It turns out, I care.  The show has come far enough to where I do actually care what happens to the rest of the cast despite the enormous weight this secondary character just assumed.  And is Simon being built up to be the Bad Wolf of this season?  Hard to tell.  He just killed the only person I’d call a villain thus far next to D. Gibbons, who in my mind is still just a name and barely someone tangible.

“Blowback’s” main focus is Aaron and Tracy.  We start off 15 years ago when Aaron is in prison for a bar fight gone wrong.  Tracy is a little girl and visiting her dad and it’s very touching but then a guard ruins it by saying lascivious things about Tracy and Aaron beats the snot out of him.  Back in the present, Aaron tries to talk her out of another drinking binge at a bar.  He wants to find the connection to her and this mission that almost killed her and Jericho.  Another flashback to two years ago when a couple of uniforms come to Aaron’s house to tell him Tracy is dead.  In the present again, they two talk about how Jericho’s head man and her CO were killed in a copter crash.  Aaron now has a name, James Erskin.  Later, Tracy’s buddy Mike shows up at Aaron’s work and tells him about someone calling him but not talking.  It was his birthday and he knew it had to be Tracy.  They’re both under the guise that the other thinks she’s dead, but Aaron blows that by saying she’s at his house.  Later, Aaron comes home to find she’s not there.  He suspects Mike and after tricking him into getting a bite to eat, he takes him to a junkyard and beats up him to get information.  Aaron then takes the fight to James Erskin, a wealthy and very alive man living in a posh neighborhood.  Aaron pretends to be there to fix the power (that he cut) and then confronts James about his daughter.  James pretends to not have any information but then makes another call later to another conspirator but it’s short lived as we see Mark’s stripped and beaten body hanging (alive) in their home.  Aaron calls Mark to say goodbye.  He has information that they’re taking Tracy to Kandahar.

Mark and Lloyd work through some of their differences as well.  Mark fesses up to being drunk in his flashforward and Lloyd completely recounts his flashforward.  The two compare notes on the phone call and after they get past the suspicion and jealousy of their locations and activities, they figure out that in that time, they are working together on the QED, which they find out must be THE QED and not a regular QED.  It might be a Quantum Experience Detector or something, but it references a formula Lloyd has written in lipstick on a mirror.  Even more revealing is that Lloyd knows D. Gibbons.  It’s apparently an alias for a man named Dyson Frost, a contemporary of Lloyd’s who stole all his ideas.  Later, Agent Vogel admits that Mark is very important and that the whole investigation is based on his vision and it all centers around Somalia.  So they’re going to go, but Mark stays behind, and Simon goes.

Zoey and Demitri are starting to come clean about what they saw.  In fact, this episode was one of those that had a lot of people actually admitting what they saw instead of hiding it.  I don’t know what the change was or when it happened, but it’s likely that after months of pent up emotions, it was just too much stress to be worried about it.  Plus, as we have seen, things can change.  Dem has even agreed to destroy the gun that was implicated in his death.  But things get worse for them when Zoey serves Director Wedeck papers under the freedom of information act.  She’s representing Alda Herzog (the blonde terrorist from the beggining) as a way to help keep Demetri alive.  It’s a stretch, really.  She must have information so Zoey is going Zealot and really pissing off Dem in the process.  They seem to come together in the end after Zoey breaks down saying she wants things to change so that she’s not going to his funeral but their wedding.  Dem goes down to evidence to retrieve his gun so it can be destroyed, but the gun is not there.

Soooomalia!  Since seeing the towers, the answers have all lived in that corrupt, impoverished African nation.  Despite Director Wedeck’s insistence that it’s nearly impossible to get there given the political climate, Agent Vogel is all set to take an away team to check out the apparent source of the black outs while the saucer section stays behind to work out the likelihood of another.

Honestly, the diverging story lines bugged me.  Normally I can appreciate an ensemble cast breaking apart and coming back together but it just didn’t work this time.  ”Revelation Zero” was such a step forward that this just felt like it might have been run out of sequence.  There was absolutely no mention from Simon or Janis about Flasso or Simon’s trip to Canada and to me that seemed fairly important.  I really hope we go back to more of that and soon.

Two and a half broken clocks.

Over the course of the two hours, the Window Washer becomes the moral thread of the story.  He tells us that we’re not alone and that if we open ourselves up (to God) that we can find a little love.  His message is that of love, sharing and compassion.  This adds broader values to the show which till now has been that of scampering suspicion and depression.  No one trusts each other or themselves and the visions of the future are turning into albatrosses.

To wit, Benford and Wedeck begin the episode yelling at each other.  Director Wedeck tells Mark that he’s doing everything he can to follow up on leads Mark’s vision has given them but his rogue antics are sabotaging everything.  Part of his probation is to see the bureau shrink.  He can come back when she says he can come back.  In the mean time, the FBI MOSAIC task force moves on, now headed by Agent Vogle (CIA) much to Agent Noh’s chagrin.  Vogle doesn’t like Benford and Noh’s actions, plays by the book but is smart and resourceful.  He makes our main character agents look like chumps.  The team is investigating the disappearance of Lloyd Simcoe.  The job was professionally done; EMTs were called to a faked 911 call at which several men jumped them.  The FBI figures if they can find one of the cell phones, the can find the ambulance and then Lloyd.  Lloyd is being kept in a basement and refuses to talk.

