Flashforward: A561984

Hello everyone!

I am typing this on a public computer in an airport terminal, so I don't have access to checking IMDB or anything else, so it won't be nearly as accurate as my other posts (accuracy?! what's THAT?!) Even my title is going by memory; I'm sure I've got a number off or a letter missing, but you get the picture.

But I HAD to post something on last night's Flashforward. I think the show has consistently been getting better week after week since about 3 or 4 weeks ago, and last night's was the best one since the second episode, as far as I was concerned. The story was pushed forward with great speed, there were several new revelations, the acting was terrific, and I actually laughed at parts. What? Flashforward found a sense of humour? Thank you, writers!!

Interestingly, when Dominic Monaghan was first announced as being cast on this show, we were told he was a math genius who would be working closely with the FBI. Who'd have thunk it would have taken HALF the season to actually get him into that position? He's far more compelling already as a rat in their midst, yet a rat that is necessary to move things forward. His reaction to discovering that photo was taken in 1991 was classic. 

Simcoe's international confession was a daring one, and rather stupid, to be honest (I have to admit I sided with Simon on that one, especially since both of them will be the most despised people on the planet... does he honestly think he and his son will ever be safe again?) And honestly, who among us didn't immediately figure out that those paramedics were NOT paramedics the moment they showed up? I'm thinking this pushes Olivia's storyline closer to the flashforward she saw: she's going to bring Dylan to her house to keep him safe, he'll become friends with Charlie, and Lloyd will eventually be brought into the fold. 

The revelation that Mark will be the one to kill Demetri was one I didn't see coming. What do you think will be the circumstances? Will Mark become an alcoholic because of the guilt he now holds over this murder he can't even fathom he would commit? Is it an accident, and he'll become an alcoholic AFTER? Why not melt down the gun? (I know, I know... we should stop asking these questions, but they're too easy not to ask.) 

The throaty-voiced woman (I can't remember her name) is intriguing, mostly because of her wall of clues that resembles the one Mark is keeping in his office. She's in some alliance with D. Gibbons (who Charlie's told us is a bad man) and somehow Mark is going to know who he is if his children will also know. 

And what about Demetri's fiancee figuring out that she's actually attending his memorial? That even got me choked up. But then I wondered, aren't there any emotions attached to the flashforwards? Wouldn't she have remembered an overriding feeling of sadness rather than happiness? What if the flower she drops is out of shock, because despite thinking his coffin is bring carried to her, she suddenly realizes it's him? Is there any chance that Demetri can escape his own death somehow?

The new revelations last night made me more intrigued about what the future of this show holds more than almost every episode beyond the very beginning, and I'm so thrilled. What did you think?

Don't forget that Dollhouse has 2 episodes tonight, starting at 8 on Fox! I'm meeting a friend in NYC and we're watching it in my hotel room. I'm so excited to actually watch it with someone else again!! 

Flashforward 1.07: The Gift

I apologize that I didn't get a chance to blog on last week's Flashforward. By the time I'd actually watched it, I figured most of the chatter was probably over. And it was more of the same for me -- it had crazy cheesy moments (when Mark was racing after the guy he'd seen in the mask and they were blaring a BAD version of Bowie's "Scary Monsters," it just seemed odd... it's like the music supervisor knows how to pick good music, but the editor just doesn't know how to use it subtly. The music is always turned WAY up and then it cuts off immediately, rather than having it slowly play throughout the scene); it had some good moments, like the looks on the faces of everyone when Simcoe and his kid both showed up at the Benford house; it had rare moments of humour, like when Simcoe ran to the nurse's station and had to describe his son as dressed like "a... uh... um, well... pimp." It had another good moment when Mark and Olivia fought in the kitchen and he blamed her for an affair she hadn't yet had, and then when she tried to blame him for a drinking problem he hadn't started up again, he told her she couldn't imcriminate him for a crime he hadn't yet committed. RICH. To which she basically said, "Oh, RICH." That made me happy. And it had one moment in it that I adored: Simon talking about Shrodinger's Cat. It still presented numerous questions for me: if Charlie is actually talking to Dylan during his flashforward, then why was her response to her own flashforward that nothing would ever be good again and that "D. Gibbons is a bad man"? Where did that name even feature in the flash we just saw? So the episode still fell a little flat. Better than the previous week, but nothing stellar.

