Flashforward Ep 07: Reviewed with great snark
Warning: This review contains depictions of a show created by Brannon Braga, and is slowly eating me away from the inside.
Who’s ready for another episode of resolution-less cliffhangers? I am! I am!
We start off this episode with Young Dolt narrating a letter to some woman named Celia. Celia is the young mother of twin boys, had no vision flashforward, and has just received a note taped to her windshield. It’s got the same blue skeleton hand that was on the stop sign in the last episode, and on the back it reads: “We know you are one of us.”
I suppose the implication here is that there are a bunch of people who haven’t had visions flashforwards going around and killing people in order to change the future. I guess if I was stupid and thought that the only possible explanation for not having a vision flashforward was that I was dead in the future, I might go a little crazy and form a secret organization of assassins too.
Although one does have to wonder: considering the number of people on the planet, Chaos Theory, and the REAL (not Professor Dom’s butchering of it) interpretation of Schrodinger’s Cat, the simple act of observing the future would have already made the outcome of that future different, thus negating everyone’s visions flashforwards. At the very least, out of the seven billion people on the planet, surely there’s been someone in the resulting weeks that managed to do something to irrevocably change their future from what they saw.
How about this: did you have a full head of hair in your vision? Shave your head every day from then on. Boom. Future changed. Simple as that.
Anyway, Young Dolt’s probably writing some kind of pre-emptive apology letter for killing, sleeping with, injuring, or somehow harming this Celia in the future. I guess that’s what he was so suddenly depressed about last episode. Boy, I sure hope Young Dolt, with his deep and rich characterization, doesn’t do anything to hurt himself. I’d hate to lose such an nuanced character.
Before Young Dolt can get to the point of his narration, we cut to Nulu hanging out in his HUMONGOUS apartment and working on totally secret stuff on his laptop. Gabrielle Union comes down the stairs and the two of them do their best to out-adorable the other for a while. It’s close, but I have to give this round to Gabrielle due mostly to my own heterosexuality. But if I swung the other way, you can bet that John Cho would have a real fighting chance. What a dreamboat!
Nulu (John Cho, for those of you who haven’t caught on in the last six episodes) has found a website called alreadyghosts.com, which I’m sure you could actually go to in real life if you hated yourself and wished nothing but misery upon your soul. The website features the same blue skeleton hand as the stop sign, making it creepy and mysterious in a not really creepy or mysterious kind of way.
After a quick cut to check out Joseph Fiennes flossing his teeth, professing his love to Olivia, and somehow managing to glower all throughout, we turn our attention instead to the gigantic blue-tinted elevator that Nulu, Joe, and Young Dolt are riding in to work.
”I don’t know what it is, guys, but ever since I saw the future I’ve just been feeling kind of...blue.”
On the way in, Nulu and Young Dolt have a friendly argument over Nulu’s abilities to defeat Young Dolt at Madden back before Nulu was living with Gabrielle Union (Something of a step up, I should think). Young Dolt accuses Nulu of cheating, but Nulu says he was just “Finding a way to change the game.”
I’m sure that line won’t ever be repeated again, ad nauseam.
After that, Young Dolt, Nulu, and Joe arrive at the morgue to check out the bodies they found the night before at the blue hand haunted house. It seems that the three of them were high on drugs and all committed suicide (with one of them being the person Young Dolt was investigating in the future), presumably to keep whatever future they saw from happening, or more likely to ensure that they would be dead like they saw (or rather, didn’t see.)
I mean: who knows why they would POSSIBLY kill themselves? It’s a total mystery to me, at this point. I simply cannot fathom a reason why they would do such a thing.
But enough of that. It’s time for the glory that is Sadbeard!
Sadbeard’s driving in to some construction site, because that’s apparently what he does for a living. I thought he was a bebearded handyman who puttered around Joe’s house fixing stuff, but I guess I was wrong. On his way in, some random guy tells Sadbeard that some other random guy is waiting for him, and that second random guy served with Sadbeard’s daughter in the military.
Corporal Random Guy introduces himself as Mike to Sadbeard, then hands him a pocketknife that Sadbeard’s daughter, Tracy, wanted him to have. Sadbeard flashes back to his vision flashforward, in which he returns the knife to Tracy and tells her she needs it more than he does. Sadbeard realizes that this means his vision flashforward must be coming true, and so he huffs and puffs in a manly “I don’t know how to cry on command” kind of way, and then gives Corporal Mike a big and overly-touchy hug. Corporal Mike is of course too mesmerized by Sadbeard’s beard to request that he respect his personal space, and I can’t blame him. Who could deny the majestic beauty of Sadbeard’s beard?
Sadbeard feeling some sort of emotion. I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Back at FBI headquarters, yet ANOTHER non-American accented person arrives to be on the show. I think the amount of people speaking in Non-American accents may now outnumber the amount of people of faking American accents. I am deeply concerned by this. The natural order of things has been disrupted! You don’t hire people to speak in their native accents for a television show. You hire them to put on really strained and poorly understood accents of which they are incapable of accurately performing! It’s just the rules, people. You’ve seen House, you know what I’m talking about.
Anyway, this person is MI6 Dolt, and also happens to be the very same woman that Young Dolt saw in his vision flashforward, at least the part that’s been revealed to us so far. She’s arrived to help because she saw herself arriving to help, and secret agents are all about the circular logic.
She jumps right into the case of the dead blue-handed people, and right away Nulu has got some absolutely SHOCKING news: all three of the dead people had no visions flashforwards!
After I managed to get air back into my lungs at that breathtaking revelation, Nulu reveals still more exposition in the form of AlreadyGhosts.com. Hold onto your hats people, because you’ll never guess what’s coming next: it’s a website for people who didn’t have visions flashforwards, and are also stupid enough to assume that means they’ll be dead in six months!
Slow down, Flashforward! You have to let me catch my breath! I can’t handle all these thrilling twists one right after the other.
It seems that the people on this website use it to coordinate their meetings, only instead of just telling you when and where the event takes place, they use a needlessly complicated series of riddles and clues, because that’s interesting and not at all stupid.
After the Dolt’s morning meeting, Young Dolt and MI6 Dolt get together to do some more investigating. Young Dolt, freshly infused with a suspiciously not-superfluous personality, seems sullen and depressed all throughout. I think it’s damned admirable that it only took him six episodes to form a personality, and I am not at all concerned about his sudden ownership of an actual character trait or two.
MI6 Dolt talks to him about her vision flashforward. She, in a way that will in no way parallel any character in this episode, talks about how helpless she felt upon watching a bird fly into the window and then slowly die on the ledge. There was nothing she could do to stop his inevitable death. Yes. Nothing she could do. His fate was sealed. She could not change his destiny. His future was set in stone. She could not change what would come next. Oh, and did she mention: FORESHADOWING?
Eventually MI6 Dolt asks Young Dolt what the phone call he received in his vision flashforward was about. He tells her it was a call from his attorney, and then we get a glimpse of him doing his best Shatner impression as he laments into the phone, “I killed her!”
Aw man, poor dude killed Celia. Well, since there’s nothing he can do to change the future, I guess he’ll just have to live with it. There’s no other option for him, of course. Yup. Nothing else he can do but just accept it and move on.