The second story revolves around Nicole.  She and her sister take care of their mentally unstable mother.  She’s a hoarder among other things.  It’s obvious Nicole is stressed about taking care of her and feels she’s a burden.  Mark and Olivia have more married talk but we don’t deal with them much.  It was a bit refreshing not having Mark be so moody and tight and Olivia not covering for her vision.  Mark visits his therapist and long and short of it, they use a drug to open up the repressed vision.  What he’s forgot is a conversation he had with Lloyd on the phone.  This comes into play later.  However the drug trip sends him to a bar.  He calls his sponsor Aaron from his car just outside.

Janis takes Simon to Lloyd’s house to try and find clues.  She is jumped and the masked men take Simon.  They dump Simon in the same basement as Lloyd.  They’re questioned by the man who showed up at the end of “Playing Cards with Coyote,” Flasso (played by the refreshingly undramatic Ricky Jay) and he asks Lloyd specifically for a piece of scientific data.  Lloyd refuses to tell him so they cut Simon’s pinky finger off with a cigar clipper.  What they’re looking for is a number, an amount of energy Lloyd and Simon’s experiment generated.  It turns out the blackout may not have been caused by Lloyd, but it helped amplify something Flasso’s people were doing.

Nicole finds her way to the Window Washer’s/Narrator’s gathering.  It’s the Sanctuary group, the fliers we’ve seen around the hospital.  Window Washer Timothy is the founder/preacher.  He’s not religious, but he wants to help people and make sure love is spread.  His vision is in a packed theater of screaming fans as he tells everyone his message.  He comes off a little creepy but as of yet there’s little doubt he’s sincere.  She opens up to him but with Bryce’s backing.  Eventually she takes some of Timothy’s talk to heart and ends up decorating a wall of pennies with her mom and Bryce.  They’re only 1989 pennies, the year she was born.

Lloyd has unsuccessfully tried to push a menu with Help Us written in blood on it out the basement window.  Flasso finds it, shows Lloyd some surveillance photos of Dylan and asks for the information again.  Lloyd caves and gives him an astoundingly large number, one quadrillion volts.

Mark follows up with his MOSAIC investigation on his own.  He tracks the menu down to a new location but nothing nearby seems to fit.  The owner tells him they used to have another location.  Mark goes there but it’s all dark and locked up.  As he drives away he remembers his flashback on the phone with Lloyd where he says he wished Lloyd was behind the eight ball when he came crashing in.  At first that line seems metaphoric until we see an 8-ball painted on the door.  Mark crashes through with his car and saves Lloyd but Simon escapes, running into Flasso in the ambulance.

Once treated at the hospital by Olivia and turned over to Agent Hawk, Simon keeps trying to lose her.  They make their way to Canada where Simon visits his family who is keeping vigil for his runaway sister.  He also visits his old mentor and physics professor to ask him how to stop another blackout once it starts.  Apparently the experiment uprooted consciousness and he’s looking for a way to anchor it.  Janis finds him again and they head home.  At dinner, Flosso, a.k.a. Uncle Teddy arrives.  Apparently, thanks to family friend Teddy, genius Simon was able to afford college and work at the institute he’s at now.  Flasso’s been keeping him under his thumb this whole time.  Even now, Simon’s sister was kidnapped as assurance that Simon continue to play by Flasso’s rules.  But he also has a secret about the blackout.  He was the dark cloaked man in the ball park.  Flosso had him wear a ring that kept him awake, he also provided an alibi for leaving the country; a dead dad (killed.)  Flosso also shows Simon his dead professor friend in the trunk.  Simon loses it and kills Flosso.

“Revelation Zero” shifts the show from Mark as main character to Simon and Lloyd as major protagonists.  The black out was caused by and may happen again because of something they did.  They both understand it and Simon, more than anyone, seems poised to either help repeat it or help stop it.  The revelation in this episodes seems to be that what Mark is doing is to play second fiddle to Lloyd.  They’re still going after D. Gibbons leads and Mark has plenty of wall clues to check on, but with concrete information like what we heard from Lloyd, Simon and Flasso, do we care what happens to Nicole, Bryce and Aaron?  I don’t.  Aaron still has his daughter’s story line, Noh still has his eventual murder to sort out and Bryce is still looking for his Japanese girlfriend, but they pale in comparison to Simon’s story.

I’ll bet you that between now and the season finale, all we’ll get will be the small stories.  We’ll probably see more of Aaron’s daughter and her squad-mate Mike.  The leader who helped her will likely be tied in to something Mark is doing in Somalia.  Bryce and Nicole are looking to move closer and closer together, but what happens to Keiko?  Introduced in one show and completely forgotten?  Probably.