A few of you sent me an article that stated that David S. Goyer, the creator of the show (who is known for writing Batman Begins, Dark Knight, and Blade) was paired up with another guy who was trying to show him how to draw out the story, and that guy was recently booted off, leaving Goyer to his own devices. This week's episode, "The Gift," was the first one that would be a Goyer episode only.

To which I say, "HALLELUJAH!!!" This episode was GREAT. (Oh thank you thank you thank you... our patience has paid off!) It wasn't an hour of semi-boredom with a shocker of a cliffhanger. It was DARK, really dark, with sudden movement in tone, many backstories getting filled in, NO REPEAT OF OLIVIA'S FLASHFORWARD (bless 'im), the fabulous Alex Kingston joining the group (which is interesting to me... she used to be married to Ralph Fiennes, Joseph Fiennes' brother, and I remember at the time it wasn't an amicable split, so... awkward? Probably not, since it was over a decade ago...)

The whole story of the Blue Hand club was amazing and creepy and made me think, What DO you do if you didn't see anything in your flashforward? If you knew you were going to be dead in 6 months, would you just drink and do drugs and commit crimes and have a lot of sex and just go crazy? Is there a segment of the population that could soon create utter chaos? (But then I also think, what if you were JUST SLEEPING in six months? Or drunk and passed out? Or having surgery and were unconscious? I mean, you can't tell me that on April 29, 2010, at 10:02pm PST, NO ONE is asleep on the planet. Come on.)

But finally... FINALLY... we had our first step forward in the puzzle when Al stepped off that building, effectively cancelling out his flashforward and changing Celia's, Fiona's (who won't be reading a report with him now), and anyone who knows Celia. Her boys might have had sad flashforwards, but now they'll be happy ones. Is that the end of it? Maybe not necessarily... maybe "Celia" will still come forward and be killed in another way, but who knows. What I love is that there's now hope that you can change your destiny. Olivia doesn't have to have that affair; Mark doesn't have to be a lonely alcoholic; and maybe Demetri doesn't have to die.

Callum Keith Rennie is here! SO excited to see his name in the opening credits. Leoben from Battlestar, Billy Tallent from Hard Core Logo (PLEASE see that movie if you haven't... and yes, the band took their name from his character)... the guy is freakin' amazing. And he's a Canuck (therefore = evil).

The writing was better, the storytelling devices were used effectively, and even though we saw that bird hit the window a few times, it never felt like we were being bashed over the heads. It actually worked structurally, as if we see that bird flying into the window over and over, the same way Fiona and Al have it flashing through their heads over and over. We moved into new characters, with Bryce telling Nicole about his Japanese dream (and please assure me that I wasn't the only person on the planet who did NOT know that Nicole is played by the same woman who plays Jane, Roger Sterling's young wife, on Mad Men?! Someone told me that this week and I just stared at them... then watched this episode with an "Oh. My. GOD." reaction... talk about a versatile actress; I didn't even RECOGNIZE her!!)

And then there's Aaron. We finally see more of his story, the scene of Tracy by the road, and then.... AAAAAHHH!! Now THAT was an ending. How it aligns with her lying in the desert in Iraq isn't clear and won't be for several more months, but I'm more than intrigued.

And who is Annabelle? Simon was fingering a bracelet with her name on it.

Last night's episode saved Flashforward, in my mind. It had all the elements I've been looking for, and intrigued me enough to actually make me look forward to the next ep, rather than feel like I'll be begrudgingly tuning in waiting for it to get better. Everything about this ep raised it up. No, I still don't know anyone's names (I've been relying 100% on IMDB to get the names right for this write-up) but that will come in time.

So... was anyone else similarly cheered by last night's ep?

Flashforward 1.05: Gimme Some Truth

I'm almost a week late on this post, but I think Flashforward is officially leaving me flat. When a show starts off slow, you should give it 3 to 4 weeks to see if it gets any better (except in the case of 90210 last season... one episode was enough. And yes, I've heard it's better this season, but I don't care). But in the case of Flashforward, it started off with a bang, then the second week was even better, and since then it's quickly fallen apart, and I find it's not something I'm really looking forward to watching.

