No More Good Days

FlashForward Rewatch

Today marks the one year anniversary of the finale of FlashForward. I did not put much effort into this blog, practically abandoning it during the mid-season hiatus. But now I am reviving it for the summer.

This June, Brian Blogs FlashForward is hosting a FlashForward rewatch. Starting June 1, I will post episodes of FlashForward on this blog via Hulu. Every weekday from June 1-June 30 an episode will be posted. Besides Hulu, FlashForward is on DVD and Netflix Instant Streaming.

Playing Cards With Coyote

When the details behind FBI agent Al Gough’s suicide become public, people suddenly believe the future can be changed. This revelation does wonders for Mark and Olivia, as they seem to be reconnecting. He sends her a gift of some sexy lingerie. Nice thought, right? Well, Olivia is totally turned off because this is the lingerie she was wearing in her flash forward starring the ever-present Lloyd Simcoe. She tosses the sexy garb into the trash.

Speaking of Lloyd, he sends an email to multiple recipients, one of whom is a man named Myhill, who forwards the email to Simon. The subject line reads: WE HAVE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY. Simon still has doubts as to what caused the blackout, Lloyd doesn’t. Simon suggests a game of Texas Hold ‘Em to resolve their impasse. If Lloyd wins, they go public and hang themselves out to dry. If Simon wins, Lloyd stays mum.

Simon is quite the card player. Most of the chips are stacked on his side. He suggests one final hand, winner take all. It doesn’t look good, but Lloyd is in. Simon has four of a kind. There aren’t a lot of hands that can beat that. But a straight flush would. And that’s just what Lloyd draws. Looks like all those sleight of hand cards tricks he’s been playing with Dylan have come in handy. We’re thinking the world may be receiving an interesting press release in the near future.

Janis returns to work with plans of resigning. She wonders if getting shot was a sign that her baby wasn’t meant to be. Wedeck says, “You gonna let a bullet decided whether or not you bring a baby into this world?” He refuses her resignation and she reconsiders her baby options. Back on the job, Janis checks out enhanced video footage of Suspect Zero. She and Wedeck notice that he’s wearing a ring. Could be a clue.

A woman named Ingrid captures the murder of a man on her cell phone camera. The gunman and his accomplice are seen taking a case from the man. Enhanced images show the gunman with a three star tattoo on his arm, just like the one adorned by the assassin who was hunting down Mark in his flash forward. The team believes they have a mole in their department. They figure the gunman will come after Ingrid, so they opt to use her as bait in a trap.

Janis guards Ingrid inside her pet store while Mark and Demetri stakeout the place from the outside. Suddenly, the lights go out. There’s been a breach.

Mark and Demetri rush into the store, guns drawn. They come upon a man with three stars on his arm. BANG! Mark shoots him dead. Was it a justified kill? Or was this Mark’s way of assuring that his future does not come true?

Tracy is having nightmares about the ambush of her Humvee, an attack that took away her right leg. The DNA from her missing limb got mixed in with others who were killed. This led the army to believe Tracy was dead. In truth, she has been on the run for two years because she witnessed a group of private military contractors slaughter a village of civilians. The contractors were known as Jericho. About a week after she told her superior officer about the massacre, Tracy’s Humvee was attacked. She believes Jericho was behind it.

Tracy thinks she has to run again when she discovers her dad told Mark that she’s alive. But Aaron reminds her that she’ll be all right, as she was alive in his flash forward. He further tells her that, in his flash, a man told him “the account has been verified” after Aaron handed him an envelope. Aaron doesn’t know what this means, but Tracy knows the person her dad spoke to that day. He’s a field medic named Kahmir and he saved her.

At what looks to be a military base, a man with three stars tattooed on his arm hands a case to another three star tattoo guy. It’s the same case that was stolen from the man who was murdered in the cell phone video. More three-starred men are seen carrying cases larger, sturdier cases around the base.

The murder victim’s case is delivered to a bearded man in a sparsely-filled structure. He opens the case. There are rings inside. Beard man says, “There are supposed to be seven.” He then closes the case and promptly shoots the delivery man dead. He calmly walks off with the case of rings. Say, wasn’t Suspect Zero was wearing a ring?

The Gift

The episode opens with a voiceover from FBI agent Al Gough narrating a message to a woman named Celia. Al says he knows Celia didn’t have a flash forward. During the voiceover, we see her playing with her sons. As she loads them in the car, Celia pulls a flyer from her windshield. It features a blue hand and a web address: www.ALREADYGHOSTS.com.

There’s a message on the back that reads: "We know you are one of us."

