This week, we seriously begin to lose faith again in the creative team behind FlashForward. We heard from an EW interview with creator David Goyer that they had to compress a few episodes in order to get back on track post-hiatus, and this week showed some Frankenstein scars, as well as some really awkward writing.
We’re gunning for you guys to survive, really we are, but this episode makes it tough.
“You think I sold out my friends and my country, but you don’t know me.”
That gem of a line comes out of agent Marcie Turloff’s mouth while she’s being questioned about being a mole and shooting six FBI officers as she tried to make her inept escape last week. Meanwhile, Janis sounds like she showed up on set with a horrible cold and they tried to keep her screen time to a minimum, and we get nothing more about her being a mole, too, except a few awkward seconds in the interrogation room with Marcie (who’s played by a fairly terrible actress, by the way). The upshot: Marcie knows something about the gun that once belonged to Mark and ultimately kills Demetri, and she tells Demetri, “All I heard is you’re supposed to die in L.A.” Then she gets haughty about how, in her flash, she sees herself using the information she knows to get herself out of prison.
“Does this mean I can’t go to the carnival, Mommy?”
Olivia is stuck in yet another amusement park entertaining creepy little Charlie, and when Charlie gets hit in the face by Dylan or something, and sits there bloody, Lloyd demonstrates his incredibly sensitive manhood by talking her down from her tears. Clearly, Olivia is moments away from doing him, even though this feels emotionally implausible. But that’s what happens when you have to compress three episodes into one.
A day or so later Olivia shows up on Lloyd’s doorstep, for no other reason than to “thank” him for taking care of Charlie, and they end up making out. Done and done.
“It’s nice to know my new position hasn’t changed your attitude toward me.”
We’re reintroduced to Senator Joyce Clements from episode five, now the vice-president, who has a mission for her onetime enemy Wedeck: look into military-contracter evildoers Jericho, specifically, what they might have done in Afghanistan that would bring down the president. She mentions the triple security around James Remar’s house (after Aaron freaked his shit out), and sends Wedeck to figure out how she’s going to become president.
Through Mark, Wedeck then hears about Aaron (who despite being, we thought, at the airport a few episodes ago, hasn’t left the country) and decides to help him in his plight to go to Afghanistan and single-handedly take down Jericho to save his daughter. Wedeck tells him he’s crazy for trying to use a U.S. passport to get there, but then hands him a bag full of guns and sends him on his way. One wonders which airline he is taking.
The case of the “disco sedan.”
Mark and Demetri go hunting for Demetri’s murder weapon. The missing gun gets used in a murder at a homeless shelter. A man (Dyson Frost) escapes in what’s first described as a seventies blue sedan, then a “1971 sedan” then a “disco sedan” (disco, dear writers, did not catch on until the late seventies), and it turns out to be a very retro and cool Citroen, which is neither a sedan nor disco-related. They then follow the gun, they think, to a hostage situation, where Demetri talks down some guy who says he only wants to talk to Macho Man Randy Savage. He doesn’t have the right gun, and he thinks “salespeople” caused the blackout. He dies.
We then get a flashback to Demetri meeting Zoey while she’s grilling him on the stand during a trial. She’s the kind of woman who likes to emasculate and humiliate her man and then ask him on a date, and Demetri’s clearly a bottom, so it works.
Cut to the present: Demetri tells Zoey they should get married right away and head off to Hawaii for their honeymoon. They go to a church, book a ceremony, and Dyson Frost is magically for no reason up in the balcony watching them talk to the priest.
“I want you to know … that night in Somalia … ”
Demetri and Janis get drunk at his bachelor party and he ends up vocalizing something about the night he “gave” Janis his sperm in Somalia. He’s drunk, but he mumbles something about not regretting it or whatever, and she says, “I’m pregnant,” and we just feel confused and icky inside.
Cut to the wedding day: Demetri’s mom is freaking out that he’s not at the church. Cut to Dyson Frost decking Demetri with a gun while Demetri is putting on a tux and singing “Islands in the Stream,” then dumping Demetri in a trunk. Cut to Zoey stood up at the altar.
Mark calls Olivia, who’s still trapped in a daily purgatory of amusement-park rides, and tells her something’s happened to Demetri. He then makes some goofy statement about it being too close to March 15 for his comfort — that’s right, it’s still not quite March 15 in FlashForward land.
Olivia then loses track of little Charlie, who turns up, naturally, on a bench somewhere with scary makeup on her face and Dyson Frost next to her looking molestery and saying, “Hello, Charlie.”
We now pray to the television gods that next week’s episode doesn’t make us want to groan loudly and take a shower like this one did.