It’s a weird thing to happen in the middle of a season, but I think FlashForward is trying to wipe the slate clean.  I think it’s trying to start over.  I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but they’re apparently abandoning a lot of story in order to push through a more interesting one.

Anyone else immediately make the leap from Dominic Monaghan wearing a special ring to another more legendary ring story?  Can’t help it.

The two parter set up a lot for the rest of the season.  And while I wouldn’t really rate this one incredibly high (they could have done this all over a full season) I am looking forward to what happens next.

Four out of five broken clocks.

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.

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.

Simon finds Lloyd doing card tricks for Dylan at the hospital.  He chides him on the email and says in response to Lloyd’s playing god comment with, “Twenty million deaths on our shoulders. That’s what you said. If that doesn’t qualify us for Godhood, tell me what does?”  It’s a stiff line I would think more suited for Horatio Caine, but we push on.  Simon challenges Lloyd to a card game.  Poker.  If Simon wins, Lloyd apologizes for the email and they don’t go public.  If Lloyd wins, they go public.

The Benford’s sexy sexy is interrupted by a call from the FBI.  Mark gives Olivia some lingerie and leaves.  She recognizes the outfit from her vision.  In her defiance toward fate, and her wanting to save her marriage, we see later that she’s thrown it away.  The call from the office says they’ve got a witness to a murder, Ingrid Alvarez.  It ties to the FBI and the MOSAIC board because one of the shooters has the three star tattoo on his arm.  Two men take something from a third, then shoot him.  A pet store owner gets a video on her phone.  They find her because she was almost killed herself.  Her roommate was killed, likely by the men who knew she was a witness.  In the video, there are just a few details.  Ingrid remembers them saying QED but no one knows what that means.  (I hope they know what it means, just not in relation to the shooting.)

Tracy’s return is not as warm and receptive as Aaron would have liked.  She’s scared and distant and can’t sleep.  She recaps her last moments in the humvee and how it wasn’t Afghani insurgents that shot the RPG, but a military contractor known as Jericho.  Earlier, she was on a recon mission where she saw Jericho wipe out an entire village.  As a witness, she is being hunted by Jericho and can’t trust the military.  She told her superior and was thus sent on her mission with Mike where she was nearly killed.  She spent two years running and she was kept alive by a man named Khamir, who appeared in Aaron’s vision as well, handing him an envelope.  Aaron asks Mark if he can help.

Janis Hawk returns but wants to quit.  Wedeck doesn’t accept her resignation, seems to settle for her taking some time off.  She’s overseen by Wedeck later looking up information on sperm donation and fertilization.  Her video of the man in the baseball stadium has come back from the NSA, and they’ve cleaned it up more but not enough to make an ID.

Lloyd is losing badly to Simon; the later full of confidence about his eventual triumph.  He uses QED in his description of his foregone win and he makes a last bet; winner take all.  Lloyd agrees.  Simon has four of a kind, Lloyd has a straight flush.  Lloyd helps us remember the card tricks he was playing with Dylan earlier by producing an Ace from his sleeve.

Benford and Noh and Hawk set up a trap for the killers by using Ingrid in her pet shop.  The power goes out, Janis reports movement and Mark and Demitri rush in.  One man appears to make a move on Mark and Demitri and Mark shoots him dead.  Not alive for questioning, and being only one of the two men were there, Ingrid has to go into witness protection.  She agrees as she believes it was in her flashforward.  Mark tells Olivia that he had a good day because he killed the man that was going to come after him.  We cut to a warehouse where different men are loading boxes, driving trucks, etc.  We see tattoos of three stars on several forearms.  One forearm brings the briefcase to a squat little man who opens it and we see six Alpha rings.  He says there’s one missing.  Then he shoots the messenger and walks away.

We’ve added more to the mystery; Tracy’s Jericho military contracting group.  There are secret soldiers wiping out villages and I’ll be you they are the security contractors in charge of providing protecting and logistics for Simon and Lloyd’s scientific experiments.  Possibly like the giant pylons in Somalia.  Ingrid says she heard one of the men say QED, Simon uses the same phrase later in the card game.  Outside of math and philosophy, QED is not a widely used phrase.  The fact that it’s in this episode twice is a clue.  Some how Simon, the three star tattoo men and Jericho are all related.

Despite the opening as music video, soundtrack provided by Pearl Jam (no foolin’,) “Playing Cards with Coyote” is fairly well put together and had some really decent moments.  I think of everyone on the show, character wise, I appreciate Aaron and Bryce the most.  They have a conviction the others lack.  Aaron’s may be due to him being in AA or possible a veteran (not sure on that, he just seems like he may have been in the service) but he has a faith of purpose that the other characters don’t possess.  They float around in this waffling mode, unsure of who they are or where they’re going.  Bryce’s story has yet to be told.  We don’t know why he was on that pier with a gun trying to kill himself (I’m guessing either gambling debts or illness) but something in his vision has assured him that he’ll be around in six months and life is worth living.