Ian Rutherford was the center of a case Al was investigating with MI-6’s Fioana Banks, who is in town from London. Rutherford is one of the three people with blue hands that Demetri and Al found at the abandoned house. They all died from self-inflicted wounds. All three were “ghosts,” a nickname given to those who did not have a flash forward. The Blue Hand is a place where ghosts can gather to embrace the evitable. It’s basically a death club. Next meeting is in downtown L.A. and we’re thinking it’s going to have some federal party crashers.

Mark, Demetri and Al infiltrate the Blue Hand meeting where entry involves a quick game of Russian Roulette. Without hesitation, Al takes the gun, places the barrel under his chin and pulls the trigger, CLICK! No bullet. Mark says, “You got a death wish. You could have been killed.” Al tosses him the one bullet that was in that chamber and echoes the message written on its side when he says, “Not today.”

The organizer of what we’ll call “Club Torture” is a Dr. Maurice Raynaud and he’s looking to commit suicide. Mark doesn’t let that happen. The team discovers the Maurice Raynaud was a 19th Century French physician who discovered a disease that affects the extremities and can turn hands blue and the party planner guy ain’t him. His name is Jeff and he’s just one of many nihilists who choose to assume Raynaud’s name.

Corporal Mike Willingham visits Aaron and presents him with the pocket knife Aaron gave to Tracy in his flash forward. This again gives Aaron hope that she may still be alive. But Mike later informs Aaron that he saw Tracy die. Aaron is understandably crushed, but also slightly at peace. Mike has been having trouble finding work since his tour ended, so Aaron gets him a job with his company.

Nicole does volunteer work at the hospital and quickly strikes up a friendship with Bryce, who asks for her help interpreting a symbol he saw behind the woman who was in his flash forward. It’s a Japanese letter meaning “believe.” Bryce doesn’t know who the woman in his flash is, but he had strong feelings for her. Nicole urges him to put his story up on the Mosaic, as he has to find her.

Other subjects explored in this episode:
- Lloyd tells Olivia that he is moving back to the Bay area as soon as Dylan is cleared to transfer.
That’s a good thing, as Mark and Olivia are still having trust issues.
- Demetri finally tells Zoey that he didn’t have a flash forward. But Zoey insists that she saw him at
their wedding.
- Simon is seen clutching a bracelet that spells out the name “Annabelle.”

Al received a phone call during his flash forward. It was from a doctor saying that Celia has been taken off life support. Al says, “I killed her.” He leaves a note for Demetri. The message inside is the one addressed to Celia in the opening voiceover. Demetri reads Al’s words and quickly realizes that it’s a suicide note.

Demetri, Mark, Wedeck and Banks rush to the roof of the FBI building where Al stands on the ledge. Demetri pleads with him to step back. But Al thinks he’s found a way to change the game. If he dies, the future cannot be set, and Celia, whoever she is, will live to raise her two young sons. Demetri and the others look on horrified as Al turns his back on them and plunges to his death. Do you think Al’s actions will, indeed, change destiny?

Al’s final words to Celia in the note are, “Live your life. Live every day. And know that the future is unwritten. Make the most of that.” We hear this voiceover as Aaron enters his house after a long day at work. He sifts through the mail, plops down his lunch cooler and steps into the dining room. He is immediately shaken by what his sees. Tracy is seated at his dining room table.

Scary Monsters and Super Creeps

In the aftermath of simultaneous attacks on the Mosaic investigation team, Janis is rushed to the hospital where Olivia manages to stabilize her. But complications arise involving her uterus. Olivia and Bryce pull her through but the chances of her being able to have children are all but gone. The news devastates Janis even though she claims she never even wanted to have a baby. But as we all know, she was pregnant in her flash forward.

Demetri recruits Al to search for the people who shot Janis. At the morgue, an incandescent light reveals a blue hand stamp on one of Janis’s attackers. “Blue hand” is one of the clues from Mark’s board and it was also related to the word Baltimore. There’s a Baltimore Street in Los Angeles. They see a blue hand decal on a stop sign that points them to a seemingly unoccupied house. There are blood stains on the porch and throughout the downstairs. Blood-soaked sheets cover several bodies in the main room. One of the bodies has a blue hand.

In Al’s flash forward, he was in London working on the Rutherford case with a Scotland Yard liaison. A bird crashed into the window and died. A crow, perhaps? Al was investigating the Rutherford case, which didn’t yet exist. In the present, they find a passport on one of the deceased bodies. It’s for a Scottish man named Ian Rutherford. Looks like Al’s case begins right now.

Mark tells Olivia that the attacks on him and Janis must be connected because of the Mosaic investigation. Olivia wants them to stop being so obsessed with the future and start living in the now. Of course, living in the now involves taking Charlie out for Halloween. While trick or treating, Mark and Aaron do a double take as they see a kangaroo hoping through the neighborhood. We know what you’re thinking. Cool costume, right? Wrong. This is an actual kangaroo! Didn’t we see this particular marsupial bouncing around the pilot episode No More Good Days?

