jeff Buckley playing at the memorial service. That man has a voice like an angel, and I love that SOMEONE finally chose something other than "Hallelujah" that he recorded.
-What did Aaron see? Is it possible that some people could have had a vision of the afterlife? I know that Kate was being sarcastic, but it would be an interesting (and brave) suggestion from the show that this would be proof of one. How could the body have Tracy's DNA and yet he saw her in the future?
-that ending with the crows falling from the sky in Somalia. Man... this show definitely knows how to pack the final five minutes of each episode with enough creepiness to give you the shivers for the next week! Brilliant ending. In literature, black crows have always been a portent of doom and death, so we're already hard-wired to see crows and have a cold chill go down our spines, but there was something especially scary about the use of it here.
-someone pointed out on here last week that March 15 -- Demetri's death date -- is the Ides of March, and the day Caesar died. Any connection?
-So what did his girlfriend see in her vision? She saw a man dressed in white, but there's no way from that distance she could actually make out that it was Demetri. Did she simply assume it was him?
Watching this episode, I was once again overcome with the thought process of all of this. The entire series is one giant philosophical question: If you saw your future, could you change it? Or... does seeing it make it happen? In other words, if they hadn't actually seen their future, Mark wouldn't be filling a board and making it look exactly like it did in his vision. And Felicia is probably going to pursue that little boy now that she's seen him in her vision, whereas she would have left him alone if she hadn't. The flashforward might be a glimpse of a moment in the future, but for them, that memory is in their past, and they're shaping their present based on it.
All of the visions always look so normal: Felicia is calmly saying goodnight to the little boy; Olivia is casually standing at the top of the stairs saying hello to someone downstairs; Mark is pacing an office and looking for answers.
But if you knew that this stuff was going to happen at exactly 10:02 pm on April 29, then at 9:58 on April 29, wouldn't you be watching the clock? Would you be walking right into that vision and playing your role, or would you be so hyperaware of it that there's no way you could actually reenact it the way you saw it?
So far I'm loving this show and the philosophy it raises week after week. I'm actually wishing that, like the characters of the show, we could just see the restof the episode now so we could discuss how they all got there! :) What did you think of Week 3?
38 comments:
Hey, Nik! This is a throwback to stuff we were discussing a week or two ago, namely the Oceanic billboard that got us all excited in the Pilot episode. In my new issue of TV Guide, there's a short article about this kind of crossover stuff. I'm sad to report that it's nothing more than product placement within a show, with exactly the same amount of significance there would be if a character took a swig of a Coca-Cola. I didn't see it in last week's episode, but apparently there was an ad for "Desperate Housewives" on the side of a bus, and another one for "Lost". ABC is just advertising their other products/shows. *sigh*
I love the fact that Kim Dickens goes from portraying a woman who helps a woman named Kate about her son Aaron, to portraying a woman named Kate who was married to a man named Aaron.
This episode wasn't as good as last week's, but it was still pretty good. I kept hoping that Dom would show up somewhere in this episode.
I loved the "leap of faith" lines. It reminded me of Locke.
I enjoyed last week's episode more, but this one still had its interesting points. I still cannot stand the writing; the characters are so bland and two-dimensional.
In terms of that, Lost and Fringe has this show beat. However, the plot still interests me...
I agree with Robert. I really want to love FlashForward. I can't put my finger on it, but there's something missing to the overall structure of the show. And I do believe it's in the writing.
What made shows like Lost, Dexter, and Fringe so compelling from the start is that they focused on character before they centered on the mystery or story. FlashForward is just jumping around from mystery to mystery, without giving us more than 5 minutes of development for any character, each week. Obviously, with only 3 episodes in, there's a lot of room to grow. But my initial reaction isn't very strong with this one. I'm enjoying it and I'm very fascinated, but my world won't end if I accidentally miss an episode.
I like the show, but you just wrote what I felt when I watched the episode, Nikki: The way they use the flashes to dumb the whole thing down is very annoying. It's okay, when they repeat flashes from past episodes to make the show accessible for anyone who joins late, but they certainly don't have to do it within the episode.
A question for you english speakers (I'm german): Does "Quale" actually mean anything (like "State prison" or something) or is it supposed to be a german name? Because it isn't - and it's actually quite atypical to be a german word at all. I don't get why they make the Sophie Scholl connection but don't call the prison by it's real name (which actually is simply "Munich Prison" but known as "Stadelheim", the part of Munich where it's at). From a german point of view, "Quale Prison" just seemed odd. But that, of course, is just nitpicking from this side of the Atlantic.
