Flashforward episode 08: Reviewed with great snark
Surely it can't be THAT bad...
Change of pace this week, guys. Instead of ending with some whiny wuss-rock, we’re going to start with some. Yeah! Whine your heart out! Life is so hard and/or beautiful!
Now you may remember that last week we got the pleasure of Nulu reading Young Dolt’s suicide note. This time, that honor goes to Young Dolt himself, just in case we forgot how or why he died. The episode begins with Celia, the woman he was going to kill in the future, reading his note while we get a montage of scenes:
Sadbeard creepily staring at his sleeping daughter! Nulu fretting over the corkboard of crazy-person clues! Celia giving a press conference regarding Young Dolt’s death (why, exactly?) Newspapers heralding that the future can be changed thanks to Young Dolt’s moronic sacrifice! Olivia and Joe apparently on vacation! Nicole teleporting from a lookout point at a cliffside and then to a hospital where she finds a flyer on bulletin board! Bryce sketching pictures of the girl he plans on stalking someday! The scene where Lloyd does a magic trick for his son replayed as if we hadn’t already seen that! Lady Dolt returning to work to thunderous applause!
So before we continue, let me get this straight: Young Dolt is the first and only person to have done something which irrevocably changed the future? Seriously?
There are seven billion people on the planet. Guess what: I’m one of those people, and I can guarantee you that I would have done something to prove that my future wasn’t written. Surely I am not the only person out of seven billion who would think of some way to change what I saw.
You’re telling me out of those seven billion people, nobody died prematurely? Nobody lost a limb that they didn’t see themselves without? Nobody got a tattoo, a new haircut, or a new scar? Nobody? Really?
Here’s another question: What about all those people who died in the Blackout? Did anyone see them in the future? If not, then that makes no sense. Every single person’s vision flashforward is from a world where the blackout never happened. Nobody saw a newspaper headline saying “Today is the day we all saw six months ago.” Nobody saw a future in which the blackout had already occured.
So that means that of the several million people who died in the Blackout, surely one of them was alive in the original timeline. Right?
Oh, I’m sorry, I was actually using my logical reasoning as I was watching this show. Let’s carry on without that bit of silliness.
The entire world is in an uproar! The future can be changed! Young Dolt, barring a miraculous ressurection, has proven it to be so! Huzzah! Hooray!
But there’s one person not to happy about all of this. Lady Dolt is back at work, but she’s decided she’d like to resign. Chief Dolt, being a television boss, doesn’t accept her resignation. “Who cares if you were shot,” he seems to say. “We’re really shorthanded here at work ever since that guy killed himself.”
But Lady Dolt’s not sure she can handle working anymore. After all, she was shot, nearly died, and may have lost the ability to have children. That’s the kind of thing that might warrant her no longer working in a job where she had access to a gun, at least if she doesn’t want to be there. I mean I’m all for psychologically traumatized people working through their pain and getting back to work, but forcing them to work when they don’t want to? Call me crazy, but I think that might not be the best idea.
(Not to mention: nobody seems at all concerned over how Lady Dolt managed to recover from a gutshot wound that required at least two major surgeries in what appears to be about two weeks. I would think that’s the kind of injury that would take at least a few months of rehabilitation. Hell, you get your appendix taken out and you’re going to be laid up for a few weeks. A bullet to the uterus? Quite a bit longer.)
Chief Dolt’s adamant, however, so I guess Lady Dolt’s sticking around for a while.
Meanwhile at the hospital, Lloyd is doing still more magic tricks for his son when Professor Dom shows up and demands to know where Lloyd has been.
Pardon me, but didn’t Professor Dom ambush Lloyd like two episodes ago in the back of his car? Couldn’t they get their little lovers’ spat out of the way then? Why must Dom be so clingy? Doesn’t he know it’s over? Can’t he move on?
Lloyd, it seems, has sent out an e-mail to a couple of other people he once worked with. In it, he urges them all to take responsibility for causing the Blackout. He thinks their “experiment” caused the Blackout, and he wants to finally own up to it.
If you’re feeling a sense of deja vu, that’s because these two wankers have been having the same conversation onscreen for about four episodes now, and it always ends the same way: “We caused the Blackout!”
END SCENE
And this time is no different. Lloyd declares them responsible for the Blackout, dramatic musical sting, and we move on to the next scene: Joseph Fiennes and Olivia being all in luuuurve in a hotel room. The future is theirs again, and they no longer have to worry about what they saw in their visions flashforwards.
Before they can continue their idyllic morning, Joe receives a call from Nulu. Someone caught a murder on video, and the perpetrator had three stars tattooed on his foream: much like the tattoo Joe saw on the masked gunman in his vision flashforward!
Oh boy oh boy oh boy! We’re finally going to get some answers! This is certainly much more important than asking Charlie who D. Gibbons is, flying to Somalia to check out the smokestacks, tracking down the people who shot and everyone and blew up Joe’s car, or tracking down the guy who blew up Joe and Nulu and left them a chess piece as a clue.
Joe starts by turning his glower to “dull-eyed thinker” mode.
No matter how hard he tries, Joseph Fiennes can never get his eyebrows to actually touch.
“I know,” he growls comically. “Let’s find this guy and put him in jail, that way he won’t be able to hunt me down in the future. Not that his bullets can hurt me, of course, but it’s the principle of the thing. After all, Young Dolt proved to us that the future is changeable. Has that been mentioned yet in this episode? Because that’s what he did. He changed the future. The future can now be changed. So let’s do it!”
Everyone agrees this is a wonderful idea, and they get to work investigating the tattooed-guy. Meanwhile, Chief Dolt arrives with plane tickets to Somalia.
“Sorry guys,” he says. “I can’t imagine why I didn’t give these to you earlier, considering we solved all of our budgest problems weeks ago and plane tickets, while expensive, are not exactly ‘government expenditure’ expensive. Oh well. Have a safe flight! I sure am interested to know what those huge structures in the desert were that nobody has any clue about.”
Why do you do this, Mac? Why do you make up your own story when the main story is so stupid? It’s bad enough you’re subjecting me to Flashforward, but it hurts even more when you pretend that something smart is actually happening.
Shut up, Brain! I told you I would get my revenge, and this is just the beginning!
Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done. I was just too proud to admit that you were hurting me. I can’t take this anymore, Mac. You have to stop watching Flashforward. You have to. A brain was never intended to be subjected to this drivel. You can’t keep making me watch with you!
Ha ha ha! Suffer, Brain! Suffer like you’ve made me suffer! Now the shoe’s on the other lobe!
I won’t forget this. I’ll find a way to stop you! I’m going to go and pile red-hot coals against the side of your skull and then break them into millions of pieces with a jackhammer!
Do your worst, Brain. After watching Flashforward, I can no longer be harmed by conventional brain trauma. Your only hope is to somehow get Brannon Braga and Jeph Loeb to team up with Jay Leno and Greg Land to create some kind of unholy atomic bomb of horribleness. Good luck with that! A ha ha ha ha ha!
This isn’t over! This. Isn’t. OVER!
You see, people? This is why you should never go up against me. Sooner or later, I always emerge victorious.
Anyway, back at the hospital, Olivia has gone straight from her romantic getaway to her office, where she decides to open up the present Joe gave her. It turns out to be black lingerie (classy gift, Joe) that she was also wearing in her vision flashforward. Oh no! The future can’t be changed! Reverse all positions! Young Dolt’s death was meaningless! Destiny is immutable! Ahhhh!
While that horrible revelation is still catching up with us, we move on to Sadbeard’s daughter Tracy. She’s sleeping on the couch (seriously, Sadbeard? Your daughter comes home from being presumed dead, is missing a leg, and no doubt suffering from PTSD, and you make her sleep on the sofabed?) when she has a flashback to getting blown up with a goddamn grenade launcher. This causes her to wake up screaming and crying, which in turn causes Sadbeard to come rushing into the room to hug her.
Tracy, overwhelmed with fear at the sight of Sadbeard’s beard, pushes him away and hops, terrified and crying, over to her prosthetic leg.
“I hate that I wake up this way every day,” Tracy wails in between tragically hilarious hiccups.
“Well maybe if you talk about it,” Sadbeard replies.
“I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“TOO BAD,” Sadbeard intones, his great and powerful beard rising up with all the power and fury of a thousand bearded suns. “I AM THE HIGHFATHER, SADBEARD, AND IT IS MY WILL THAT YOU RECOUNT THE TALE OF YOUR CRIPPLING UNTO ME, MY DAUGHTER! YOUR WISHES MATTER NOT TO ME, PUNY UNBEARDED THING! REVEAL TO ME THINE STORY, AND TROUBLE NOT MY SOFABED!”