Back in Nulu’s Hu-fucking-gi-goddamn-normous-ballsout-mongous apartment, Nulu (Is he secretly the star of this show? Cause I’m not complaining if they want to give us less Joseph Fiennes glowering) is busy preening in front of a full length mirror as he basks in his adorableness. Not to be outdone, Gabrielle Union struts in; jaw set in anger, little brow furrowed cutely, and taking angry, confident steps. Oh boy! It’s an adorable-off!
Gabrielle is pretty darn mad, you guys. See, Nulu was supposed to go the printer with her that afternoon to shop for wedding invitations. Nulu tosses out that lame old, “Sorry, honey, but I was swamped at work trying to track down the people who blew up my car, shot at me, shot one of my friends through the uterus, and are apparently involved in a suicide cult.” Obviously it doesn’t work. I mean, come on, Nulu! Don’t trot out that tired old excuse.
“Yeah, well my day was super busy too,” Gabrielle snaps back. “I was filing motions for all sorts of lawyerly stuff all day, and that’s just as important as what you were doing, so I still get to be mad! Grrrr!”
Nulu apologizes for trying to find the people who almost killed Lady Dolt, but Gabrielle is not having any of it. She’s tired of Nulu being all busy after the greatest catastrophic event the world has ever seen. He’s got to pay more attention to her and stop trying to keep millions of people from getting killed if the blackout ever happens again, you great big jerk!
“Oh yeah,” Nulu replies. “Well you’re a great big stupid head and I’m leaving!”
And that he does, slamming the door behind him as he goes. The cavernous interior of his massive super-apartment (it’s too big to be accurately referred to as a regular apartment) echoes for a good minute and a half.
Meanwhile at the Hospital, Nicole, the college girl who spends all day babysitting, is doing some volunteer work when suddenly a crazy Japanese woman shows up and starts yelling at everyone about flowers. Nicole reveals that not only can she bend time to her will and thus juggle classes, babysitting, moping around the house, and volunteer work, but she has also somehow found the time to learn to speak fluent Japanese.
After that mostly pointless scene, we turn to Joe, Nulu, and Young Dolt. They’re following the first needlessly complicated clue from the Ghost website which read, “Go downtown and look at the time.”
When they arrive at “Downtown” they find nothing except some buildings and a giant blue neon clock projected against a wall. Joe looks up at it and shakes his head knowingly.
“What?” Nulu says. “There’s nothing here.”
“Up there. The clock. ‘Go downtown and look at the clock.’”
“Ohhh,” Nulu replies. “Thanks, Joe. I was temporarily struck both stupid and blind by Brannon Braga. See, someone needed to explain the clock thing to our deeply moronic audience, and I lost the coin toss.”
“No problem,” Joe growls. “Everybody gets Braga-dumb sometime.”
The three of them head into the building and, presumably after wandering around for a while, eventually find a door that has a blue skeleton hand sticker next to it. When they knock on the door, it’s answered by a mute guy who stamps their hands with the blue skeleton symbol, then leads them inside to an old foosball table.
A moment later, an old man in a fedora walks out, places a revolver on the table, and asks them who is going to play. When Joe growls something incoherent at him, the old man picks up the gun, places the barrel under his chin, and pulls the trigger. When nothing happens, he places the gun back down and asks again, “Who is going to play?”
Rather than simply say, “Nobody, stupid.” Young Dolt picks up the gun and places it to his chin too. He pulls the trigger and nothing happens. Then the old man takes the bullet out of the gun and offers it to Young Dolt as his ticket inside.
“Are you crazy?” Joe asks after the old man leaves. “You could have been killed!”
“Not today,” Young Dolt replies in a way which is in no way indicative of his current psychological state. He then tosses the bullet to Joe, and on the casing it reads: Not today!
Whoa. That just blew my mind.
I mean seriously, you guys. I’ve never seen something try so hard to be poignant and cool and instead turn out to be pointless and silly. It’s mind blowing.
The trio heads through yet another door, going further inside the labyrinthine warehouse, the interior of which I can only assume exists in some fifth-dimensional pocket outside of normal space-time, considering how spacious it is. Inside, they find a bunch of vague punkish hipster types milling around aimlessly while techno music plays.
Joe approaches the bar, and the mutant chicken-thing that acts as bartender comes to his service.
”Make an order or get out, buddy. The cluck’s ticking. You want a nice cocktail? How about a pecks on the beach? Maybe you’re feeling festive and want some eggnog? Or you could just get a classy sparklehen whine. Just hurry up! What? The price? Don’t worry about the price, each drink is at most a poultry sum. You can afford it.
Joe asks the ChickenTender (get it?) where the guy who runs the site is. ChickenTender doesn’t seem to know, but she does suggest that the trio partake in the lovely atmosphere where one can do anything. No fear! No limits!
Why, you could mill around aimlessly with other people dressed in goofy leather clothing! You could put in way too much hair gel, fall asleep for twelve hours, and then forget to shower or comb your hair before you go outside! You could listen to poorly dubbed in audio of a tiger or something growling really loud! You can skateboard, play classic arcade games, smoke regular or menthol cigarettes with Sam Rockwell, eat fast food, and unbox plenty of high-end boomboxes and portable televisions!
Oh wait, that last one is what you can do if you join the Foot Clan. Man, they sure do sound awesome. If they have health and dental benefits, I am sold. I’ll steal from my local TV news producer father all day long if I can get some of that awesome fast food and skateboarding action.
Anyway, let’s tear ourselves away from fond memories of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie, and come back to the infinitely more horrible Flashforward.
You remember Flashforward, don’t you? It’s the show about a bunch of people who work for the FBI, get a major lead about some weird smokestacks in Somalia, spend a full episode making sure they can get the funding to go check out said lead, and then never mention it again.
So instead of traveling to Somalia or asking Charlie who the fuck D. Gibbons is, let’s have some more awkward British stuttering from Non-American Lloyd to his future fuckbuddy, Olivia.
“Hi,” Lloyd says as he enters Olivia’s office.
“Hi,” Olivia says, because the old you-say-hi-I-say-hi thing is pretty much mandatory whenever you’re having an awkward meeting between two characters in a really poorly written scene.
“Stammer stutter stammer?” Lloyd asks.
“Angry interruptions and mutterings!” Olivia replies.
“Oh, um, right then, and-and, well, um, oh, well, um, oh, er, oh, um, well, er, oh dear.”
“Mutter mutter mumble!”
I’m rooting for those two, I really am. Their chemistry lights up the room like a defective nightlight covered in dirty laundry that’s really more prone to start a fire and kill everyone as they sleep than it is to do anything else.
The gist of all the muttering and stammering seems to be that Lloyd is going to leave Olivia and her family alone from now on, just as soon as he can move his son out of the Hospital. I guess sending an e-mail was out of the question for Lloyd. After all, the British don’t have the internet yet. They’re too busy wearing powdered wigs and forcing children to work in factories.
Elsewhere in the hospital, Bryce asks Nicole where she learned Japanese, and she tells him her father was stationed there for a while when she was little. Sensing opportunity, Bryce pulls out his sketchbook that he carries with him everywhere he goes while working as an intern in a hospital (makes sense to me) and shows Nicole a picture of his future girlfriend. On her shirt is a symbol of some sort, which he has somehow identified as being Asian, but that “nobody can tell” him what it is.