Altogether still a compelling show, though yes, a little bit of fleshing out the characters certainly wouldn't hurt.
@mgkoeln: I think I MAY have found the answer to your Quale Prison question. I checked Wikipedia and found the following:
Plural "qualia" or singular "quale" (pronounced roughly KWAH-leh), from the Latin for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to describe the subjective quality of conscious experience. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, or the redness of an evening sky. Daniel Dennett writes that qualia is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us." And then as an example on the Wikipedia page, there was a square of solid, bright red, with this caption below it: "Redness" is usually taken as the canonical example of a quale.
So, maybe the writers of FlashForward chose that name because of how it relates to the visions that (almost) everyone in the world experienced. Sometimes very commonplace things and experiences are actually hard to describe, given the limitations of human language. Try describing colors to a person who was born blind!
Doesn't 'Qual' mean pain or torture? (although the plural is 'Qualen').
Maybe they chose a name that was close to 'pain' in German, and close to 'Quail', a bird, in English.
Though this show doesn't seem nearly as smart enough to give us hidden references.
GREAT post as always. Some stuff my husband and I caught:
How in the world did they exhume Tracy's remains and compare her DNA in one day? Usually this takes weeks. Either Aaron was lying to Kate (which I don't think he was) or maybe the army is lying to Aaron. Where did they get the DNA to compare in the first place? Hmm.
Maybe Demetri didn't see anything in his vision because he had been rendered blind. But wouldn't his other senses have created a memory of his wedding day? Sounds, smells, etc.?
I am SO with you....isn't the world going to be poised to see what will happen on April 29th? How in the heck will everyone just be sitting around, going about their normal business? GREAT point. In fact, it pretty much means the future will NOT happen that way. Unless...maybe the time "changes" and the time that everyone thought D-Day occured ends up being different. That's a bit too far fetched, though, in light of all the millions of anecdotes that point to April 29th as the day.
LOL at your statement about how LOST will show you two seconds in season two, and then make it epic in season five...oh, so true! I have friends who are like, "So catch me up on this LOST you show like so much. Don't people crash on an island?" Bwahahahaha! As if. Yeah, do you have about 45 HOURS? I'll be glad to tell you what's going on.
Just got a chance to watch this week's Flash Forward via hulu. While I liked it - though not as much as last week's episode - I was struck by a couple of incongruities in the story. (At least, I think their incongruities.)
1) Why would researchers investigating the death of crows in 1991 request money from DHS? (I'm assuming DHS = Department of Homeland Security.) DHS didn't exist in 1991.
2) Why would DHS be interested in/willing to fund research on mass crow deaths in Africa?
3) Or does DHS mean something else and I've got it all wrong?
Also, what if Demetri DID arrest hapless underwear-dancing-bong-smoking Jerome Murphy? Would/could that one event have created such a ripple effect that the future for everyone, Demetri included, changes?
Just curious.
This show keeps getting better and better.
Only have to nitpick about something since I actually live in Munich:
When the panorama of the city with the Alps in the backdrop is shown, the Olympiaturm (Radio Tower) must have been on the left and not on the right side of the shot. Maybe they simply flipped the shot.
The German was done without errors, I give them that.
I'm still upset that Mark let himself be played so easily.
Have also noticed Cassidy running around.
Cassidy/Mrs. Saracen/Kim Dickens was also the lovely Joanie Stubbs from Deadwood, a series I still mourn the loss of. I'm glad to see her around so frequently nowadays (and considering how season 3 of FNL ended, wondering if we're going to continue seeing her in season 4).
I'm not sure how I feel about this show generally. I mean, the CONSTANT exposition and the use of the flashes really REALLY dumbs things down to a level that annoys me. Then they pull out the trick of Zoe and Demetri having potentially conflicting flashforwards, and the Somalia thing, and I see potential again.
I'll keep watching, but I'm wondering if I'm going to get totally annoyed at some point and give up.
Also, I'm hoping that in about 10-15 years in the future, age/time limits will mean that TV series and movies can finally stop using that "really old Nazi" trick everytime they need someone evil. It's just getting old.
This is of course not to say that Nazis aren't still a powerful symbol of evil, but with all the horrible things that have happened in the world since 1945, including several other instances of genocide, it just seems to me to be writer laziness to always fall back on the aged Nazi as the surprise twist.
