I’ve been rather lax in my blogging this season, in part because there’s more decent to good sci-fi on the tellybox right now than there’s been in a good long time, so trying to catch up with it all has been a challenge.

I was inspired to write this post now, however, after reading 5 Reasons Flash Forward is a Flash in the Pan on CinemaBlend, because I don’t agree with pretty much any of their five points.

So consider this to be a rebuttal, point by point:

• Bad Acting: Let’s just agree to disagree on that. Is all the acting stellar? No. But there are few shows where all the actors are top-notch. But don’t badmouth PENNAH! (Lost fans, you know what I’m talking about.) I do think it’s funny that half the actors on the show are Brits, though only a couple are playing actual Brits. But Joseph is fine as the lead and the guy who played Steve Saunders in Coupling is pretty good in his role. Charlie as the bad guy is proving quite interesting and I think that everyone’s kind of growing into their roles.

• Too big of a problem: What? The folks here have a problem with the scope of the problem. People are “just going back to work.” Well, I think FBI folks and others in law enforcement would seem kind of likely to go back to work. They’re naturally going to want to get to the bottom of it. And doctors, nurses and the like are going to be swamped at work and feel more needed than ever – and they are. I think we’ve seen quite a bit of chaos at that level. And I think we’ve seen a fair bit of chaos around. Especially with last week’s episode and the Blue Hand. (By the way, how happy am I that Callum Keith Rennie is in this show? Words cannot express.) Sure, there are some moments that are a bit incongruous: Janis’ date and the art gallery opening were a little odd – there only to establish that she’s a lesbian (making her pregnancy odder) and then to get her shot. Seemed unlikely that she’d have much time for a dinner date in a fine restaurant (and, sure, odd that the restaurant is open, but the owners have still got to earn a living, right?). How is this any bigger of a problem than the Visitors? Or some strange forces causing a plane to crash on an island hidden by time with specific people on board?

• Who are the villains?: Again, this is a bit of red herring. In 24, for example, we’d have been given misdirection on the villains about a half dozen times already. On Lost, we hadn’t seen The Others yet. We’ve already met two people involved and seen another on that surveillance tape from the sports stadium. We’ve gotten hints of other people who may or may not be involved. We’ve gotten lots of clues and it’s obvious that even by the time April rolls around, the FBI folks won’t have the full picture. But we’re building Benford’s board now, piecing together many clues. We also have intrigue from the White House – the president and newly minted vice president. And, I wonder, is Aaron’s daughter somehow involved? And what about the previous incident in Africa? There’s a pattern here.

• The (yawn) characters (yaaaawwwwnn) are “yaaaaaaawwwwwnnnnn”: We’ll have to agree to disagree, again. Anyone who thought Al was a boring character saw it all pulled together with his suicide last week. He leaped to his death for partly selfless and partly selfish reasons. He knows that sometime in the future, he’ll accidentally kill a mother of two. He can’t live with the thought that he’ll kill someone innocent, even if it’s not on purpose. But he also wants to show Demetri that he CAN change the future, that it’s not immutable. That armed with knowledge of the future, you can make a change, though it may have to be utterly drastic – or maybe just minor, like taping the windows so a bird doesn’t fly into it. This brings me to one of the biggest themes in the shows I watch right now: The immutability of the future, but I’ll get to that after the fifth and final rebuttal. Demetri’s attempts to figure out his future, Bryce’s sudden change from suicidal to lover of life, Nicole’s efforts to atone for a future sin are all intriguing. To me, anyway.

• The Lost problem: This is the one point I have to give CinemaBlend. It’s natural the show would be compared to Lost, because it’s a weird mystery, sort of sci-fi-ish and it’s on ABC. Plus, you have Charlie and PENNAH! But it’s not fair to any show to compare it to Lost. Lost has been an utterly unique experience. Brilliantly crafted, written and acted, with few missteps, no show can hope to measure up. Nor should any try. I have to admit, the kangaroo hopping around has kind of weirded me out, too. On Lost, the kangaroo would totally represent something, and that makes viewers think it represents something on Flash Forward, too. I can’t imagine what it might represent. If it doesn’t, WTF? And if it does, well, WTF?

OK, so that’s the five points Cinemablend brought up. But I’d like to examine the issue of an immutable future. I’ve written about this before, in relation to Lost and Supernatural.

Flash Forward, at first, seemed to fall down on the side of the future being firm, unchanging, predetermined.

As all the pieces started falling into place after everyone regained consciousness, it seemed at first that things would happen as they would. And when Al first put the pistol to his chin and pulled the trigger, he was betting on that immutability.

But he came to realize that if you want to change something badly enough, you have to make a major change. Sometimes the flutter of butterfly’s wings may be enough — taping the window to prevent a bird from flying into it and dying. Sometimes it takes something far greater — jumping off a building to prevent a woman from being killed.

So maybe Demetri needs to do something drastic. Maybe there are two futures. May his fiance isn’t lying and actually saw him in her vision. Maybe he has a big decision to make and if he goes in one direction, he is killed. And he goes in another, and he’s not. I’m betting the people responsible for the loss of consciousness (or losses) didn’t bet on that. They’re assuming that everyone’s going to see the same future, that there’s just one path. But there isn’t, and I think that’s what the Demetri storyline is all about, as was Al’s.