The question all these people should be asking is why it happened.  I think it’s short sighted of the writers to put people in a hole dug with promises of the future.  Yes, your vision says you’ll be alive in six months.  What about six months and one day?  They need a character that steps up and says they’re going to live their life the best they know how and not make plans based on what might happen.

Three and a half (out of five) broken clocks.

Another web site!

ABC loves ARGs.  Lost had a whole campaign based on the fictional story behind what happened to flight 815 and the Dharma Initiative.  Now FlashForward follows suit with several alternate reality sites, all of which lead back to the series portal on ABC.  We can now add www.alreadyghosts.com.

“The Gift” ends up being Agent Al Gough’s episode.  His flashforward shows him investigating a case with a British MI6 agent, Fiona Banks (Alex “ER” Kingston.)  The case they were investigating will be The Rutherford Case.  One of the three people killed in the blue hand abandoned house is named Rutherford.  He will be investigating this case still six months from now.  The whole reason Agent Banks is here is because she saw it in her FlashForward and  Rutherford was reported missing off a British cargo ship.

Investigating the deaths with MOSAIC shows these people are Ghosts; those that didn’t have a flashforward.  Ghosts meet in most major cities to celebrate the inevitable, which we find out means torturing themselves because they’re going to die anyway.  Demetri and Al discuss inevitability and fate and typical FlashForward topics throughout the show.  We find out Al’s flashforward has him taking a call from his lawyer.  Apparently he accidentally killed someone.  Part of his vision is also with Agent Banks and during their discussion of the case, a bird hits the window and dies.  Al suggests to her they tape the window.

The other major story is that of Aaron Stark.  Someone from his daughter’s Army squad finds him and gives him her pocket knife, an artifact he saw in his vision.  He views this as a sign that she is alive and is quite hopeful for a time until this young man, Mike, tells him that there’s no way that could happen because it was with her when she was killed.  We see Mike’s memory of the attack they suffered while in their Humvee.  She was trapped in the vehicle when an RPG tore it and her to pieces.  Aaron is shaken, but he starts thinking positively; a bit relieved now that the truth is out.  He knows Mike has had a hard time finding work after his deployment, so he gets him a job.

Mark, Demetri and Al investigate a Blue Hand Ghost meeting.  It turns out to be debauchery to the nth degree with scenes of Russian Roulette, electrocutions, beatings and any other number of ghastly activities.  They eventually follow the mob who is there to see The Raynaud (Callum Keith “BS:G’s Leoben” Rennie) or the rotating leader of the Ghost group.  It’s a bit of a cult following, but of people who have no future.  The agents take him down and question him, showing him the dead blue hand’s photo, saying he shot at an FBI agent.  The Raynaud doesn’t care if they put him in prison, everything’s already written.

Lloyd Simcoe comes to Olivia at the hospital, apologizing a little too heavily for his interference in her life.  He says he’s moving to San Francisco with Dylan.  She’s happy about that and pushes to get some paperwork through for him.  Nicky helps Bryce interpret his flashforward.  She’s volunteering at the hospital and through a bit of luck we find she knows Japanese.  We also find Bryce is a talented artist and his vision is of a Japanese girl with a kanji symbol behind her – the symbol means “believe.”  Demetri tells his fiancée about his lack of a vision after she thinks he’s being distant and dodgy with his feelings.  After all his doom and gloom and yelling at Mark about it all coming true, he does an about face when presented with love and endeavors to push on regardless.

Al, however, cannot live with what his future holds for him.  Despite all he tells people about being able to change it, he can’t live with the idea of taking another person’s life and leaving abandoned children.  He writes a note to this Celia from his vision, leaves it to Demetri to take care of, then goes to the roof and jumps off.  Nothing magic saves him, he’s dead.  Can everyone change their future?  Agent Fiona Banks tapes the window.  Aaron Stark’s daughter is waiting for him at his home.

“The Gift” makes the viewer question fate.  The entire show does, yes, but this episode specifically.  People in this fictional world walk around in a fog of knowing.  For the first time in human history, they (until now) believed in one fact; that they would be alive in six months.  Save for the ghosts, those who had visions at least assumed they’d be alive in April.  Agent Al Gough disproved that.  His actions at the very least showed that the future is not written.  Now, whether or not this Celia still gets shot remains to be seen.  In many time line sensitive shows, it’s not the who but the what that’s usually important.  Not who killed this woman, but that she died.

I’m not sure where the Blue Hand and Ghosts and The Raynaud come into play yet.  They seem emo and unestablished and too nihilistic to mean anything other than a diversion to the FBI team.  I believe The Raynaud, despite his flock’s desire to see him shoot himself, is not an important figure in the story nor do they have answers to what happened.

The problem with what happened is that ABC keeps showing teasers for an episode in which Dominic Monaghan says “I know what caused the blackout” and then doesn’t say what it is.  That’s too much too soon.  There’s no mystery and now we’re just watching the action.  Give it a full season before revealing that a physicist and his team are somehow responsible for the blackout.  You do it two episodes in and we suddenly don’t care; especially if it turns out to be something to do with quantum mechanics.  As much as I love the subject, you can hear the remotes clicking when the subject comes up.  Dancing with the Stars is on next, I don’t think names like Heisenberg, Bohr and Schroedinger are going to get many extra viewers.

