The Future of FlashingForward

Hello FlashForward friends. I apologize for the absence. In the interest of prioritization and for personal reasons, I will be shutting down this site. My plan is to post occasional analysis of and theory speculation about FlashForward over on my main pop culture site, but not necessarily on a weekly basis. 

I have truly appreciated your feedback and comments. I'd like to recommend a few other FlashForward sites and a podcast for you to get your weekly fix:

Jeff "Doc" Jensen, Entertainment Weekly

FlashForwardCast with Jay and Jack (podcast)

FlashForward.net

Hyper Mosaic

And I also highly recommend that you check out Red Panda Resources, which is the official site of the creative team behind FlashForward. There is a fantastic forum and those behind the scenes of the show are actually answering questions posted by fans. 

Thank you again, and apologies for abandoning you mid-season. I still love the show and hope to continue interacting with you about it via Twitter and Facebook. And, of course, I will continue to see most of you over on Get Lost with JOpinionated.

-Jo

FlashForward, Episode 1.07: "The Gift"

"What you call cheating, I call finding a way to change the game."

-Demetri Noh

Welcome to this week's analysis of FlashForward!

As a reminder, I use FF to indicate flashforward and GBO when referring to the Global Blackout.

Al

Of course we have to start with Al, as the ramifications of his actions may have a vast ripple effect on the entire series. His suicide does indeed change the game altogether. And clearly he is not the only person who took their own life in order to prevent another's death. 

Hopefully we will get a glimpse into exactly HOW the game is changed when people change the rules on their own.

Celia

In theory, Al's sacrifice prevents Celia's accidental death. But we do not know at this point whether or not she was fated to die before April 29, 2010 anyway. Al is not going to be the cause of her death, but he may not have prevented the inevitable by sacrificing his own life. In his FF, her accident had already occurred; it remains to be seen if it still does.

Fiona Banks

Now that Al has taken himself out of the picture, I wonder whether or not Fiona will pursue the Rutherford case. If I had to guess, she not only takes over the investigation, she joins the team in LA in hot pursuit of the Blue Hand organization. 

Part of me wonders...if Fiona had accepted Al's offer to come over for dinner that night, would it have changed his outcome or decision the next day?

Mark Benford

I'm sure that if Benford had any inkling that investigating the Blue Hand would lead to the death of a fellow FBI agent, he would have done everything in his power to avoid it. 

Nicole

Am I the only one who thinks that Nicole has a crush on Bryce? Of course she thinks she's doomed due to her ominous FF and is watching him dream about the woman in his, but IF the game has changed...

It struck me as significant that Nicole mentioned that her father was former military. We know that she and Tracy Stark (Aaron's allegedly deceased daughter) were friends, so I automatically assumed that Aaron and her father served together. This may prove to be relevant if Tracy is alive and well (rather than merely a wishful vision come to life from Aaron's FF). Because if Nicole's father is still alive as well, perhaps he has information about or is involved with Tracy's current whereabouts...


Demetri Noh


I don't think that he is behaving any differently than I would if I knew my date of expiration in advance. Not only is he battling an unknown future and balancing a massive GBO investigation with a pending marriage, his two FBI friends from the academy are now down; Janis is in the hospital after being shot, and Al committed suicide.  

Simon

Potential parallel alert!

Judging by the bracelet that he is holding at the end of the episode, it seems that Simon has a daughter named Annabelle (it did not resemble the bracelet of a grown woman). Mark's daughter Charlie gave him a bracelet, which figures prominently on the Mosaic clue board in his office, and now we see that Simon's daughter probably gave him one as well. 

Is this the first hint of a softer side to Simon, or will it turn out to be the bracelet of someone that he killed? [sidenote: There is no way in hell that this bracelet belonged to the woman on the train...unless it belonged to HER daughter. But I still don't think that he killed this woman...]

Tracy Stark

Corporal Mike Willingham told Tracy's father Aaron that he saw her die in Afghanistan. I do not believe that to be the case. While it is true that she appeared to have lost a leg after the explosion, Willingham ran away and did not actually see her pass away. My guess is that she was either taken in by a sympathetic (non-insurgent) local and secretly attended to or Willingham and the military are lying/hiding something. 

If it turns out that Tracy is real and in the flesh at Aaron's house, it is my belief that what he sees in his FF still comes true. From the look and feel of it, she appears to be injured again and they are in a military zone. Perhaps she resurfaces only briefly and has to return on a mission, and Aaron goes to be by his daughter's side in six months time...

Zoey

Something still does not add up with her, at least to me. She is a criminal defense attorney with obvious intellect, and yet it didn't occur to her to check the Mosaic site when her fiance had been acting so out of character since the GBO? I do not believe for one second that it is a matter of trust, that she took Demetri's version of his FF at face value. I'm not implying that she has anything to do with his future murder, but I would not be at all surprised to learn that she has a connection to either Simon, Simcoe or Suspect Zero...

Let's not forget that we have not seen Zoey's entire FF. She repeatedly tells Demetri that she sees him, but we have not witnessed that.

Band of the Blue Hand

We now know that the Blue Hand group recruited others without FFs via the Mosaic website. I assume that is how they discovered Celia and put that note on her windshield. 

Does every new Blue Hand candidate have to play Russian Roulette? If so, odds are that occasionally one gets the bullet. What is done with those bodies? Then again, who exactly is responsible for lining and covering up the bodies after they kill themselves? 

It seems to me that whomever wanted Janis in LA and the boys in DC killed specifically hired Blue Hand members for that dangerous mission and potentially suicidal attack on the FBI. 

FYI, I went to AlreadyGhosts.com but right now it simply redirects to the FlashForward site on ABC. Although that is rather disappointing given their track record of interactive alternate reality sites, I have faith that it may become active in the near future. 

