We see the blackout from another angle…the quiet of an LA park. People are walking, playing, and generally acting like it’s a Saturday afternoon, not Tuesday at 11 AM, when the blackout actually occurred. We see a plane blow up in the sky, buildings catch on fire, and a bus full of people dive into the lake. There are two survivors in that incident: a girl and the guy (Edward “call me Ned” Ned) who’s finally turning up in the hospital two weeks later, talking to Bryce and Liv. He hasn’t needed a doctor until now.
He seems like a nice enough guy, entirely positive, and maybe just a little doped up on morphine. Liv’s all business, but Bryce wants to know what his flash forward was. He was “rocking leather pants” in a club he’s always wanted to go to. Which, considering that along with clowns and escalators has always been a fear (he probably saw that Friends episode where Ross got stuck with his down, that’s what turned me off of ‘em), is a big step for him. But not the biggest step, apparently, in his flash forward, he was African American “like Oprah.”
Zoe and Demetri are at a coffee shop. She’s telling him that she thinks he should be the one to tell his folks that they’re moving the wedding up. Especially since the free trip to Hawaii that’s going along with it hasn’t been enough so far to make up for the fact that Zoe isn’t Korean. Demi’s half-listening, and he claims it’s about work. It isn’t of course, but Zoe doesn’t push the issue. She does ask about the blonde they arrested the day of the blackout. Professionally, she doesn’t think violating someone’s due process is cool, but personally, if she had something to do with it, she hopes they’re getting all “Dick Cheney on her ass.”
Mark and Charlie are making breakfast and doing a puppet show with an egg. Liv (wait, wasn’t she at the hospital just a few minutes ago?) interrupts them and after making a crack about Mark’s Shakespearean acting (oh, so cute), she announces that Nicole’s coming back. Cut to Nicole having breakfast with Aaron. It turns out Tracy was HER babysitter growing up. Aaron tells her Mark told him she went AWOL after the blackout. She apologizes for screwing up the opportunity, but he tells her that if the y didn’t understand, they wouldn’t be inviting her back. She should just surrender to her higher power and trust it’s going to be okay.
Liv and Bryce are back at the hospital where she’s now reaching for a bag of chips in the vending machine. She asks Bryce what the cat scan results for Ned were, but he’s still stuck on the vision of Ned’s complexion change. Liv reminds him that she needs him in the present, and he admits that ER’s traumas keep bumping Ned from the scanner. Then, she tells Bryce that she knows he hasn’t been going to his weekly psychiatry appointments. He’s been busy. She tells him in not so many words that he’s going to be a lot less busy work-wise if he doesn’t go to these appointments.
A tray flies out of Dylan’s room, and Lloyd spills coffee on himself when he bends to retrieve it. He catches Liv’s eye as he apologizes. When he returns to the room, she tells Bryce that she wants Dylan transferred to Physical Therapy as soon as he’s off the IV Antibiotics that are currently keeping him in her ward.
Al and Mark are in Stan’s office trying to get him to sign off on a trip to Somalia. He’s not convinced because Germany didn’t exactly work out, but they keep pressing the issue. Al tells him that he’s been trying to get the satellite pictures from the CIA from the ’91 date, but all he’s getting is run-around. Stan tells him that it’s important, but going to war with the CIA isn’t the way to accomplish anything. When they leave Stan’s office, Mark reminds Al of a hacker that they busted a few years ago. Does he think the hacker would find the CIA computers a challenge? Of course, but Al reminds him that he’d be spying on his own country. He’s not too thrilled with the idea. As Mark steps into the elevator, he asks where Demetri is. Al says he’s questioning the blonde terrorist because he’s “hot.”
Alba, the blonde, is insisting to Vreede and Demetri that she’s an honest businesswoman. They can’t keep her indefinitely. Vreede agrees and invites her to call her embassy. The question Demetri has for her as he flips out several passports, is which one? Two of her associates are “super-dead” as of the blackout, so does she want to give them a name they can use? “Customer Choice Restaurant Group.” Vreede looks it up, and finds that the name has popped up a couple of times in the investigation, but they’ve never figured out the significance. Demetri tells Alba that she’s running out of time for this to be a civil conversation. Alba snarks that she though Demetri was the one running out of time; he really should get out there before it’s too late.