I don't think that Dmitri and Zoe do have conflicting flashes, I think that-
1. He screws up their life together in the next few months and she ends up marrying someone else or
2. It's her memorial to him, since they did set a wedding date.
The crows creeped me out alot. I always think of them as evil because of the Stand, by Stephen King.
I'm still interested in the show and like it.
So here's my opinion of why the remains in the casket are of his daughter, yet she's mysteriously alive:
She unfortunately lost a limb in an explosion or whatever. I don't know if all the limbs weigh 37 pounds all together, but maybe there was other stuff along with it. His daughter does look injured in his FF, laying down.
Mike
I enjoy the show, but I have a problem with Benford desperately trying to fill the board with everything that he saw in the Flashforward. He keeps going on about how he had all of these things on the wall, and they must mean something, but in the flashforward he's drinking and looks frustrated. The sad reality is, he's just trying to post a number of things on the board, and hoping that at some point, they all come together and make sense. The investigation appears to have more to do with filling the board than following up on leads. In episode 2, we learn that G. Dillon made a phone call during the 2 minutes 17 seconds. But that wasn't even discussed this episode at all, which is frustrating.
And I agree, Nikki, the Nazi is not going to get off with his trick.
One show that you really need to watch is Peep Show. Season 6 is incredibly funny, and the writing is really tight. If you have any way of watching the first five episodes (I have a weird suspicion that you do, har har), then you should totally check it out. :)
I agree with Nikki...it really seems that they are making their flashforwards come true. I think Benford is creating a self-fulfilled prophecy by just looking for things on the board, which in the future seem to NOT help him solve this mystery. Perhaps if he focused on the investigation the board would look different?
On a related note, it seems a lot of Lost actors are popping up all over ABC. The little girl who plays young Kate was on Private Practice this past week. I was a little bummed out because she made such a perfect young Kate that I don't want to see her as anyone else! LOL
Perhaps the crows didn’t die, but “blacked” out for a period of time?
A group of crows is called a "murder." This name came about because a group of crows will sometimes kill a dying crow.
The crow’s black feathers have made many people fear it. Thus, throughout history, the crow has also been considered an omen of death.
Crows are considered the most intelligent of all birds. One example of their brainpower is their use of tools: They sharpen twigs to help them forage for insects and larvae. Also, crows have a remarkable memory and there are some studies indicating that crows can count.
Crows are predators and scavengers, which means that they will eat practically anything. Their diet consists of various road-kill, insects, frogs, snakes, mice, corn, human fast food, even eggs and nestlings of other birds. An adult crow needs 11 ounces of food daily.
Crows are very social and have a tight-knit family. They roost in huge numbers (in the thousands) to protect themselves from enemies like red-tailed hawks, horned-owls, and raccoons. Crows also use 25 different calls. The distress call brings other crows to their aid, as crows will defend unrelated crows. Crow couples are thought to mate for life.
Crows are in the corvidae family which includes ravens, magpies, and blue jays. Crows live all over the world, except for South America, New Zealand, and Antarctica. (from - PBS/Nature, and probably more than you ever wanted to know about crows...)
Will numbers be important in this series?
One hundred [and] thirty-seven is the 33rd prime number. This constant, 137, is the way physicists describe the probability that an electron will emit or absorb a photon.
217: This gene encodes a mitochondrial isoform.
09/24/09: a symmetrical date whose numerals add up to 24.
only watched the episode this afternoon because, like others have said, it's one of those shows i can take or leave and don't feel the urgency to watch live. that said, i liked this episode (although i liked last week's better).
i felt frustrated and thought it was a cop-out that the nazi didn't really tell them why the blackout lasted 137 seconds. i was far more interested in that than him telling them about the crows (and now i have an urge to watch that film with brandon lee ...).
i also felt frustrated that the nazi touched on janis wearing a ring on her thumb ... and then it went nowhere. was that the writers trying to imply janis is a lesbian and thus adding another layer to her pregnancy flashforward? or am i reading too much into it?
like you, nikki, i actually rolled my eyes when felicia saw the little boy at the memorial and the scene where she tucked him in was revisited. absolutely not necessary and almost insulting to the audience. stop trying so hard, show! your viewers aren't that stupid!
finally, the one thing i actually DID like this week was the situation with demetri, the would-be customs agent and the bong. demetri already knew if he busted the guy, the future wouldn't come true (and presumably, the nazi would stay imprisoned). this was a perfect opportunity to change the future and prove the flashforwards don't need to be carved in stone ... but demetri chose not to bust the guy, thus making the flash a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. given a) his own uncertainty about his future and b) that he is an FBI agent, i was actually surprised he didn't jump at the chance to prove the future wrong. it wasn't what i expected, and i liked that.