Nicole very quickly recognizes it as being the Japanese character for “believe,” making me wonder just who Bryce asked about it in the first place and why they couldn’t figure that out. What’s that you say? Lazy writing? I guess you’re right, voice only I can hear.
Mac, who are you talking to?
Not you, Brain. Especially after the hell you put me through the last two nights, getting your buddy Stomach to gang up on me like that. I have someone new to talk to now. He’s invisible and only I can see or hear him.
For the last time, Mac, you are not Dr. Sam Beckett.
Oh boy.
Stop that! It’s bad enough you already talk to your own brain, but I won’t have you talking to an imaginary Dean Stockwell. That’s just creepy.
Well I have to do something, Brain! This show is killing me! Can’t you see? It’s killing me! I can’t get through this alone! Bryce didn’t even have the intelligence to ask a single Japanese person what the symbol meant! And besides, what the fuck do I care what the symbol means? It’s on some girl’s t-shirt in the future! What possible significance could that have to anything? It’s a meaningless mystery just like every other damn mystery in this show! And the one or two mysteries that actually do mean something are the ones they ignore for week after week! Who blew up Joe the first time? Who blew up Joe the second time? What are the smokestacks in Somalia? What the fuck is Dominic Monaghan doing in this show and why does he have such a poor understanding of Schrodinger’s Cat? Who is D. Gibbons and why does nobody ask Charlie that very same question? Why did Young Dolt suddenly develop a personality last episode when he’s about to be written out of...er, I mean, when he’s never had one before? Damn it, Brain! It’s driving me mad!
Driving you mad?
Okay, fine. Madder.
Here’s what you do. Take a deep breath. Drink plenty of clear fluids. Consider what terrible psychological trauma you went through that makes you incapable of avoiding such a spectacularly boneheaded show. Then realize that you are a sinful person who deserves everything he gets! NOW GET BACK TO WATCHING FLASHFORWARD, YOU SICK BASTARD!
Fine, but I’m going to get back at you someday, Brain. If I live through this, I swear I’m going to make you sit there and watch all of Charmed from beginning to end. You just wait, buddy boy! You just wait!
Weak threats from a weak man. Now get back to work, weaky. I need to go back to sending my patented new nauseo-agony brand pain impulses throughout your entire body.
Oh he’ll get his. It won’t just be Charmed. It’ll be an entire Stargate marathon! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Anyway, back to the fun of Flashforward, where Sadbeard is being visited by the walking undead.
Robert Pattinson wanders off the set of Twilight Three: Goin’ Bananas
Corporal Mike is back, and he’s there to let Sadbeard know: all his silly hope for believing his daughter is alive? Hogwash! You see, Corporal Mike was there when Tracy was killed. They were driving down a dirt road in their humvee when they stopped to check out the mysterious guys dressed in black commando uniforms who were hanging out by the side of the road. One of the guys pulled out a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, and then fired it into the humvee. The humvee decided that was the best time to suddenly have its doors be incapable of being opened, and so Tracy, not having the explosion-deflecting powers of Joseph Fiennes’ glare, must surely be dead. After all, he saw her lying in the road with one leg blown off, and then he ran away a split second later, so yeah, the chances are that she’s dead.
Wait, that sounds kind of wishy-washy. I want it to be very clear here, folks. She’s dead. She has to be. I mean, there’s no way anyone could survive the car they were clearly trapped in a split-second before exploding in a giant fireball. That’s impossible. We all know this. So just because Corporal Mike didn’t actually check her pulse or anything, that doesn’t mean she’s alive. And just because her severed leg was no doubt returned to America and buried in place of her actual body, that doesn’t mean the 90% of her that wasn’t blown off is still alive somewhere.
No, damn it, that sounds noncommital too. She is DEAD! There is absolutely zero possible chance that she’s alive, okay people? Just because Nulu, Old Dolt, Chief Dolt, and Joe have all survived at least one major explosion doesn’t mean that Tracy will. People just don’t live through things like that. She’s dead. Do you hear me? DEAD!
Probably.
So Vampire Corporal Mike (the title of my new screenplay, by the way) definitely put the final nail in this coffin. Sadbeard’s daughter is dead, and now he can move on with his life.
Speaking of moving on with your life, what better way to celebrate your approaching death than strapping yourself to a chair, hooking yourself up to a car battery, and having someone throw water on you? I certainly can’t think of a better way I’d like to spend my last few months, and it seems that the folks at the secret underground suicide cult can’t think of any better way either, cause that’s what they’re doing for fun.
But hey, it’s not all torturing people by electric shock. Some people are hanging by chains while dressed in black KKK uniforms that symbolize, uh...something. Other people are being nearly drowned in tubs full of water. A bunch of nooses hang from the ceiling, and man you just KNOW that some people’s necks are going in those things when the party gets rowdy. Ha ha! Remember all those times in college when you’d go out for an all-night kegger and multiple-forms-of-ritualistic-abuse-and/or-suicide party? Man, those were the (end)days!
For some reason though, Joe finds the whole scene stupid and pathetic.
“Hey, what do they have to lose?” Nulu asks. “They’re dead anyway.”
Let’s analyze that, shall we? Are S&M clubs generally filled with legions of terminally ill cancer patients? Is the average person going to go out and start shocking his own testicles if he finds out he’s going to die in a few months? “What do they have to lose” only works if there is some other gain to be had.
If they were all skydiving, doing tons of drugs, and having unprotected orgies, then “What do they have to lose” makes plenty of sense. Stupid parties where they hang from chains and act all dark makes fuck all sense.
Not to mention: THEY HAVE NO EVIDENCE TO SUGGEST THE ARE GOING TO DIE.
So really, this whole place is just an excuse for a bunch of suicidal masochists to get together and hurt each other while they pretend to be in the negative zone KKK.
Aww, look everyone. It’s the Not OKKK.
Suddenly a klaxon sounds, and all the idiots decide to walk, zombie-like, to the other side of the room (this is yet another room in this dimensionally unsound warehouse, by the way). Once there, they find that creepy Cylon guy from Battlestar Galactica, who is apparently the fellow who runs the site. His name is Reno or Reynaud or Reynard or something, only really his name is Jeff and he’s just pretending his name is whateverthefuck.
So let’s call him Jeff so I don’t have to go through the indignity of actually looking up how they spell the other name on this show. Jeff is a former history teacher who has been typecast into playing existential douchebags, so get ready for lots of cheap pop-psychology and dime store philosophy.
Yes, Jeff has been using the Mosaic system to find other people who have no visions flashforwards, and he is a firm believer that the future is unchangeable. I can’t possibly understand why the camera would focus directly on Young Dolt’s recently-capable-of-expressions face during this. It’s not like Young Dolt would ever do anything to directly contradict that.
Especially after he has a nice talk with MI6 Dolt directly after that where he suggests things that she could do to stop the bird from crashing into the window. Yes, it’s clear that Young Dolt is not planning to do anything at all to prove his vision flashforward is incorrect.