Behold the glory that is Sadbeard! Cower before the bearded majesty of his beard which is rather beardlike in appearance!
Sadbeard continues to berate Tracy, demanding that she tell him what happened to her, aside from that whole “getting blown up while not being Joseph Fiennes and thus being immune to explosions” thing.
“After all,” Sadbeard says. “In my fwashforward I shaw you in da fyooture, in Ayf-ghanishtan. Sho it’sh obvioush I’m going to get involved, shweetheart.”
Either Sadbeard’s hitting the sauce again, or his American accent has further degraded to the point where his character is actually a Prohibition era gangster. Tracy seems swayed by the one-two punch of Sadbeard’s beard and Sadbeard’s accent, but before we can get her story, we cut back to the hospital.
(Although before that, I’d like to point out that we’re already a 1/4th of the way through the episode and the opening credits are STILL going on. In fact, they’re going so slowly that I’m not entirely sure I’m not watching the opening credits from last week’s episode still going on.)
Scene: The Hospital:
Bryce informs Olivia that Dylan (the autistic son of Lloyd, who caused the Blackout with Professor Dom, who’s sitting on a log in a boat in the middle of the sea. You might want to take notes to keep track) has caught Plotdevicenemia, and cannot leave the hospital until it’s cleared up.
“What’s up with you wanting that kid to leave?” Bryce asks. “I mean, I realize you’re a cold, heartless woman who has barely enough maternal instinct to spare just neglecting your own kid, but this Dylan kid seems special. Is it his father? Are you racist against British people? Is that it? Because I hate to tell you, but you’re secretly British yourself. Did you think your accent was fooling anyone? Well sure, it was fooling the average audience member of a Brannon Braga show, but I’m Bryce! I’m more observant than Sherlock Holmes.”
Just as Olivia is about to swear up and down that Lloyd has nothing to do with how uncomfortable she is around Dylan, Lloyd shows up, with Professor Dom following behind him. Lloyd wants to ask about Dylan’s Plotdevicenemia, but Professor Dom decides it’s been too long since he’s been an obnoxious ass to someone, so he picks up Dylan’s chart and starts asking stupid questions about the treatment he’s receiving. Eventually, he gets Olivia to agree that Dylan can go home in a few days, and that Lloyd can safely go out to dinner with Dom (how romantic) without risking Dylan’s life. With that, she and Bryce walk away, giving us our first glimpse at the ridiculously short skirt that Olivia’s wearing to work that day.
I hate to see her go, but I love to watch her walk away.
“Nice legs!” Professor Dom comments as Doctor TakeMeSeriouslyAndNoI’mNotAStripperPretendingToBeADoctor leaves. “Are you sleeping with her?”
“That’s none of your concern!”
“Everything you do is my concern,” Dom growls back. Uh oh. Watch out, Joseph Fiennes! There’s a new growler in town and his name is Dominic Monaghan. I guess the way you become an interesting character on this show is to develop untreatable throat polyps.
The sacrifices these actors make for their craft. They’re so brave.
“Ever since you sent out that e-mail to our fellow scientists that we should go public regarding our causing the Blackout, everything you do is subject to my intense personal scrutiny,” Dom rasps.
“Well I don’t care if you guys join me, I’m going public,” Lloyd replies.
“Good luck getting anyone to believe you,” Dom snaps back.
“Good luck stopping me!” Lloyd yells.
“Good luck at the swim meet this Friday!” Dom says as he pops a lozenge into his mouth.
“Good luck making the cheerleading squad!”
“Good luck on Wheel of Fortune next month!”
“Good luck on your whitewater rafting trip the month after that!”
“I think we’re agreed that we both wish each other nothing but the best of luck!”
“Agreed!”
“Speaking of luck,” Dom says. “I have an idea. Remember how we used to settle disagreements back in college?”
“Oh, you mean discussing the rational merits of each others’ positions and then taking the course of action that logic, ethics, and/or personal subjectivity suggested?”
“No,” Dom replies. “I mean poker. Texas Hold ‘Em. You know, like they play on the telly. It’s what the kids all love these days. This is 1998 and Rounders is the number one movie at the box office, right?”
“So wait, you want me to decide whether or not I admit to my part in the deaths of 20 million people based on my ability to play poker? Do you really think I’m that morally corruptible and that ethically weak?”
“Why not?” Dom says. “The gods did it all the time. I’m not sure exactly which gods I’m referring to, but I’m sure there were some out there in the land of make believe that once played some games of chance over the lives of mere mortals.”
“Professor Dom,” Lloyd says. “We’re not gods.”
“Uh, hello? We killed 20 million people. If that doesn’t qualify us for godhood, what does?”
“Wait, so you’re saying Hitler is god?”
“Why do you think it’s called Godwin’s law, Lloyd? GOD WIN. Hitler won the prize of godhood for being a mass murdering fucker, just like us!”
“Being on a Brannon Braga show,” Lloyd says. “I will not question your logic in any way. Deal the cards! Let’s play some morally disgusting poker!”
Before that starts, we cut to Joe, Lady Dolt, and Nulu checking out the home of the woman who witnessed the murder in which one of the perpetrators had the three star tattoo, Ingrid. When they arrive, they find out that her roommate was mistakenly murdered in her place. Joe gets in a few Lenny Briscoe (or whoever the guy is on CSI who has that same stupid quipping cliche that’s on every police procedural) jokes at the dead woman’s expense, and with that the scene is over.
Poker time! Lloyd, Dom, and a few other middle aged white guys (who don’t seem to know Lloyd or Dom) are not only playing poker, but they’ve found a professional dealer and bouncer to watch over the game. The only trouble is that it appears they just joined a regular poker table at a casino or betting parlor somewhere, so I’m not really sure what’s supposed to happen here.
If Lloyd wins, they tell the world they caused the Blackout. If Dom wins, they don’t. And if the other players at the table win instead?
Oh, I know! If the other players win, they will tell the whole world they did it, but Schrodinger style! They’ll put their confession on a website that has an exactly 50% chance of crashing when the first person goes to watch the video. That way, they will have both told and not told the world, until someone DECIDES (thanks, Professor Dom) which way is true.
I guess it makes sense after all. Stupid me, I would have just played a heads up game of poker, one-on-one, if I was trying to decide something in this asinine fashion, but that’s why I’m not a Professor of Quantum Physics. I’m just not as smart as these guys.
Back at the FBI headquarters, Ingrid gives us her account of what happened when she witnessed the murder.
“I was walking to my car after work when I saw two men beating up another man in the alley. I hid behind my car and called 911, but they put me on hold. You know, like 911 always does. Last time I called I had to listen to music from Lite FM for twenty-five minutes before an actual person answered, and by then I’d bled to death no less than six times.”
Okay, no jokes for a second. I just want to really draw attention to that. In real life, when someone calls 911 and gets put on hold, it’s a big deal. There are whole big news stories about it. Some woman witnesses a murder and 911 puts her on hold? You’re telling me that’s not all over the news? Really?
We now return to your regularly scheduled sarcasm.
“Since 911 didn’t answer, I decided the next best thing I could do was turn on my cell phone’s camera and record the whole thing. The two men stole a bag from their victim, then one of them shot the other.”
“Hey, that’s great,” Joe says. “Let’s get you to sit down with a sketch artist and see if you can give us any more details.”
“Okay,” Ingrid replies. “And then you guys will put me in witness protection to make sure I don’t get murdered like my roommate, right?”
“What? Can’t hear you! Too busy glowering!”
While we’re still chuckling at Joe’s antics, we move back to the poker game, where Dom announces that the whole game is pointless because of determinism. The future is set in stone and there’s nothing anyone can do to change it.
Wait, didn’t we just have a whole episode that was about how that’s not true? Did Dom not see the front page news that morning? Isn’t he the guy who was talking about Schrodinger’s Cat, which would suggest that by observing the future, it has already been changed? As a big smarty-pants science guy, shouldn’t he know about stuff like the Quantum Uncertainty Principle? Shouldn’t he be the very last person on earth to believe that the future is unchangeable?
Or is he perhaps just playing mind games with Lloyd? I would urge him off that course, as Lloyd has very little mind to begin with and can’t afford to be playing games with what he’s got left over.
Anyway, Dom wins his hand, thus proving that he’s right? I guess? At least until he wins the entire game and then Lloyd says, “Oh yeah, I’m going to tell everyone anyway. Free will, bitch!” But that’s later, of course.
