Flash forward

Year of release : 2009

Run time : 41m - 44m, 22 episodes, 1 season

Genre : Sci Fi / Action / Thriller

Cast : Joseph Fiennes, John Cho, Zachary Knighton, Dominic Monaghan, Gabrielle Union

 

The series are based on the 1999 novel Flashforward, by Canadian Sci Fi writer, Robert J. Sawyer (in the book people saw what happened 21 years and a half into the future! ).

The series open with the aftermath of an event causing people to lose consciousness. The streets are a mayhem, as there's wounded people and dying everywhere, while helicopters and planes are crashing into buildings.

Agent Mark Benford and his partner Demetri Noh are chasing known terr0rists who have a new target, wanting to k1ll millions. Just then, everything goes dark, and they wake up at the accident crash, the world falling apart around them.

Working on this new case now, they find out the whole world lost consciousness for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, leaping 6 months into the future, to the 29th of April, to be more exact. Based on what agent Benford remembers, from his vision, as he was working on this very case, they start the case.

Mark's wife, Olivia, tells him in her vision she is with another man, and in the 2nd episode she meets him. He is the father of one of her patients. Their daughter remembers his son from her vision.

Mark's team discover one man was awake as everyone was asleep. He is contacted by a woman who had a vision about him and his partner, Demetri.

He is also contacted by a former Nazi soldier who tells him what the 2 minutes 17 seconds mean, and that crows are important, as the event k1lled them, telling him these clues are gonna get him his freedom! This is how they discover the blackout happened in the early '90's in Somalia on a smaller scale.

He also tells Janis, in the Eastern European countries, women wore a ring on the left thumb as a sign of them liking women. She is wearing a ring on her left thumb.

Demetri's fiance thinks her vision was their wedding, while he is told he dies on the 15th of March 2010.

Olivia is treating a man with a rare condition, but due to her not wanting her vision of the future to come true, ignores Bryce's information on the matter. At the same time she's trying to avoid the man from her vision at all costs.

Mark's nanny, Nicole, who "disappeared" on them since the blackout, finally comes back to work. The blackout scared her so much, she thinks God is trying to punish her for something she didn't do yet, as she had a vision of someone drowning her!

Janis goes on a date with a woman she likes, and the day after they spend the night together, the woman asks her if she's into men too, as she read her Mosaic vision, and she knows she's gonna be pregnant in 6 months time. Janis freaks out, and breaks up with her.

Mark's team are in Washington as they have to testify in front of a Senate Intelligence Committee who wants to shut them down, while their boss is trying to get more funding. This ridiculous senator woman, Clemente, is drilling Mark because he doesn't remember enough from his 2 minutes vision! It's 2 minutes not 2 hours!

Their boss, Stanford Wedeck, is friends with the president, and ends up blackmailing him (although the man offered him a place in his team earlier), in order to get his funding, as senator Clemente wants to cut it.

Olivia saves Janis' life, as masked men attack Mark's team and Janis at the same time.

Lloyd, the man in Olivia's vision, has an autistic son, who is still in the hospital. Llyod tells him he's gonna have to live with him now, as his mother died when the world blacked out, and the kid leaves the hospital, going to Olivia's place, as in his vision Olivia's daughter tells him it's his house too!

That's how Lloyd realizes who the woman is, and why Olivia has been giving him the cold shoulder this whole time!

This causes another rift between Olivia and Mark, as they start fighting for something that hasn't happened yet, and when Olivia tells him she knows he drinks in his vision (Mark used to be an alcoholic, he's been 7 years sober), he tells her not to judge him for something he hasn't done yet, which is what he does to her !

Finding more clues which tie in with Mark's vision, they find a Death Club, the Blue Hand, of people who didn't have a vision of the future, who meet to k1ll themselves so they won't live in fear of it happening.

Agent Al Gough can't live with what he saw in his vision (that he k1lled a woman who had 2 sons) and k1lls himself.

Doctor Bryce, who wanted to k1ll himself before the blackout, and found a new joy of living due to his vision, is looking for the woman he saw in his vision, and finding out Nicole knows Japanese, asks her what is the symbol behind the woman. She says it's unfinished ,and means Belief or Believe.

We find out Lloyd and his partner, Simon (a genius who seems to lack feelings), are the ones responsible for the blackout. Lloyd wants to come clean, while his partner doesn't.