And even more especially after Nulu and Joe have a nice long talk about why the future is inevitable and all of the visions flashforwards are coming true. So don’t worry about anything, gang. The future is set. The writers certainly wouldn’t spend so much time telling us that unless it were absolutely, 100% true.
Later that night (yes, after Joe and the others go undercover in a secret underground death-cult’s club, capture the leader, take him back to interrogate him, write up their reports, and talk about the inevitability of changing the future) Joe is back at home and watching cartoons with his wife and daughter, who has a bedtime of roughly 2 AM. Charlie soon illustrates her sleepiness with the the most poorly acted yawn of all time.
Oh my. I am very sleepy. Yawn.
Uh oh. Them’s fightin’ actin’ as far as Joseph Fiennes is concerned. He counters Charlie’s poor acting with some laughable face-contortions of his own as he tries to convey some sort of tortured emotion on his glowery mug.
”If I try hard enough, I can turn into Robert DeNiro!”
Charlie soon gives in and declares him the winner in their impromptu “Make M. McGregor laugh so hard his stomach hurts at your disgustingly awful attempts at acting” contest.
But wait! What’s this? A last second surge by newcomer Young Dolt! He overtakes Joe’s bad acting lead and wins the race with a quivering fish-lip scene! Truly a spectacular display of laughable acting, ladies and gentleman. A round of applause for Young Dolt’s vision flashforward in which he receives bad news while on the phone, sticks out his lower lip, and starts quivering that thing like it’s made of Jell-O. Truly spectacular stuff.
Since this is just a still shot, you’ll have to use your imagination if you want to get the full effect. Just pretend his lower lip is shaking up and down like a Shake Weight (google it if you have to.)
After that rousing competition, we finally go back to Nulu and Gabrielle Union, determined to make the last few scenes even more horrible by doing something unthinkable: acting well and with skill and talent!
Nulu finally reveals to Gabrielle that he had no vision flashforward, and that he’s going to die in the next few months. Gabrielle refuses to believe that since her own vision flashforward was of her seeing him on their wedding day. And while it would be very easy to make a “you all look alike joke” here, I won’t actually do it. Why? Because I’m more mature than that.
What’s that, imaginary Dean Stockwell? I just made the joke by pretending I wouldn’t make the joke? well that’s just silly. Now let’s continue on.
The next morning at Sadbeard’s job, he has Corporal Mike come over so that he can talk to him again. And by talk to him, I mean “have his fake America accent completely fall apart.” Also, he offers Mike a job. After all:
“Yoo won’t be da foist schwoo-up dish plashe hash hired.”
From there we move on to Bryce and Nicole, but they’re boring, so who gives a crap? Nicole tells Bryce to put his vision flashforward up on the Mosaic site so that he can find his future girlfriend. Where’s Charlie? I need someone to accurate portray my feelings on this matter.
I feel like this, only not fake.
Thanks, Charlie.
Then it’s on to Young Dolt. Boy, he sure has been getting an awful lot of screentime for a large superfluous peripheral character. I mean just two episodes ago he barely had three lines per episode, and suddenly he’s being treated like an actual main character. Good for him. It’s good to see a character that nobody gave much credit to break out and become a star. He’s this show’s Fonzie or Urkel. This kid is going places.
You know what? In honor of his meteoric rise to plot relevance, let’s stop calling him Young Dolt. How about Young Up-And-Coming-Star? Yeah. I like the sound of that.
Young Up-And-Coming-Star strides confidently into work, secure in the knowledge that he is finally a main character and will have character traits, thematic elements, running plotlines, and maybe even a love interest or two. He stops to leave a note on Nulu’s desk, no doubt a list of demands that he will be wanting for his trailer now that he is just as important as Nulu or any other character.
During their morning meeting, Nulu picks up the note and reads it. While this is going on, we finally see the rest of Young Up-And-Coming-Star’s vision flashforward. In it, he gets a phone call from his attorney informing him that the woman he accidentally injured in some way was just taken off of life support. He’s killed the mother of two little boys.
I don’t know what to say. How do you deal with something that unexpected? I feel like I’ve been punched right in the gut. Brannon Braga, Pantheon of Lazy Writers, anybody, come on! You can’t just have something like that get revealed out of nowhere. Where was the episode or two of lazy, obvious foreshadowing? This is totally out of left field! I had absolutely no idea that Young Up-And-Coming-Star was going to be upset about what he saw. This is outrageous!
But it’s okay. It’s okay. This is part of his new character arc, that’s all. He’ll be all depressed, maybe he’ll meet the woman and fall in love. He can become the father her children never knew. It’ll be great. You’ll see. It’ll all work out.
Young Up-And-Coming-Star heads up to the roof to look out over the horizon at the endless possibilities of his new life now that he’s a main character.
Wait a second. This looks suspiciously like he’s going to commit suicide! Oh man! I’d be really scared right now if Joe, Nulu, and Chief Dolt didn’t arrive in time to talk him down.
“You don’t have to do this!” Nulu says.
“Yes I do,” Young Up-And-Coming-Star says. “You see, if I die, then the future can be changed.”
“But why are you doing this?” Joe demands.
“Because if I’m dead, then the future is alterable,” Young Up-And-Coming-Star replies.
“I don’t understand,” Chief Dolt says. “Why would you want to kill yourself?”
“If I’m dead, then the future is no longer written in stone,” Young-Up-And-Coming-Star answers.
“Wait, hang on,” Nulu says. “I understand all that, but why kill yourself?”
“Because if I do something to change my vision flashforward, then that means we aren’t chained to our fates.”
“Well sure,” Joe says. “That makes perfect sense. But why are you doing this!?”
“Because I figured out a way to CHANGE THE GAME,” Young-Up-And-Coming-Star says, and oh my gosh I can't believe it, that's what Nulu said to him at the start of the episode! How's that for continuity?
This repeats itself about six hundred more times until even the thickest of the average Brannon Braga audience has gotten the message. And with that...
He slips! It’s the only possible explanation, because I can’t think of a single reason why he would kill himself. It just doesn’t make sense.
Why, Brannon Braga? Why!? You stole from us the greatest character of the last episode and a half! He was so nuanced for about 45 minutes! He had so much personality for about two weeks! He was so interesting for a two-episode arc! Damn you, Brannon Braga! Damn you for stealing Young Up-And-Coming-Star away from us!
The poor dead bastard doesn’t even get to narrate his own suicide note. That gets read by Nulu. I guess all is back to normal in the Flashforward universe. Young Up-And-Coming-Star died as he lived: as a Young Dolt with little to no reason for existing on the show other than to die, it seems.
So we get a montage of people being all sad or happy or reconciled or Sadbearded, but that is where it ends. The music stops as Sadbeard comes home, steps into his kitchen, and BY THE GLORY OF THE EVERLASTING BEARD: SADBEARD’S DAUGHTER IS ALIVE!
But I just can’t process the shock. Sure, I’m genuinely and honestly surprised by this totally unforeseen turn of events. I would have never guessed that Sadbeard’s daughter could possibly turn out to be alive after Corporal Mike’s totally convincing and not at all ambiguous story about her death. It’s just that after the tragedy of losing Young Dolt, I don’t know how much more I can feel.
I’m just numb inside.
RIP, Young Dolt.