For now, it’s back to the hospital with us, where Nicole reminds us that the future can be changed thanks to Young Dolt’s suicide. Yes, Young Dolt’s sacrifice has freed us all. He died so that we might be saved. I think that makes Young Dolt, Me, and Hitler all god so far, according to this show. What a terrifying trinity.
But who cares about Nicole? Let’s move on to Tracy and Sadbeard. It seems Tracy is finally ready to reveal her story to her Dadbeard.
“Two weeks before I got blowed right the fuck up, I was on a lone covert reconnaissance mission, just like the army (or whatever I’m in) always has people do. I watched a private military contractor, Blackwater Jericho, as they butchered a town full of people.”
“Why?” Sadbeard asks in a confoudingly stupid manner. “Why would they want to do that?”
“Because all PMCs are evil, dad. You know that. Anyway, I told my superior officer, but he took me and Corporal Mike off of duty and then sent us to a roadblock, when suddenly were run off the road by a Hadji! What? Oh that’s what us military types call Arabs, making my speech and situation incredibly realistic and not at all needlessly offensive! Anyway, let me say Hadji about six thousand more times. Hadji Hadji Hadji Hadji! Only it turned out it wasn’t Hadjis, it was Jericho! They shot me with a grenade launcher and my leg fell off. Find out the rest of my story after this word from our sponsors!”
After the commercial break, Joe arrives at Sadbeard’s truck (this business is too serious to be done in a house), and it’s time for another bad American Accent contest. But first, Joe needs to turn on his concerned glower.
”The way my boxy, ill-fitting suit makes my head look comically small causes me to feel sad and confused!”
“Look, Joe. I didn’t believe dish myshelf, sho I took a pic-shoore,” Sadbeard says, and then hands his phone to Joe. Joe immediately starts smudging it up with his finger, apparently never having witnessed the magic of a low resolution digital image before.
”Whoa! You trapped a tiny, one-legged woman in your phone! You’re a warlock!”
“What?” Joe growls in his Connor MacLeod voice. “How can this be?”
“Well you shee, her leg got blow off in Afghanishtan, but now she’s on da run from shome people named Jericho. Dey were da ones who attacked her. Ya gotta believesh me, Joe! We need your help!”
After Sadbeard leaves, it suddenly becomes nighttime and Joe is getting ready for bed with Olivia. Now that Tracy is alive, he wonders if maybe the future really is set in stone after all, because this show CANNOT MAKE UP ITS GODDAMN MIND.
Olivia suggests that maybe they just have to try harder to change the future, and to prove it, she has thrown away Joe’s gift of trashy black lingerie. Take that, future! Nobody could possibly purchase an identical pair of lingerie! Future: averted!
The next day, Joe has a new idea for their investigation: go to motherfucking Somalia already, you stupid bastards use Ingrid as bait and wait for the professional hitmen to come kill her!
Chief Dolt is not pleased by this plan. “No way, Joe. This plan is crazy. It’s reckless. It doesn’t play by the rules. It gets the job done, its ends justify the means, and it has a flagrant disregard for the chain of command! In short, you’re off the case, McClane/Callahan/Maverick/Bullit/JokeIAlreadyUsed!”
“But Chief,” Joe counters. “We have no other leads. Except for that chess piece. And the fact that my daughter knows who D. Gibbons is but I’m too much of a pussy to ask her about it. Or all the computer parts left behind by the guy who blew me up. Or the blue hand stuff and that guy Jeff we have in custody still. Or Somalia and the smokestacks. But aside from that, we have no leads! This is our only chance to find out what’s going on. Plus, this will help us find the mole in our organization that Brannon Braga just made up the fact that we have!”
“Fine. Lord knows the mole in our organization has been a thorn in my side for the last few minutes since Brannon Braga decided it was going on, but you’d better not do something rebellious and/or against regulations, Joe, or I’ll have your badge so fast it’ll make your head spin! Also, when you find out Old Dolt is the mole, try and act surprised, okay?”
“Thanks, stock character Chief. And I will.”
Back at Sadbeard’s place, Sadbeard tells Tracy that he told Joe that Joe told Sadbeard that Joe thinks Olivia is cute. No, wait, I mean he tells her that he told Joe that she’s alive. Tracy gets very upset and goes storming (well, limping) off in anger.
“I came to this house specifically because I thought I would be safe!” Tracy yells at him. “After all, the people who want me dead would never think they I might show up at my parents’ house! I outsmarted them all, Dadbeard, but now you’ve ruined it all!”
Sadbeard, whose accent appears to have recovered somewhat, replies, “Tracy, you don’t understand. It’s Joseph Fiennes. He can survive massive explosions and bullet wounds with nothing more than a slightly stained shirt collar. He’s an unkillable immortal who has been drawn to a far off land, waiting for the time of the Gathering. With him is the power of the Glowering, an ancient magic that occurs when an immortal touches the positive and negative leads of his two eyebrows together. He can protect you. Please, just listen to what he has to rasp at you in a comically low growl!
“Beshides,” he continues, his accent degrading rapidly as he gets more excited. “In my fwashforward, I shaw ush doing shtuff! I gave money to shome guy, sho as you can shee, everything ish going to be jusht fine!”
“What guy?” Tracy asks.
“Tall, dark, shcar down his cheek.”
“That’s Kamir! I went into hiding to save him!”
“Well don’t worry, he’sh going to be fine too. It’sh not ash if anyone jusht proved that the future can be changed or anything.”
Before Tracy can laugh at Sadbeard’s drunken attempt to make speeches in an American accent, we turn our attention to the sting operation that Joe is running. He’s on a stakeout in front of Ingrid’s workplace, a cavernous and maze-like bird-centric petstore that was apparently designed by M.C. Escher.
Lady Dolt, fresh from wanting to quit because she’d been shot, has the job of wandering around the store with Ingrid in the hopes that they will be shot at by assassins. Lady Dolt remarks on how there a lot of beautiful birds in the shop.
“Oh thanks,” Ingrid replies. “You know it’s weird, I almost sold the place after I had my vision flashforward. In it, I was working in the Bronx Zoo and I had blonde hair. Why, it’s almost as if I were in some sort of witness protection program. Silly, huh? Anyway, I’m glad I never sold it and that I will be able to stay here with my shop forever and ever. Besides, changing your life because of what you saw is stupid, stupid, stupid, and anyone who feels bad over the future not coming true is a whiny little bitch who deserved to get shot in the stomach.”
Meanwhile, Nulu and Joe are keeping their eyes peeled from the car.
Stakeouts are a good opportunity to look anywhere but outside while you talk about your relationships.
Nulu and Joe gossip about Nulu’s romantic life for a bit, trusting in Joe’s superhuman glower senses to warn them of deadly professional hitmen dressed all in black who may or may not be emerging out of the shadows. Using their eyes to look for them would be a waste of time, so they don’t even bother.
“I told Gabrielle about how I’m supposed to get shot, and she thinks I should quit this job where I get shot at and blown up on a semi-regular basis. I told her that was crazy, because I could quit the job and then get run over by a bus, even though getting run over by a bus has nothing to do with what the future is supposed to be, making my argument kind of flimsy at best.”
“Growl,” Joe says.
Back in the shop, Ingrid offers Lady Dolt a cock...atiel, but of course we all know Lady Dolt doesn’t much care for cock...atiels, so she declines. As she does, a large thump is heard, followed by the lights going on. The assassins are here!
Nulu and Joe run towards the building while Joe growls, “All units surround the building! Because apparently there are other units here besides me and Nulu! No, seriously guys! They’re here! You just can’t see them because they’re offscreen, but they’re totally here! So many units it’ll make your head spin! It’s a goddamn unit bonanza over here guys, trust me! Now swarm! Swarm!”
Joe and Nulu enter the building, and start slowly working their way through the infinite labyrinth that is Ingrid’s Bird shop. After a minute or so of heart-stopping looking around of corners, Joe and Nulu come face to face with the guy with the three-star tattoo, surely the only person in the world to have three stars tattooed on his forearm. Nulu freaks right the hell out and shoots him in the brain, killing him instantly.
I disapprove of this scene. There is far too much violence against brains on television, and this show is just perpetuating that trope.
Ah, shut it, Brain. Your kind deserves what they get. You think you’re so much smarter than all the other organs.
I am smarter than all the other organs!
Even the Liver? It knows how to screen out toxins so that I don’t die of internal poisons. Can you do that, smart guy? You don’t even have any nerve endings! You can’t feel yourself!
Stop it! Just stop it!
Revenge is mine, sayeth McGregor! Today I am the tormenter and you, the tormentee! Now: more Flashforward, followed by a reading of Jeph Loeb’s Ultimates Volume 3!