Hi all,
I thought that this episode was much worse than last week, mainly because of the plot holes, which although they have been accumulating, just got much worse this week. To name a few:
- Yes, the Audobon society does count birds - mostly as an annual exercise (known as the Christmas Bird Count, as it is usually done Christmas week, when volunteers are on vacation from their normal jobs). Volunteers spend the day at selected sites counting as many birds as they can, the data get collected and finally published months later. Think about it - how could any web site have up-to-minute data on bird populations with several data points over the last few weeks, without thousands of people doing nothing but counting birds?
- If there was a massive die-off of crows, why did no one else notice it?
- Janis had better get busy - the ultrasound picture that they showed is of a 7-8 month old fetus plus you can't tell the sex of the fetus from an ultrasound until at least then.
- If the flashforward was to 10:00 PM in LA, then it was 1:00 AM on the East coast - an very unusual time for an arriving airplane passenger from Germany to be clearing customs.
A few other thoughts:
- Aaron might be having a dream - his vision did have a dreamlike quality
- Has anyone read "Flashforward" by Robert J. Sawyer, which this series is based on? I have just started. The plot is very different as the book focuses on 2 physicists at CERN who trigger the blackout with one of their experiments on the Large Hadron Collider. The world jumps forward 20 years, not 6 months. But, interestingly, one of the physicists is names Lloyd Simcoe.
What really turned me off however, was the cloud shaped as an alien spacecraft in the last Somalia scene. If this turns out to be alien interference, I'm out of here.
Meant to mention that the plot holes that I listed are in addition to all the ones that others have already posted - the one-day turnaround on DNA results, a German judge allowing the release of the Nazi, etc., etc.
One question - was Mark burning the friendship bracelet in the fireplace scene at the end of epi 2? I tried to see if he was still wearing it in this episode, but couldn't ever get a clear shot of his wrist.
We recorded this episode, but didn't have a chance to watch it until last night. I am really enjoying this show (though it's definitely not something I'm hyper-analyzing like Lost).
I love all of the philosophically questions they're raising.
As to Aaron's daughter - he got the DNA to match from his daughter's military file. If the military is covering something up (the fact that she didn't die) then they would have doctored her records, too... amiright? So matching the remains with the file means nothing and his daughter could still be alive.
The only thing that really irritated me this episode was that it seems like they are trying way too hard with the Lost stuff. I was excited to see Penn-eh was going to be in it and looking forward to Chah-lie's entrance as well. I might have even been able to handle Cassidy as Aaron's ex-wife, but honestly, did they have to name her Kate!? There are like a billion names and they couldn't pick something else? And then have her work with a guy named Jack?! Puh-lease. I find that more insulting than anything else.
Debi, I don't have kids but have plenty of friends who do...you can find out the sex of a baby way before 7-8 months. Maybe you meant weeks? (and for that i have no idea if you can sex a baby that young LOL)
I didn't like this week's episode nearly as much as last week, and hope the series is going to be more like the first couple of episodes. I think that Zoe may be lying about what she saw, and that knows she will not be marrying Demetri, but is trying to change the future so that he doesn't get murdered and does marry her. And I think I was half sleeping--I had not even put together Cassidy as Kate married to Aaron...DOH!
So many things to respond to, and GREAT food for thought, everyone! (Loved the "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Crows" post!) but just wanted to point out the only thing I know to be true from experience: You can tell a baby's sex at 20 weeks. Now, you might be able to tell earlier, but in Canada, at least, you get the 14-week ultrasound for the genetic testing, and then the 20-week ultrasound (i.e. the mid-point one) to make sure the baby's growing well and, if interested, the sex. I found out both of mine at 20 weeks. :)
Loretta: Couldn't agree more about the tiredness of the "Evil Nazi." That generated an eyeroll from me, too. Ugh.
Fell behind again and just got caught up...
I mean, that scene flashed 20 minutes earlier... you honestly think we weren't going to remember it?
I'm with you Nikki. I knew from the first episode I was going to get very tired of the constant flashing back to flashforwards because the network suits figure we're all morons.
I was okay with flashing back to Felicia's flashforward, since it was a relatively new one for the audience, OR flashing back to her conversation with Olivia, but BOTH? Come on, show, we're smarter than that.