Now, my husband, on the other hand, still thinks it's one of the best shows we watch, so I know my comments will probably be divisive. And I don't completely dislike it, don't get me wrong. But the things I like about it seem to be growing fewer and fewer, while the things that annoy me about it grow by the week. You all know what I like about it, since I've been posting on it weekly (go to the left side and scroll down to Labels, and you'll find Flashforward, where you'll see the rest of my blog posts on it). But here are some of the things that are starting to drive me batty:

1. There are simply too many characters and not enough about each of them to make me care much. On Lost, season 1 focused on one episode per character, so we came to sympathize with each one of them and got to know them intimately. On Heroes in season 1, the names of the characters always flashed on the screens before a scene, so we got to know them. I honestly can't tell you what half the names of the people on this show are. I have no idea who Mark's boss is, even though the actor is excellent and he was particularly good this week. But his name?

2. If I see that Flashforward of Olivia walking to the top of the stairs and saying, "Hello Darling" one more time, I'm gonna scream. I'm so sick of them honestly thinking we DO NOT remember something they've flashed at us, oh, 5 or 6 times now. I GET IT. SHE'S WITH SIMCOE. Does she think she's talking to someone else? Is she working undercover for the FBI and pretending to be with him to help Mark get to him, but she's not with him at all?

3. There's still that paradox I mentioned the last time that they're all going about their business in their flashforwards, and not sitting staring at the clock waiting for the moment to arrive. (OK, now I suddenly have this image of "Blackbird" playing over the finale episode.)

4. The cheese factor. The bad guy in the third episode was a Nazi. Wow. That's original. And the shoot-out in "Gimme Some Truth" at the end, complete with "How does it feel?!" blaring over the scene... COME ON. At our house there was silence, until I finally said, "OK, cheesiest moment ever?" and my husband burst out, "NO KIDDING! I was just thinking the same thing." And they were all in the car AS the bomb was heading toward them, and you want me to believe they somehow all escaped? I don't care WHAT the explanation was for that one, I don't think I'll be buying it.

Or how about Chah-lie finally calling Simcoe at the end of the 4th episode and saying, "Now that we've perpetrated the single biggest catastrophe in the history of human existence..." or something equally preposterous that one person would ever say to another... it reminded me of Charlie referring to Locke and his "four HUNDRED knives" in such a way that he was exaggerating for effect, and emphasizing his sarcasm.

5. It's always felt like there's been something missing from the show, and last week a friend of mine conveyed his thoughts after watching the first episode, "Where's the humour?" And I realized THAT is it. This show takes itself far, far too seriously. There's nothing funny about it. There are the occasional gags, but the show is trying so hard on every level that you can actually feel them straining to do so.

Will I continue to watch this show? Sure... I'm intrigued enough to find out where it's going. But there's SO much good TV on these days that all shows need to step up. Don't draw me into this as a Lost fan if the writing isn't going to hold up to Lost. Don't suggest that the two are anything alike when they're not, apart from the forced references to Lost that you insert in there.

And don't dangle Charlie in front of me like that and then take him away in the next episode!!! Ahem. OK, seriously, that wasn't a critique of this episode. Yes it was. No it wasn't.

Yes.

It was.

Flashforward 1.04: Black Swan

CHAH-LIE!!! FINALLY!! Was anyone else whooping it up on their couch in the final minute of Flashforward? Because the moment I saw the name "Simon" on Simcoe's phone, I certainly was!!

In this week's episode, Mark found out Demetri's secret; Olivia operated on a patient who had a completely crazytown flashforward vision, but whose vision gave the other doctor clues as to how to operate; the babysitter had a vision where she was being drowned while feeling like she deserved it; she turns out to be Aaron's daughter (that's probably been mentioned already but for some reason I'd forgotten it); the other agent is looking for someone named "Celia"; Simcoe never actually saw Olivia in his dream (which we'd pretty much all figured out already); and Simcoe, as we suspected, is somehow connected to Simon and the evil, but he's in there reluctantly, it would seem.

Random Thoughts:
• I was freaking out a little as that bus was hurtling toward the people lying there in the opening scene, thinking, "Wow, imagine falling over in a park for 2 minutes, and during your blackout you're run over by a bus somehow." Yeowch.
• What are the chances that Ned Ned was sleeping and having a weird hallucinatory dream on April 29? Maybe he will never end up as a cool black dude rocking those leather pants, and was only dreaming of it, or hallucinating it through some medication.
• So... terrorist chick: How would SHE know that Demetri posted his flashforward on the Internet if she's in the LA County lock-up? How would that have become public knowledge for the prisoners?
• The other doctor keeps asking people what their flashforward was, and Simcoe comments that it's replaced "How's the weather" as the standard question. I don't think so: I think your vision would be pretty private, actually. Not everyone would be throwing it out there, and I find it a little forward of the guy to be asking everyone.