Changes: Turn and Face the Strange

A Blue Hand indicates surrendering to the inevitable. Al Gough did just the opposite; he changed the inevitable. 

Now that Al has died, does that signify change for everyone else we've met? Perhaps Janis won't get pregnant after all, Mark won't fall off the wagon, Demetri will solve his murder before 3/15/10, etc. 

What is fascinating to me is the popular debate of fate vs. free will. It is a CHOICE for Janis to get pregnant and Mark to start drinking again, whereas Demetri may fall victim to fate. Of course he may have the will to dedicate his life to preventing his death, but that may be out of his hands. 

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Thank you for taking the time to visit this site and read along as we traverse this new road together. I appreciate your eyes and comments. See you next week!


-Jo

FlashForward, Episode 1.06: "Scary Monsters & Super Creeps"

Apologies for the delay. Let's jump right in.


As a reminder, I use FF to indicate a flashforward and GBO when referring to the Global Blackout.


Captain Kangaroo


So far, the kangaroo has appeared twice on FlashForward, and both times were in front of Mark Benford. I feel as if it is a hint and plays a major role; perhaps it will serve as the final clue on or to Mark's Mosaic bulletin board.


I Want to Hold Your (Blue) Hand


It seems to me that someone retaliated against the Blue Hand assassins rather quickly for their simultaneous attacks on the FBI teams in LA and DC. It was striking that the Blue Hand victims were lined up and covered, rather than left where they were murdered. 

If I had to guess, the people responsible for executing the Blue Hands are investigating the GBO themselves; thus, they are taking matters into their own hands. Remember, the mystery man who escaped in Utah was trying to hack into Mosaic, and Noh believed that he was looking into the cause of the GBO. 

They're Blinding Me with Science

I am not in the least bit familiar with any of the scientific notions introduced by Simon, so here are a few links if you're interested:

Quantum Superposition

Schrodinger's Cat

Double-slit experiment

Of course as a Lost fan, I am intrigued by Simon's statement that "both eventualities occur at the same time," given how Season 5 ended and the possibility of an alternate reality reveal in Season 6. I am also reminded of the mysterious Pigeon, UT man on FlashForward (White to Play, episode 2) who said that "he who foresees calamity suffers it TWICE over."

You Are Not Alone

Their "experiment killed 20 million people." Simon and Simcoe were not working alone. I wonder if we'll find out whether Suspect Zero was working with them. We already know that Gibbons was; he and Simcoe were both on the phone during the GBO (chances are that Gibbons sent that text to Simcoe at the beginning of his FF), and that little Charlie Benford knew that Gibbons was a bad man. She was living with Simcoe at the time...

Olivia Benford

Apparently, the B-Lynch procedure that Olivia performed on Janis is rare and usually necessary only AFTER a baby is born. There are various medical journal reports that discuss it online, but the best place to start if you'd like to research it is the official website of the very doctor that invented this suture (Christopher B-Lynch). 

Sidenote: FlashFoward must have a medical consultant on staff. Addison's Disease and now this? They are certainly utilizing realistic conditions and diseases. 

I don't recall whether or not Olivia knew about Janis' FF vision of pregnancy six months down the line, but I'm assuming she did based upon her decision to use the B-Lynch.

One of my favorite scenes in FlashForward thus far has to be the tense, awkward moment when Olivia comes home to find her husband Mark in the same room with her future lover Lloyd.

Al Gough

Right now he is listed in the credits as a guest star, but I'm hoping that Lee Thompson Young is made a series regular sooner than later. That they just uncovered the man who's case he is investigating six months from now (Rutherford) is an indication that he will be alive and potentially integral. Al's FF places him in London with a Scotland Yard investigator, played by Alex Kingston (ER), so I hope they take us down this particular rabbit hole. 

Janis Hawk

It will be very interesting to see what path Janis takes from here. The trauma and risky surgery to save her uterus do not seem likely to heal in a short period of time, and yet the clock is ticking as they inch closer to 4/29/10. I'm not sure how it will be physically possible for Janis to be pregnant and healthy mere months from this point, or exactly how she winds up with child...but I eagerly await that development. 

Demetri Noh

Even though he and Al were investigating Janis' attack on their own, it surprised me that they did not call the DC morgue immediately after discovering the Blue Hand stamp on the deceased gunman in the LA morgue to check for the same.  

Dylan Simcoe

Am I crazy, or would two adults who only began dating recently feel comfortable walking around shirtless (Lloyd) and in lingerie (Olivia) with two small children awake in the house? Something does not add up, and I look forward to finding out who's FF is misleading. And I wonder if Dylan's autism affected his FF in a way that no one else experienced. 

Lloyd Simcoe

Lloyd is very uncomfortable with his role in the GBO, and I believe that he did not know about or intend for it to happen. If he knew in advance that there was a risk of danger or death, he would have arranged for the security of his son Dylan.

Simon

When Simon was describing his FF to the woman on the train, I think he was simply describing a day in his life. I have a strong suspicion that he was actually awake during the GBO, and that we will find out exactly where he was and what he was doing before the end of the first season.

By the way, although I initially thought that the woman on the train would be killed after Simon's confession, I realized that she had a FF. Of course at this point, it is not clear whether or not all FF's are real/true, or if what people saw took truly took place six months from the time of the GBO. 

Marcie Turoff

For the second week in a row, Agent Turoff is the ONLY character to wear a shade of red. Either she is an obvious Red Shirt casualty in waiting, or some type of red herring...

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Enjoy this week's new episode, which I hear is going to be stellar! I will be back next week with analysis. Thank you for reading along - please feel free to leave comments and share your thoughts every week.