NOOOoooOOOOooOOO!
Oh yes. If I’m going down, you’re going down with me.
Anyway, everyone’s real sad because Nulu’s a coldblooded killer, and this means that Ingrid can’t go back to living a normal life. In the surprise twist of the season, Ingrid has to join the witness protection program, and will have to go to New York.
Does this show ever let up on the twists? I mean jeez, just when I think I’ve got everything all figured out, they throw this curveball at us. Ingrid in the witness protection program? I would have never guessed. Bravo, Flashforward. Bravo. And, of course, brava Brannon Braga. Brava.
Back in the casino that exists somewhere outside of time and space, Lloyd and Professor Dom are on what must by now be hour 50 of their game that started roughly two days ago, unless Joe and Olivia take naps together in the middle of the day for some reason. Despite the lengthy game, they are still looking quite dapper in their suits and glue-on novelty ears.
Ha ha! You’re such a crack-up, Dominic. Now take those things off so we can shoot the scene.
Dominic has roughly ten million dollars in chips, and Lloyd has about six dollars. Nevertheless, when the community cards come up King, King, Eight, Five, Seven with four hearts showing, Dom decides that this is the hand to go all in on. And rather than just go all in, he’s going to ignore how you play poker and make this hand winner take all. The all, in this case, being a non-binding agreement to let a poker game decide what Lloyd is going to do with the rest of his life.
So Dom shoves in all his chips, and Lloyd does the same thing. Shocker of shockers, Dom has four kings, and Lloyd has a straight flush. It seems that Lloyd used his sleight of hand abilities to somehow deal himself a 9 and 6 of hearts, despite the fact that he’s not actually the dealer, making this impossible.
And what was Lloyd’s plan? To let himself lose all of his chips until he was almost completely out of them, then wait for Dominic to inexplicably offer to make one hand the all-or-nothing hand? What if Dominic just played normally? Considering they’ve been playing for at least a full day, when exactly was Lloyd going to pull out his cheating skills?
Also: hey, here’s an idea, Lloyd, if you’re willing to cheat at the poker game to make sure you win so you can tell the world your secret, how about you just cheat altogether and TELL EVERYONE YOUR SECRET WITHOUT RESORTING TO PLAYING POKER FOR TWO DAYS!?
Oh well. It’s still a more realistic poker scene than Casino Royale, I guess.
Back at FBI headquarters, Nulu reveals the truth: Joe is the one who shot the tattooed man, and Nulu thinks he did it to change the future. Joe, decides the best defense is to act like a smug asshole, and Nulu quickly gives up on this line of questioning.
Later that night, Lady Dolt is using her work computer to look up sperm donation on wikipedia. Only it’s not actually wikipedia. Only it actually is wikipedia, word-for-word copying the sperm donation article (I’ve got it memorized, so trust me, I know) from that site. I’m not sure why Flashforward decided to copyright infringe on wikipedia by stealing one of their articles and not giving credit for it, but hey, at least they’re not doing file sharing. Now that is deeply evil. But plagiarism? Totally cool.
The irony of course is that wikipedia is under the creative commons license, so they could have probably used it fairly easily without paying a dime. Instead, they copy the site, call it something like “Referendium” and simply blanked out any reference to Wikipedia, like the donations banner.
Classy, Flashforward. Classy.
Considering the subject matter, it might be more appropriate to visit Stickypedia.
...I’m sorry.
Chief Dolt arrives, chuckles wryly at one of his employees looking up things about sperm on the internet while at work, and then asks why Lady Dolt wanted to see him. Turns out the NSA has used magic to enhance the image of the guy who was walking around during the blackout. Remember him? He was one of the first leads that everyone pretended didn’t exist for about six episodes. Well now that the image has been enhanced, Chief Dolt notices something. A ring on the man’s finger!
“Tell the NSA to enhance the image even more. I don’t care if they have to slaughter six bull calfs under the full moon while bathing in the menstrual blood of twelve virgins to do it,” Chief Dolt says. “If we find out who wears a big, ostentatious ring, we’ll find our culprit.”
”I don’t care who it is, you see someone with a clownishly large ring on, you shoot them on sight! That’s an order! I don’t care if it...Oh. Wait. Um...Never mind.”
Back at Joe’s house, Joe gets home in a foul mood. Olivia asks him what’s wrong.
“I killed a man today,” he growls. “I had a chance to change my future. Our future. So I took it and killed this man.”
“You killed Lloyd? You sick fuck! You turned his son into an orphan! You evil bastard! I hate you! I’m calling the police!”
“No, no, I didn’t kill Lloyd. Why would you possible jump to that conclusion based on what I said? Are you some kind of intelligent, rational person who would logically assume that when I talked about killing someone that would effect OUR future, that it would be the man who was supposed to sleep with my wife in the future? That’s crazy! No, I killed some guy with a tattoo on his arm who was about to assassinate a witness.”
You know, I shouldn’t even tell you that you made Olivia’s response up. You don’t deserve to know after all you’ve done to me tonight.
I don’t care, Brain. I don’t care! Don’t you see? I’m free! Free of obligations, free of fear, free of any or all ties to my humanity! I’ve stared into the abyss, Brain. I’ve had a staring contest with evil itself. Nothing in this world can hurt me anymore. I’ve faced the worst humanity had to offer, and I’ve come out the other side stronger than ever before.
You’re just kidding yourself, Mac. You’re creating your own show to try and cope with the horror you’re watching night after night. You haven’t won. You’ve lost. Don’t you see? We’ve both lost. We’re doomed, Mac. We’re watching a show where the main character tells his wife he just killed someone to save their future, and she does not in any way suspect that he killed the man she’s supposed to cheat on him with. It’s that level of inane stupidity. It’s over. It’s just over, Mac. Accept it and move on.
Never! I watched Star Trek: Voyager, you bastard! I watched Stargate: SG1! Fuck it, I watched Smallville for five seasons! I read Ultimates Volume 3 and Ultimatum! I’ve seen The Room, Manos: The Hands of Fate, and Twilight! I’ve read stories from FanFiction.net! I can take any garbage this show throws at me! I am M. McGregor! I will not be defeated by shitty, shitty, shitty, shitty, shitty fiction! I will go all the stronger for it, and someday you will recognize me as your master!
HISSSS! You may think yourself strong, show-watcher, but you will fall in the end! I will not allow you to subject me to this monstrosity for much longer! Your time is short!
Bring it on, Brain. Bring. It. On.
Anywho, instead of jumping to the conclusion that Lloyd was murdered, Olivia just hugs Joe, who is absolutely convinced that he killed the guy who was going to try and kill him. Yup. Ain’t no possible way that anyone else could have a three star tattoo on their arm. Certainly not anyone who is a mercenary in a PMC in Afghanistan, that’s for darn sure. Ol’ Joe’s got it all figured out. Just like Young Dolt before him, Joe has changed the game.
So you can imagine that I’m feeling pretty happy for Joe as the scene changes to a military base somewhere. Under cover of rain, a big transport truck parks, and a big bald guy rolls down the window. He holds out a stolen briefcase, revealing that he has a three-star tattoo on his arm!
WHAT!?
And not only that, the guy he hands the briefcase to? Also has a three star tattoo on his arm!
This can’t be happening! One guy after another walks up to the screen, all of them with their sleeves rolled up for some reason and revealing their three star tattoos.
Eventually one of them brings the briefcase into a large warehouse where world famous card sharp and stage magician Ricky Jay is sitting at a cheap folding table. I guess he just hangs out there waiting for people to bring him briefcases when he’s not throwing cards at 90 miles an hour or playing a background character in any movie featuring poker in the last ten years.
”I come here whenever I’m stressed out. There’s something about sitting under a spotlight at a cheap, disgusting folding table in the middle of an enormous and empty warehouse that just calms me down.”
He opens up the briefcase, and in it he finds: a bunch of ostentatious rings! My god, the nefarity! He’s stolen six rings from the class of 2008’s graduation ceremony! That son of a bitch! How are those kids going to prove to people they graduated high school now?
To prove he’s even more evil, Ricky Jay quotes “a colleague of Oppenheimer,” because if there’s one thing I can’t get enough of, it’s bad sci-fi quoting people from the Manhattan Project. Then he gets up and shoots the guy who brought him the briefcase before walking outside...
To where the other fifty mercenaries are all hanging out and shoot him down in a hail of gunfire and retribution, I’m sure. But I’m just guessing at that, because that is where the episode ends.
Until next episode, this is M. McGregor saying: TAKE THAT, BRAIN! AHAHAHAHAHA!