Highlights:
• "Jesus is my Episco-pal." I MUST have one of those shirts.
• I LOVED the choice of music at the beginning (oh, my love for Bjork is deep) and was singing along... I always love the juxtaposition of music that shouldn't fit the scene, like this lovely old standard against the backdrop of a world in flames.
• Breakfast for dinner made my husband and I crack right up. He LOVES it when I make that; I, on the other hand, am not a fan. Breakfast is my least favourite meal of the day, so why would I tarnish dinner by having it then?! Ugh. (I know I'm in the minority on this one...)
• Chah-lie as the evil little man! Presumably he's the guy who's 5'8" and 130 pounds or whatever who was walking around the stadium. Excellent! Will he be the hacker they call in, not realizing he's also Dr. Evil?

Lost moment:
• When Penny tried to get the chips out of the vending machine and it got stuck, she whacked the machine and nothing happened. I half expected Jacob to appear, get the chips and hand them to her and say, "Sometimes it just needs a little push."

Flashforward 1.03: 137 Sekunden

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?

Flashforward 1.02: White to Play

Whew! While at first I wasn't sure I was loving this episode, by the end the creep factor was exponential. Mark and Demetri follow the D. Gibbons lead to a creepy warehouse in Utah, where Demetri meets another person who claims not to have seen anything during the flash. A few minutes later, she's dead. She dies inside a doll warehouse that just made me shudder for the entire scene. UGH. First, the doll heads, doll legs, doll parts (I feel like breaking into a Hole song here), but then those lead to full dolls hanging by nooses, and if THAT isn't creepy enough, when Mark trips the switch, they're activated into dolls that sing "Ring Around the Rosy." Good god.

As I suggested last week, I think many of the Lost tie-ins were there in the beginning to pull in the Lost fans, but it's not something they'll be continuing. The sensibilities of the show are very similar -- clues along the way, a big mystery to be solved, free will vs. destiny, time travel -- but this week's episode didn't feel as "Lost 2.0" as last week's did, to use a phrase a few of you coined.

• So, at the AA meeting, was anyone else waiting for the guy standing to say, "When Cameron was in Egypt's land, let my Cameron goooo....."
• "We're all prophets." This line was particularly poignant to me, and, OK, Lost-like. It was the first time I thought, "Man, I wish they'd do a crossover ep."
• Did anyone else find moments in the episode that felt very "Minority Report"? It was very well done, the idea that Olivia is getting the cold shoulder from her husband for a crime she hasn't yet committed.
• I thought it was a little strange that Simcoe didn't know what "spectrum" meant. If he has an autistic kid and hasn't hear the word "spectrum," then it's not that he hasn't played a huge role in his life, it's more like he's been completely absent.
• So help my husband and I out -- does Simcoe remind you of A) a young Alan Rickman, B) Hugh Jackman, C) Colin Firth?
• Mark made the comment last week that maybe Demetri was dreaming. I can't stop thinking about that comment now -- would there be several time zones of people who largely had blackouts? Or is it possible you'd have a flashforward of a dream you had? "Oh my GOD, my life 6 months from now is going to be terrible! I'm going to be naked in front of a classroom of students, and it's the last day of class and time to write the final exam but I haven't actually been to any of the classes, and all of my teeth start falling out, and...."
• LOVED Nick Drake at the end of this episode. Loved it.

I enjoyed last week's episode a lot, but this week's was leagues above it. But just one question: Where's Chah-lie?!

Flashforward 1.01: No More Good Days

Every once in a while a concept comes along where I think, "Wow, why didn't someone think of THAT before??" Tonight, watching the new ABC series "Flashforward," I was struck with exactly that thought (unless I haven't boned up on my sci-fi enough, and someone other than Toronto's own Robert J. Sawyer really did already come up with it before he did). Shows like this one -- which is being billed as "the new Lost," ensuring all of us Losties will be glued to our sets -- are the sort of thing that make you put yourself in the shoes of the main characters and imagine what you would do under similar circumstances. If this had happened to me 6 months ago, when I had just celebrated my book coming out, I had two kids, I worked in publishing, I would have had a flash of my future -- still with two kids, another book just coming out, still working in publishing.

