'FlashForward': Lloyd Simcoe and Simon play a friendly game of poker
Last week on "FlashForward," we found out that the future is changeable, that what people saw in their flashes doesn't have to come true. How did that revelation affect people tonight?Well, most immediately, Olivia and Mark seemed interested in each other again. Olivia gave some ridiculous line about never thinking that they couldn't change the future. Sure, I believed that, didn't you? She seemed pretty perturbed about Mark's drinking in his flash. She was partially angry about him not coming clean about the flash, but she was definitely also angry about the drinking. Taking that sort of anger out on her husband doesn't seem like the actions of someone who believed that the future was malleable.
More importantly, though, it prompted Lloyd to send an e-mail to his flash-causing friends strongly suggesting (he wrote it in caps) that they come forward about what they did. I think that was kind of an odd, or perhaps weak, move. He had already heard from Simon, who wasn't interested and presumably the other folks aren't interested either. If Lloyd really wanted to go public, he should just have done it. I kind of feel like Lloyd doesn't want to announce that he was responsible for the flash, he just says he does because he doesn't want the guilt anymore.
The upside of the e-mail was that Simon came to visit, and that meant we got more Simon this week. That is always a good thing, especially because Simon feels like he's a god. That was something of an egotistical statement, but as he pointed out, he was partially responsible for the deaths of 20 million people, so even if he's not a god, he's probably a demi-god at the least. And, if demi-gods don't play dice with the universe, they do apparently play poker.
Demi-gods apparently cheat at poker too, which is what Lloyd did to beat Simon. My question there is if the game was to determine whether they should go public, why would Lloyd cop to cheating? Can't Simon, if he was ever going to abide by the agreement in the first place, just say that he's not going to now because Lloyd cheated? See, I don't think Lloyd really wants to go public. I think he wants someone else to do it for him or to stop him from doing it completely.
Demetri, Mark, and Janis spent time tonight chasing down a murderer who had the same tattoo as one of the killers in Mark's flash. Using a witness as live bait, Demetri ended up shooting and killing the tattooed man. Why? Well, because Mark engineered a situation so that the tattooed man would get shot. Demetri probably didn't have to kill him, but Mark did put the idea in his head that maybe that tattooed man was the guy who was going to kill Demetri.
I was actually really impressed by Mark there. It may have been a pretty despicable and semi-evil thing to do, but it showed more skills at manipulation and more control of a situation than we've seen yet from Mark. Maybe there is a reason that Mark is an FBI agent after all.
It's just too bad for Mark and the FBI that there is way more than one tattooed man. It's a whole group... perhaps even a PMC. A PMC named Jericho. A PMC named Jericho who has ties with the military and tried to kill Aaron's daughter, Tracy. Yup, that's my crazy, off-the-wall, theory of the week. What's yours?
Quick flashes:
- Wedeck wouldn't give Janis Hawk time off now that's she back. I'm all with Wedeck on that -- she seems like she'd be a wallower, and getting her to keep moving was a good plan.
- Mark referred to the tattooed man as their "only lead." I guess it was a great idea for them to free that Nazi a few episodes back if Mark now feels his info is irrelevant. Either that, or the producers forgot all about the dead birds and Africa.
- What was up with the α rings at the end of the episode?
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'FlashForward's' first casualty speaks
ummmm, dude...
mark is WAY too much of a spaz to be an FBI agent!
killin' ONE GUY with a tattoo on his arm, cuz he COULD be "THE guy" they're lookin' for? okay, maybe down one of the tiny branches of the reasoning tree...
but, to ACTUALLY believe that's the ONLY guy with a tattoo like that and braggin' to your wife about how you've taken the future by the balls?! he should be pistol-whipped with his own weapon and stripped of his badge IMMEDIATELY!
killing every dude with a three-star tattoo, cuz you wanna "change the game"...
C'MON, SON!
"killin' ONE GUY with a tattoo on his arm, cuz he COULD be "THE guy" they're lookin' for? okay, maybe down one of the tiny branches of the reasoning tree..."
NonImus, my thought exactly. And this hasn't been his first badly reached conclusion, this is the latest of many. But this one was really bad. I was thinking can an FBI agent with investigative duties be this dumb and this much of an illogical thinker? (yes, take his badge away pronto!) It's almost enough to make me quit this show.
And what doctor walks around hospitals showing her legs like Olivia in tonight's ep? None that i've ever seen that's for sure!!
Who the hell is writing this dreck anyway? Please stop insulting the viewers!
Verdict: LAME.
I also thought Mark was pretty stupid to think there was only one man with a tatoo -- especially after hearing (from her father) about Tracy's ordeal. I think it was pretty clear at this point (or at least by the end of this episode) that the tatooed guys are all Jerich PMCs.
