In timely Christmas fashion, A Christmas Carol plays several times in the show.  At one point, a poignant bit by Scrooge asks if this is what will be or what may be.

Benford and Noh go to Hong Kong despite Assistant Director Wedeck’s orders to stay in the US.  They are on the trail of the woman who called Demitri and told him of his murder on March 15th.  They were able to use the wire tap information from the NSA to locate her in Hong Kong.  They are greeted by agent Marshall Vogel who tells them to go home.

But the big news is that Simon Campos and Lloyd Simcoe are at a live news conference telling the world that their plasma wakefield experiment went off at the exact moment the blackout happened.  Lloyd believes they were the cause, Simon still doesn’t and the head of their group, Gordon Myhill, is trying to mitigate an unruly crowd.  Eventually a distraught woman grabs a guard’s gun and takes a shot at the podium.  The event is broadcast globally.  Noh thinks it’s the end of MOSAIC.

In Hong Kong, Noh and Benford track down Nhadra Udaya.  She is Persian and likes Dim Sum.

Wedeck is surprised when Simon Campos comes to his office, unannounced.  He wants to work with the FBI.  He adjusts his tie a lot.  They show him pictures of Somalia and the five high tech obelisks.  He thinks it’s a CGI of his pulsed laser for a plasma afterburner.  They tell him it’s real and it was taken a year before he had his idea to build it.  They also mention D(eacon) Gibbons as the possible architect.  (D. Gibbons was apparently the man in the doll factory in Utah that blew everything up before Noh and Benford could nab him.)

Zoey attends the funeral of a coworker and as she sees a woman holding a white flower, the same one she’s holding in her FlashForward.  She has a realization that Demetri may be right about being dead.

Mark and Demetri find Nhadra at the dim sum restaurant.  She keeps saying it’s a bad idea for them to be here, but they keep asking questions.  She finally reveals that Demetri’s killer is Mark.  She then rattles of the number A561984, the serial number to Mark’s gun.  It’s not an accident killing, he shoots Demetri three times at close range.  Then Mark does the dumbest thing in the world:  When Nhadra says she’s done talking to them, Mark crashes the table, grabs her and runs into the street with his gun at her head.  Demetri is left to follow and cover.  Her men plus all of Agent Vogel’s men meet outside and the standoff ends with Benford and Noh being cuffed.

Everyone hates Lloyd.  He tries to secure a transfer for his son to a more secure location but the hospital admin hates him with the fire of 1000 suns.  Olivia steps in and gives us a complete 180 in her character by being very nice to Lloyd while making eye contact.  She helps get a transfer to a good location and they talk about Harvard.  He went there, she was supposed to but stayed because Mark’s job sent him to LA.  Lloyd married the woman next door, the woman that could have been Olivia.  Lloyd talks about the Many-Worlds theory.  It’s a quantum mechanics assertion, boiled down it means that every event happens but we’re only able to live with the actions in this world.  For instance, you may wake up, go to work and then on your way home decide to grab a pizza instead of a hamburger.  In the Many-Worlds theory, you’ve done both and there’s another universe running along side ours in which you got a hamburger.  (It’s a bit more complex than that and giving it the “choice” mechanism isn’t always correct.  For more, read here.)

Zoey meets Demetri’s mom after several unanswered phone calls.  Mrs. Noh was afraid because she knew her vision was of Demetri’s funeral and they want Zoey as part of their family.  Zoey says they can change the future.  Agent Vogel is escorting Mark and Demetri at the airport when Wedeck calls and fires Mark.  He gives Demetri his gun and badge.

Nicole gives Bryce a maneki neko (beckoning cat, she calls it a neki neko) for luck with love, says he’ll find her.  It’s another reminder that he’s looking past the obvious.  Agent Janis Hawk comes to visit Bryce this time not on a surveillance detail like last time but as a woman wanting to get pregnant.  He starts with a script for vitamins, but she needs something more basic because, “The whole penis thing is a problem because I don’t like them.”  ”Oh, you’re gay.” Laugh, “Super gay.”  He gives her a sperm bank doctor’s name.

Olivia comes to see Dylan and Lloyd off.  They’re going in an “ambo” (how the cool people say it, or what Olivia tells Dylan) to the new hospital.  As soon as Olivia asks the EMTs if they’ve had training with autistic people and one of them says, “Oh we’ve had training” I knew something was up.  Sure enough, after Olivia and Lloyd have a nice parting moment, Dylan struggles in the restraints and the EMTs say they don’t have time for this.  Olivia calls a guard but the EMTs pull guns and shoot them down.  Then they grab Lloyd, leave Dylan behind and drive off.

Things that annoy me about this show:

• Mark Benford.  Fiennes just hasn’t found this character yet.  If I were an FBI director, I would not want this guy on my team or in the bureau period.  Whoever writes for him is just lousy.  The guy is constantly making mistakes and the delivery is just horrible.  The only part when I didn’t think, “Crap, it’s brooding Mark Benford and his tight lipped delivery” was at the very end when he and Noh were in the airport.
• The small steps with 100 characters approach is really slowing the show down.  I know we have a target date, but if it can survive a four month hiatus as a show dedicated to a timeline, expect a lot of filler moments.  Every name I hear in the show is possibly a new character that will have more screen time.  The science director at the beginning, the doctor Bryce recommends, Mrs. Noh, agent Vogel, Nhadra, the NSA agent.  All these people are sucking away screen time from the main characters.  And they’ve killed off Agent Gough, the world is in too much flux and it’s hard to find a way to identify with it.
• Choose your fate/your fate is chosen for you.  It’s the questions and discussions we all have.  Like many other supernatural shows, FlashForward raises more questions that it answers.  Agent Gough shows you can change the future, but Simon and Lloyd are suggesting it’s not our future but A future.

Despite that, I enjoyed “A561984.”  Nhadra is a wonderful character.  She’s earnest and powerful and tragic.  While Simon’s constant tie adjusting and lint picking can be annoying, he’s easily one of the more charming characters.  I liked watching him fall from grace at the idea that someone was better than he and much earlier.

There’s talk that FlashForward is on the ever growing cancellation bubble.  Some ABC shows are in danger.  Lost really took a toll on the network during it’s blue-whale sized break and while they continued to try to fill in with scripted dramas, FlashForward will not return on March 4th as expected thanks to American Idol. The unscripted juggernaut talent show will chew up two weeks making FlashForward start again on the 18th.  This means the April 29th D-Day event may not happen on April 29th.

So it’s almost pointless to get hooked on a show like this, especially on a major network.  If anything most of the sci-fi, supernatural, fantasy shows are always in trouble.  Can’t say as I’m surprised, if they’re all like this episode.

Three out of five broken clocks.