Still, this was a well paced, acted and written episode.  Despite my hang ups over what was done IN the show, the production value at least warranted some higher marks.

Three and a half (out of five) broken clocks.

I’ve decided that Joseph Fiennes bugs the ever livin’ bejesus out of me.  I don’t know what it is, but the way he sucks in through his teeth or grimaces or furrows his brow or what.  It’s possible it comes from the character he’s created and the fact that it’s covering up a British accent and the best way to do that is really invest in the character and how they sound and react.  It’s a weird one way dialect road where Brits can assume an American accent and fool most Americans, but us Yanks trying to sport a British accent (no matter the location) are known to butcher it completely.

Regardless, Fiennes’ performance is beginning to wear me down.  He and Sonja Walger (as Olivia) are getting a lot of screen time to argue and find reason to mistrust each other.  Sonja does rather well, and I can’t fully blame her for the lines she’s given.  “Scary Monsters and Super Creeps” is really about the falling out the Benfords have and showing us that despite the truth finally being revealed, it’s too little too late.  The snowball has been pushed down the hill and despite Mark’s assurances that the future is mutable, his marriage is having no trouble winding down the path toward its eventual fate as a divorce.

Mark and Aaron take Charlie trick or treating and Mark chases down a couple kids wearing the same masks as the gunmen in his vision.

Lloyd Simcoe was even in the Benford’s home after locating Dylan who ran away from the hospital.  Mark stared at him through enraged and nearly flaming eyebrows to tell him to get out but when he and Olivia spoke (fought) later and he revealed his vision was of him drinking, she called him on his hypocrisy and left him with the final thought that there was no trust left in their marriage.

Speaking of eventualities, Agents Demetri Noh and Agent Al Gough (Lee Thompson Young) begin investigating the men who attacked the FBI Agents.  As Agent Hawk recovers, thanks to a simple yet effective suturing technique by Dr. Benford, Noh and Gough follow a lead to an abandoned house with several bodies.  They’ve tracked a “blue hand” clue to the scene of what appears to be an execution or sacrifice.  It doesn’t lead them exactly where they want, but it does correspond to Agent Gough’s flashforward in which he is still working on the case.

Agent Noh’s story is actually quite intriguing.  It may stem from the fact that John Cho is very likable on screen, even when he’s being petulant and brooding, he comes across as a very down to Earth fellow who just wants to do his job the best he can.  He’s the first character I’ve felt anything for.  His drama and his life seem hopeless and yet he still tries to push on.  It’s tragic and likely the reason for the emotional tie.

Dominic Monaghan’s Simon character is back this time and gets an updated amount of screen time.  He seduces a woman on a train with his intelligent banter and we find out he’s a quantum physicist.  His flashforward is of him choking a man to death.  This shocks the woman a little but she currently has her legs wrapped around him so it must not be THAT horrible.  After Lloyd gets excused from the Benford’s, Simon is waiting for him in his car.  He tells Lloyd that “they” have been worried about him since he ran away to Los Angeles.  Lloyd says he wants nothing to do with them, as it is their experiment killed hundreds of millions of people.

Which we already figured, and I wish this had been more substantive.

Agent Hawk is ok, but because of her injury and the way Dr. Benford saved her from bleeding to death, she may never have kids.  Why she’s so upset then, because of her flashforward, she doesn’t understand.  She didn’t want kids to start.  Maya has sent her flowers.

“Scary Monsters and Super Creeps” did something a lot of dramas do and that’s try to stay current.  Airing two days before Halloween, the Benfords neighborhood was alight with revelers and decorations.  It was bright and colorful and very safe.  Even the cemetery in which Mark chases the hoodlum is quite banal and typical.  It was all there to link the show to reality, to say that it could really happen because these are real people who dress up on Halloween.  The cemetery was a bit much as it didn’t do anything but tie into the title.

The kangaroo makes a return and as yet we don’t have any idea to the significance.  I’ve heard everything from the director had a bad experience with them to it signifying that everything we need to know about the Blackout is in Australia.  Come to find out, David S. Goyer (creator and writer) said it’s a grace-note or just something put in there, mostly in disaster movies, to be neat little things to make you think about something else for a second.  However, it got such a huge response that they brought it back for this episode and will likely have a back story for it.

If the kangaroo gets a flashforward, I’m removing the show from my scheduled recordings.

There was nothing revealing in “Scary Monsters,” rather it was an emotional episode designed to allow the viewers to find if they can identify with the cast.  Each in their own way has a good case for emotional attachment, but some of the performances will not let that happen.  Despite any history a character may have, if they are currently unbelievable then you’ve lost the viewers.

Three out of five broken clocks.

Opening Credits.

This episode of FlashForward really shows where the show’s strengths lay; in the political world.  The show has floundered a little by focusing on interpersonal relationships between people who, by the nature of television, are unable to be honest and forthcoming.   In “Gimme Some Truth,” however, we’re treated to a bit more of what the FBI has to deal with from those who control the purse strings.

