TV Tyrant

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.