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FlashForward: Will the Kids Be All Right?

FlashForward

Scary Monsters and Super Creeps
Season 1 Episode 6

Like everywhere else in TV land, it’s Halloween in the semi-surreal version of Los Angeles that’s the setting for FlashForward. And that means masks, candy, and the continued investigation the greatest worldwide disaster in history. What do the glimpses of April 2010 tell us this week?

Janis Hawk
The Flash: She’s pregnant (remarkably, you can still get an ultrasound somewhere at 10 p.m. Pacific time). Last week we saw her get ambushed and shot in the gut — and it turns out the bullet bounced around near her uterus and stuff, and despite Olivia’s excellent surgical skills, the prognosis for her future child-rearing isn’t great.
The Upshot: At least she’s alive, and she says through tears she didn’t even want a baby anyway. Girlfriend Maya sends her flowers in the hospital. Also, one of the Asian dudes she took down yields a single clue once he lands in the morgue: a stamp of a blue hand.

Agent Benford
The Flash: The relevant portions here are the men with clear plastic masks coming after him with guns, and the index card he sees that says Blue Hand/Baltimore on the Mosaic board. Oh, and the whole drinking again thing.
The Upshot: Because it’s the Halloween episode, there happen to be a couple of kids wearing similar masks roaming the neighborhood where Benford takes his daughter Charlie trick-or-treating. He gives chase, and it turns out they’re just kids who egged a house (and thought that’s why he was chasing them yelling “FBI”). Mark’s future drinking comes into play when he finally admits it to Olivia, and she can’t forgive him even though it hasn’t happened yet. (Women!) As for the blue-hand thing, it leads Agents Noh and Gough to Baltimore Street in L.A. (Noh’s idea), where they happen upon a stop sign with a blue skeleton-hand sticker on it. If that weren’t coincidence enough, the hand seems to be pointing somewhere, and it just so happens to be a scary, haunted-looking house with a puddle of blood on the porch and a pile of dead bodies inside with their hands apparently dipped in blue paint.

Agent Gough
The Flash: He’s sitting with lovely British actress Alex Kingston at a desk in an office overlooking the Thames, discussing something called “the Rutherford case.”
The Upshot: That pile of bodies in the scary house? One of them had a U.K. passport with the name Rutherford in it. The case that hadn’t started yet? “It starts today,” observes Agent Noh.

Dylan Simcoe
The Flash: Lloyd Simcoe’s autistic son, who became Olivia’s patient in the pilot, saw not only Olivia and Charlie in his flash but a postcard on the fridge at the Benfords’ house with an address label that says “TO OUR FRIENDS AT: 25696 Sawyer Court, Los Angeles, CA, 90024.” Charlie says to him, “It’s your house too,” so these are things he keeps repeating, autistic-style, when he sneaks off from his dad and boards a bus.
The Upshot: Dylan makes his way to the address he remembers, where he and Charlie act like old pals who have only met each other in dreams. Lloyd ends up at the doorstep of the woman he’s going to be sleeping with in six months, and he recognizes it, and finally her (whom he only heard but didn’t see in his flash). Olivia gets a little freaked out, and Mark gets royally pissed and tells him to leave and never come back.

Simon
The Flash: The apparent mastermind of the worldwide blackout is a quantum physicist, so to the Sufi parable of the earlier episode we can now add some vague discussion of quantum physics and perception as reality. He uses “I know what caused the blackout” as a pick-up line on a train, and it turns out this is already a popular pick-up line! After bedding the object of his desire, he details his flash, in which he’s throttling the throat of a man with “a neck like an ox” and finally kills him.
The Upshot: He’s in town now, and he finds his way into Lloyd’s car wearing a rubber mask. Lloyd isn’t so happy to see him, and says, a little too flippantly, “Our little experiment killed 20 million people. I don’t think there’s anything left to say.” We think he’s probably wrong there.

What’s Next? Simon’s obviously here to stay, and Olivia and Mark already seem on the verge of breaking up, solely for the reason that they know they will. Wedeck seems to make up with Benford and they’re all glad they’re alive after getting shot at in Washington, but politics still has to come into play again. Is it possible that fate isn’t a done deal? So far, there’s no reason to think it isn’t.

More Recaps:
A Boozer on a Train Headed to Los Angeles
[TV Without Pity]
FlashForward Breakdown, “Scary Monsters and Super Creeps” [Buzz Sugar]
FlashForward Review: “Scary Monsters and Super Creeps” [TV Fanatic]

FlashForward: Will the Kids Be All Right?