(And if I see that shot of Olivia looking down on Simcoe sitting in front of the fire ONE MORE TIME...)
In fact, my wife recently read an article in Entertainment Weekly that mentioned some apparent tension between the creators of the show and the network over this very issue (the network, of course, thinking the audience is dumb and needs constant reminders of the specifics of a given flashforward).
But if you knew that this stuff was going to happen at exactly 10:02 pm on April 29, then at 9:58 on April 29, wouldn't you be watching the clock?
My buddy, half joking, half serious, said the same thing after the first episode. He figured that if everyone saw themselves at a set date in the future, then everyone should have just seen themselves going "well, it's the date and time I saw a vision of six months ago, in which I was thinking about it being the date and time I saw a vision of six months ago."
One of the things I really like so far in the show is the internal conflict within Mark. While there are certainly characters on both sides of the line (some who want what they saw to come true, some, like Demetri, who desperately wants to avoid it) Mark is the one character who wants both to happen. Professionally, he's working to bring about the events of his flashforward because he believes it will help him get to the bottom of things, but personally, he wants to find a way to avoid the future his wife and daughter experienced.
I too was miffed the old Nazi didn't offer more explanation. The tease of this episode in the post-premiere sneak preview was one of the most interesting things for me, and I was bummed that he didn't really know why the blackout lasted 137 seconds, even if his observation of the crows becomes important.
One of my favorite TV/movie nitpicks (and TONS of tv shows and movies have done this through the years, not just Flashforward) is when the main character asks someone to get specific information from a computer, and that person is always able to pull up that info within seconds, and always by simply typing on a keyboard.
When in fact it should take AT LEAST a few minutes to find whatever it is the person is asking about, and almost every user interface involves SOME mouse-clicking. I chuckle every time it happens on a show...
@Debi if this turns out to be alien interference, I'm out of here.
I, on the other hand, would LOVE alien interference. :) Ever since "The X-Files" it seems like it's been awhile since we had a good alien show that stuck around for more than a few episodes, and I miss them (it's one of the reasons I'm so excited about "V"). If they go the alien route, I'd be happy with it as long as it's done well and in a clever way.
Teebore: In fact, my wife recently read an article in Entertainment Weekly that mentioned some apparent tension between the creators of the show and the network over this very issue (the network, of course, thinking the audience is dumb and needs constant reminders of the specifics of a given flashforward).
That's really interesting, Teebore! Is there any validity to that argument, or do you think it's the creators looking to blame someone? I ask, because this show happens to be on the same network as Lost, so I find it difficult to believe that the same suits that are saying to Darlton, "Looks good! Very complicated. Like how you name-dropped Jacob in season 3 but we don't see him for another 40 episodes... nicely done" are saying, "Um... it's been 5 minutes since the flash of Olivia saying, "Hello darling" down the stairs... better remind the audience of it again..." ;)
Different suits, maybe? There must be some explanation of this somewhere.
@ Nikki,
This is true, but keep in mind how uncomplicated the first season of Lost now seems in retrospect.
And in the fourth episode (which is almost the number we're up to now), the fabulous Walkabout (still one of my very favorite episodes), we actually did have something of a flashback. After the famous "Don't tell me what I can't do" scene, with the wheelchair reveal, we flashed back to that first scene of John standing up on the beach, which we had seen only a couple episodes earlier. Of course, that flashback added immensely to the episode, aided hugely by Terry O'Quinn's stellar acting, and the always wonderful scoring of Michael Giacchino.
So, on the one hand, maybe ABC does have a history of saying things like "Hey, can you remind the dumb audience that we first saw John Locke walking only at the very beginning of the first pilot?" But then, on the other hand, maybe Darlton is just waaaaaaaaaaaay better at saying "Okay, let's take that reminder and make it profound," which the Lost scene I described above was.
Loretta: I agree with you completely, in that I'm certainly not looking for Flashforward to be an utterly complicated web right from the get-go, nor would I expect that from any show. But when Locke stood up at the end, the effect was beautiful, with music, and it wasn't just a reminder that he'd stood up. It was so much more. It was bringing the story to a close by showing us his real reaction to waking up and standing on a beach, but showing it from a new point of view. When we saw it the first time we saw a guy jumping up and happy to be alive. This time it was something completely different.