And I’m on the side of multiple possibilities for the future. I don’t think the future is predetermined. I think all possibilities exist and each decision you make leads you on the path to each future.

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I have not had a chance to watch Flash Forward or this week’s Supernatural yet. I will see them before the weekend’s out and muse upon them in this spot. I know you can’t wait.

Meanwhile, here’s a tidbit of news for you: Stephen Root will have a “multiepisode arc” on 24‘s Season 8, according to Backstage. He’ll play Ben Prady, “an officer of the Department of Corrections looking into a parolee gone missing.”

Well, that can’t be good. You’ll recognize Root from
Office Space (Milton) or as the nerdy accountant vampire who sold his blood to Lafayette in Season 1 of True Blood. Even if you don’t recognize his face, if you watched King of the Hill, you’ve heard his voice a zillion times, in Bill.

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As it is with every year, a whole bunch of science fiction-y shows were canceled at the end of the season, but I have to give it to the networks for trying a bunch of new ones next year.

It was so hard to keep track of the comings and goings during the upfronts, but SciFi Wire thankfully charted it all in a very understandable fashion.

The clear winner, IMHO, is Fox.

Sure, Fox canceled Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, better known as TSCC because it’s a lot freakin’ shorter. But it did keep Dollhouse around for at least another 13 episodes. (Side note: This comic is probably a bit too close to reality for comfort when it comes to how the decision was made.) I’m thinking that Fox didn’t feel like incurring the wrath of the Whedonverse again, whereas TSCC ended at a spot that could full well be the series’ end. (Not that I wouldn’t have loved to see where it would have picked up in the fall.)

Fox also kept Fringe, which is one of my favorite shows. So the net gets brownie points for that. It’s also picked up Human Target and Past Life, each for 13 episodes and for midseason.

Human Target is based on a D.C. comic book and focuses on a guy who goes undercover, basically, as his clients whose lives have been threatened. It was written by Jonathan Steinberg, who was the co-creator of the late Jericho.

I’m not sure I completely understand the premise of Past Life, and the description on Zap2It didn’t help much, but from what I can tell, it’s about a bunch of investigators who solve crimes by dredging up their clients’ long-lost memories. Whether that means memories of dead clients or memories of past lives for solving cold cases or just stuff people have forgotten, I’m not quite clear on. I’m guessing it’s one of the first two, otherwise the whole “science fiction” aspect of it is lost on me.

NBC is second in the science fiction Olympics, though it canceled more sci-fi-ish shows from this season than it has old and new ones put together. Off the schedule: Knight Rider, My Own Worst Enemy, Kings (I still haven’t forgiven them for that decision) and Medium (which CBS decided to pick up).

But it decided to renew Chuck (midseason) and Heroes (really? Talk about a show past its prime, despite it having been around for only 3 seasons) and has three new shows, though two of them are summer series: Day One, The Listener and Merlin.

Day One sounds the most promising to me, what with its post-apocalyptic Melrose Place-ian-ish-ness. Of course, that means it stands an excellent chance of not succeeding.

The Listener is about a paramedic who can read minds, it seems. And Merlin – well, if you can’t guess what it’s about, you need to go back and read King Arthur.

ABC lost more than it’s gained, but it has one of the best sci-fi shows ever: Lost. This is the show’s last season, though, so hopefully one of the new shows will pick up the mantle. Canceled were Cupid, Eli Stone, Pushing Daisies and Life on Mars (which is the only one of the four I cared about; I tried to like Pushing Daisies, but it was just too precious for me).

But it has V, a remake of one of my favorite miniseries ever. I’m sorry the guy originally responsible for it isn’t involved, and I’d sure like to see Michael Ironside in it, but what is he now, 65, 70? I have great hopes for it, especially if they redo the hybrid alien baby and don’t use a really lame puppet.

ABC also is trying out Eastwick and Flash Forward.

Now, Eastwick is based on the John Updike novel The Witches of Eastwick, which was quite memorably adapted into a movie starring Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and Jack Nicholson. I tried reading the book at one point but it was a bit too dated and I just couldn’t hack my way through it. I’m willing to give the show a shot, though.

Flash Forward has a lot of promise, though, with a premise in which the entire world blacks out and glimpses 2 minutes and 17 seconds of an undetermined time in each person’s own future. It’s based on a book, whose author is even writing one of the episodes. It’s being written as if it will be five seasons of 22 episodes apiece and could become a worthy successor to Lost, if it catches on.

CBS gave up on two shows: Eleventh Hour and The Ex-List, but kept Ghost Whisperer and snagged NBC’s cast-off Medium. That’s all.

The CW kept Smallville and Supernatural. Though this season is likely to be the final season of SPN, that’s great news they decided to keep it on. But it killed Valentine and Reaper, the latter of which I mourn deeply. I still have three or four episodes on my DVR, so I still have more Reaper to see.

It’s airing the new show Vampire Diaries, though, which I’d imagine might be a good pair with SPN. It’s based on a pre-Twilight series of books, The CW would like you to know, thankyouverymuch. It’s about a girl who can’t decide between two vampire brothers – one good, one evil, of course. They’re battling for her and the souls of all the people in her small town.

So that’s it. Of course, there will be some shows on SyFy, USA, FX, AMC and a whole other slew of acronyms, but these are the big five, so to speak.

Which shows are you looking forward to, and which ones will you miss the most?

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