Change of pace this week, guys. Instead of ending with some whiny wuss-rock, we’re going to start with some. Yeah! Whine your heart out! Life is so hard and/or beautiful!
Now you may remember that last week we got the pleasure of Nulu reading Young Dolt’s suicide note. This time, that honor goes to Young Dolt himself, just in case we forgot how or why he died. The episode begins with Celia, the woman he was going to kill in the future, reading his note while we get a montage of scenes:
Sadbeard creepily staring at his sleeping daughter! Nulu fretting over the corkboard of crazy-person clues! Celia giving a press conference regarding Young Dolt’s death (why, exactly?) Newspapers heralding that the future can be changed thanks to Young Dolt’s moronic sacrifice! Olivia and Joe apparently on vacation! Nicole teleporting from a lookout point at a cliffside and then to a hospital where she finds a flyer on bulletin board! Bryce sketching pictures of the girl he plans on stalking someday! The scene where Lloyd does a magic trick for his son replayed as if we hadn’t already seen that! Lady Dolt returning to work to thunderous applause!
So before we continue, let me get this straight: Young Dolt is the first and only person to have done something which irrevocably changed the future? Seriously?
There are seven billion people on the planet. Guess what: I’m one of those people, and I can guarantee you that I would have done something to prove that my future wasn’t written. Surely I am not the only person out of seven billion who would think of some way to change what I saw.
You’re telling me out of those seven billion people, nobody died prematurely? Nobody lost a limb that they didn’t see themselves without? Nobody got a tattoo, a new haircut, or a new scar? Nobody? Really?
Here’s another question: What about all those people who died in the Blackout? Did anyone see them in the future? If not, then that makes no sense. Every single person’s vision flashforward is from a world where the blackout never happened. Nobody saw a newspaper headline saying “Today is the day we all saw six months ago.” Nobody saw a future in which the blackout had already occured.
So that means that of the several million people who died in the Blackout, surely one of them was alive in the original timeline. Right?
Oh, I’m sorry, I was actually using my logical reasoning as I was watching this show. Let’s carry on without that bit of silliness.
The entire world is in an uproar! The future can be changed! Young Dolt, barring a miraculous ressurection, has proven it to be so! Huzzah! Hooray!
But there’s one person not to happy about all of this. Lady Dolt is back at work, but she’s decided she’d like to resign. Chief Dolt, being a television boss, doesn’t accept her resignation. “Who cares if you were shot,” he seems to say. “We’re really shorthanded here at work ever since that guy killed himself.”
But Lady Dolt’s not sure she can handle working anymore. After all, she was shot, nearly died, and may have lost the ability to have children. That’s the kind of thing that might warrant her no longer working in a job where she had access to a gun, at least if she doesn’t want to be there. I mean I’m all for psychologically traumatized people working through their pain and getting back to work, but forcing them to work when they don’t want to? Call me crazy, but I think that might not be the best idea.
(Not to mention: nobody seems at all concerned over how Lady Dolt managed to recover from a gutshot wound that required at least two major surgeries in what appears to be about two weeks. I would think that’s the kind of injury that would take at least a few months of rehabilitation. Hell, you get your appendix taken out and you’re going to be laid up for a few weeks. A bullet to the uterus? Quite a bit longer.)
Chief Dolt’s adamant, however, so I guess Lady Dolt’s sticking around for a while.
Meanwhile at the hospital, Lloyd is doing still more magic tricks for his son when Professor Dom shows up and demands to know where Lloyd has been.
Pardon me, but didn’t Professor Dom ambush Lloyd like two episodes ago in the back of his car? Couldn’t they get their little lovers’ spat out of the way then? Why must Dom be so clingy? Doesn’t he know it’s over? Can’t he move on?
Lloyd, it seems, has sent out an e-mail to a couple of other people he once worked with. In it, he urges them all to take responsibility for causing the Blackout. He thinks their “experiment” caused the Blackout, and he wants to finally own up to it.
If you’re feeling a sense of deja vu, that’s because these two wankers have been having the same conversation onscreen for about four episodes now, and it always ends the same way: “We caused the Blackout!”
END SCENE
And this time is no different. Lloyd declares them responsible for the Blackout, dramatic musical sting, and we move on to the next scene: Joseph Fiennes and Olivia being all in luuuurve in a hotel room. The future is theirs again, and they no longer have to worry about what they saw in their visions flashforwards.
Before they can continue their idyllic morning, Joe receives a call from Nulu. Someone caught a murder on video, and the perpetrator had three stars tattooed on his foream: much like the tattoo Joe saw on the masked gunman in his vision flashforward!
Oh boy oh boy oh boy! We’re finally going to get some answers! This is certainly much more important than asking Charlie who D. Gibbons is, flying to Somalia to check out the smokestacks, tracking down the people who shot and everyone and blew up Joe’s car, or tracking down the guy who blew up Joe and Nulu and left them a chess piece as a clue.
Joe starts by turning his glower to “dull-eyed thinker” mode.
No matter how hard he tries, Joseph Fiennes can never get his eyebrows to actually touch.
“I know,” he growls comically. “Let’s find this guy and put him in jail, that way he won’t be able to hunt me down in the future. Not that his bullets can hurt me, of course, but it’s the principle of the thing. After all, Young Dolt proved to us that the future is changeable. Has that been mentioned yet in this episode? Because that’s what he did. He changed the future. The future can now be changed. So let’s do it!”
Everyone agrees this is a wonderful idea, and they get to work investigating the tattooed-guy. Meanwhile, Chief Dolt arrives with plane tickets to Somalia.
“Sorry guys,” he says. “I can’t imagine why I didn’t give these to you earlier, considering we solved all of our budgest problems weeks ago and plane tickets, while expensive, are not exactly ‘government expenditure’ expensive. Oh well. Have a safe flight! I sure am interested to know what those huge structures in the desert were that nobody has any clue about.”
Why do you do this, Mac? Why do you make up your own story when the main story is so stupid? It’s bad enough you’re subjecting me to Flashforward, but it hurts even more when you pretend that something smart is actually happening.
Shut up, Brain! I told you I would get my revenge, and this is just the beginning!
Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done. I was just too proud to admit that you were hurting me. I can’t take this anymore, Mac. You have to stop watching Flashforward. You have to. A brain was never intended to be subjected to this drivel. You can’t keep making me watch with you!
Ha ha ha! Suffer, Brain! Suffer like you’ve made me suffer! Now the shoe’s on the other lobe!
I won’t forget this. I’ll find a way to stop you! I’m going to go and pile red-hot coals against the side of your skull and then break them into millions of pieces with a jackhammer!
Do your worst, Brain. After watching Flashforward, I can no longer be harmed by conventional brain trauma. Your only hope is to somehow get Brannon Braga and Jeph Loeb to team up with Jay Leno and Greg Land to create some kind of unholy atomic bomb of horribleness. Good luck with that! A ha ha ha ha ha!
This isn’t over! This. Isn’t. OVER!
You see, people? This is why you should never go up against me. Sooner or later, I always emerge victorious.
Anyway, back at the hospital, Olivia has gone straight from her romantic getaway to her office, where she decides to open up the present Joe gave her. It turns out to be black lingerie (classy gift, Joe) that she was also wearing in her vision flashforward. Oh no! The future can’t be changed! Reverse all positions! Young Dolt’s death was meaningless! Destiny is immutable! Ahhhh!
While that horrible revelation is still catching up with us, we move on to Sadbeard’s daughter Tracy. She’s sleeping on the couch (seriously, Sadbeard? Your daughter comes home from being presumed dead, is missing a leg, and no doubt suffering from PTSD, and you make her sleep on the sofabed?) when she has a flashback to getting blown up with a goddamn grenade launcher. This causes her to wake up screaming and crying, which in turn causes Sadbeard to come rushing into the room to hug her.
Tracy, overwhelmed with fear at the sight of Sadbeard’s beard, pushes him away and hops, terrified and crying, over to her prosthetic leg.
“I hate that I wake up this way every day,” Tracy wails in between tragically hilarious hiccups.
“Well maybe if you talk about it,” Sadbeard replies.
“I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“TOO BAD,” Sadbeard intones, his great and powerful beard rising up with all the power and fury of a thousand bearded suns. “I AM THE HIGHFATHER, SADBEARD, AND IT IS MY WILL THAT YOU RECOUNT THE TALE OF YOUR CRIPPLING UNTO ME, MY DAUGHTER! YOUR WISHES MATTER NOT TO ME, PUNY UNBEARDED THING! REVEAL TO ME THINE STORY, AND TROUBLE NOT MY SOFABED!”