We hardly knew ye (for five episodes, then you suddenly gained a personality and died.)
Who’s ready for another episode of resolution-less cliffhangers? I am! I am!
We start off this episode with Young Dolt narrating a letter to some woman named Celia. Celia is the young mother of twin boys, had no vision flashforward, and has just received a note taped to her windshield. It’s got the same blue skeleton hand that was on the stop sign in the last episode, and on the back it reads: “We know you are one of us.”
I suppose the implication here is that there are a bunch of people who haven’t had visions flashforwards going around and killing people in order to change the future. I guess if I was stupid and thought that the only possible explanation for not having a vision flashforward was that I was dead in the future, I might go a little crazy and form a secret organization of assassins too.
Although one does have to wonder: considering the number of people on the planet, Chaos Theory, and the REAL (not Professor Dom’s butchering of it) interpretation of Schrodinger’s Cat, the simple act of observing the future would have already made the outcome of that future different, thus negating everyone’s visions flashforwards. At the very least, out of the seven billion people on the planet, surely there’s been someone in the resulting weeks that managed to do something to irrevocably change their future from what they saw.
How about this: did you have a full head of hair in your vision? Shave your head every day from then on. Boom. Future changed. Simple as that.
Anyway, Young Dolt’s probably writing some kind of pre-emptive apology letter for killing, sleeping with, injuring, or somehow harming this Celia in the future. I guess that’s what he was so suddenly depressed about last episode. Boy, I sure hope Young Dolt, with his deep and rich characterization, doesn’t do anything to hurt himself. I’d hate to lose such an nuanced character.
Before Young Dolt can get to the point of his narration, we cut to Nulu hanging out in his HUMONGOUS apartment and working on totally secret stuff on his laptop. Gabrielle Union comes down the stairs and the two of them do their best to out-adorable the other for a while. It’s close, but I have to give this round to Gabrielle due mostly to my own heterosexuality. But if I swung the other way, you can bet that John Cho would have a real fighting chance. What a dreamboat!
Nulu (John Cho, for those of you who haven’t caught on in the last six episodes) has found a website called alreadyghosts.com, which I’m sure you could actually go to in real life if you hated yourself and wished nothing but misery upon your soul. The website features the same blue skeleton hand as the stop sign, making it creepy and mysterious in a not really creepy or mysterious kind of way.
After a quick cut to check out Joseph Fiennes flossing his teeth, professing his love to Olivia, and somehow managing to glower all throughout, we turn our attention instead to the gigantic blue-tinted elevator that Nulu, Joe, and Young Dolt are riding in to work.
”I don’t know what it is, guys, but ever since I saw the future I’ve just been feeling kind of...blue.”
On the way in, Nulu and Young Dolt have a friendly argument over Nulu’s abilities to defeat Young Dolt at Madden back before Nulu was living with Gabrielle Union (Something of a step up, I should think). Young Dolt accuses Nulu of cheating, but Nulu says he was just “Finding a way to change the game.”
I’m sure that line won’t ever be repeated again, ad nauseam.
After that, Young Dolt, Nulu, and Joe arrive at the morgue to check out the bodies they found the night before at the blue hand haunted house. It seems that the three of them were high on drugs and all committed suicide (with one of them being the person Young Dolt was investigating in the future), presumably to keep whatever future they saw from happening, or more likely to ensure that they would be dead like they saw (or rather, didn’t see.)
I mean: who knows why they would POSSIBLY kill themselves? It’s a total mystery to me, at this point. I simply cannot fathom a reason why they would do such a thing.
But enough of that. It’s time for the glory that is Sadbeard!
Sadbeard’s driving in to some construction site, because that’s apparently what he does for a living. I thought he was a bebearded handyman who puttered around Joe’s house fixing stuff, but I guess I was wrong. On his way in, some random guy tells Sadbeard that some other random guy is waiting for him, and that second random guy served with Sadbeard’s daughter in the military.
Corporal Random Guy introduces himself as Mike to Sadbeard, then hands him a pocketknife that Sadbeard’s daughter, Tracy, wanted him to have. Sadbeard flashes back to his vision flashforward, in which he returns the knife to Tracy and tells her she needs it more than he does. Sadbeard realizes that this means his vision flashforward must be coming true, and so he huffs and puffs in a manly “I don’t know how to cry on command” kind of way, and then gives Corporal Mike a big and overly-touchy hug. Corporal Mike is of course too mesmerized by Sadbeard’s beard to request that he respect his personal space, and I can’t blame him. Who could deny the majestic beauty of Sadbeard’s beard?
Sadbeard feeling some sort of emotion. I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Back at FBI headquarters, yet ANOTHER non-American accented person arrives to be on the show. I think the amount of people speaking in Non-American accents may now outnumber the amount of people of faking American accents. I am deeply concerned by this. The natural order of things has been disrupted! You don’t hire people to speak in their native accents for a television show. You hire them to put on really strained and poorly understood accents of which they are incapable of accurately performing! It’s just the rules, people. You’ve seen House, you know what I’m talking about.
Anyway, this person is MI6 Dolt, and also happens to be the very same woman that Young Dolt saw in his vision flashforward, at least the part that’s been revealed to us so far. She’s arrived to help because she saw herself arriving to help, and secret agents are all about the circular logic.
She jumps right into the case of the dead blue-handed people, and right away Nulu has got some absolutely SHOCKING news: all three of the dead people had no visions flashforwards!
After I managed to get air back into my lungs at that breathtaking revelation, Nulu reveals still more exposition in the form of AlreadyGhosts.com. Hold onto your hats people, because you’ll never guess what’s coming next: it’s a website for people who didn’t have visions flashforwards, and are also stupid enough to assume that means they’ll be dead in six months!
Slow down, Flashforward! You have to let me catch my breath! I can’t handle all these thrilling twists one right after the other.
It seems that the people on this website use it to coordinate their meetings, only instead of just telling you when and where the event takes place, they use a needlessly complicated series of riddles and clues, because that’s interesting and not at all stupid.
After the Dolt’s morning meeting, Young Dolt and MI6 Dolt get together to do some more investigating. Young Dolt, freshly infused with a suspiciously not-superfluous personality, seems sullen and depressed all throughout. I think it’s damned admirable that it only took him six episodes to form a personality, and I am not at all concerned about his sudden ownership of an actual character trait or two.
MI6 Dolt talks to him about her vision flashforward. She, in a way that will in no way parallel any character in this episode, talks about how helpless she felt upon watching a bird fly into the window and then slowly die on the ledge. There was nothing she could do to stop his inevitable death. Yes. Nothing she could do. His fate was sealed. She could not change his destiny. His future was set in stone. She could not change what would come next. Oh, and did she mention: FORESHADOWING?
Eventually MI6 Dolt asks Young Dolt what the phone call he received in his vision flashforward was about. He tells her it was a call from his attorney, and then we get a glimpse of him doing his best Shatner impression as he laments into the phone, “I killed her!”
Aw man, poor dude killed Celia. Well, since there’s nothing he can do to change the future, I guess he’ll just have to live with it. There’s no other option for him, of course. Yup. Nothing else he can do but just accept it and move on.