Mark sees three figures wearing masks similar to the ones worn by the assassins in his flash. He chases one of the figures down. It’s just a teen who thought he was in trouble for pulling a prank. The kid says he got the mask at a discount store. Mark then gets a call from Nicole. There’s a problem at home.

Lloyd Simcoe tells his son Dylan that they will be living in his house after he gets out of the hospital. Dylan seems more interested in playing card games. Then he stares ahead and says, “It’s my house, too.” After trick or treating in the hospital, Dylan wanders outside. He hops onto a bus and spouts out an address: 25696 Sawyer Court. When Dylan arrives at the house, we see Nicole handing out candy to kids. 25696 Sawyer Court is home to Mark and Olivia Benford.

Dylan steps inside saying, “It’s my house, too.” When Mark arrives, Dylan and Charlie high-five each other as if they are old friends. In Dylan’s flash, Charlie let him know that it was okay to have a cookie because this is his house, too. Nicole had called Lloyd at the hospital, as Dylan was still wearing his ID wristband. When Lloyd sees the inside of the house, he realizes it’s the one from his flash. And when Olivia comes home, Lloyd further realizes that she is the woman he had such strong feelings for. This all goes down in front of Mark. Awkward.

Mark basically tells Lloyd to get lost forever. He accuses Olivia of hiding things. Too bad he doesn’t know that she got an anonymous text letting her know he’s the one hiding things from her. Mark finally admits that he was loaded in his flash forward but steadfastly promises that he will not drink. That’s not good enough for Olivia. It’s not about the drinking. It’s about trust. And they don’t trust each other anymore.

The mysterious Simon (yep, that’s Dominic Monaghan from Lost) takes a train to Los Angeles. Along the way, he tells a woman he’s a quantum physicist genius. The lady must be into science geeks as they end up rolling around naked in Simon’s sleeper car. Basking in the afterglow, Simon tells the woman that he choked the life out of a man in his flash forward. We’re pretty sure this will put the kibosh on a second date. When Simon arrives in L.A., he surprises Lloyd, who isn’t interested in talking to him. He says, “Our experiment killed 20 million people, Simon. What more is there to say?”

Gimme Some Truth

In a Washington, D.C. parking structure, FBI agents Benford, Noh, Vreede and Wedeck pile into a passenger car. Moments later, a black SUV barrels toward them, crashing into their vehicle. A team of assassins exit the SUV, one of them armed with rocket-propelled grenade launcher. A deadly missile streaks toward the car. There’s a massive explosion. Smoke envelops the screen.

We jump back 39 hours to learn that Wedeck and his FBI team are in town to testify before a Senate Intelligence Committee. Mark, Demetri and Vreede are given polygraph tests regarding their flash forwards while Wedeck shoots some hoops with Dave Segovia, aka the President of the United States.

President Segovia and our favorite FBI Deputy Field Director go way back, which is probably why he offers Wedeck the job of Director of Homeland Security. Although the President has not publically revealed the details of his flash forward, we see that it involves a Secret Service agent telling him something terrible has happened.

Wedeck has a volatile past with the head of the inquiry committee, Senator Joyce Clemente. The senator blames Wedeck for a lost chance at the presidency. Opportunity may knock again though, as Clemente claims she saw herself sitting in the Oval Office during her flash. Presently, Clemente seems determined to quash Wedeck’s Mosaic investigation and she wants to hear from the person who spawned it: Agent Mark Benford.

Clemente grills Mark, asking why his vision seems “hazy” and “disjointed.” We know it’s because Mark was drinking. We also know he can’t admit that in front of the entire world. Clemente suggests Mark’s investigative techniques border on voodoo or fraud. This is more than Wedeck can take. He walks out of the hearing in a huff.

Janis scans satellite imagery looking for anything relating to the crow die-off of 1991 and evidence that people in the Ganwar region of Somalia lost consciousness. Satellite shots show 100-foot pylons standing in the middle of nowhere. Sounds like something worth investigating to us, especially since we got a firsthand look at a pylon in the episode titled 137 Sekunden.

Janis goes on a date with Maya, a woman from her Tae Kwon Do class. They end up spending the night together. The next day, Maya gives Janis a present. It’s a slick-looking alarm clock on wheels. It’s a gadget clock that rolls away from you if you hit the snooze button too often. After the gift exchange, Maya admits that she checked out Janis on the Mosaic web site and knows that she will be pregnant. Janis becomes extremely uncomfortable, as she is still trying to digest the whole baby situation. She hastily ends things with Maya.