Demetri’s trying to convince Stan to reopen the dirty bomb case since it’s, you know, an active lead on a terrorism investigation (something the y kind of do at the FBI) and not an urban myth about dead poultry in Africa. Besides, thinks started to go down the day of the blackout. Mark’s not happy, but Stan agrees with Demetri on this one. He sends them to Indio, California.
Liv’s in the cafeteria when Lloyd approaches and thanks her for putting up with all his requests for details. She keeps trying to blow him off, but he’s following her around. He tells her that the police just brought him the keys to Dylan’s mum’s house, and Liv suggests that he try sleeping there as she walks away. Bryce runs up, tells her that he’s going to grab a veggie dog before going over the scans, and she reiterates her request to transfer Dylan to PT. They can handle the antibiotics.
Mark and Demetri are at a restaurant in Indio requesting the names and addresses of every employee. The manager doesn’t know why a burger and waffle fries joint would attract the FBI, but he’s proud to announce that in the future, he’s adding FroYo. Demetri’s all business. He asks the manager if it’s owned by Customer Choice, and the manager tells him that it IS Customer Choice. Mark asks for a moment, and the manager walks away yelling a request that someone get the FBI guys some burgers. Mark’s snarking about the FroYo intelligence when the cook starts running for the back door, grabbing his back pack on the way. The guys give chase, and they end up in a trailer park, where Mark tackles him in a kiddie pool. Demetri goes through the backpack. He thinks he found uranium, but it turns out to be weed. In the cook’s flash forward, he’s driving a mack-daddy car and has found a new job as the “Scarface of Weed.” He tells Demetri that he “can’t be fighting fate, yo,” which inspires Demetri to kick him. Mark pulls him off and reminds Demetri that he needs to drop his personal crap and start being an FBI agent again. It’s not about what Mark saw, it’s about what Demetri didn’t. Demetri punches Mark, and then goes, “March 15th. Three shots to the chest. I’m not going just die, I’m going to be murdered.”
Their perp goes to the local police, and Mark asks Demetri how he found out about the murder. He tells him about the call from Singapore. He apologizes for not telling Mark, but he thought he’d get a lead in Indio because Alba said that he was running out of time. Mark doesn’t believe him, but all Demetri can hear is the clock ticking on him. Mark thinks they can use what they saw to stop what they saw.
Back at the hospital, Lloyd returns a notebook with a drawing Bryce made of a girl. He asks if it’s his girlfriend, but Bryce hasn’t techinically met her yet. He asks what Lloyd saw, and after a crack about that question being the new “how’s the weather,” he tells Bryce that he was in a house and got a phone call. He heard a woman’s voice, but he never saw her face. Still, he knew she was important to him somehow.
Liv walks by, and Bryce gets up to chase her down. He’s got Ned’s CT results. He’s got a hematoma around his liver, so Liv thinks it’s lucky that he showed up in time. Bryce points out that he’s alive in his vision, so they should probably have accepted that he was going to live through this anyway. Liv’s getting a little annoyed with all of Bryce’s vision crap, though frankly, as much as I like Bryce as a person I tend to agree. He’s a little too much of a “vision suck” without giving anything up himself. Do we know what Bryce himself saw? No, we don’t. Does he want to know what everyone else saw. Yes, he’s always ready to discuss. We had a name for that kind of person in high school. It wasn’t nice.
But I digress.
Bryce claims that the visions are relative data. Liv tells him that it’s no more relevant than her dream from last night. Bryce doesn’t know how she can ignore it. Liv claims she’s not ignoring it (except, she totally is), she just wants him to consent Ned for surgery and move on with it.
Ned consents to the surgery. He’s “totally cool” with the process, despite the risks. He doesn’t feel nervous or afraid anymore. It’s like, in six months he’s this totally invincible black guy. The vision and surviving the accident turned him into the person he’s always been afraid to be.
Cut to a church and a shirt I TOTALLY want (Jesus is my Episco-pal). Nicole talks to an Episcopal priest about volunteering with the church because she want s to atone for something she hasn’t quite done yet. The conversation is interspersed with visions of somebody, possibly Nicole drowning. She asks the priest if he thinks God made this happen. He says that it’s hard to believe that there’ s not a divine hand in this somehow . Despite the fact that he said they were “full-up” before, he gives her Angela Ridgeway, the volunteer coordinator’s phone number. Then he gives her the t-shirt I wanted.