Er... hm. Is my life really boring??

Anyway, NOT SO with these characters, but that's the beauty of it. See, if your mind flashes forward 6 months from now, then presumably the next 6 months will be a complete rollercoaster as you deal with the strong emotions you had during the flash, try to figure out what it all meant, watch other people around you falling apart or lifting themselves up (depending on the nature of their visions), and wait for the inevitable to happen. It's a brilliant concept.

And, for my money, it was executed well in this opening episode. The cast is a great one. Joseph Fiennes is amazing as Mark, the FBI agent who belongs to AA, whose wife leaves him purposely nasty notes as an inside joke (rather than "I love you," she tells him that she hopes she never sees him again or that he's a crappy husband, and that's their own funny shorthand for "I love you"). His American accent is flawless; you'd never know this was the funny British guy from Shakespeare in Love and numerous rom-coms.

Sonya Walger (who we know as Penn-eh) doesn't handle her American accent very well (why not just make the actress a Brit and get on with it?) but otherwise she's great. I really enjoyed seeing her in a leading role, rather than playing second fiddle to the rest of the cast on Lost. The guy who plays Mark's AA sponsor, Aaron, has a terrible accent (I have no idea where he's from, but he sounded mostly Irish to me... watch, with my luck he's probably from Kansas). The actor looked somewhat familiar to me, but without the beard. I can't place him. But otherwise, he was great, and the scenes of him talking about his daughter were gut-wrenching. He was one of the more intriguing people for me.

The breadth of the visions is what will keep us going for the rest of the season. Mark saw a future where he is on the hunt of the person who caused the blackout, has fallen off the wagon, and his life is in danger. His wife saw herself with a different man who she was completely in love with and is devastated to think she'd cheat on her husband. Aaron, on the other hand, saw his dead daughter living again. While Olivia's colleague had a gun to his head the moment before the blackout, his vision of being alive and well in the future has given him a reason to live and realize this happier future.

And Demetri, Mark's partner, saw nothing. Which, to him, could only mean one thing.

Things I noticed:
• The directing in this was spectacular, from the long shot shown above where Mark jumps up on the bridge, to the shot behind Bryce's head as he stands on the pier and looks out over the water, to the closeups, to the whacked-out confusion of the flashes.
• One of the things Mark had written on his bulletin board was "Red Panda," and we saw it a lot, yet he doesn't recall it when he's going back over his memory.
• One might think, hey, the friendship bracelet from his daughter isn't the end of the world: just take it off and you thwart the future. But if your kid makes you a bracelet, YOU WEAR IT.
• Demetri's fiance wants their first dance to be "Islands in the Stream" (which made me laugh, because my mom was obsessed with Kenny and Dolly when I was growing up... every time I hear one of their Christmas songs, I CRINGE). One of the lines is "Sail away with me, to another world" which points to the otherworldliness of what is happening to everyone.
• Um... no Chah-lie?? :(
• Maybe we're supposed to think this, but the silhouette in the stadium at the end looked like Lloyd Simcoe. Or Neil Gaiman. OMG, Neil Gaiman is behind everything!!

Fun stuff for Losties:
• The very title of the series is reminiscent of Jack's flashforward from season 3, and the many ones we've seen since. This idea of showing us the future and then leading us up to it is definitely a Lost touch.
• I nearly jumped off the couch (OK, I TOTALLY jumped off the couch) when Mark was sitting in his car and in one shot you can see a billboard behind him for Oceanic Airlines!!! What an awesome homage to its predecessor. I couldn't see what was written on the side of the sign, but humanebean emailed me and I got his email just now, and he says it reads, "Perfect safety record." HAHAHA!! Maybe the time flash was caused by Jack dropping the bomb, which reset time and events and now Oceanic never crashed!! ZOMG!
• Not only is there time travelling (even if it's just consciousness-travelling, which is Desmond's specialty) but the overriding question of the season looks like it might be, once again, free will vs. fate. Are they all destined to live out what they saw? Can they change their futures through their own choices?

What did you think of the premiere episode?