Wedeck visits the home of a woman named Renee Garrigo, who lives with a young boy. We don’t find out who these two are until Wedeck has a meeting in the White House. He produces a photo of the President with Renee. It appears they had an affair and the boy is Segovia’s illegitimate child. Wedeck helped with the cover up.

Wedeck wants the Prez to call off Clemente before she cuts the funding for his investigation. Otherwise, he’ll go public with the pics. Nothing like a little blackmail between friends, right? Segovia takes the bait and Senator Clemente will no longer be bothering Wedeck. She’ll be too busy filling the no longer vacant office of Vice President of the United States.

Mark and Wedeck have a heated argument about the hearing. Mark finally admits to his boss that he was loaded in his flash. After the blowup, Olivia receives an anonymous text message that reads: Mark was drinking in his Flash Forward. Could it have been Wedeck who sent the text? Perhaps it was Aaron. Olivia had confronted him after overhearing Aaron tell Mark to find an AA meeting in DC. Or maybe it was someone else altogether.

We catch up to the scene that opened the episode. Mark is on the phone with Janis as he and the others step into the car. The black SUV rams them. Mark and the others scramble to escape as the rocket-propelled grenade annihilates their car. The assassins take aim at the car but Mark, Demetri, Vreede and Wedeck emerge from the wreckage with guns blazing. They take out a few of the assassins but others escape. Thankfully, no one on Mark’s team is hurt. At least, no one in D.C.

Back in L.A., the phone call with Mark goes dead for Janis, who is walking home from the market. An armed man springs from the shadows and attacks Janis. All that Tae Kwon Do training has paid off as Janis methodically disarms and disables the gunman. But then a second attacker shoots Janis in the stomach. This doesn’t have the feel of a routine mugging.

Janis manages to draw her own gun in time to shoot the second attacker before he can escape, but she’s gravely injured. As she gasps for air, she recalls her flash. She asks the nurse to tell her about the baby. It’s a girl. Janis is overwhelmed in her flash. But in the here and now, she’s fighting for her life. She lies in the street in a pool of her own blood as that alarm clock on wheels she got as a gift rolls haphazardly alongside her.

Black Swan

Mark and Demetri argue about their cases, Olivia and Bryce disagree on how to treat a patient and Nicole hopes to atone for something she hasn’t done yet.

Demetri questions the terrorist suspect he and Mark captured the day of the blackout. She claims to be Alda Hertzog, though we’re not sure how many of her multiple fake passports actually bear that name. Alda throws the feds a bone when she mentions something called Customer Choice Restaurant Group located in a town called Indio, which has had multiple wiretaps in the past. Alda unnerves Demetri by making an offhanded comment about him running out of time. You just know Dem’s still anxious about that ominous anonymous phone call he received.

Against Mark’s wishes, Demetri talks Wedeck into letting them go to Indio where they investigate a restaurant that is supposedly owned by Customer Choice Restaurant Group. A shady looking man bolts out of the place when he hears Mark and Demetri are with the FBI. When they catch the runner, he turns out to be nothing more than a lowlife Russian drug dealer.

Demetri is beyond frustrated. He gives the loudmouth dealer a little tune up until Mark jumps in. Then Demetri starts in on him, claiming he’s sick of following leads from Mark’s flash. Mark thinks Demetri’s real issue is that he didn’t have a flash and he’s losing perspective. Demetri finally tells his partner about the anonymous call he received saying that he’s going to be murdered on March 15th. Mark tells him that’s why the Mosaic investigation is so important. He says, “We can use what we saw to stop what we saw.”

When they get back to the office, Mark takes a whack at questioning Alda about the blackout. She’s evasive but speaks of a metaphor used to describe a high-impact event, something so rare it’s beyond the realm of human expectation. It is called a black swan and comes from a time when scientists assumed all swans were white. They were wrong. Think Alda knows anything about the blackout? Or is she just playing games?

One of the agents on Mark’s team, Al, does a search on the Mosaic Collective web site for someone named Celia. He seems distressed when results pop up but Mark stops by and Al snaps back to normal. Mark wants Al to reach out to a computer hacker they once arrested. He plans to ask him to infiltrate the CIA database for info on a possible blackout in Somalia in 1991. We’re not sure, but isn’t it illegal to steal info from the CIA even if you are with the FBI?

Olivia and Bryce treat a patient named Edward Ned who was in a bus crash the day of blackout. Friends call him Ned. That’s right; the guy’s name is Ned Ned. He says that he was rocking out at a bar in his flash forward. Oh, and Ned, who is white, claims that in his flash, he was black.

