What did you see?
The first episode of one of the most eagerly-anticipated shows of the year hit the ground running and didn’t disappoint. From the moment Mark Benford wakes up in his car, after what appears to have been an horrific Los Angeles traffic accident, we’re on information overload. There’s a mystery to be solved here. The question is, are we looking at the right clues?
I apologize in advance for the length of this post. There’s so much to discuss, and I can’t believe it was only an hour long!
We cut to four hours before Benford wakes up in the car. Though his wife’s broken into the gun safe and left him a note telling him he’s a crappy husband, the fact that she hasn’t actually used the gun on him while he slept, is an indication that he might not be as crappy as the note claims. When he wakes her up with a loving, “I hate you too,” we get the idea that he wants a little nookie. She, on the other hand, just wants him to fix the garage door.
The next time we see Mark’s wife Olivia (Livvie), she’s out of bed and leaving a message for another doctor. She’s annoyed with Bryce for missing rounds, but when we cut to a despondent Bryce at the Venice Pier and see him pull a gun out of his bag, it’s a good indication that he’s not planning to go to rounds today either.
When we see Mark again, he’s at an AA meeting. At this point, I found myself starting to get a little confused with the timeline. I know we have about four hours to play with, but if Mark’s at the AA meeting, then why hasn’t Bryce – who’s pulled out a gun in a public place – been noticed or arrested? Are these things happening at the same time? If they are, then how many messages has Livvie left? It’s a nitpicky detail, but it’s one that kept coming up over and over again as I watched.
As for the AA meeting, Mark’s sponsor is Aaron. He’s a despondent father of a soldier whose ashes were sent home from Afghanistan about two years ago. The action starts to pick up a little here, and we see flashes of our characters as time ticks steadily towards the Flash Forward event. Mark and Livvie’s babysitter, Nicole having sex with her boyfriend while her charge, Charlie, sleeps upstairs; Mark and his partner Demetri doing surveillance and talking about first dance songs (Demi’s fiancée wants “Islands in the Stream,” Mark can’t remember what his was); Olivia scrubbing into surgery; Aaron preparing to climb a telephone pole to do a little maintenance.
Demi and Mark see their suspects exit the building and the guys go on the move behind them. A couple of traffic lights in, the bad guys “make” them, and thus begins one of those fantastic high speed pursuits for which LA is famous. Mark’s driving, and Demi cracks a joke that he’s never done this before. Nice.
Cars are flying everywhere, being pushed out of the way by the SUV that the guys are pursuing. Cut to Bryce who’s got the gun to his face (still on the crowded pier). Nope, he’s definitely not making rounds today. Cut to Nicole and her boyfriend who are still doing the horizontal mambo. Cut to Aaron, who’s now climbing up the pole.
And Flash.
We only see Mark’s “memory.” He’s in his office, drinking again, and writing notes to himself. “Who Else Knows?” He sees that he’s wearing a Friendship Bracelet, and then he sees the room fill with the red laser scopes of a rifle.
Then he wakes up. Along with everyone who survived the event.
Bryce sees a bunch of balloons floating towards the sun. He then hears the surfers in the water below yelling for help. Turns out that the water might not have been the smartest place to be during The Event. He offers to help and rushes down.
Nicole and the boyfriend wake up, and Nicole runs upstairs to check on Charlie. Considering that this is a girl who hasn’t turned on the television and who was just in the throes of passion, why is it so important to check on the kid she’s been ignoring all morning? She runs upstairs with an urgency that suggests that she knows it’s at least a city wide event, but at this point, she has no way of knowing that.
Then again, if she didn’t, she wouldn’t hear about Charlie’s “dream” that there are “no more good days.”
Mark and Demi manage to find the SUV they were pursuing when the whole thing began. No, it’s not a white bronco. The male suspects are dead, but the female suspect is alive and looking good for this. Is it a dirty bomb, perhaps? She mentions that she was somewhere else…in a storm and the horses were scared. She’s also pretty darn insistent that she didn’t do this. A passerby corroborates her story. He heard on his radio: the same thing is happening in other parts of the state.
Cell phone service is still down, and the guys can’t get through to their families. I’d blame Aaron, but he’s fixing the landlines. Demi points out that the hospital is two miles away. Mark decides to run for it. As he does, he sees the mayhem and destruction. And, of course, the looters. At least something’s normal. Or not: anyone want to explain what a kangaroo is doing in the middle of LA?
In a lucky break, the looters have passed up the store with all of the big screen TVs, instead heading straight to the ones with the boxes of undeterminable contents. This means that the sets are still on when Mark passes, and he learns that The Event is global.
While Mark’s still making his way to the hospital, cell phone service goes back up. After hearing that Livvie and Charlie are safe, he decides to bag the trip to the hospital and make his way to the office instead. That’s okay, though, because Livvie’s got a big problem on her hands. A kid who lost a fight with a car on his playground is wheeled in, and Bryce (who I am fully convinced has superpowers because he has somehow managed to save a bunch of surfers AND make his through the hellacious traffic from the Venice Pier to the hospital in less time than it would presumably have taken Mark to run it) finally shows up. When Livvie tells the kid that he’s going to be okay, he says, “I know, Olivia.” Small problem: she’s never seen this kid before.
