'FlashForward,' at
risk of becoming lost
Paranormal drama is compelling and well done
By Tom Conroy
Sep 24, 2009
FlashForward” is an intriguing, well-made paranormal drama that would be a lot more intriguing if “Lost” had not come before.
It’s not so much that the story feels familiar as that the premiere
often indicates that the series will wind up making the same mistakes
that “Lost” made.
Like “Lost,” “FlashForward” starts off with a crash, in this case the
crash of the car in which FBI agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) and
his partner Demetri Noh (John Cho) are pursuing a terror suspect. When
Mark regains consciousness, he’s surrounded by other people staggering
out of their own cars.
Like the destruction of Oceanic 815 in “Lost,” this is no ordinary
accident. It seems that everyone in Los Angeles has blacked out for 2
minutes and 17 seconds. Mark and his colleagues soon learn that the
same thing happened all over the world.
It gets more paranormal: While unconscious, almost everyone seems to
have had a vision that showed what he or she will be doing at 10 p.m.
on April 29, 2010, about six months in the future.
The premiere episode, airing tonight on ABC at 8 p.m., shows widespread
destruction in LA but then skips over all that to focus on two
different issues: First, what or who caused the blackouts and visions?
Second, what do the visions of the future mean and what, if anything,
can be done to change them?
Both Mark and his wife, Olivia (Sonya Walger), saw drastic changes in
their life together. Other characters received hopeful visions or, in
one case, no vision at all.
In some moments, it seems that the show’s creators plan to follow the
pattern of the early seasons of “Lost,” during which every episode
revealed something new and surprising about a character’s past. On
“FlashForward,” presumably, we will see people either fighting or
coming to terms with what they’ve learned could be their future.
Fiennes (“Shakespeare in Love”) and Walger (a veteran of many TV
series, including “Lost”) are skilled, appealing actors who draw you
immediately into their characters’ inner lives, and the premiere will
leave viewers wanting to know what they’ll do next.
Still, “Lost” has shown that it’s nearly impossible to maintain
plausible, psychologically complex and relatable characters against a
backdrop of supernatural hoo-hah.
After Mark is assigned to run the FBI team investigating the possible
cause of the blackouts, there are suggestions that “FlashForward” is
going to build a vast structure of myth and conspiracy like the one in
“Lost,” which, as that show winds down, has become ever more
complicated and ludicrous—even supernatural events should have some
internal logic—and has taken up more and more air time at the expense
of character development.
The sighting of a kangaroo raises unpleasant memories of the polar bear that served as a red herring in the premiere of “Lost.”
The producers of “FlashForward” have promised that they won’t keep
viewers hanging for years and that the show will reach the
flash-forward date before the first season is over. But once that
happens, won’t the series suddenly become a lot less interesting?
Some of the issues raised by the visions are fun to ponder. At one
point, Mark wonders whether he’s been appointed to run the
investigation because his vision showed him running the investigation.
“Lost” diehards should eat this up. For the rest of us, there’s enough
imagination and talent in the premiere to justify giving the series the
benefit of the doubt for another episode or two.
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