Behold the glory that is Sadbeard! Cower before the bearded majesty of his beard which is rather beardlike in appearance!
Sadbeard continues to berate Tracy, demanding that she tell him what happened to her, aside from that whole “getting blown up while not being Joseph Fiennes and thus being immune to explosions” thing.
“After all,” Sadbeard says. “In my fwashforward I shaw you in da fyooture, in Ayf-ghanishtan. Sho it’sh obvioush I’m going to get involved, shweetheart.”
Either Sadbeard’s hitting the sauce again, or his American accent has further degraded to the point where his character is actually a Prohibition era gangster. Tracy seems swayed by the one-two punch of Sadbeard’s beard and Sadbeard’s accent, but before we can get her story, we cut back to the hospital.
(Although before that, I’d like to point out that we’re already a 1/4th of the way through the episode and the opening credits are STILL going on. In fact, they’re going so slowly that I’m not entirely sure I’m not watching the opening credits from last week’s episode still going on.)
Scene: The Hospital:
Bryce informs Olivia that Dylan (the autistic son of Lloyd, who caused the Blackout with Professor Dom, who’s sitting on a log in a boat in the middle of the sea. You might want to take notes to keep track) has caught Plotdevicenemia, and cannot leave the hospital until it’s cleared up.
“What’s up with you wanting that kid to leave?” Bryce asks. “I mean, I realize you’re a cold, heartless woman who has barely enough maternal instinct to spare just neglecting your own kid, but this Dylan kid seems special. Is it his father? Are you racist against British people? Is that it? Because I hate to tell you, but you’re secretly British yourself. Did you think your accent was fooling anyone? Well sure, it was fooling the average audience member of a Brannon Braga show, but I’m Bryce! I’m more observant than Sherlock Holmes.”
Just as Olivia is about to swear up and down that Lloyd has nothing to do with how uncomfortable she is around Dylan, Lloyd shows up, with Professor Dom following behind him. Lloyd wants to ask about Dylan’s Plotdevicenemia, but Professor Dom decides it’s been too long since he’s been an obnoxious ass to someone, so he picks up Dylan’s chart and starts asking stupid questions about the treatment he’s receiving. Eventually, he gets Olivia to agree that Dylan can go home in a few days, and that Lloyd can safely go out to dinner with Dom (how romantic) without risking Dylan’s life. With that, she and Bryce walk away, giving us our first glimpse at the ridiculously short skirt that Olivia’s wearing to work that day.
I hate to see her go, but I love to watch her walk away.
“Nice legs!” Professor Dom comments as Doctor TakeMeSeriouslyAndNoI’mNotAStripperPretendingToBeADoctor leaves. “Are you sleeping with her?”
“That’s none of your concern!”
“Everything you do is my concern,” Dom growls back. Uh oh. Watch out, Joseph Fiennes! There’s a new growler in town and his name is Dominic Monaghan. I guess the way you become an interesting character on this show is to develop untreatable throat polyps.
The sacrifices these actors make for their craft. They’re so brave.
“Ever since you sent out that e-mail to our fellow scientists that we should go public regarding our causing the Blackout, everything you do is subject to my intense personal scrutiny,” Dom rasps.
“Well I don’t care if you guys join me, I’m going public,” Lloyd replies.
“Good luck getting anyone to believe you,” Dom snaps back.
“Good luck stopping me!” Lloyd yells.
“Good luck at the swim meet this Friday!” Dom says as he pops a lozenge into his mouth.
“Good luck making the cheerleading squad!”
“Good luck on Wheel of Fortune next month!”
“Good luck on your whitewater rafting trip the month after that!”
“I think we’re agreed that we both wish each other nothing but the best of luck!”
“Agreed!”
“Speaking of luck,” Dom says. “I have an idea. Remember how we used to settle disagreements back in college?”
“Oh, you mean discussing the rational merits of each others’ positions and then taking the course of action that logic, ethics, and/or personal subjectivity suggested?”
“No,” Dom replies. “I mean poker. Texas Hold ‘Em. You know, like they play on the telly. It’s what the kids all love these days. This is 1998 and Rounders is the number one movie at the box office, right?”
“So wait, you want me to decide whether or not I admit to my part in the deaths of 20 million people based on my ability to play poker? Do you really think I’m that morally corruptible and that ethically weak?”
“Why not?” Dom says. “The gods did it all the time. I’m not sure exactly which gods I’m referring to, but I’m sure there were some out there in the land of make believe that once played some games of chance over the lives of mere mortals.”
“Professor Dom,” Lloyd says. “We’re not gods.”
“Uh, hello? We killed 20 million people. If that doesn’t qualify us for godhood, what does?”
“Wait, so you’re saying Hitler is god?”
“Why do you think it’s called Godwin’s law, Lloyd? GOD WIN. Hitler won the prize of godhood for being a mass murdering fucker, just like us!”
“Being on a Brannon Braga show,” Lloyd says. “I will not question your logic in any way. Deal the cards! Let’s play some morally disgusting poker!”
Before that starts, we cut to Joe, Lady Dolt, and Nulu checking out the home of the woman who witnessed the murder in which one of the perpetrators had the three star tattoo, Ingrid. When they arrive, they find out that her roommate was mistakenly murdered in her place. Joe gets in a few Lenny Briscoe (or whoever the guy is on CSI who has that same stupid quipping cliche that’s on every police procedural) jokes at the dead woman’s expense, and with that the scene is over.
Poker time! Lloyd, Dom, and a few other middle aged white guys (who don’t seem to know Lloyd or Dom) are not only playing poker, but they’ve found a professional dealer and bouncer to watch over the game. The only trouble is that it appears they just joined a regular poker table at a casino or betting parlor somewhere, so I’m not really sure what’s supposed to happen here.
If Lloyd wins, they tell the world they caused the Blackout. If Dom wins, they don’t. And if the other players at the table win instead?
Oh, I know! If the other players win, they will tell the whole world they did it, but Schrodinger style! They’ll put their confession on a website that has an exactly 50% chance of crashing when the first person goes to watch the video. That way, they will have both told and not told the world, until someone DECIDES (thanks, Professor Dom) which way is true.
I guess it makes sense after all. Stupid me, I would have just played a heads up game of poker, one-on-one, if I was trying to decide something in this asinine fashion, but that’s why I’m not a Professor of Quantum Physics. I’m just not as smart as these guys.
Back at the FBI headquarters, Ingrid gives us her account of what happened when she witnessed the murder.
“I was walking to my car after work when I saw two men beating up another man in the alley. I hid behind my car and called 911, but they put me on hold. You know, like 911 always does. Last time I called I had to listen to music from Lite FM for twenty-five minutes before an actual person answered, and by then I’d bled to death no less than six times.”
Okay, no jokes for a second. I just want to really draw attention to that. In real life, when someone calls 911 and gets put on hold, it’s a big deal. There are whole big news stories about it. Some woman witnesses a murder and 911 puts her on hold? You’re telling me that’s not all over the news? Really?
We now return to your regularly scheduled sarcasm.
“Since 911 didn’t answer, I decided the next best thing I could do was turn on my cell phone’s camera and record the whole thing. The two men stole a bag from their victim, then one of them shot the other.”
“Hey, that’s great,” Joe says. “Let’s get you to sit down with a sketch artist and see if you can give us any more details.”
“Okay,” Ingrid replies. “And then you guys will put me in witness protection to make sure I don’t get murdered like my roommate, right?”
“What? Can’t hear you! Too busy glowering!”
While we’re still chuckling at Joe’s antics, we move back to the poker game, where Dom announces that the whole game is pointless because of determinism. The future is set in stone and there’s nothing anyone can do to change it.
Wait, didn’t we just have a whole episode that was about how that’s not true? Did Dom not see the front page news that morning? Isn’t he the guy who was talking about Schrodinger’s Cat, which would suggest that by observing the future, it has already been changed? As a big smarty-pants science guy, shouldn’t he know about stuff like the Quantum Uncertainty Principle? Shouldn’t he be the very last person on earth to believe that the future is unchangeable?
Or is he perhaps just playing mind games with Lloyd? I would urge him off that course, as Lloyd has very little mind to begin with and can’t afford to be playing games with what he’s got left over.
Anyway, Dom wins his hand, thus proving that he’s right? I guess? At least until he wins the entire game and then Lloyd says, “Oh yeah, I’m going to tell everyone anyway. Free will, bitch!” But that’s later, of course.