Back in Nulu’s Hu-fucking-gi-goddamn-normous-ballsout-mongous apartment, Nulu (Is he secretly the star of this show? Cause I’m not complaining if they want to give us less Joseph Fiennes glowering) is busy preening in front of a full length mirror as he basks in his adorableness. Not to be outdone, Gabrielle Union struts in; jaw set in anger, little brow furrowed cutely, and taking angry, confident steps. Oh boy! It’s an adorable-off!
Gabrielle is pretty darn mad, you guys. See, Nulu was supposed to go the printer with her that afternoon to shop for wedding invitations. Nulu tosses out that lame old, “Sorry, honey, but I was swamped at work trying to track down the people who blew up my car, shot at me, shot one of my friends through the uterus, and are apparently involved in a suicide cult.” Obviously it doesn’t work. I mean, come on, Nulu! Don’t trot out that tired old excuse.
“Yeah, well my day was super busy too,” Gabrielle snaps back. “I was filing motions for all sorts of lawyerly stuff all day, and that’s just as important as what you were doing, so I still get to be mad! Grrrr!”
Nulu apologizes for trying to find the people who almost killed Lady Dolt, but Gabrielle is not having any of it. She’s tired of Nulu being all busy after the greatest catastrophic event the world has ever seen. He’s got to pay more attention to her and stop trying to keep millions of people from getting killed if the blackout ever happens again, you great big jerk!
“Oh yeah,” Nulu replies. “Well you’re a great big stupid head and I’m leaving!”
And that he does, slamming the door behind him as he goes. The cavernous interior of his massive super-apartment (it’s too big to be accurately referred to as a regular apartment) echoes for a good minute and a half.
Meanwhile at the Hospital, Nicole, the college girl who spends all day babysitting, is doing some volunteer work when suddenly a crazy Japanese woman shows up and starts yelling at everyone about flowers. Nicole reveals that not only can she bend time to her will and thus juggle classes, babysitting, moping around the house, and volunteer work, but she has also somehow found the time to learn to speak fluent Japanese.
After that mostly pointless scene, we turn to Joe, Nulu, and Young Dolt. They’re following the first needlessly complicated clue from the Ghost website which read, “Go downtown and look at the time.”
When they arrive at “Downtown” they find nothing except some buildings and a giant blue neon clock projected against a wall. Joe looks up at it and shakes his head knowingly.
“What?” Nulu says. “There’s nothing here.”
“Up there. The clock. ‘Go downtown and look at the clock.’”
“Ohhh,” Nulu replies. “Thanks, Joe. I was temporarily struck both stupid and blind by Brannon Braga. See, someone needed to explain the clock thing to our deeply moronic audience, and I lost the coin toss.”
“No problem,” Joe growls. “Everybody gets Braga-dumb sometime.”
The three of them head into the building and, presumably after wandering around for a while, eventually find a door that has a blue skeleton hand sticker next to it. When they knock on the door, it’s answered by a mute guy who stamps their hands with the blue skeleton symbol, then leads them inside to an old foosball table.
A moment later, an old man in a fedora walks out, places a revolver on the table, and asks them who is going to play. When Joe growls something incoherent at him, the old man picks up the gun, places the barrel under his chin, and pulls the trigger. When nothing happens, he places the gun back down and asks again, “Who is going to play?”
Rather than simply say, “Nobody, stupid.” Young Dolt picks up the gun and places it to his chin too. He pulls the trigger and nothing happens. Then the old man takes the bullet out of the gun and offers it to Young Dolt as his ticket inside.
“Are you crazy?” Joe asks after the old man leaves. “You could have been killed!”
“Not today,” Young Dolt replies in a way which is in no way indicative of his current psychological state. He then tosses the bullet to Joe, and on the casing it reads: Not today!
Whoa. That just blew my mind.
I mean seriously, you guys. I’ve never seen something try so hard to be poignant and cool and instead turn out to be pointless and silly. It’s mind blowing.
The trio heads through yet another door, going further inside the labyrinthine warehouse, the interior of which I can only assume exists in some fifth-dimensional pocket outside of normal space-time, considering how spacious it is. Inside, they find a bunch of vague punkish hipster types milling around aimlessly while techno music plays.
Joe approaches the bar, and the mutant chicken-thing that acts as bartender comes to his service.
”Make an order or get out, buddy. The cluck’s ticking. You want a nice cocktail? How about a pecks on the beach? Maybe you’re feeling festive and want some eggnog? Or you could just get a classy sparklehen whine. Just hurry up! What? The price? Don’t worry about the price, each drink is at most a poultry sum. You can afford it.
Joe asks the ChickenTender (get it?) where the guy who runs the site is. ChickenTender doesn’t seem to know, but she does suggest that the trio partake in the lovely atmosphere where one can do anything. No fear! No limits!
Why, you could mill around aimlessly with other people dressed in goofy leather clothing! You could put in way too much hair gel, fall asleep for twelve hours, and then forget to shower or comb your hair before you go outside! You could listen to poorly dubbed in audio of a tiger or something growling really loud! You can skateboard, play classic arcade games, smoke regular or menthol cigarettes with Sam Rockwell, eat fast food, and unbox plenty of high-end boomboxes and portable televisions!
Oh wait, that last one is what you can do if you join the Foot Clan. Man, they sure do sound awesome. If they have health and dental benefits, I am sold. I’ll steal from my local TV news producer father all day long if I can get some of that awesome fast food and skateboarding action.
Anyway, let’s tear ourselves away from fond memories of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie, and come back to the infinitely more horrible Flashforward.
You remember Flashforward, don’t you? It’s the show about a bunch of people who work for the FBI, get a major lead about some weird smokestacks in Somalia, spend a full episode making sure they can get the funding to go check out said lead, and then never mention it again.
So instead of traveling to Somalia or asking Charlie who the fuck D. Gibbons is, let’s have some more awkward British stuttering from Non-American Lloyd to his future fuckbuddy, Olivia.
“Hi,” Lloyd says as he enters Olivia’s office.
“Hi,” Olivia says, because the old you-say-hi-I-say-hi thing is pretty much mandatory whenever you’re having an awkward meeting between two characters in a really poorly written scene.
“Stammer stutter stammer?” Lloyd asks.
“Angry interruptions and mutterings!” Olivia replies.
“Oh, um, right then, and-and, well, um, oh, well, um, oh, er, oh, um, well, er, oh dear.”
“Mutter mutter mumble!”
I’m rooting for those two, I really am. Their chemistry lights up the room like a defective nightlight covered in dirty laundry that’s really more prone to start a fire and kill everyone as they sleep than it is to do anything else.
The gist of all the muttering and stammering seems to be that Lloyd is going to leave Olivia and her family alone from now on, just as soon as he can move his son out of the Hospital. I guess sending an e-mail was out of the question for Lloyd. After all, the British don’t have the internet yet. They’re too busy wearing powdered wigs and forcing children to work in factories.
Elsewhere in the hospital, Bryce asks Nicole where she learned Japanese, and she tells him her father was stationed there for a while when she was little. Sensing opportunity, Bryce pulls out his sketchbook that he carries with him everywhere he goes while working as an intern in a hospital (makes sense to me) and shows Nicole a picture of his future girlfriend. On her shirt is a symbol of some sort, which he has somehow identified as being Asian, but that “nobody can tell” him what it is.