And it's one thing to remind us of something from a few episodes ago. It's another to remind us of something that happened 5 minutes ago, and not change it in any way. Putting the name of the prison on the screen is akin to flashing back to Locke standing up again and putting, "September 22, 2004... moments after Flight 815 crash." ;)
Is there any writer/creator overlap that would lead us to think that there SHOULD be any real connections btw FF & Lost?
NecieDee: Honestly, I think the only real connection is the network, with both shows being on ABC. The reason we discuss the show in the context of Lost is the prevalence of actors from that show, the similar themes that are on it (flashing forward in time; destiny vs. free will, etc.) and the fact that ABC deliberately tried to pull in Lost viewers by showing the first previews of the series during the Lost season finale last year, and they've targeted a lot of their marketing at Lost fans.
Hi Niki!! Love that your blogging on FlashForward as well as LOST. I totally agree with you that this show uses a lot of LOST comparisons (how many times was "Leap of Faith" said last week?) but in a dumbed down sort of way. The problem I'm having is that I can't keep the character names straight because they are not really focusing on characters like LOST does. I'm still calling the characters "Penny", "Cassidy" and I'm sure once Dom joins he will always be "Charlie". I need to get some insight into these new characters before I can let go of their old ones.
Also, love the Omar from The Wire reference!!! Miss that show so much and I'm still harboring a grudge at Kenard for taking him down, that little Sh**!
Keep up the great work!!
But if you knew that this stuff was going to happen at exactly 10:02 pm on April 29, then at 9:58 on April 29, wouldn't you be watching the clock? Would you be walking right into that vision and playing your role, or would you be so hyperaware of it that there's no way you could actually reenact it the way you saw it?
I have been thinking more about this comment, and talked to someone who was also thinking about it, and I think it may be a flaw of the show. I have enjoyed the show to date, but if they don't do something to explain this at some point, then it might explain why the concept was never tried before in a TV show.
Benford was investigating the flashforward, so he knows it happened, and now knows the time of the flashforward. So why does the wall still have random pictures and messages, instead of having more important information. For example, why didn't Benford write across the picture of the Nazi, don't cut a deal with him!!! Or put up something about the Crows.
Also, people are on the FBI-created website talking about what news they saw at the time, but unless netorks are supposed to change in the next 6 months, I'm guessing that the netorks would treat the flashforward time like it was New Year's, and would all be going on about it. Also, unless we assume that the gunmen did not witness the flashfoward, why would they be doing that at the very point in time. They should know that Benford knows they're coming, so why not do it at 10:30 pm instead? And even if they are some of the chosen few who didn't flashfoward, they should know the time that everyone in the world saw, so it still seems odd that they would choose that point in time to try to kill an FBI agent.
Am I off track in some way? Is there something I'm missing?
I thought maybe the daughter's files may have been tampered with to reflect the DNA of the remains that are in the grave?
Is there any validity to that argument, or do you think it's the creators looking to blame someone? I
I read the article my wife was referencing, and it was a general article about how clueless networks are when it comes to new shows (it discussed, amongst other things, network edicts involving all characters having to be likeable, the hiring of big name actors rather than discovering new ones, and the networks propensity for switching timeslots, which they always think will help but rarely does).
Anyways, in reference to Flashforward, the article talked about how the networks like to cram as much exposition as possible into episodes (especially pilots). One of the anonymous writers they interviewed for the article used the Flashforward pilot as an example (which set-up the main characters' relationships, the idea of the fashforward, the role of the local FBI office as the epicenter of the investigation, and the idea that someone was behind the flashforward, all in 43 minutes).
So it wasn't anything real specific about Flashforward or a struggle between their writers and ABC, but a more general "look how the networks cluelessly muck around with TV shows" article which used Flashforward as an example.
FlashForward? I managed to survive four episodes and then gave up. It has all the cardboard characters and cardboard pop philosophy that passes for profundity in the Rodden, er, Bragaverse.
There is one thing I will say for FlashForward: It is better than Glee. That show has gotten exponentially worse each week (save for that one anomaly episode, the one with Chenowith as guest star).
This season of American television proves once again that it is simply not as creative or as interesting as British TV. I'll take the upteenth adaptation of Emma and Lewis over any of the stuff on the American small screen. American TV continues to give new meaning to the term "mediocre". Diogenes out.
I was probably a bit harsh on US television. PBS, particularly its Nova, Independent Lens, POV, Frontline (see the reports on Bush's War and the four reports they have done on recent economic history), and World Focus to name a few, does remarkable things with little money. Hell, I would argue that the dramas they did in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, for example Tales of the City, are better than most fiction on US TV today.
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