'FlashForward' finale: Mark and company go out with a bang
The entire season of "FlashForward" has been leading up to this week's episode. Well, it all has except for the tons of wrong turns the FBI has taken in pursuing the case, but for the purposes of the finale that's neither here nor there.We really don't have to discuss the dead ends and foolishness that occurred in the past because before the first commercial break there was new foolishness in the present. For the last time this season (I promise) I'm going to tell you that I had no idea what Wedeck was doing -- he busted Mark out of jail first thing this week. Surely if Wedeck wanted Mark to not die at the FBI offices, leaving the guy in jail was a pretty good way to make that happen. Plus, as the bad guys wouldn't necessarily have known that Mark wasn't at the office they may still have tried to break in to the FBI and could have gotten caught without risking Mark's life.
Wedeck instead drove Mark straight to the FBI. That small fact probably didn't matter -- once Wedeck busted Mark out there was no way Mark wasn't going to go back to the office (even if there were bombs inside the place, and there were). Not only did Mark go inside, but he had a little discussion with Hellinger first and Hellinger sent the bad guys in after Mark (d'oh!). The one thing our FBI agent hero was missing for his flash to be one hundred percent fulfilled was being completely drunk so that (he had apparently sobered up pretty good). Outside of that, he'd set up his fate pretty well.
Probably it's a good thing that he wasn't drunk, because if he had been he never would have been able to connect the dots on the strings on his board which spelled out "T.E.N.F.O.U.R.T.E.E.N.P.M." and then pointed to April 29. That's right, the next blackout was scheduled for a few minutes after the arrival of the date and time witnessed in the first.
Mark didn't have time to contemplate that what with the baddies showing up. They shot up Mark's office pretty good, but he lived through the firefight, as did Wedeck. What Mark didn't do (Wedeck did) was vacate the building that was about to blow up. Silly Mark, if he had left the building when he had the chance, the bad guys still would have been inside and died when it blew up, but he certainly wouldn't have been.
Back at the top of the episode, Dylan and Lloyd showed up at the beach to hang with Charlie and Olivia. Technically speaking, they were there more to convince Olivia to go back to the house than to hang at the beach. Olivia completely bought into Lloyd's logic and went with him. Actually, she more than completely bought into it because she agreed to snog with Lloyd on the basis that they had just finished doing as much in her flash (it kind of makes you wonder how many folks got lucky because they had seen themselves getting lucky).
As for Simon, Demetri, and Janis, they broke into NLAP. Well, Janis helped them distract the security guard by having serious complications with her pregnancy, she never actually made it inside. Being at NLAP put Demetri and Simon at the exact right place at the exact right time to stop the machine being fired up and thereby prevent the next blackout. They didn't succeed though. Awesome.
Yup, people saw another vision of the future. There were a couple different dates that flew across the screen, but I don't know about any of them being right as we saw an adult Charlie all happy that "they found him" and none of the dates I saw would have made Charlie an adult Found who? Perhaps Mark as Mark was running towards a helicopter that was outside a window at FBI office when the blackout occurred. He may have died or maybe someone with a ring pulled him out. That could have happened, after all, that nice woman who recruited Janis and slept with Simon, she had a ring and took a sleeping Janis from the hospital during the flash. So, perhaps, "he" referred to Janis' baby (she's having a boy!) and not Mark. Who knows, but what I do know is that Charlie was smiling in her new flash (take that "no more good days" pronouncement).
In any case, the last thing we saw on "FlashForward" was the FBI office blowing up pretty good. I choose to believe that Mark perished in the blast, a victim of his own pigheadedness. No doubt many will disagree and perhaps a detailed analysis of every shot shown in the second flash will prove me wrong, but that's how I choose to see it.
Quick flashes:
- Tracy didn't die last week, but surely you knew that she didn't, didn't you? After all, her storyline was progressing exactly as was foretold - she had to be alive.
- Bryce found Keiko... or vice versa. Good for them, may they live happily ever after.
- Vogel ended up saying Mark was dead not because he was but because he figured Mark couldn't make it out before the bomb went off. He was wrong to say it at the time -- Mark still could have made it out at that point - but he may have been proven right a few minutes later.
- Nicole was being saved, not drowned.
- I don't know, are we happy with the finale? I'm not unhappy. Things could have gone better, I don't particularly appreciate the cliffhanger ending, but it certainly worked within the established framework of the show. I did want to see Zoey again though.
The TV and Film Guy's Reviews - Kangaroo!
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This episode was incredible, literally from the beginning to the very end. It was action-packed. It was emotional.
Please, someone bring it back.
Of all the shows I was watching this season that got canned...this is one I wished was coming back. I am with Andy... we need closure on this storyline!
I am literally in tears at the fact that this show is done with. The end of the episode was literally the climax, I need some closure here!
What I learned from flash forward:
Los Angeles, Afghanistan and Tokyo are in the same time zone.
mark is dead, and the Flash forward was just a glimpse of purgatory, where all
his friends and family had also died at different times.
I liked the fact that Mark sort of saved the day. Somehow in the implausability of the time available, he warned the entire planet and it appears there weren't any big disasters this time. It's a nice ending, but completely ridiculous. Who would listen to some random FBI agent and okay scaring the whole world with the information. He had no proof other than a savante (?) putting it on his crazy board. And it appeared he had about 3 mins from when he made the call to when the blackout happened. Oh well, liked the ending, mostly because I assume Charlie was happy they found Mark, which would mean had it continued, he'd be MIA for 10 years. Woo!
It was an incredible episode. One of the best I would have to say. I have one problem though, IT WAS A HORRIBLE SERIES FINALE!!!! You cannot end the show by opening up a million more questions! We as viewers will never find peace! Frustrating. It would have been an incredible SEASON FINALE, but no, ABC had to screw over everyone and cancel the show. Great. Thank you for that. But yes, this was a great episode, just not the ending of the show. Let's hope it gets picked up by a network that actually has some intelligence. Really, The Gates, ABC? The Bachelorette, ABC? V, ABC? Come on.
This episode was amazing and I wish it stay on the air because we never going to find out of Mark live or died but I think he live but how would we know when ABC (stupid) cancel the show when it was getting to the awesome parts of the season and I wish we all who love Flashforward make a petition to ask somebody that is out there put it back on ABC or different channel.
This was in fact the WORST series finale EVER. There are WAY too many loose ends like, what will happen to Demetri and Zoey? What about Loyd and Olivia? What about the ring lady taking Janice?
Honestly, this would have been an epic SEASON finale. It's got a real great cliffhanger but this is a terrible finale for a series. I know they had no choice cus it got cancelled but WTF. There is just NO CLOSURE ON ANYONE. And Charlie's flashforward is far too cryptic.
I'm still holding out hope that it will come back. I loved the finale, and thought it was handled well, although if they had had been told it would be the finale beforehand, they would have been able to make it more like a series finale, instead of a season finale with a cliffhanger.
Then again, if it comes back I'm glad it ended like this. Leaves things more open ended. Like I said, still holding out hope.
I agree when you all say this was a horrible series finale but you need to keep one thing in mind. When this show was filmed they had no idea the show was going to be cancelled. The show was already shot and filmed. I won't even call it a series finale because it wasn't written as such. ABC can go to hell for cancelling this wonderful show!