Nicole very quickly recognizes it as being the Japanese character for “believe,” making me wonder just who Bryce asked about it in the first place and why they couldn’t figure that out. What’s that you say? Lazy writing? I guess you’re right, voice only I can hear.
Mac, who are you talking to?
Not you, Brain. Especially after the hell you put me through the last two nights, getting your buddy Stomach to gang up on me like that. I have someone new to talk to now. He’s invisible and only I can see or hear him.
For the last time, Mac, you are not Dr. Sam Beckett.
Oh boy.
Stop that! It’s bad enough you already talk to your own brain, but I won’t have you talking to an imaginary Dean Stockwell. That’s just creepy.
Well I have to do something, Brain! This show is killing me! Can’t you see? It’s killing me! I can’t get through this alone! Bryce didn’t even have the intelligence to ask a single Japanese person what the symbol meant! And besides, what the fuck do I care what the symbol means? It’s on some girl’s t-shirt in the future! What possible significance could that have to anything? It’s a meaningless mystery just like every other damn mystery in this show! And the one or two mysteries that actually do mean something are the ones they ignore for week after week! Who blew up Joe the first time? Who blew up Joe the second time? What are the smokestacks in Somalia? What the fuck is Dominic Monaghan doing in this show and why does he have such a poor understanding of Schrodinger’s Cat? Who is D. Gibbons and why does nobody ask Charlie that very same question? Why did Young Dolt suddenly develop a personality last episode when he’s about to be written out of...er, I mean, when he’s never had one before? Damn it, Brain! It’s driving me mad!
Driving you mad?
Okay, fine. Madder.
Here’s what you do. Take a deep breath. Drink plenty of clear fluids. Consider what terrible psychological trauma you went through that makes you incapable of avoiding such a spectacularly boneheaded show. Then realize that you are a sinful person who deserves everything he gets! NOW GET BACK TO WATCHING FLASHFORWARD, YOU SICK BASTARD!
Fine, but I’m going to get back at you someday, Brain. If I live through this, I swear I’m going to make you sit there and watch all of Charmed from beginning to end. You just wait, buddy boy! You just wait!
Weak threats from a weak man. Now get back to work, weaky. I need to go back to sending my patented new nauseo-agony brand pain impulses throughout your entire body.
Oh he’ll get his. It won’t just be Charmed. It’ll be an entire Stargate marathon! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Anyway, back to the fun of Flashforward, where Sadbeard is being visited by the walking undead.
Robert Pattinson wanders off the set of Twilight Three: Goin’ Bananas
Corporal Mike is back, and he’s there to let Sadbeard know: all his silly hope for believing his daughter is alive? Hogwash! You see, Corporal Mike was there when Tracy was killed. They were driving down a dirt road in their humvee when they stopped to check out the mysterious guys dressed in black commando uniforms who were hanging out by the side of the road. One of the guys pulled out a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, and then fired it into the humvee. The humvee decided that was the best time to suddenly have its doors be incapable of being opened, and so Tracy, not having the explosion-deflecting powers of Joseph Fiennes’ glare, must surely be dead. After all, he saw her lying in the road with one leg blown off, and then he ran away a split second later, so yeah, the chances are that she’s dead.
Wait, that sounds kind of wishy-washy. I want it to be very clear here, folks. She’s dead. She has to be. I mean, there’s no way anyone could survive the car they were clearly trapped in a split-second before exploding in a giant fireball. That’s impossible. We all know this. So just because Corporal Mike didn’t actually check her pulse or anything, that doesn’t mean she’s alive. And just because her severed leg was no doubt returned to America and buried in place of her actual body, that doesn’t mean the 90% of her that wasn’t blown off is still alive somewhere.
No, damn it, that sounds noncommital too. She is DEAD! There is absolutely zero possible chance that she’s alive, okay people? Just because Nulu, Old Dolt, Chief Dolt, and Joe have all survived at least one major explosion doesn’t mean that Tracy will. People just don’t live through things like that. She’s dead. Do you hear me? DEAD!
Probably.
So Vampire Corporal Mike (the title of my new screenplay, by the way) definitely put the final nail in this coffin. Sadbeard’s daughter is dead, and now he can move on with his life.
Speaking of moving on with your life, what better way to celebrate your approaching death than strapping yourself to a chair, hooking yourself up to a car battery, and having someone throw water on you? I certainly can’t think of a better way I’d like to spend my last few months, and it seems that the folks at the secret underground suicide cult can’t think of any better way either, cause that’s what they’re doing for fun.
But hey, it’s not all torturing people by electric shock. Some people are hanging by chains while dressed in black KKK uniforms that symbolize, uh...something. Other people are being nearly drowned in tubs full of water. A bunch of nooses hang from the ceiling, and man you just KNOW that some people’s necks are going in those things when the party gets rowdy. Ha ha! Remember all those times in college when you’d go out for an all-night kegger and multiple-forms-of-ritualistic-abuse-and/or-suicide party? Man, those were the (end)days!
For some reason though, Joe finds the whole scene stupid and pathetic.
“Hey, what do they have to lose?” Nulu asks. “They’re dead anyway.”
Let’s analyze that, shall we? Are S&M clubs generally filled with legions of terminally ill cancer patients? Is the average person going to go out and start shocking his own testicles if he finds out he’s going to die in a few months? “What do they have to lose” only works if there is some other gain to be had.
If they were all skydiving, doing tons of drugs, and having unprotected orgies, then “What do they have to lose” makes plenty of sense. Stupid parties where they hang from chains and act all dark makes fuck all sense.
Not to mention: THEY HAVE NO EVIDENCE TO SUGGEST THE ARE GOING TO DIE.
So really, this whole place is just an excuse for a bunch of suicidal masochists to get together and hurt each other while they pretend to be in the negative zone KKK.
Aww, look everyone. It’s the Not OKKK.
Suddenly a klaxon sounds, and all the idiots decide to walk, zombie-like, to the other side of the room (this is yet another room in this dimensionally unsound warehouse, by the way). Once there, they find that creepy Cylon guy from Battlestar Galactica, who is apparently the fellow who runs the site. His name is Reno or Reynaud or Reynard or something, only really his name is Jeff and he’s just pretending his name is whateverthefuck.
So let’s call him Jeff so I don’t have to go through the indignity of actually looking up how they spell the other name on this show. Jeff is a former history teacher who has been typecast into playing existential douchebags, so get ready for lots of cheap pop-psychology and dime store philosophy.
Yes, Jeff has been using the Mosaic system to find other people who have no visions flashforwards, and he is a firm believer that the future is unchangeable. I can’t possibly understand why the camera would focus directly on Young Dolt’s recently-capable-of-expressions face during this. It’s not like Young Dolt would ever do anything to directly contradict that.
Especially after he has a nice talk with MI6 Dolt directly after that where he suggests things that she could do to stop the bird from crashing into the window. Yes, it’s clear that Young Dolt is not planning to do anything at all to prove his vision flashforward is incorrect.
And even more especially after Nulu and Joe have a nice long talk about why the future is inevitable and all of the visions flashforwards are coming true. So don’t worry about anything, gang. The future is set. The writers certainly wouldn’t spend so much time telling us that unless it were absolutely, 100% true.
