So the world of FlashForward has been changed after the suicide of agent Al Gough. A revised notion of free will has been assumed, and nothing is a certainty anymore. Except of course for the hammy dialogue and the combined five to seven minutes spent telling us things we already know. There are a few interesting details interspersed in all the brooding looks and eye-roll-inducing speeches, so I'll try to focus on them instead of wondering why not a single "fun" thing ever happens in this show. Not even during a poker game.
That poker game is played between quotable baddie Simon and fuddy duddy Lloyd, who has sent an email to four or so people (names are visible but as yet unrecognizable), asking for their involvement in the blackout to be publicly confessed. Simon confronts him on this, and a high stakes card game is the obvious solution to decide things. The game scenes pop up through the episode, but mostly feature Simon's intellectual conceit, and a brief conversation (hardly disguised for the casual card players and dealer at the table) about fate and determinism and how the smart man always wins. After Lloyd loses most of his chips, Simon predictably eschews his entire philosophy (and hours of poker playing) and plays an all or nothing hand to decide if the confession will happen. Lloyd wins, using the sleight of hand he pleases his son with. That this was established in previous episodes and used here is almost more clever than the entire poker game itself, which felt forced. So to recap, barring an "accident," Lloyd is free to publicly accept responsibility for the blackout. That'll happen smoothly, I'm sure.
Tracy Stark's return is in fact a reality, and her father Aaron couldn't be happier. There are many awkward moments between the two where rehashed information is blurted, but for the most part, this storyline gets a lot more interesting, and I'll sum it up in a sentence. Two years previous, Tracy covertly watched an entire town be slaughtered by the Jericho military complex (the "good" guys), and they were the ones responsible for blowing up her Humvee; she's since been on the run from them. Now she was in the Humvee when it 'sploded and she was able to walk away with just a leg missing, pun intended. We get to see a little more of Aaron's Afghani flash forward, which includes him handing an envelope to Kamir, the field medic who saved Tracy, after being told by Kamir that the "accounts have been verified." No idea what any of this means just yet, but it'll come out, I'm sure.
Of course, our main storyline involves our gung-homely FBI squad, which is joined again by Janis, who recovered from a gunshot wound given to her only a couple days previous, as far as this show's timeline is concerned. Regardless, a cell-phone video upload is sent to Mark Benford, and contains a duo of thugs stealing a case from an engineer named Peroski, who was fired for suspicion of espionage. This engineer is then shot by one of the men, a man who has three stars tattooed on his arm: the same tattoo on one of the men invading Mark's office in his flash forward, which incites plenty of thought into Mark and Noh. The cell video was taken by Ingrid Alverez, a bird shop owner with a future in the Bronx Zoo, as per her own visions. When the agents arrive to talk to Ingrid, they find a woman shot to death in her car. This woman was Ingrid's roommate. Oops, the bad guys got the wrong woman. Will they fail again? Cut to commercial.
Janis hangs out at the bird shop, keeping an eye on Ingrid while Mark and Agent Noh sit outside. Noh briefly talks about leaving the FBI, but isn't that serious. Inside the shop, Ingrid says generic things that resonate with Janis, and then there are noises, and the lights go out. Mark and Noh sneak around inside, joined by erratic bursts of Mark's flash forward in a distracting manner. I think I like Demetri Noh best of all now because I don't have to worry about seeing any visions from him every three seconds. Anyway, the two of them catch the intruder, and sure enough, there are three stars tatted on his arm. Here is another one of those ill-timed commercial breaks, and when we come back, the guy is dead. I assume he didn't pose any threat, and that Mark shot him based solely on his own issues with his future. Kill the guy who's supposed to kill you, and there's less to worry about.
Except a tattoo of three stars is hardly the world's most original, and it turns out there are a ton of these guys. The show's weekly WTF ending has the engineer assassin presenting the stolen case to another militant looking guy, who brings the case to none other than Mamet-alum Ricky Jay, who makes evil look enjoyable. He opens the case and finds six silver rings, and says there are supposed to be seven. He then kills the case bringer. Minutes earlier, the sports game "single conscious person during the blackout" video was enlarged to show detail, and we see that the guy was wearing a silver ring. Is it the missing ring? Is this guy wearing one that was already in the case? What do they do? How come card magic was done in this episode, and Ricky Jay had nothing to do with it? I hope he flings an ace into the side of Lloyd's neck at some point.
So Mark's plan to change his future fell wildly short. Olivia, on the other hand, is more successful. Mark gifts her with the black nightie she wears in her flash forward with Lloyd. Without telling Mark this, she throws the nightie away, ensuring this detail is not set in stone. It was another nice bit that the show glossed over. There weren't too many incidental things going on here. Simon got a tad defensive towards Lloyd when asked what he's ever lost on a personal level. That will probably get touched on more at a later date, as will my commentary on it. This recap is almost longer than the show, so I'll bow out less than gracefully.
