The first surprise was seeing Lloyd (Jack Davenport) and Simon (Dominic Monaghan) hold a worldwide press conference and take the blame for the blackout, having been conducting a cutting-edge experiment at the exact time the event occurred. Assumedly they'll now be sued and financially ruined? Lloyd's a clever guy, but he has no common sense. Simon's actually not convinced they're to blame for the blackout, but Lloyd is adamant and determined to offload this burden in public. Needless to say, the news is greeted with a lot of anger and Lloyd becomes an immediate hate-figure, while Simon scurries to the FBI and offers Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance) his expertise in proving the blackout wasn't their fault. Wedeck reluctantly agrees to egomaniac Simon's help, as it's only matter of time before Mosaic is shutdown now culprits have stepped forward and promised no further blackouts will occur.
Adding to the mystery, while Simon recognises the FBI's aerial shots of those enormous towers in Somalia as something he theorized in 1992, such equipment has never been built to his knowledge, and the photo predates his idea by a year! Was someone else simply ahead of the curve, and has been willing to stay anonymous rather than bask in glory? That's what the FBI believe, and hypothesize that the enigmatic "Deacon Gibbons" is probably the man they're after. But, hey, he's an alternative theory for you all -- did someone, perhaps Gibbons, simply hop back in time with Simon's unmade invention, to use the technology to prevent a forthcoming global catastrophe? I'm just throwing this stuff out there. There's too much discussion about many-worlds theory and parallel dimensions to ignore the possibility that FlashForward's universe is actually a divergent reality someone created by altering the timeline in 1991.
In the major storyline, Benford (Joseph Fiennes) and Demetri (John Cho) arrive in Hong Kong to find the mystifying Persian lady who called Dem to warn him of his murder on 15 March. It's an unofficial mission that Benford accepts responsibility for, angering Wedeck nevertheless, and when they eventually track down their mystery caller, Nhadra Udaya (Shohreh Aghdashloo), she gives them a worrying addendum to her warning: that Demetri's killer will be his best friend Benford. She even proves her prediction by telling Benford the serial number of the murder weapon, his own Burea-issue handgun. Sadly, nobody thinks to ask how Nhadra knows all of this, but we do see her office has a similar wall of "clues" to the one Benford's piecing together in Washington? To my mind there's only one possible explanation for Nhadra's knowledge: she, like Gibbons (whom we see in her office in the closing scene), is a time-traveller and has painstakingly pieced together the events of 2009 for some reason. Any advance on that?
Like I said, FlashForward still isn't a show with character you feel particularly invested in, but there was better chemistry between Olivia (Sonya Walger) and Lloyd in this episode -- and it helps that Benford has proven to be so dull that I'm actively willing them to get together, just to make Benford cry. The scene where Lloyd realizes that, under slightly different circumstances, he may have met Olivia while he was at Harvard (but instead met his wife), was especially good work. And, again, it reinforces this idea of a "multiverse", which I'm now convinced is the explanation behind FlashForward on some level.
"A561984" leaves us with plenty of tantalizing notes: Benford and Dem's relationship now has a level of mistrust built-in (what will Dem do to make Benford want to kill him?); Simon will probably become the FBI's resident quirky scientist, determined to pin the blame for the blackout on someone else to save his career; Nhadra is in league with the chess-obsessed Gibbons (so why was she helping Dem by warning him about his murder?); Zoey (Gabrielle Union) went to see Dem's parents, and it was revealed that their shared vision of a wedding was actually Dem's funeral; and Lloyd's son was kidnapped by fake paramedics while being transferred by ambulance (who didn't see that coming, given how friendly-yet-shifty those medics were?)
It worked well as a mid-season finale, it has to be said. There was more than enough developments you keep you happy, and quite a few were surprising enough to lure you back for more. Indeed, the saving grace of FlashForward has been how it's had a steady stream of enticing reveals up it sleeve, ready to put them into play just when you grow exasperated by its haphazard plotting and generally bland characterizations. Sadly, audiences are falling away fast (on both sides of the Atlantic) and I somehow doubt ABC will be keen to greenlight a second season if the ratings continue to dwindle and the critical response remains very mixed, at best.
But I'm still watching. It's not great TV, but it's not totally boring, and the premise has its hooks firmly embedded in me now. I need to see how this ends, and it's fun to theorize about. I think the CIA are somehow involved, perhaps in league with that Jericho outfit, using technology created by Gibbons and financed by a cabal of rich Arabs who are perhaps related to Nhadra's character. I just wish I liked the people as much as I like the concept.
30 November 2009
Five, 9pm
written by: David S. Goyer & Scott M. Gimple directed by: Michael Nankin starring: Joseph Fiennes (Agent Mark Benford), John Cho (Agent Demetri Noh), Brian F. O'Byrne (Aaron Stark), Zachary Knighton (Bryce), Courtney B. Vance (Agent Stanford Wedeck), Sonya Walger (Dr. Olivia Benford), Genevieve Cortese (Tracy Stark), Barry Shabaka Henley (Agent Vreede) & Peyton List (Nicole)
