This week, Mark (Joseph Fiennes) hears about an imprisoned Nazi called Rudolf Geyer (Curt Lowens), who claims to have information from his flashforward that the Mosaic investigation will find invaluable, teasing them with a claim he knows why the blackout lasted 137 seconds. Seeing as the phrase "137 Sekunden" and a photo of Geyer adorned the evidence wall in Mark's own flashforward, it feels like a lead worth investigating, so Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance) sends Mark and Janis (Christine Woods) to Germany...
Elsewhere, Demetri's (John Cho) fiancée Zoey (Gabrielle Union) touches down at LAX, excited because her flashforward showed them getting married on an exotic beach next April -- although Demetri's certain this can't be true, as he didn't receive a corroborating flashforward and a mysterious woman called Nhadra (Shohreh Aghdashloo) has told him he'll be murdered on 15 March. Demetri decided to go along with Zooey's belief her vision saw them together, but is she just mistaken? If so, who is she marrying? Would she be marrying someone else less than two months after her fiancé dies? Does her vision perhaps mean there's another reason for Demetri's lack of vision? Will he perhaps fake his death?
Meanwhile, Wedeck's wife Felicia (Gina Torres) tells Olivia (Sonya Walger) she saw herself playing mother to a boy she doesn't recognise in her vision, whom she later notices attending a funeral service for agents killed during the blackout. And recovering alcoholic Aaron (Brian F. O'Byrne) tells his wife Katie (Kim Dickens) about seeing their dead daughter in his vision, but she doesn't believe him and, after exhuming his child's grave after Mark pulls some strings, the evidence suggests she was right to be dismissive...
There were some things to like about "137 Sekunden", others to feel disappointed about. Right now, Demetri's by far the most interesting character, because Cho's more watchable on-screen than Fiennes and has a personal dilemma that's not just a lazy way to steer the FBI's investigation around. I appreciated the efforts to show us the aftermath of the blackout (crashed planes, an empty airport, wrecked buildings), although the show would need a film's budget to do justice to the ramifications of everyone falling unconscious for two minutes. The main story with the manipulative Nazi grew less interesting as time passed, and his plan to be freed in exchange for apparently useless intelligence was fairly predictable.Still, we got a decent-sized puzzle piece in the last five minutes, as Mark realizes the dead crows Geyer saw outside his prison cell are symptomatic of whatever knocked everyone out cold. Indeed, after a search on a ridiculously helpful FBI computer into bird deaths, Mark realizes that there have been similar incidents in the past -- and a flashback to Somalia in 1990 shows us a flock of crows dying in mid-air above a small African town.
Overall, I'm still interested and willing to persevere with FlashForward. I only really care about Demetri's predicament, and the novelty of people edging inexorably closer to their fate isn't as engrossing as the show seems to believe (as it feels lie we're just waiting for the inevitable), but I'm still intrigued to see how the central mystery develops. What caused the blackout? Who set it off Why did they do it? Questions like that. Of course, those questions are so deep-seated in FlashForward's mystery that I doubt we'll be getting answers for years, and I'm still unconvinced there's enough here to keep us around as we wait patiently...
12 October 2009
Five, 9pm
written by: David S. Goyer & Marc Guggenheim directed by: Michael Rymer starring: Joseph Fiennes (Agent Mark Benford), John Cho (Agent Demetri Noh), Peyton List (Nicole Kirby), Brian F. O'Byrne (Aaron Stark), Courtney B. Vance (Agent Stanford Wedeck), Sonya Walger (Dr. Olivia Benford), Christine Woods (Agent Janis Hawk), Shohreh Aghdashloo (Nhadra Udaya), Mike Cochrane (Bar Patron), Genevieve Cortese (Tracy Stark), Kim Dickens (Katie), Guido Föhrweißer (Schultz), Barry Shabaka Henley (Agent Vreede), Anna Khaja (Older Woman), Thomas Kretschmann (Stefan Krieger), Olympia Lettry (Nurse), Curt Lowens (Rudolf Geyer), Stefan Mavi (LAPD Officer), Michael Merton (John Spears), Cade Olivas (Attaf), Ray Proscia (Helmut Baecker), Jeff Richards (Jerome Murphy), Joe Rose (Bartender), Amy Rosoff (Marcie Turoff), Alan Ruck (Tomasi), Gina Torres (Felicia Wedeck), Gabrielle Union (Zoey Andata) & Lee Thompson Young (Agent Al Gough)