And I had the same thought about Lloyd revealing that he was cheating -- though perhaps he knows Simon well enough (better than we audience members do) to know that Simon would (apparently) just consider that part of the game and wouldn't reneg on his bet.
Despite the above caveats, I think this was perhaps the best episode yet -- though that isn't saying much. I was wondering how they were doing to explain Aaron's vision of Tracy, and I admit I didn't see this coming and I find it (the corrupt Blackwater type storyline) quite interesting. (Wasn't the real Blackwater just caught giving bribes to Iraq officials to try to silence them regarding some of their atrocities?)
And I think it is pretty clear now the basic rule of the flash-forwards: It is the future that would have happened if not for the flashforward event, but the flashforward event itself affects the present (we don't normally get to see the future) and thus the future can be changed.
Which makes sense -- I just think the show has streched things out way too much (including with "blue hands" and "dead crows" and every other conceivable padding device). As I've said before, it should have been a straightforward manner to set up mosiac to see if anyone dies who had a flashforward. Statistically, probably several dozen (in the U.S. alone) did before last week's episode, making the agent's taking of his life totally unnecessary.
Alas, the writers of this show seem to think that the audience is pretty stupid and won't think of such things, and will simply put up with week after week Mark and Oliva re-hashing the same old crap over and over again.
Which is one of the reason's tonight episode (besides the Blackwater stuff) was so much better than most: not only wasn't there any unnecessary suicides or blue-hand/dead crow red herrings (so to speak), there was no rehashing of the Mark/Oliva endless pre-divorce arguments!
Clearly, there is more than one man with that tatoo on his arm. However, it should be remembered that this man was there to kill the Latin woman. He cut off the power to the building so that he could obtain the upper hand. However dark or light it was in the building, if I saw the intruder, and I knew that he was there to do harm, I would have taken the shot. Yes, it would have been great if they had captured him alive, but protecting this witness was the highest priority. Besdies, if they had captured him alive, and he was a merc, why should they believe that he would have talked anyway. These guys are trained to withstand interrogation techniques.
On a separate note, I think that Aaron should take Tracy and leave town. Go somewhere like Wyoming or Idaho where there is less of a chance of her being found. Some may say that this would be the cowardly thing to do, but let's be honest...with the artifical limb that Tracy now wears, how well will she actually be able to defend herself?
I figured that Simon didn't complain about losing the bet because he's twisted enough to respect when somebody puts one over on him.
Why are you guys watching this show when you dislike it so much? I'm enjoying it enough so far that I'm willing to suspend any disbelief. There's so much incompetence and poor judgement in real life under normal circumstances that I'm OK with the idea that an event like this would trigger really irrational behavior.
"YES" I suspend disbelief when watching TV shows for example:
"The Lord Of The Rings" shooting the messenger
after getting the briefcase,
I chalked it up to the messenger seeing the rings,
even tho the messenger had just received
the briefcase, uum I dunno 50 feet away,
and if "the Lord Of The Rings"
had an itchy trigger wouldn't make more sense to shoot the bald headed guy who gave the messenger the briefcase since he was the one who shot the scientist,
and the killing could be trace back to him???!!!
yeah stuff like that I have to suspend disbelief, cos the writers believe all tv-watchers are stupid and let it go!!!
one more thing I'm on boat as mark being the most retarded FBI agent in all TV history,
makes Barney Fife look like "The Metalist"
I'm just saying!!!
@Justafan -- so again I ask, why are you watching? Especially when you could use the time brushing up on grammar and spelling.
Missed last night's episode, glad I didn't go out of my way to record it, 'cause it doesn't look like I missed much. Ah, well, at least Lost is coming back in a couple months. Something to look forward to. Y'all enjoy, because I'm out.
Oh, yeah, and Zap2It's new platform still sucks.
@Beth:
How else am I going to passed the time on a friday morning at work?
on thursdays @ 8 pm I'm watching survivor.
downloading eps from the net = 10 min.
watching the ep without commercials, getting paid and
being a lazy bastard on casual friday = priceless
spelling and grammar = public school graduate - GO PUBLIC SCHOOLS!!!
and
YOU left your webcam on...call me!!!
Enjoyed the episode. Lots and lots of holes, though.
I'd expect many, many suicides to have happened after the flashforward, not just this one agent months later.
Shouldn't Janis have taken a very long time to recuperate? (Is it just me, or is her boss Wedeck awfully "handy"? He touches her a LOT - nothing inappropriate, but often.)
Mark had good reason to shoot three-star tattoo guy, far less reason to feel relieved that he's dead. I don't believe Tracy could survive having her leg blown off without immediate medical attention, and there's no explanation as to how she got into the US to be reunited with her father.