39 Hours earlier, Agents Benford, Noh and Veerde are undertaking polygraph tests.  Veerde is shown leaving the office through a secure door, he doesn’t know why.  Mark flips a coin that says 7 Years on one side and Keep Coming Back for More on the other.

Director Wedeck has his hands full when he’s in DC with a Senator Clemente.  Something has happened in his past and Clemente was involved or knows about it and she intends to pull his field office’s funding for the MOSAIC project.  Mark Bedford’s testimony before the committee doesn’t go well and he, and by proxy Wedeck and the whole office, come off sounding like a bunch of conspiracy nuts.

All is not lost, however, as Wedeck and the President are old friends, as we see earlier by them playing some 1v1 hoops.  The Prez alludes to the fact that Wedeck was his choice for Vice President but Wedeck had refused.  Now the President offers him the job of Secretary of Homeland Security.  Wedeck has to roll in the mud and pull a skeleton out of the closet in order to get Clemente off his back.  The President had an affair with an African American woman and from that union came a child.  They paid the woman off but she lives close by in Georgetown.  Wedeck was able to find her again through MOSAIC and pays her a visit.  He’s awfully chummy with the young boy, like he’s a favorite uncle, and the woman says it’s been a long time.

Wedeck shows the Pres a picture of the woman and asks that the Pres makes sure Clemente doesn’t pull his funding.  It’s a dirty play, but it gets the job done.

Olivia overhears Aaron talking to Mark on the phone.  He’s there to help fix some things on their house.  Aaron tells Mark to find an AA meeting while in Washington.  Olivia and Aaron talk and she doesn’t trust that Mark won’t start drinking again.  It happened before when he was stressed and in Washington.  Aaron tries to talk her down, says it’s no good to lie to each other, which of course is all they’ve been doing.

Agent Janis Hawk is seen kicking someone’s butt in Tae Kwon-Do or Karate class.  The ass-kickee asks her out, she says maybe, but then later we see her with the chick from the class instead.  They’re having a nice dinner, they kiss, the next morning over breakfast the lady says Janis needs a new alarm clock and asks to see her later at an art show.  Janis says of course and goes to work.

There’s going to be a lot of flak caught by the show about Janis Hawk.  There are going to be all sorts of reactions ranging from pandering to moral decrepitude.  The LGBT of America will say it was horribly written, there was too much PDA and that Janis Hawk being gay is a token.  The more religious of viewers will, I’m sure, write angry letters and emails and message board posts about how seeing two women kiss, make breakfast and promise to see each other later is the reason behind teen pregnancy, AIDs and the Cubs not winning.  I only bring it up because after watching it twice, and living with and knowing a few lesbians, I have to say there was nothing to it.  It happens to be a budding relationship and so far it’s nothing more than Demetri Noh and his fiancée have done.  This is me telling everyone to get over it.  But it’s important to the show because her almost girlfriend (they’re unsure at this point) says her flash forward has her wearing a wedding band and Janis’s was of being pregnant.  She’s earlier said, “I don’t even have a boyfriend.”  Now we start thinking about how these two end up.

Janis and a few other agents are able to find satellite photos of the Ganwar region of Somalia and they see comparative photos over several months in which several pylons are erected around a spit of a village.  It’s enough proof to send a team to investigate.

Something happens earlier in the committee hearings.  CIA Director Keller (played by perpetual agent of all kinds Michael O’Neill) reports that the CIA has reason to believe that the Chinese are behind the Blackouts.  When they happened, it was 2am in China, virtually no damage or loss of life.  What better way to weaken America, China’s biggest rival?

In a bar after the hearings, Agents Noh and Veerde sing some horrible karaoke and Mark tells Stan that he can’t remember all of his flashforward because he was drunk.  This shocks Stan, he’s put his whole career on the line based on Mark’s vision and now he finds out that Mark was hammered at the time.  There was a little confusion because they made it seem like Mark was drunk WHILE he blacked out, not IN his blackout.  I don’t know if that would have mattered.

So, they agree it was a bad day, go get the car and are attacked by…Chinese?  We don’t know the affiliation.  Mark is on the phone to Janis Hawk when it happens.  After an RPG hits the car, from behind the burning wreckage come all four FBI agents, guns ablaze as “Like a Rolling Stone” cover plays.  They take out the bad guys decisively.  Janis is worried about the gun fire but as she’s walking home with groceries, she is attacked by Chinese gunmen.  She is able to take one down in hand-to-hand, but another is about 20 feet away and shoots her in the gut.  As she lays there bleeding, her flashforward plays in her head.  She’s getting a sonogram and the technician tells her it’s a girl.

But does she die on the street with the rolling alarm clock given to her by her friend trailing blood in little circles saying, “Wake up, it’s time to get up?”  We don’t know.  She’s bleeding a lot, there’s no one around, we’re left to assume she dies and that her vision of the future will not come true.  But we don’t see her flatline and we don’t see people watching her body be put in the ground.  It’s all too likely that next week she’s miraculously found by an EMT who sustains her life until she can be patched up at the hospital that’s only blocks away.  I bet you it’s Olivia’s hospital.