Ned needs needs surgery surgery. But he’s not worried. He knows that six months from now he’ll be living life as a fearless black guy, like Shaft or Bryant Gumbel. Bryce does a little research on pigment change and believes Ned has Addison’s disease, which means his body is making melanin compounds instead of adrenaline. It explains why he is so calm in times of distress and why his skin is going to get dark.

Bryce tries to convince Olivia not to operate until the proper precautions are taken for Addison’s disease. But Olivia refuses to base a medical decision on a patient’s crazy dream. We’re thinking she’s doing the denial thing because she’s still freaked out about her flash. Bryce thinks the same thing and calls out his boss, who kicks him out of the OR.

During the procedure, Ned crashes. Olivia is losing him until we see a look of unavoidable acceptance fill her eyes. She orders the proper meds to treat a patient with Addison’s disease. Just like that, Ned makes a comeback and stabilizes. Olivia has been forced to accept the reality of the flashes.

Nicole is ready to start babysitting Charlie again. We find out that Aaron’s daughter, Tracy, used to babysit her. Troubled by her flash, Nicole finally reveals what she saw to Mark. Someone was drowning her and she believes she deserved what was happening to her. She saw the man’s face just before he pushed her back down into the water. And then she was gone. Mark assures her that he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure she’s safe.

Lloyd Simcoe tells Bryce about his flash. In it, he received an urgent call and also heard a woman’s voice. He didn’t see who the woman was, but he knew that she was important to him. We know that it is Olivia, who has been playing a game of “Avoid the Lloyd” with very little success.

Lloyd receives a call on his cell phone. We see on the readout that it’s from someone named Simon. Lloyd doesn’t want to talk but Simon insists. He says, “Talking to me is just one of those little inconveniences you’re going to have to put up with now that we’re responsible for the single greatest disaster in human history.”

Source: ABC.com

137 Sekunden

An episode titled “137 Sekunden” begs the question: What the heck’s a sekunden? Let’s find out.

Rudolf Geyer, an elderly Nazi criminal being held in a German prison claims to know why the blackout lasted exactly 137 sekunden (that’s German for seconds). Mark recalls seeing a picture of Geyer and a printout of “137 Sekunden” on the bulletin board in his flash. The murderous Nazi will only talk to Agent Mark Benford of the FBI. Good thing the planes are up and running again, as Mark and Janis are headed to Munich.

Demetri is understandably anxious after receiving a phone call saying he’ll be murdered on March 15, 2010. The caller, a woman with a foreign accent, elaborates by saying he’ll be shot three times in the chest. To avoid a premature death, we’re thinking Demetri should start wearing a Kevlar vest and beware the ides of March. He should also stay away from fried foods, as that stuff’ll kill you, too. Demetri tries to trace the cell transmission, but whoever made the call covered their tracks.

Demetri’s fiancée, Zoey (Gabrielle Union), returns from Seattle where she’d been stranded since the blackout. She asks Demetri if they can finally talk about their flashes. He relents. Zoey’s vision was of their wedding day, as she walked down the beach in Hawaii. Demetri asks if she saw him there. She did. He lies and says he saw her as well. Guess they don’t have to worry about setting a wedding date. Zoey’s flash has set it for them.

Rudolf Geyer wants a full pardon and a safe return to the United States. He will divulge one piece of information now and provide the remainder of his knowledge after the pardon is granted. Geyer speaks of Kabbalah, a set of esoteric teachings relating to the mystical aspect of Judaism. He says, “In Kabbalah, everything has a hidden meaning.” Geyer spells out the word in Hebrew. Each letter in the Hebrew alphabet is attributed a number. And if you add up the numbers in Kabbalah, it totals up to…you guessed it…137.

Geyer promises that his second piece of information will prove crucial to the investigation. He knows this because in his flash he was being repatriated to the U.S. having bought his freedom with the info. He says a U.S. Customs agent named J. Murphy was clearing him as he arrived at the airport. He told the agent he was returning home and he has a murder to thank for it. But Geyer will say no more until he gets the pardon.

Demetri tracks down Jerome Murphy, an applicant for the U.S. Customs program. Jerome is psyched to hear that his vision was on target and he got the job. He corroborates everything that was said by Geyer, even though Jerome doesn’t know what the word “corroborate” means. The guy’s a total goof.

Upon the verification of Geyer’s flash, the pardon is approved. Geyer then tells Mark that after the blackout he saw a grouping of dead crows in the prison courtyard. In his vision, he knew that he was freed because he told Mark about the crows dying. He gives Mark a book on birds saying it may be helpful in his investigation. Geyer also admits that he has no idea why the blackout lasted 137 seconds. This guy played them and Mark knows it.