Aaron, who had a vision of the future in which his daughter is alive (he thought she was dead for over 2 years now), gets to have her back, as she's been in hiding for a Jericho private military team tried to k1ll her and her colleagues. She is missing a leg, and suffers from PTSD.

Episode 9, titled Believe, is my favorite so far, as I love Bryce and Keiko's story,they are my favorites. Doctor Bryce's vision was of a Japanese woman he meets at a restaurant, so, having a few days off, he goes looking for her. He actually finds her, he goes to her house, but her mother lies to him she doesn't live there.

Bryce has terminal cancer, and wanted to k1ll himself before he had the vision which gave him hope.

Mark and Demetri go to China after the woman who called Demetri to tell him he dies on the 15th of March. They find out he is k1lled with Mark's gun!

Loyd and Simon hold a press conference to tell the world they might have caused the blackout, although Simon doesn't think so. Everybody hates them, and Lloyd can't keep his son at the hospital anymore.

Simon ends up working with Mark's team.

Lloyd is kidnapped in front of the hospital when he is transferring his son to another hospital by people who pretend to be paramedics. Soon after, Simon is too from his home. They are held in the basement of a closed restaurant, as the kidnappers want to know what Lloyd did in order to increase the magnitude of the blackout, as it was not Lloyd and Simon's project which caused it.

Mark goes to a therapist, and uses regression to remember more from his vision. And that's how he finds Lloyd and Simon!

Simon can't escape Mark's team who want to protect him, more or less, and Janis follows him home to Canada, where she meets his family. We find out the man who kidnapped them and cut one of Simon's fingers, is his uncle! He's been using Simon as a pawn in his criminal network, and right now, he kidnapped his sister! We also find out what Simon was doing during the blackout, as his uncle gave him a ring to stay awake, and made him walk around the stadium, for the cameras to see him! Simon's vision turns out to be what really happened, as he k1lled the man who k1lled his father!

Nicole spends more time with doctor Bryce, and while out to the Japanese restaurant where he met Keiko in his vision, he kisses her. Keiko was inside with her boss, right behind the window they were in front of, as she works in L.A at a car repair shop.

 

Aaron is tricked by Tracy's former colleague into telling him she's alive, and he sends the Jericho soldiers after her, who take her .

Mark brings Lloyd to his home, in the bedroom, so he could remember more of his vision.

Simon, Janis and Demetri go to Somalia, where they are taken hostages by the armed militia, who keep on k1lling extras we don't care about .

Olivia is asking Mark again, to move to another city, to save their marriage. Mark refuses, because they are the leads, without them the series would be over. This leads to him moving out of the house ,and his daughter makes him another friendship bracelet, as he burnt the previous one.

Demetri's fiance also asks him to quit his job so he won't die, but again, he's one of the leads and he can't do that. They make the simple things so hard!

 

In Somalia they find a video of Dyson Frost who tells them he had many flash forwards and knows what they're gonna do, and that he's dying on the same day as Demetri.

Mark and Marshall Vogel start interrogating the office ,as they think there's a mol. They find a listening device under the letter M of his computer keyboard. And they find the mol, but turns out they were two.

 

They interrogate the mol they caught, but she can't tell them much, for she doesn't know much.

Senator Clemente, now the vice president of the USA, calls Mark's boss on a private meting, warning him about Jericho who trigger a political crisis in her vision, asking for his help. This leads him to Mark, asking him about his friend who asked about Jericho. And he ends up helping Aaron, who leaves the country to find his kidnapped daughter.

Mark and Demetri are looking for Mark's gun which went missing, but the mol said she only gave the information about where it was stored.

Dyson Frost kidnaps Demetri and sets a device with Mark's gun, in front of him, which is supposed to k1ll him at a certain time!

Demetri's fiance is trying to get information about Demetri's death from a terr0rist she is representing, but the woman plays her, and uses her to escape from jail.

 

Janis tells Demetri she is pregnant with his baby, as they decided to "celebrate life" as he only had a short time to live, when they were in Somalia. Like I said in a previous review of a Russian series, I'm sick of the creators' twisted minds inserting their weirdness into movies.

Dyson contacts Mark, playing mind games with him, but he is k1lled by the terr0rist who escaped jail. Mark finds Demetri in the nick of time, and rescues him.

We see how Janis was recruited into the shadow organisation, and how she was asked by Vogel to accept the offer.