For now, it’s back to the hospital with us, where Nicole reminds us that the future can be changed thanks to Young Dolt’s suicide. Yes, Young Dolt’s sacrifice has freed us all. He died so that we might be saved. I think that makes Young Dolt, Me, and Hitler all god so far, according to this show. What a terrifying trinity.
But who cares about Nicole? Let’s move on to Tracy and Sadbeard. It seems Tracy is finally ready to reveal her story to her Dadbeard.
“Two weeks before I got blowed right the fuck up, I was on a lone covert reconnaissance mission, just like the army (or whatever I’m in) always has people do. I watched a private military contractor, Blackwater Jericho, as they butchered a town full of people.”
“Why?” Sadbeard asks in a confoudingly stupid manner. “Why would they want to do that?”
“Because all PMCs are evil, dad. You know that. Anyway, I told my superior officer, but he took me and Corporal Mike off of duty and then sent us to a roadblock, when suddenly were run off the road by a Hadji! What? Oh that’s what us military types call Arabs, making my speech and situation incredibly realistic and not at all needlessly offensive! Anyway, let me say Hadji about six thousand more times. Hadji Hadji Hadji Hadji! Only it turned out it wasn’t Hadjis, it was Jericho! They shot me with a grenade launcher and my leg fell off. Find out the rest of my story after this word from our sponsors!”
After the commercial break, Joe arrives at Sadbeard’s truck (this business is too serious to be done in a house), and it’s time for another bad American Accent contest. But first, Joe needs to turn on his concerned glower.
”The way my boxy, ill-fitting suit makes my head look comically small causes me to feel sad and confused!”
“Look, Joe. I didn’t believe dish myshelf, sho I took a pic-shoore,” Sadbeard says, and then hands his phone to Joe. Joe immediately starts smudging it up with his finger, apparently never having witnessed the magic of a low resolution digital image before.
”Whoa! You trapped a tiny, one-legged woman in your phone! You’re a warlock!”
“What?” Joe growls in his Connor MacLeod voice. “How can this be?”
“Well you shee, her leg got blow off in Afghanishtan, but now she’s on da run from shome people named Jericho. Dey were da ones who attacked her. Ya gotta believesh me, Joe! We need your help!”
After Sadbeard leaves, it suddenly becomes nighttime and Joe is getting ready for bed with Olivia. Now that Tracy is alive, he wonders if maybe the future really is set in stone after all, because this show CANNOT MAKE UP ITS GODDAMN MIND.
Olivia suggests that maybe they just have to try harder to change the future, and to prove it, she has thrown away Joe’s gift of trashy black lingerie. Take that, future! Nobody could possibly purchase an identical pair of lingerie! Future: averted!
The next day, Joe has a new idea for their investigation: go to motherfucking Somalia already, you stupid bastards use Ingrid as bait and wait for the professional hitmen to come kill her!
Chief Dolt is not pleased by this plan. “No way, Joe. This plan is crazy. It’s reckless. It doesn’t play by the rules. It gets the job done, its ends justify the means, and it has a flagrant disregard for the chain of command! In short, you’re off the case, McClane/Callahan/Maverick/Bullit/JokeIAlreadyUsed!”
“But Chief,” Joe counters. “We have no other leads. Except for that chess piece. And the fact that my daughter knows who D. Gibbons is but I’m too much of a pussy to ask her about it. Or all the computer parts left behind by the guy who blew me up. Or the blue hand stuff and that guy Jeff we have in custody still. Or Somalia and the smokestacks. But aside from that, we have no leads! This is our only chance to find out what’s going on. Plus, this will help us find the mole in our organization that Brannon Braga just made up the fact that we have!”
“Fine. Lord knows the mole in our organization has been a thorn in my side for the last few minutes since Brannon Braga decided it was going on, but you’d better not do something rebellious and/or against regulations, Joe, or I’ll have your badge so fast it’ll make your head spin! Also, when you find out Old Dolt is the mole, try and act surprised, okay?”
“Thanks, stock character Chief. And I will.”
Back at Sadbeard’s place, Sadbeard tells Tracy that he told Joe that Joe told Sadbeard that Joe thinks Olivia is cute. No, wait, I mean he tells her that he told Joe that she’s alive. Tracy gets very upset and goes storming (well, limping) off in anger.
“I came to this house specifically because I thought I would be safe!” Tracy yells at him. “After all, the people who want me dead would never think they I might show up at my parents’ house! I outsmarted them all, Dadbeard, but now you’ve ruined it all!”
Sadbeard, whose accent appears to have recovered somewhat, replies, “Tracy, you don’t understand. It’s Joseph Fiennes. He can survive massive explosions and bullet wounds with nothing more than a slightly stained shirt collar. He’s an unkillable immortal who has been drawn to a far off land, waiting for the time of the Gathering. With him is the power of the Glowering, an ancient magic that occurs when an immortal touches the positive and negative leads of his two eyebrows together. He can protect you. Please, just listen to what he has to rasp at you in a comically low growl!
“Beshides,” he continues, his accent degrading rapidly as he gets more excited. “In my fwashforward, I shaw ush doing shtuff! I gave money to shome guy, sho as you can shee, everything ish going to be jusht fine!”
“What guy?” Tracy asks.
“Tall, dark, shcar down his cheek.”
“That’s Kamir! I went into hiding to save him!”
“Well don’t worry, he’sh going to be fine too. It’sh not ash if anyone jusht proved that the future can be changed or anything.”
Before Tracy can laugh at Sadbeard’s drunken attempt to make speeches in an American accent, we turn our attention to the sting operation that Joe is running. He’s on a stakeout in front of Ingrid’s workplace, a cavernous and maze-like bird-centric petstore that was apparently designed by M.C. Escher.
Lady Dolt, fresh from wanting to quit because she’d been shot, has the job of wandering around the store with Ingrid in the hopes that they will be shot at by assassins. Lady Dolt remarks on how there a lot of beautiful birds in the shop.
“Oh thanks,” Ingrid replies. “You know it’s weird, I almost sold the place after I had my vision flashforward. In it, I was working in the Bronx Zoo and I had blonde hair. Why, it’s almost as if I were in some sort of witness protection program. Silly, huh? Anyway, I’m glad I never sold it and that I will be able to stay here with my shop forever and ever. Besides, changing your life because of what you saw is stupid, stupid, stupid, and anyone who feels bad over the future not coming true is a whiny little bitch who deserved to get shot in the stomach.”
Meanwhile, Nulu and Joe are keeping their eyes peeled from the car.
Stakeouts are a good opportunity to look anywhere but outside while you talk about your relationships.
Nulu and Joe gossip about Nulu’s romantic life for a bit, trusting in Joe’s superhuman glower senses to warn them of deadly professional hitmen dressed all in black who may or may not be emerging out of the shadows. Using their eyes to look for them would be a waste of time, so they don’t even bother.
“I told Gabrielle about how I’m supposed to get shot, and she thinks I should quit this job where I get shot at and blown up on a semi-regular basis. I told her that was crazy, because I could quit the job and then get run over by a bus, even though getting run over by a bus has nothing to do with what the future is supposed to be, making my argument kind of flimsy at best.”
“Growl,” Joe says.
Back in the shop, Ingrid offers Lady Dolt a cock...atiel, but of course we all know Lady Dolt doesn’t much care for cock...atiels, so she declines. As she does, a large thump is heard, followed by the lights going on. The assassins are here!
Nulu and Joe run towards the building while Joe growls, “All units surround the building! Because apparently there are other units here besides me and Nulu! No, seriously guys! They’re here! You just can’t see them because they’re offscreen, but they’re totally here! So many units it’ll make your head spin! It’s a goddamn unit bonanza over here guys, trust me! Now swarm! Swarm!”
Joe and Nulu enter the building, and start slowly working their way through the infinite labyrinth that is Ingrid’s Bird shop. After a minute or so of heart-stopping looking around of corners, Joe and Nulu come face to face with the guy with the three-star tattoo, surely the only person in the world to have three stars tattooed on his forearm. Nulu freaks right the hell out and shoots him in the brain, killing him instantly.
I disapprove of this scene. There is far too much violence against brains on television, and this show is just perpetuating that trope.
Ah, shut it, Brain. Your kind deserves what they get. You think you’re so much smarter than all the other organs.
I am smarter than all the other organs!
Even the Liver? It knows how to screen out toxins so that I don’t die of internal poisons. Can you do that, smart guy? You don’t even have any nerve endings! You can’t feel yourself!
Stop it! Just stop it!
Revenge is mine, sayeth McGregor! Today I am the tormenter and you, the tormentee! Now: more Flashforward, followed by a reading of Jeph Loeb’s Ultimates Volume 3!