Charlie’s vision may have involved the mysterious D. Gibbons. Mark is worried that Charlie may be in danger. He’s confides in Aaron, as he’s also a dad and understands his concerns. Aaron is dealing with his own fatherly issues as he visits his ex-wife, Kate, to tell her that their daughter, Tracy, is alive. He saw it in his vision.

Aaron wants Kate to sign an affidavit to exhume Tracy’s remains, but she refuses. He then asks for Mark’s help to get around the legal red tape and Demetri provides him with the needed warrant. Aaron visits Kate once more to tell her that test results confirm the body they buried is, indeed, Tracy’s. Kate was right. Their daughter is dead. But if that’s true, we’re still wondering why she’s alive in Aaron’s flash.

Olivia has lunch with Wedeck’s wife, Felicia (Gina Torres), who tells about her vision. She was tucking a young boy into bed. Though she’s never seen him before, the boy refers to her as “Mom.” At a memorial service for fallen FBI agents, Wedeck addresses the mourners as Felicia gazes into the crowd. She sees what we’re guessing is the young son of a deceased agent. It’s the same boy from her flash, the one who called her Mom.

After the service, Demetri tells Zoey that they should go forward with their “D-Day wedding,” meaning he wants to plan the ceremony for April 29, 2010. He says to her, “I want us to make our future happen.”

Mark and Janis do some research and discover that crows didn’t just die outside of Geyer’s cell the day of the blackout; they perished all over the world. There was another instance of this phenomenon. In the Ganwar region of Somalia, all crows died on the same day in October of 1991. The inhabitants of the region claim to have suffered a mass loss of consciousness. Mark says, “We’ve been so worried the blackout might happen again, we haven’t stopped to ask ourselves…what if it happened before?”

Our final image features a young boy herding sheep in 1991 Somalia. A disturbing noise from above causes him to gaze skyward. Crows scatter in frantic flight before finally plummeting to the Earth. The boy looks down at the deceased birds until his attention is ultimately drawn elsewhere. Standing before him in the distance is a soaring, mystifying tower. We don’t know what this means, but at least we now know what a sekunden is.

Source: ABC.com

White To Play

It’s a jarring, horrifying image as we see a group of seemingly unconscious children on the ground of a schoolyard. Only Mark and Olivia Benford’s daughter, Charlie, is standing. She wears an unsettled look on her face as she clutches her favorite stuffed doll, Squirrelio. Thankfully, the kids are only playing a game called blackout. Everyone is having fun. Everyone but Charlie.

Charlie won’t talk about her vision with the other kids and gets into a fight when a bully rips her doll. Charlie’s teacher wants Mark and Olivia to ask their daughter about her vision, as she has yet to talk about it. Mark fears it’s because Olivia’s flash showed her with another man. What if Charlie saw this, too? The little girl may be worried that her family is falling apart, as Mark and Olivia continue to try to convince themselves that it surely isn’t. Mark tells his wife, “It’s gonna take a helluva lot more than fate if you want get rid of me.”

At the FBI office, the team is visited by the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, Anastasia Markham (guest star Lynn Whitfield). Janis briefs her on the Mosaic Collective Web site. They are looking for patterns from the hundreds of thousands of stories that have already been submitted. Markham is less than impressed until she sees the video of the solitary figure at a Detroit stadium, the one who was awake during the blackout. They’re calling him “Suspect Zero.” Cool name, right? Video forensics suggests the subject is male, 5’8” and about 150 pounds.

Olivia brings Charlie to the hospital with her. Although she’s swamped with patients, her first order of business is to suture the wounds sustained by her little girl’s doll. While Olivia is stitching up Squirellio, she meets the father of the young boy she saved. His name is Lloyd Simcoe and he’s the man she saw in her vision.

Olivia is understandably freaked but seems to settle down when it becomes apparent that Lloyd doesn’t recognize her. Nevertheless, she shifts Lloyd’s son’s case to Bryce, who seems to be taking things in stride. Bryce was suicidal before his flash but now feels “there’s a gift in the knowing.” He tries to comfort Lloyd, who is struggling to find a way to tell his autistic son, Dylan, that his mom died during the blackout.

When Olivia points out Lloyd to Charlie, she doesn’t know who he is. But when Charlie sees Dylan in the hospital bed, she gets very upset. She screams, “Who hurt Dylan?” Olivia is thoroughly confused, as are we. She asks her daughter how she knows Dylan. Charlie says she saw him in her dream. She tells Mark what happened at the hospital. He’s a little unhinged by the fact that Olivia has now literally met the man of her dreams.

