overnights

FlashForward: Ask a Nazi

FlashForward

137 Sekunden
Season 1 Episode 3

It’s now been about a week since the entire planet lost consciousness for 137 seconds. We already know what the main characters saw, but now we’re meeting new folks whose flashes might actually help us move this plot forward. Let’s make our introductions and visit with some old pals, shall we?

Strange Woman in Hong Kong (via IMDb: Nhadra Udaya, played by Oscar nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo)
The Flash: She saw a report — of what kind she is not at liberty to say — that details the murder of Agent Noh. All she sees is his name, the date of the murder (March 10, 2010), and the fact that he was shot three times in the chest. We saw her briefly in the last episode, and we know she’s in Hong Kong because I.M. Pei’s Bank of Hong Kong tower looms in the background.
For Now: Is she part of an intelligence agency? How and why did she track Demetri down so quickly?
Her Agenda: No idea, but we’re sure we’ll see her again.

Zoey Andata, Demetri’s Fiancée (Gabrielle Union)
The Flash: She sees her wedding to Demetri, where she walks barefoot down a beach in Hawaii in a white dress. We see a minister, perhaps, and several other blurry people in the distance.
For Now: We realize who she is when Demetri meets her at the airport. When she tells him her vision, and that she saw him, he says he remembers the same thing. If he’s dead in March, who was she walking down the beach to marry — or is she even at her wedding at all?
Her Agenda: She wants Demetri to agree to the fraught date for the wedding, and because she thinks she knows how it will go down, he has no choice in the matter. Of course, he believes he’s just going to get shot up anyhow.

Aaron Stark, Benford’s AA sponsor
The Flash: He saw his daughter Tracy alive, even though she apparently died in the war in Afghanistan and he buried her remains. (He talks in the pilot about how only a few of her 130-odd pounds made it back. Grisly!)
For Now: Aaron seeks out his ex-wife Katie (Lost and Deadwood alum Kim Dickens), who’s a bartender and (presumably) an alcoholic, and who doesn’t really want to believe Aaron’s vision that Tracy is alive, because it’s too difficult for her to process.
His Agenda: He wants Katie to sign off on having Tracy’s remains exhumed so they can be DNA tested; she refuses. He gets the dig pushed through anyway, via his pal Benford, and, as it turns out, the remains are hers. But we have to return to the whole weight thing — couldn’t this just be her leg or something?

Mark Benford
The Flash: The pertinent piece of Benford’s conveniently evidence-studded flash-forward here is a picture of an old man with the words “137 Secunden” written next it.
For Now: We meet this old man, Rudolph Geyer, in a Munich prison, summoning Agent Benford by name, and saying he knows the significance of the 137 number. Benford flies to Munich with Agent Janis Hawk, and meets the former Nazi, who is not the most popular prisoner in Quale Prison.
His Agenda: Benford hopes that whatever information Geyer has to offer is more important than punishing the old man further (who, if he was 20 or so during the Nazi regime, needs to be pushing 90 at this point). Janis, for her part, thinks this moral relativism is bullshit.

Rudolph Geyer, Nazi
The Flash: He sees himself passing through an American airport and meeting a Customs agent named Jerome Murphy. He says something about having “a murder” to thank for his return to the U.S.
For Now: He offers up a convoluted theory about Kabbalah and the Hebrew word for “world,” the letters of which correspond to numbers, which add up to 137. Benford is pissed to get handed this crap after freeing Geyer. But Geyer also claims he woke up and went to his window to see a bunch of crows (a “murder” in animal parlance, apparently) dead in the prison yard.
His Agenda: He wants his release, sure. But why does he want back in the U.S.? And what’s the deal with him asking Janis if she’s a lesbian after seeing the ring on her thumb?

Jerome Murphy, Customs agent
The Flash: He sees himself as a Customs agent, meeting the old German dude.
For Now: He only applied for the government post after his flash-forward, and while he waits to hear whether he got accepted, he’s getting stoned and dancing around his apartment in his tightie-whities to K.C. and the Sunshine Band. “Boogie Shoes,” to be exact.
The Agenda: Obviously, government employment, and to avoid getting busted when Agent Noh accidentally kicks over his bong.

What’s Next?
Janis needs to come out of the closet already. Oh, and there’s this crow thing. Benford has Janis look into dips in the national crow population. Lo and behold, a whole MURDER of crows in the U.S. dropped dead the day of the blackout. But had it happened before? It had! All the crows croaked AND a load of people lost consciousness in the Ganwar region of Somalia in 1991. This summons the first flashback we’ve yet to see, showing a young boy in Ganwar, Somalia, in 1991, watching the crows die and stepping over a ridge to see a big chimney/antenna sticking out of the ground and emitting something. Dun dun dun.

FlashForward: Ask a Nazi