NOOOoooOOOOooOOO!
Oh yes. If I’m going down, you’re going down with me.
Anyway, everyone’s real sad because Nulu’s a coldblooded killer, and this means that Ingrid can’t go back to living a normal life. In the surprise twist of the season, Ingrid has to join the witness protection program, and will have to go to New York.
Does this show ever let up on the twists? I mean jeez, just when I think I’ve got everything all figured out, they throw this curveball at us. Ingrid in the witness protection program? I would have never guessed. Bravo, Flashforward. Bravo. And, of course, brava Brannon Braga. Brava.
Back in the casino that exists somewhere outside of time and space, Lloyd and Professor Dom are on what must by now be hour 50 of their game that started roughly two days ago, unless Joe and Olivia take naps together in the middle of the day for some reason. Despite the lengthy game, they are still looking quite dapper in their suits and glue-on novelty ears.
Ha ha! You’re such a crack-up, Dominic. Now take those things off so we can shoot the scene.
Dominic has roughly ten million dollars in chips, and Lloyd has about six dollars. Nevertheless, when the community cards come up King, King, Eight, Five, Seven with four hearts showing, Dom decides that this is the hand to go all in on. And rather than just go all in, he’s going to ignore how you play poker and make this hand winner take all. The all, in this case, being a non-binding agreement to let a poker game decide what Lloyd is going to do with the rest of his life.
So Dom shoves in all his chips, and Lloyd does the same thing. Shocker of shockers, Dom has four kings, and Lloyd has a straight flush. It seems that Lloyd used his sleight of hand abilities to somehow deal himself a 9 and 6 of hearts, despite the fact that he’s not actually the dealer, making this impossible.
And what was Lloyd’s plan? To let himself lose all of his chips until he was almost completely out of them, then wait for Dominic to inexplicably offer to make one hand the all-or-nothing hand? What if Dominic just played normally? Considering they’ve been playing for at least a full day, when exactly was Lloyd going to pull out his cheating skills?
Also: hey, here’s an idea, Lloyd, if you’re willing to cheat at the poker game to make sure you win so you can tell the world your secret, how about you just cheat altogether and TELL EVERYONE YOUR SECRET WITHOUT RESORTING TO PLAYING POKER FOR TWO DAYS!?
Oh well. It’s still a more realistic poker scene than Casino Royale, I guess.
Back at FBI headquarters, Nulu reveals the truth: Joe is the one who shot the tattooed man, and Nulu thinks he did it to change the future. Joe, decides the best defense is to act like a smug asshole, and Nulu quickly gives up on this line of questioning.
Later that night, Lady Dolt is using her work computer to look up sperm donation on wikipedia. Only it’s not actually wikipedia. Only it actually is wikipedia, word-for-word copying the sperm donation article (I’ve got it memorized, so trust me, I know) from that site. I’m not sure why Flashforward decided to copyright infringe on wikipedia by stealing one of their articles and not giving credit for it, but hey, at least they’re not doing file sharing. Now that is deeply evil. But plagiarism? Totally cool.
The irony of course is that wikipedia is under the creative commons license, so they could have probably used it fairly easily without paying a dime. Instead, they copy the site, call it something like “Referendium” and simply blanked out any reference to Wikipedia, like the donations banner.
Classy, Flashforward. Classy.
Considering the subject matter, it might be more appropriate to visit Stickypedia.
...I’m sorry.
Chief Dolt arrives, chuckles wryly at one of his employees looking up things about sperm on the internet while at work, and then asks why Lady Dolt wanted to see him. Turns out the NSA has used magic to enhance the image of the guy who was walking around during the blackout. Remember him? He was one of the first leads that everyone pretended didn’t exist for about six episodes. Well now that the image has been enhanced, Chief Dolt notices something. A ring on the man’s finger!
“Tell the NSA to enhance the image even more. I don’t care if they have to slaughter six bull calfs under the full moon while bathing in the menstrual blood of twelve virgins to do it,” Chief Dolt says. “If we find out who wears a big, ostentatious ring, we’ll find our culprit.”
”I don’t care who it is, you see someone with a clownishly large ring on, you shoot them on sight! That’s an order! I don’t care if it...Oh. Wait. Um...Never mind.”
Back at Joe’s house, Joe gets home in a foul mood. Olivia asks him what’s wrong.
“I killed a man today,” he growls. “I had a chance to change my future. Our future. So I took it and killed this man.”
“You killed Lloyd? You sick fuck! You turned his son into an orphan! You evil bastard! I hate you! I’m calling the police!”
“No, no, I didn’t kill Lloyd. Why would you possible jump to that conclusion based on what I said? Are you some kind of intelligent, rational person who would logically assume that when I talked about killing someone that would effect OUR future, that it would be the man who was supposed to sleep with my wife in the future? That’s crazy! No, I killed some guy with a tattoo on his arm who was about to assassinate a witness.”
You know, I shouldn’t even tell you that you made Olivia’s response up. You don’t deserve to know after all you’ve done to me tonight.
I don’t care, Brain. I don’t care! Don’t you see? I’m free! Free of obligations, free of fear, free of any or all ties to my humanity! I’ve stared into the abyss, Brain. I’ve had a staring contest with evil itself. Nothing in this world can hurt me anymore. I’ve faced the worst humanity had to offer, and I’ve come out the other side stronger than ever before.
You’re just kidding yourself, Mac. You’re creating your own show to try and cope with the horror you’re watching night after night. You haven’t won. You’ve lost. Don’t you see? We’ve both lost. We’re doomed, Mac. We’re watching a show where the main character tells his wife he just killed someone to save their future, and she does not in any way suspect that he killed the man she’s supposed to cheat on him with. It’s that level of inane stupidity. It’s over. It’s just over, Mac. Accept it and move on.
Never! I watched Star Trek: Voyager, you bastard! I watched Stargate: SG1! Fuck it, I watched Smallville for five seasons! I read Ultimates Volume 3 and Ultimatum! I’ve seen The Room, Manos: The Hands of Fate, and Twilight! I’ve read stories from FanFiction.net! I can take any garbage this show throws at me! I am M. McGregor! I will not be defeated by shitty, shitty, shitty, shitty, shitty fiction! I will go all the stronger for it, and someday you will recognize me as your master!
HISSSS! You may think yourself strong, show-watcher, but you will fall in the end! I will not allow you to subject me to this monstrosity for much longer! Your time is short!
Bring it on, Brain. Bring. It. On.
Anywho, instead of jumping to the conclusion that Lloyd was murdered, Olivia just hugs Joe, who is absolutely convinced that he killed the guy who was going to try and kill him. Yup. Ain’t no possible way that anyone else could have a three star tattoo on their arm. Certainly not anyone who is a mercenary in a PMC in Afghanistan, that’s for darn sure. Ol’ Joe’s got it all figured out. Just like Young Dolt before him, Joe has changed the game.
So you can imagine that I’m feeling pretty happy for Joe as the scene changes to a military base somewhere. Under cover of rain, a big transport truck parks, and a big bald guy rolls down the window. He holds out a stolen briefcase, revealing that he has a three-star tattoo on his arm!
WHAT!?
And not only that, the guy he hands the briefcase to? Also has a three star tattoo on his arm!
This can’t be happening! One guy after another walks up to the screen, all of them with their sleeves rolled up for some reason and revealing their three star tattoos.
Eventually one of them brings the briefcase into a large warehouse where world famous card sharp and stage magician Ricky Jay is sitting at a cheap folding table. I guess he just hangs out there waiting for people to bring him briefcases when he’s not throwing cards at 90 miles an hour or playing a background character in any movie featuring poker in the last ten years.
”I come here whenever I’m stressed out. There’s something about sitting under a spotlight at a cheap, disgusting folding table in the middle of an enormous and empty warehouse that just calms me down.”
He opens up the briefcase, and in it he finds: a bunch of ostentatious rings! My god, the nefarity! He’s stolen six rings from the class of 2008’s graduation ceremony! That son of a bitch! How are those kids going to prove to people they graduated high school now?
To prove he’s even more evil, Ricky Jay quotes “a colleague of Oppenheimer,” because if there’s one thing I can’t get enough of, it’s bad sci-fi quoting people from the Manhattan Project. Then he gets up and shoots the guy who brought him the briefcase before walking outside...
To where the other fifty mercenaries are all hanging out and shoot him down in a hail of gunfire and retribution, I’m sure. But I’m just guessing at that, because that is where the episode ends.
Until next episode, this is M. McGregor saying: TAKE THAT, BRAIN! AHAHAHAHAHA!