Bryce can’t let go of Ned’s vision, so he Googles “pigment change.” He races to Ned’s room in the ER, and after learning that the OR has already taken him for surgery, he demands that the nurse call them. They’re about to kill their patient!
Liv’s scrubbing when Bryce announces that they can’t operate. Ned has Addison’s Disease. This is why he was so calm in the flash forward and, since his body’s making Melanin instead of Adrenaline, it’s why his skin is so dark in six months. Liv isn’t happy about the fact that he’s using the visions to diagnose. Bryce claims that the whole reason Liv isn’t ready to accept is because she saw the end of her marriage. She throws Bryce out of her OR, and prepares to kill Ned.
Lloyd returns to his wife’s house and starts wandering around. He picks up the Modern Magician’s Handbook and sits down on Dylan’s bed.
Bryce is watching from the scrub room while Ned starts crashing on the table. He’s trying to not make that “I told you so” face from the other room, but he totally is. Liv remembers that Bryce mentioned the hydrocortisone shot, and despite the fact that she told Bryce it would kill him, she orders the shot. The other docs are ticked that she didn’t mention it, but she says he hasn’t been diagnosed yet. They compliment her on her “catch,” but she doesn’t mention that it wasn’t hers.
Did I mention before that, as a character, Liv isn’t my favorite person? No? Well, she totally isn’t.
Back at the FBI, it’s Marks’s turn with Alba. He demands to know what she knew about Demetri’s murder. All she knew was that he didn’t have a flash forward. Then again, everyone in the office knew that. She didn’t know he was murdered. He asks why she wasted their time, but she points out that she’ll just lie to them. Still, asking questions is his job. He starts asking if she’d ever been to Somalia, Detroit, or Utah. She says that they’re wasting their time on the “how” when they should be focusing on the “why. “ She asks if he knows what a “Black Swan” is. It’s a metaphor for a high-impact event. She tells him about a parable in which a small boy in a room has a flame. The man asks where the flame came from. In response, the child blows it out, and tells the man that if he tells him where the flame went, he’d tell him where it came from. I don’t get it either. The point is, the little boy, like the people Alba runs with, are willing to give up everything for ideology. Mark isn’t. That’s why he won’t succeed.
Al logs on to the Mosaic website and searches for a woman named “Celia.” He’s interrupted by Mark, who asks him to give the hacker a call. Yes, Somalia is that important.
Bryce delivers Ned’s diagnosis, totally giving credit to Liv for the diagnosis. Ned thinks the crazy thing is that he wasn’t afraid because he didn’t need to be afraid. He said the future saved him. Exiting the room, Bryce apologizes to Liv for being out of line. She says that he was, but he was also right. She just didn’t want to see what was going on since her vision sucked. She tells Bryce that she hasn’t pushed him, but she’s here if he wants to talk. He says he’s fine; the future saved him. A nurse approaches with a couple of sheets for Liv to sign, including Dylan’s. When Liv objects, the nurse tells her that PT couldn’t handle the antibiotics so they transferred him back. Lovely.
Mark arrives home and asks Nicole how she’s doing. She tells him that she feels bad for disappearing and wonders why they didn’t fire her. Mark reminds her that she’s part of the family, they couldn’t. she tells him that in her vision, she saw someone drowning her. She doesn’t get it, but she was convinced she deserved it. She saw the man’s face before she went. She doesn’t know what she did to deserve being killed. Mark tells her that she didn’t do anything wrong; he’ll have a LAPD Detective come talk to her in the morning as well. Charlie comes downstairs and, together, they invite Nicole to stay for dinner.
Lloyd and Dylan are doing magic tricks in Dylan’s room as Liv walks by. She sees that Dylan’s starting to come out of his shell. As Lloyd leaves to get dinner, he gets a call from Simon. It’s Charlie, Merry, Dominic Monaghan! With his British accent! Lloyd doesn’t want to talk, but Simon tells him that talking to him is just “one of those little inconveniences he’s going to have to put up with now that ‘we’re’ responsible for the single greatest disaster in human history.” Touche!