Demetri notices that Mark is wearing the friendship bracelet from his vision. He says that by putting that thing on, Mark wants the future to happen. Based on the belief that Olivia’s with someone else, he’s drinking again and assassins are trying to kill him, we’re pretty sure that’s not the case. Nevertheless, we totally get why Demetri is so upset. He fears the worst for himself because he didn’t have a vision.

Mark and Demetri are investigating the name “D. Gibbons” that was posted on the bulletin board during Mark’s flash when Janis steps in to say that a D. Gibbons has just walked into their office. Actually, it’s Didi Gibbons, the owner of a cupcake store in Anaheim. She even brought some samples. The carrot cake ones look especially tasty. In Didi’s vision, she was on the phone arguing with someone over her credit card. She tells the other caller they need to talk to FBI agents Benford and Noh.

Janis runs a check on Didi but she’s pretty much a girl scout. The only odd thing is that her credit card account was charged almost simultaneously in two different locations last week. Someone was using a clone credit card somewhere in Utah. Didi mentioned the word “pigeon” in her flash and they discover it refers to a location: Pigeon, Utah. D. Gibbons purchased a bus ticket, as all planes are still grounded. Mark and Demetri chopper into Utah to find their person of interest before he skips town.

When they arrive, Demetri learns that the local sheriff did not have a vision either. They wait by the bus station, but the subject never shows. As they are wrapping things up, Mark notices a vacant doll factory next to the station. In Mark’s vision, there was a photo of a burned doll next to a card with the name D. Gibbons.

The place is extremely eerie, with dolls hanging from the rafters in nooses. A shadow is seen in the upper level. As Mark moves up the stairs, he triggers a booby trap. Bells ding, gears squeak and we hear a recording of a totally creepy rendition of ring-around-the-rosy. “Freeze!” Mark yells as they storm into the upper loft to find a silhouetted figure standing with his back to them.

The figure ominously says, “He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over.” Anyone else totally freaked out by this guy? Mark is caught off guard by the statement. Things quickly spiral out of control. The figure flicks a lighter and drops it into some bubbling liquid. Flames whoosh! The sheriff is shot dead. An explosion rocks the building and the figure escapes.

In the aftermath, a photo is taken of a charred doll. It’s the same picture from Mark’s flash. A cell phone and a chess piece are also found. The chess piece suggests D. Gibbons was playing a game with another person. A photograph of a burnt doll with a shell casing is snapped and, you guessed it, it’s the same picture from Mark’s flash. There are also signs that D. Gibbons was using the place as a hideout as he attempted to hack into computer networks around the world. It seems they aren’t the only ones investigating the blackout.

Back at the FBI office, Janis is able to determine that the cell phone belonging to D. Gibbons was used 30 seconds into the blackout, which means he was also awake. They trace the call to a second cell, one that was used at a baseball stadium in Detroit. Janis says, “D. Gibbons was talking to Suspect Zero.”

Janis is still confused by the fact that she was pregnant in her flash as blonde woman performs a sonogram. Demetri is still uneasy about his lack of a vision, especially since the sheriff who was just shot dead was flashless in Utah. They both opt to enter their stories into the Mosaic Collective. Later, Demetri receives a call from a foreign-sounding woman who read his post. She says her vision involved him. She read in an intelligence briefing that on March 15, 2010 he is going to be murdered.

When Lloyd finally tells his son that his mother died, Dylan says, “I want to see Olivia.” Other than the fact that she saved his life, just how does Dylan know her?

Back at the Benford home, Olivia wonders why Mark has built a fire. We know why instantly once we see Charlie’s friendship bracelet engulfed in flames. When Mark stops up to check on Charlie, he asks her if she saw something scary in her vision. She nods despondently before saying the words, “D. Gibbons is a bad man.” That sensation you’re undoubtedly feeling right now is a chill running down your spine.

Source: ABC.com

No More Good Days

FBI agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) crawls from the wreckage of his overturned car to find all of Los Angeles in chaos. Something has happened. Something catastrophic!

In a flash, we’re sent back four hours to a calm, quiet, sunny morning. Mark and his wife, Dr. Olivia Benford (Sonya Walger, aka, Penny from Lost) are happily married parents to their little girl, Charlie. Mark and Olivia are our core focus here, but here’s a quick breakdown of the other important people in their lives:

- Demetri Noh (John Cho) is Mark’s volatile, soon-to-be-married FBI partner.
- Stanford Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance) is their decisive FBI boss.
- Aaron (Brian F. O’Byrne) is Mark’s AA sponsor who’s had a rough time of it ever since DNA tests confirmed the remains of a fallen soldier belonged to his daughter, Tracy.
- Bryce (Zachary Knighton) is an intern on Olivia’s trauma team who contemplates suicide.
- Janis Hawk (Christine Woods) is an FBI agent with a lousy dating history.
- Nicole (Peyton List) is a college student who earns money as the Benford’s babysitter.