I hope there’s an EMT around to save this show from its own acting.  I wanted to give this episode a lot of praise for showing a little bit of political reality and a little bit of life outside the Benford House of Lying, but the acting was atrocious.  I can’t tell if Fiennes is just having a hard time with the American accent or if he’s playing an American FBI agent with a migraine, IBS and shoes that are too small.  He’s contorted and forced and truly unbelievable in this roll.  Vance’s performance during the bar scene was out of place and hard to follow.  It was like watching a horror movie that you knew was trying to be evil and serious and yet you can’t help but laugh at the absurdity.

There was no Larry Simcoe, no Charlie Merry, but they keep pushing smaller characters on us and it’s starting to water down the cast list.  There’s ensemble casts that survive on their own in vignette showcases from week to week, then there’s this smattering of “Well who is that now?” that FlashForward is doing.

It’s not everyone and it’s not all the time, but this episode was without major reveals to the story and it hence must rely on the strength of its writing and acting and it just didn’t have it.  But I do hope Janis isn’t dead.

Two and a half out of five broken clocks.

Remember that great reveal from last week?  Agents Benford and Hawk discovery an area of Somalia that reported dying birds and local villagers blacking out.  It linked Herr Geyer’s story and gave them something to work toward in finding out what caused the global blackout.

But forget all that because we have an FBI agency director that’s mad at his agent for coming up with bupkis so he’s going to side with the agent who’s judgment is clouded by the fact that he may be murdered within six months.  Senior Agent Wedeck tells Bedford that the Germany trip was a major loss and they shouldn’t be chasing these weak leads.  HE suggests following Demetri Noh’s desire to interrogate Alda Hertzog (Rachel Roberts) and her involvement with the suspicious characters from episode 1.  We’re not exactly sure what they do or what the FBI wants them for, but Alda is not giving up any information.  She knows Demetri didn’t have a flashforward and she nudges him into chasing after what turns out to be a small time drug runner.  Noh and Bedford blow up at each other after running down the perp and Demetri finally tells him about the mysterious call.

Olivia Bedford and Bryce Varley encounter a regular man who’s in the hospital after a couple weeks for some pain resulting in a bus accident during the blackout.  He recounts being very calm and actually helping someone out of the sinking bus.  His vision was of him in a club wearing leather pants as a black guy.  It seemed odd but the combination of that vision plus his calm nature during crisis leads Bryce to believe he has Addison’s Disease, an adrenal gland failure that can cause people to turn black, apparently.  Dr. Bedford won’t listen to him and she goes in for surgery to repair some internal bleeding.  But when the patient almost dies, she has to admit Bryce was right and the patient survives.

After a zinger of a line between the Bedfords that Mark’s antics with Charlie weren’t very Shakespeare-like, Nicky confides in Mark that she went missing because her flashforward of her being drowned by someone was frightening and she thought she was being punished.  After being rebuffed by a priest, she talks about it with Mark and he’s very understanding.

Larry Simcoe is no closure to admitting that as a dad he’s just fine and at the end of the episode he gets a call from Simon (Dominique Monaghan) it’s revealed that Larry and Simon are involved in the blackout.  (With a wonderfully cheesy line about being responsible for the worst disaster in the history of the world.)

This whole episode was a bit of a filler.  Mark and Demetri don’t get anywhere interviewing Alda other than she’s creepy and shifty.  Olivia comes to terms with the avoiding of the flashforward reliability question.  Almost too late she admits she’s wrong but it’s obvious that she’s pretending they don’t exist.  She doesn’t like her vision and it’s easy (and probably common) for people to admit to themselves that they aren’t real or true.  People with visions they don’t like are going to be the believers in changing the future.  Those with positive visions are going to decry the merits of fate.

So far the only one on the show that makes any sense is Aaron Stark.  So far he’s done very human things and reacted in very normal ways.  In the preview for next week, he’s also apparently the only one giving Mark the what-for for lying to his wife.  He may have some weird South Boston accent for a Los Angelino, but he’s the porridge Goldilocks settled on.  Where other characters may be dynamic or sexy, Aaron so far is the only real one.

The entire episode felt like it was a set up for the last few seconds with Simon and Larry’s phone call.  It wasn’t completely boring, but it fell a little flat.  There were more than a few times when witty banter or quick dialog was weighed down by long scenes without an edit or without any movement.  Imagine line delivery from West Wing delivered by people standing stock still.

It was scattered, unsettled and very two dimensional.  I hope it picks up next week.  Three out of five broken clocks.

FlashForward

A German mass murderer has contacted the FBI claiming he has information about why the blackout lasted 137 seconds.  He arranges to have his sentence pardoned and be set free in America in exchange for this knowledge.  FBI Agent Benford agrees after some haggling with his own Agent Hawk and the German officials.  I wasn’t really sure about the details as the German official claimed the US had no authority but then later it appeared they had plenty in letting this man go.  Herr Geyer says his vision included being greeted and heckled a bit by a dopey customs agent.  Agent Noh verifies this with the pot-smoking dead beat who just applied to the customs agency after his vision.

