Of the show’s remaining visions, Dr. Bryce Varley’s may be one of the more interesting.  He was on a pier with a loaded pistol under his chin when The Blackout hit.  Whatever he saw changed his outlook completely.  We know he went from Eeyore to Stuart Smalley in two minutes seventeen seconds and that he saw an Asian woman, but the rest was a mystery until now.

Bryce has cancer and has been in treatment and trying to hide it from his family and the staff at the hospital.  Olivia doesn’t know and a few weeks before the Blackout was seen giving Bryce a lot of guff over his job performance, saying he should re-examine his choice in being a doctor.  We recap a visit Bryce has with his doctor saying he’s in stage four and nothing they’re doing is working.  He fought it off once with chemo, but it might not work again.  Bryce is up for any kind of options, but he’s very despondent and after accidentally backing into a jerk in a nice car, he repeatedly smashes into the car before just walking away.

We also meet Keiko Arahida, an engineer who is trying to get a job with a prestigious firm in Tokyo.  Keiko is the girl from Bryce’s vision.  Her family is supportive but doesn’t understand why she’s too good to work in a restaurant.  (I think her family owned a restaurant, but I’m not sure.)  She’s creative and whimsical and would rather be a musician, as shown by her air guitaring a Bob Dylan video at work.  Her bosses, not wanting to hire another woman to be a secretary and because they’re misogynistic Japanese businessmen, ask her to serve them tea during a meeting.  She’s pissed and decides to rebel by getting a tattoo.  It’s the tattoo we see in her and Bryce’s visions.

Bryce and Keiko are very enamored with each other in their flashforwards.  Keiko believes Bryce is the one meant for her, Bryce likewise but also sees her as a sign that he’s beat cancer.  Keiko’s mom is trying to set her up with a couple nice boys but she doesn’t like either of them because they lack imagination.  She’s also considering quitting her job because they don’t respect her.  Bryce is learning Japanese with Nicole’s help, she’s impressed.  He’s able to talk to the old Japanese woman we saw a couple episodes ago.  He shows her his drawing of Keiko and she recognizes the symbol on her shirt as a very local restaurant in Japan.

The FBI hooks up with an NSA operative and they relay information about the video of Suspect Zero in Detroit.  They’ve been able to ID the ring and it has an Alpha symbol on it, but they can’t ID the face and Wedeck thinks it’s a line of bull.  The NSA lady says they can’t share more because one of the FBI agents has been redflagged; Agent Noh.  They intercepted a call from overseas and he’s a potential leak.  Demitri gets shouty and bullies the lady into getting him that call information as it was the call he took about his possible murder.

On top of the information that Mark has for Aaron about Jericho being a Blackwater type contractor with ties in DC that are more than Mark can access, he is also trying to find out who sent his wife the text message that he was drinking in his flashforward.    He only told two people so he tries Aaron first, who’s having a hard enough time with his daughter as it is.  They argue a bit and then Aaron tells him he can’t be his sponsor any more, but he still needs a friend.  Mark later tries with Wedeck who gets equally pissed.

Bryce’s health, meanwhile, is taking a turn for the worse.  Dr. Benford begins chiding him again, then pesters him to take some time off because he’s sick or exhausted.  When she goes to listen to his chest with a stethoscope, she sees his central line and understands.  He has renal cell carcinoma and had a kidney removed shortly before working at the hospital.  He doesn’t want to bother his family as his dad had lung cancer and the family is still reeling from that.  Olivia tells him to go see a friend she has in Houston’s MD Andersen center, so he takes time off…and goes to Tokyo.

Keiko and her mother have an argument and Keiko is kicked out.

Believing he’ll find this girl in Japan, Bryce is able to use his moderate language skills to locate the restaurant and talk to the employees.  They recognize Keiko from the drawing and tell Bryce where she lives.  He goes to the house and is greeted by a younger girl who gives the always funny line, “Mom, there’s a white man at the door.”  Mrs. Keiko’s Mom answers and Bryce tries to talk to her about Keiko.  Her mom assumes that this America is the “someone else” Keiko mentioned earlier and gets her dander up, telling Bryce that Keiko doesn’t live there any more and to go away and stop bothering them.  Bryce is heartbroken and when he calls home he talks to Nicole who tells him to come home.

Mark and Demitri find that the call Demitri took was from Hong Kong but Wedeck is not letting them go for two reasons.   One, the CIA agent told Congress that they believed the Chinese were behind the Blackout and two, their last couple overseas trips have not netted them very positive results.  Mark doesn’t care, tells Demitri to pack a toothbrush.

Keiko leaves Japan for Los Angeles, convinced she can find Bryce.  We end with her flashforward of her running down the street to a restaurant, as before, with the same symbol as the one in Japan, but on the front of the restaurant is a sign that says, “Best of Los Angeles.”

I like Bryce.  He’s cheerful and artistic but without all the saccharine you’d expect from a born-again.  He’s very genuine and I couldn’t help but smile at the visions he and Keiko shared.  It was honestly endearing without being Hallmark sweet.  It was two people who seemed to fall in love without ever having met and it makes me want to root for both of them.

Which is saying something because up until now, I was rooting for Simon to wipe out the rest of a humanity full of liars and paranoid backstabbers.  Mark Benford is the most stubborn, overly suspicious person I’ve ever seen in fiction or reality.  He’s a cartoon of imbalanced mental behavior and I’m worried that he serves as a representative of the FBI.  Olivia isn’t much better as she seems to be stymied by the visions and is not seemingly able to control herself when the thought of them arises.  She completely shuts down and is unable to function.

Thus Bryce’s story, like Aaron’s with his jaded optimism, is a nice change of pace for FlashForward.  It’s good to see these kids fall in love and be so sure of it that they’re willing to go to the other side of the Earth to secure it, months before it’s supposed to happen.  I’m worried that Nicole is going to become too involved with Bryce; her telling him to come home was too heartfelt to be merely friendly.

Major characters done, let’s move on to the science again.

Four out of five broken clocks.