Everyone is going about their normal business to start the day. Mark and Demetri tail a trio of suspected terrorists. Olivia is performing surgeries at the hospital. DWP worker Aaron climbs a pole to repair a power line. Nicole and her boyfriend get busy in the Benford living room as Charlie sleeps upstairs. Only Bryce is doing something drastic, as he pulls a gun from his backpack at the beach, looking to kill himself.

Everything rushes up to a flood of parallel action as Olivia steps into the O.R., Bryce places the gun under his chin, Mark races his car through the city in hot pursuit of his suspects until…FLASH! Mark is no longer in his car. He’s in the FBI office at night, alone and anxious. He posts things on a bulletin board, drinks from a flask and writes down the words “Who Else Knows?” on a page-a-day calendar. The date on the calendar: April 29, 2010. Red beams pierce the room; they are laser sight guides from rifle scopes. Masked intruders are coming for Mark because he knows too much. They are closing in. Then…FLASH!

We’re back in present day, where disaster has hit. Was it an earthquake? A terrorist attack? Or something else? Whatever it was, it didn’t just happen in Los Angeles. This thing is global. Everyone on the planet blacked out for two minutes and seventeen seconds. The repercussions of the event are severe. Massive car pileups, downed airplanes, raging fires and there’s even a kangaroo hopping along the streets of downtown L.A.

The blackout interrupts Bryce’s suicide and he’s taken this as a sign that it wasn’t meant to be. He rushes to the hospital to help Olivia. She’s treating, Dylan Simcoe, an eight-year-old boy who, somehow, knows her name. They save the boy’s life, but his mother was killed during the mass blackout and they can’t locate his dad.

Back at FBI headquarters, Mark and Demetri bring in the lone female survivor of their terrorist suspects. Mark reveals the details of his blackout vision. He says, “I was having a memory, only it wasn’t of the past. It was of the future.” Turns out everyone had flashes of events that have not yet occurred, all taking place on April 29, 2010—six months from now.

Demetri is concerned because he didn’t have a flash. He wonders if that’s because, six months from now, he’ll be dead. Flashes from others include:
- Janis sees that she was 17 weeks pregnant, which is odd because she doesn’t have a boyfriend.
- An FBI agent is in London meeting with their Scotland Yard liaison, Fiona Banks (Alex Kingston). Inspector Banks and the FBI guy have the exact same recollection of each other’s flash.
- Aaron sees his daughter, Tracy, very much alive.
- Olivia lovingly says, “Hey, honey” to a man in her living room, but that man is not Mark.

Mark’s vision seems to indicate that he is investigating what caused the flash forward. That’s enough for Wedeck to assign him, Demetri and Janis to run point on the case. Janis wants to create a Web site so people from around the world can post their visions. This way they can search for patterns. That’s exactly what Mark was doing in the office the night of his flash.
Here’s a breakdown of the key things Mark remembers from his flash:
- The name of the investigation is “Mosaic.”
- The name “D. Gibbons” was written on a note card.
- There was a photograph of a doll that was burned with a bullet casing nearby.
- The words “Blue Hand” were written on another note.
- One of the masked men coming to kill him has a tattoo on his arm—three stars.
- He was wearing a friendship bracelet, like the ones kids make.
- Also, Mark remembers he was drinking again.

After a long day, Olivia is upset because of the strong feelings she had for the mystery man in her flash. Mark tries to comfort her by saying, “Just because we saw these things…doesn’t mean they’re gonna happen.” We get the sense that Mark is trying to convince himself of this, too. At the hospital, Lloyd Simcoe, the father of the young boy Olivia saved, shows up to be with his son at the hospital. We’re shocked see that Lloyd is the man from Olivia’s flash.

During the blackout, Charlie says to Nicole, “I dreamt there are no more good days.” She later tells Mark she had another bad dream. Mark notices Charlie has something in her hand. It’s a present for him. A friendship bracelet. It’s the same bracelet Mark was wearing in his flash. It’s a jarring moment for him. Could something have happened to Charlie? Is that what triggered his drinking again? Mark hugs his daughter, overwhelmed by an ominous feeling.

Back at FBI headquarters, Janis has spent hours going through footage from hundreds of surveillance cameras. All videos show the same thing. Everyone collapses for two minutes and seventeen seconds at every location on the planet…except one. At a sporting event in Detroit, the entire stadium crowd passes out except for one solitary figure. He slowly walks along the concourse before ultimately disappearing into the darkness of the exit. Janis asks the questions we’re now asking ourselves, “Who the hell is that? And why are they awake?”

Source: ABC.com