Later that night (yes, after Joe and the others go undercover in a secret underground death-cult’s club, capture the leader, take him back to interrogate him, write up their reports, and talk about the inevitability of changing the future) Joe is back at home and watching cartoons with his wife and daughter, who has a bedtime of roughly 2 AM. Charlie soon illustrates her sleepiness with the the most poorly acted yawn of all time.
Oh my. I am very sleepy. Yawn.
Uh oh. Them’s fightin’ actin’ as far as Joseph Fiennes is concerned. He counters Charlie’s poor acting with some laughable face-contortions of his own as he tries to convey some sort of tortured emotion on his glowery mug.
”If I try hard enough, I can turn into Robert DeNiro!”
Charlie soon gives in and declares him the winner in their impromptu “Make M. McGregor laugh so hard his stomach hurts at your disgustingly awful attempts at acting” contest.
But wait! What’s this? A last second surge by newcomer Young Dolt! He overtakes Joe’s bad acting lead and wins the race with a quivering fish-lip scene! Truly a spectacular display of laughable acting, ladies and gentleman. A round of applause for Young Dolt’s vision flashforward in which he receives bad news while on the phone, sticks out his lower lip, and starts quivering that thing like it’s made of Jell-O. Truly spectacular stuff.
Since this is just a still shot, you’ll have to use your imagination if you want to get the full effect. Just pretend his lower lip is shaking up and down like a Shake Weight (google it if you have to.)
After that rousing competition, we finally go back to Nulu and Gabrielle Union, determined to make the last few scenes even more horrible by doing something unthinkable: acting well and with skill and talent!
Nulu finally reveals to Gabrielle that he had no vision flashforward, and that he’s going to die in the next few months. Gabrielle refuses to believe that since her own vision flashforward was of her seeing him on their wedding day. And while it would be very easy to make a “you all look alike joke” here, I won’t actually do it. Why? Because I’m more mature than that.
What’s that, imaginary Dean Stockwell? I just made the joke by pretending I wouldn’t make the joke? well that’s just silly. Now let’s continue on.
The next morning at Sadbeard’s job, he has Corporal Mike come over so that he can talk to him again. And by talk to him, I mean “have his fake America accent completely fall apart.” Also, he offers Mike a job. After all:
“Yoo won’t be da foist schwoo-up dish plashe hash hired.”
From there we move on to Bryce and Nicole, but they’re boring, so who gives a crap? Nicole tells Bryce to put his vision flashforward up on the Mosaic site so that he can find his future girlfriend. Where’s Charlie? I need someone to accurate portray my feelings on this matter.
I feel like this, only not fake.
Thanks, Charlie.
Then it’s on to Young Dolt. Boy, he sure has been getting an awful lot of screentime for a large superfluous peripheral character. I mean just two episodes ago he barely had three lines per episode, and suddenly he’s being treated like an actual main character. Good for him. It’s good to see a character that nobody gave much credit to break out and become a star. He’s this show’s Fonzie or Urkel. This kid is going places.
You know what? In honor of his meteoric rise to plot relevance, let’s stop calling him Young Dolt. How about Young Up-And-Coming-Star? Yeah. I like the sound of that.
Young Up-And-Coming-Star strides confidently into work, secure in the knowledge that he is finally a main character and will have character traits, thematic elements, running plotlines, and maybe even a love interest or two. He stops to leave a note on Nulu’s desk, no doubt a list of demands that he will be wanting for his trailer now that he is just as important as Nulu or any other character.
During their morning meeting, Nulu picks up the note and reads it. While this is going on, we finally see the rest of Young Up-And-Coming-Star’s vision flashforward. In it, he gets a phone call from his attorney informing him that the woman he accidentally injured in some way was just taken off of life support. He’s killed the mother of two little boys.
I don’t know what to say. How do you deal with something that unexpected? I feel like I’ve been punched right in the gut. Brannon Braga, Pantheon of Lazy Writers, anybody, come on! You can’t just have something like that get revealed out of nowhere. Where was the episode or two of lazy, obvious foreshadowing? This is totally out of left field! I had absolutely no idea that Young Up-And-Coming-Star was going to be upset about what he saw. This is outrageous!
But it’s okay. It’s okay. This is part of his new character arc, that’s all. He’ll be all depressed, maybe he’ll meet the woman and fall in love. He can become the father her children never knew. It’ll be great. You’ll see. It’ll all work out.
Young Up-And-Coming-Star heads up to the roof to look out over the horizon at the endless possibilities of his new life now that he’s a main character.
Wait a second. This looks suspiciously like he’s going to commit suicide! Oh man! I’d be really scared right now if Joe, Nulu, and Chief Dolt didn’t arrive in time to talk him down.
“You don’t have to do this!” Nulu says.
“Yes I do,” Young Up-And-Coming-Star says. “You see, if I die, then the future can be changed.”
“But why are you doing this?” Joe demands.
“Because if I’m dead, then the future is alterable,” Young Up-And-Coming-Star replies.
“I don’t understand,” Chief Dolt says. “Why would you want to kill yourself?”
“If I’m dead, then the future is no longer written in stone,” Young-Up-And-Coming-Star answers.
“Wait, hang on,” Nulu says. “I understand all that, but why kill yourself?”
“Because if I do something to change my vision flashforward, then that means we aren’t chained to our fates.”
“Well sure,” Joe says. “That makes perfect sense. But why are you doing this!?”
“Because I figured out a way to CHANGE THE GAME,” Young-Up-And-Coming-Star says, and oh my gosh I can't believe it, that's what Nulu said to him at the start of the episode! How's that for continuity?
This repeats itself about six hundred more times until even the thickest of the average Brannon Braga audience has gotten the message. And with that...
He slips! It’s the only possible explanation, because I can’t think of a single reason why he would kill himself. It just doesn’t make sense.
Why, Brannon Braga? Why!? You stole from us the greatest character of the last episode and a half! He was so nuanced for about 45 minutes! He had so much personality for about two weeks! He was so interesting for a two-episode arc! Damn you, Brannon Braga! Damn you for stealing Young Up-And-Coming-Star away from us!
The poor dead bastard doesn’t even get to narrate his own suicide note. That gets read by Nulu. I guess all is back to normal in the Flashforward universe. Young Up-And-Coming-Star died as he lived: as a Young Dolt with little to no reason for existing on the show other than to die, it seems.
So we get a montage of people being all sad or happy or reconciled or Sadbearded, but that is where it ends. The music stops as Sadbeard comes home, steps into his kitchen, and BY THE GLORY OF THE EVERLASTING BEARD: SADBEARD’S DAUGHTER IS ALIVE!
But I just can’t process the shock. Sure, I’m genuinely and honestly surprised by this totally unforeseen turn of events. I would have never guessed that Sadbeard’s daughter could possibly turn out to be alive after Corporal Mike’s totally convincing and not at all ambiguous story about her death. It’s just that after the tragedy of losing Young Dolt, I don’t know how much more I can feel.
I’m just numb inside.
RIP, Young Dolt.
We hardly knew ye (for five episodes, then you suddenly gained a personality and died.)