Things take a turn, however, when Herr Geyer says that aside from some dead crows outside his cell window and his vision, he has no actual idea why the blackout lasted 137 seconds.  He says this after his release is secured and Agent Bedford is frustrated that he’s been played.  Which leads me to believe Agent Bedford is not all there as I wouldn’t have trusted a man sentenced to life for multiple murders with breathing on his own much less providing useful information.  Geyer leaves Bedford with an Autoban Book saying he might be able to find information in there.

Agent Noh is having a crisis of his own in relation to his vision of nothing.  His fiancée (played by Gabriel Union) is finally able to fly home after the airlines are all opening up.  She is one of about five people on this flight, including a nervous and alcohol requesting CEO of the airline itself;  there to ensure to the people that it’s safe to fly.  Agent Noh greets here and deflects the conversation about his vision again.  Later he just parrots her vision of a wedding on a beach.  We don’t actually see him, neither does she, but he assures her he sees the same thing.  However, in the early moments of the episode, Demetri gets a call from Nhadra Udaya, a woman claiming she knows he was killed but can’t given him any more information.  This frustrates him and he asks another agent for help tracing the call.  It can’t be traced so he gets the LUDs on the repeating towers.

Aaron Stark tries to convince his (apparent) ex-wife to sign off on paperwork that would allow him to exhume their daughter’s body from her military grave.  She refuses so he calls in a favor to Agent Bedford while he’s in Germany.  You need a warrant to do it without consent, so he has Noh draw up the paperwork.

We’re introduced to Stan Wedick’s wife Felicia (played by Firefly’s Gina Torres) as she recounts to her friend Olivia Bedford that her vision included a 10 year old boy she’s never met.  Olivia is again circumspect when recounting her vision to Felicia.  Stan Wedeck is prepping for a eulogy to the department and when he delivers it at the end of the episode, Felicia sees a boy in the first row look back at her.  It’s the boy from her vision and he is comforted or hushed by a woman in a head scarf who for a second looked an awful lot like Aaron Stark’s daughter.  (It wasn’t, but any time someone gets a lot of face time on screen, you get the feeling they’re important.)

Despite the setback, Mark Bedford dives into the Audubon book and asks Agent Hawk to check on crow deaths at the time of event.  The Audubon society tracks bird deaths and the data is available at the press of a few keys.  The number is dramatic on the easy to interpret graph.  Janis says so what, but Mark pushes on asking her to find similar occurrences.  They’re so tied up wondering when it will happen again, they failed to ask if it had happened before.  Sure enough, a report from Somalia in 1991 showed the same pattern of bird deaths also tied to a period of population unconsciousness.

We flashback to Ganwar Region of Southern Somalia in 1991.  A young goat herder is moving is herd along when they start getting panicky.  He notices a large number of birds gathering in the air and investigates.  Suddenly the birds drop from the sky and as he moves over the hill he sees a village where all the people are lying apparently unconscious.  We scan through the village to a tower at least ten stories tall.  The top appears to emit a shockwave or a cloud of gas.  It’s hard to tell as the sun is bright and the sky is hazy, but the tower itself should not be be part of a small goat village in Somalia.

I really hope our two main characters stop lying to everyone.  We get it, you don’t like your visions of the future.  But let’s put this in play for a second.  You hide things and lie and avoid confrontation with your spouse for three to six months.  They get suspicious, you get anxious and stressed, you can’t handle it.  You seek solace in another person or a bottle of whiskey.  The marriage falls apart because you don’t trust each other because you are lying from the start.  Even we can see it and this isn’t some magical fairy world or highly advanced science-fiction orbital platform around an alien world.  This is Los Angeles, present day.  Don’t for a minute think that these extenuating circumstances allow for the loss of basic human interaction.

If there’s one thing that will ruin a show (and I’m looking at you, Heroes) it’s the knack writers have of completely abandoning human nature in favor of plot twists.  You can’t have a major reveal or a good forward moving story, it would seem, without keeping the characters in the dark and it’s just frustrating.  Yes it creates conflict and yes conflict is what makes a story, but let’s not forget that these people are human beings and not sound bites.  The more real you make them, the more viewers will identify with them and thus the show as a whole.  If you make them lying and deceitful and unwilling to trust themselves and others, we won’t bother sticking it out until D-Day to see what happens.

(Incidentally, the show is calling April 29th/30 2010, “D-day”  The only reference that makes sense is to the Normandy invasion at the end of World War II.  The term then referred to nothing more than the plan that was carried out.  The D in D-Day means only “day” because the day and time of an attack have yet to be determined, so the D is left as a D.  An H would be there for the hour of attack.  It’s basic military planning.  What that means here is a little paradoxical as we know exactly when the date and time of the event is.)

Unless of course, this is how we really are; lying, deceitful and untrustworthy.  Then maybe we deserve to be put to sleep.

Three and a half (out of five) broken clocks.