Olivia is being stalked by a weird man who seems to know a lot about her, and tells her she was always supposed to be with Lloyd, not Mark.

Aaron is looking for his daughter taken by Jericho in Afghanistan.

Somebody is targeting the people who were supposed to be dead on April 29th but survived, as they think they should be dead.

Simon's sister was kidnapped since the day of the blackout, and Mark finally manages to get her back, 6 moths after!

Nicole finds Keiko's file among the immigration ones given to her, and wants to tell Bryce, but he kisses her and asks her out, so she doesn't.

The shady organisation is trying to get Simon back into the fold, but he's out for vengeance as they used him since he was 13, k1lled his father, kidnapped his sister, and he's had enough.

Janis is asked to k1ll Mark, and she tells Vogel to pull her out but he says this will make the organization k1ll her, and Mark.

Demetri wants to be part of Janis' baby's life now. He tells his fiance the truth, as she wanted to marry him in Hawaii.

Simon is asking for Janis' help to bring the organization down, as even he doesn't know who they are!They cut one head of the snake, another one grows back in its place!

The FBI manage to catch who they think to be the boss of the organization, and the organization retaliates by putting b0mbs inside the FBI building, having their people pose as soldiers, k1lling the real ones.

Mark finally drinks, as a man on the street hands him his bottle, as he says in his vision he quit drinking. So Mark starts drinking because he was drinking in his!

Olivia takes her daughter to the beach on the night the vision is supposed to happen, as her daughter heard 2 men saying her father, Mark, is dead!

Lloyd is trying to convince her to stay at the house with him, as he's trying to recreate the conditions he was in, to remember the formula he was working on, to help Mark.

Mark finally takes Gabe's advice and connects the dots on his vision board, and finds out when the next blackout takes place.

I personally enjoyed the movie, probably not as much as the first time I watched it. The movie ends with another flash forward, which to me it says this is the course it was gonna take if the series progressed past season one, just like Prison Break, and I personally don't like circular movies, because I find them redundant.

My favorite characters then and now, are Bryce and Keiko because of their love story. Although Bryce starts something with Nicole, and I didn't like how he treated her. See, Bryce asked Nicole out, who is 19, he is probably 30, and then, when he hears Keiko is in town, he just leaves Nicole like nothing ever happened between them, he doesn't even give her a hug or anything! That just made him unlikeable.

I didn't like the fact, knowing he only had a few months to live, instead of wanting to spend them with his fiance, Demetri did the opposite, staying away from her, and cheating on her.

The same can be said about Mark, who, knowing his wife's vision, when she asks him to move to another city, so it wouldn't come true, he chooses his job over her, which makes her leave him. Of course, if these characters didn't make these choices the movie would have ended, or we would have had other leads.

I was also annoyed by the fact Gabe kept on telling Olivia she was never supposed to be with Mark, trying to push her to be with Lloyd, because it was meant to be (because that's what he saw in his flash forwards, which is proof the visions don't come true!).

Also, many of the flash forwards didn't happen, while at the same time Simon and Lloyd kept on saying they have to do what they saw in the flashes because ,reasons!

One thing that bothered me most, was the decision Demetri takes to sleep with Janis, so she could have the baby she wanted in the timeline she wanted. This, while she was gay, and he was engaged to be married, and said he loved his fiance, who obviously loved him so much! You don't cheat, you don't do ridiculous things like this when you love someone, no matter the situation you are in! He said it was because he was dying! I'm sick of these weirdos working on movies, putting their weirdness in movies!

All in all, at the end of the movie nothing was resolved, they didn't find out who was behind the blackout and why, and why they kept on doing it! What was the purpose?! To k1ll people? Political gain? The series have 22 episodes! If they would have made a second season I wouldn't have watched it.

The visual effects were good.

The actors were good. I thought the best was James Callis, who played Gabe,the autistic character.

Michael Ealy, Genevieve Cortese, Annabeth Gish, Gil Bellows have guest roles.

Timbaland has a small cameo in episode 12. I think I also saw Michael Ironside as one of the ICE officers when they take Keiko.

Every episode's title sequence has a hidden image in the Flash Forward logo, as a new clue they find, and what the episode is gonna be about.

Despite the show being canceled, it actually received positive reviews from critics, and a few awards nominations.

The series were initially developed for HBO who thought the series would be better for a broadcast network!

Rating : Worth a watch !