A pediconference between Stan, Mark, and an unnamed Agent I’m calling Stewie because, yes, that is Family Guy‘s Seth MacFarlane, reveals that the blackout lasted exactly 137 seconds (2:17). This is interspersed with Liv and Bryce in a desperate race to save the kid. Just as they think they’re losing him, he manages to pull through. As far as the FBI goes, Stan wants to know if the Pope has chimed in on this.
The FBI crew is reviewing the damage, and they’re pretty sure the Vice President is dead. Mark tells the group about his vivid dream, and Stewie says that people have reported hallucinations. Mark says that it’s not an hallucination. He starts group share time talking about his “dream.” He knows the time and date : 10 PM 4/29/2010. Others have seen the same date. Does the fact that the show premiered on 9/24 and the date is 4/29 mean anything? We’ll see.
Demi finally shows up with the female suspect. She’s all “we didn’t do this,” he’s like “I don’t care, you were still planning to do something.” Another agent walks up and tells Mark that his Flash Forward was to 4/30/2010 at 6 AM. But he was in London with the new Scotland Yard liaison. A bird interrupted them by banging into the window. His point: he had a vision of Fiona Banks. Did she have a vision of him? They call her, and she remembers the exact same thing.
Everyone is watching the same CNN broadcast and one of the panelist mentions “Mosaic.” It’s the name of the investigation Mark’s working on in his Flash Forward. Mark tells his boss this, but admits that none of the leads make any sense to him now. Stan asks Demi what he saw: nothing. Janice : currently boyfriendless (and a little bitter if her tone is any indication) is getting a prenatal screening. Stan claims to be in a meeting, but was actually in the bathroom reading the sports page. Demi thinks they should start gathering stories; Janice suggests a website. Stan puts Janice, Mark, and Demi in charge. Demi’s a little bitter about that too because they’re running point because Mark’s vision had them running point. Uh oh, it looks like somebody has vision envy or he thinks that his lack of vision means he’ll be dead in six months.
Mark’s finally home, and Nicole asks if he’s all right. She thinks God did this to punish them.
Liv and Bryce are still trying to locate the parents of the kid they saved. Liv asks how Bryce is staying so “Zen” through all of this. He tells her about his suicide plot and that whatever he saw made him change his mind. He doesn’t share what he saw with her, but like Nicole, he thinks it’s a sign from God. Unlike Nicole, he thinks it was a gift. With his newfound determination to live again, could it be that all he needs now is a girl?
Mark tells Aaron that in his Flash Forward, he’s drinking again and the shame is all back. Aaron points out that even if he saw it, it doesn’t mean it’ll actually happen. Maybe, because he saw it, it means he can change it (Ghosts of Christmas Future). What if he can’t? Liv will leave him. Aaron tells him not to slip and points out that until he sees something that corroborates the vision, they’re all fantasy. Aaron tells Mark that in his Flash Forward, his daughter – supposedly dead in Afghanistan for two years – is alive. He’s hopeful, but he’s angry that he’s hopeful. Mark’s worried his future is going to come true; Aaron’s worried that his won’t.
It’s the end of the day when Mark’s finally getting around to the garage door. Liv comes home and asks him about it. He tells her it was a “slow” day. In bed that night, Mark asks about their first dance song. Liv remembers it was “At Last” by Etta James. She asks what he saw, and he gives her the sweetened condensed version that doesn’t include the drinking. Mark asks Liv what she saw, and it turns out she was with another man. Mark steals Aaron’s line and reminds her that just because they saw these things doesn’t mean they’re going to happen. But when the kid’s father shows up at the hospital and talks to Bryce, it turns out it’s the same guy.
It’s the very early morning on the first day after, and Mark is sitting on Charlie’s swing set. Charlie comes outside fully dressed and gives him the friendship bracelet he’s wearing in his vision. She ties it on. Piece #1 of his vision puzzle.
Demi’s at work watching a Youtube video of Kenny and Dolly singing Islands in the Stream. Janice calls him over to her desk. She’s been watching video for the last five hours. It’s the same thing over and over. At 11, people start dropping, at 11:02, they start coming to. Then she finds footage of a baseball game in Detroit. As everyone else is passed out, a lone figure slowly makes his way to the exit. Who is it, and more importantly, why are they awake?
Overall impression: WOW. I loved the book when I read it last summer, and while it’s not necessarily word for word, it’s true to the spirit of Robert J. Sawyer’s work. True, the timeline was a little shaky, but I think that might have been more of the fault of ABC condensing the entire tale into an hour-long time slot. The concept is fantastic, the action sequences are insane, and the little touches (anyone else catch the “Perfect Safety Record” tag on the Oceanic Airlines billboard?) are inspired. Most of all, the casting is brilliant. Including Seth MacFarlane, there’s not a misstep in the bunch. This is usually true when the ensemble is made up of familiar faces, but like Lost and ER, the up-and-comers came out of the gate holding their own and ready to play.
As the girl who made it all the way through the Harry Potter books convinced Lupin was James Potter reincarnate, I don’t know if I’m the best source of mystery clues and analysis. Still, I’m looking forward to the season as it plays out, I’ll try my best to highlight the clues I actually pick up on, and most importantly, I’ll definitely be tuning in next Thursday.
