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When was the last time a TV pilot gave you chills?
If you’ve seen ABC’s newest sci-fi serial FlashForward, then odds are you’ve had the experience pretty recently. That’s because FlashForward is the most engrossing new show since Lost, and easily the best new network drama this season.
The show’s premise is deceptively simple: All of humanity passes out for exactly 137 seconds, and in that time they see what appears to be their own lives six months in the future.
After dealing with the immediate aftermath — for example, every plane that was in the air crashed — the FBI begins to sort things out. Along with the National Security Agency, they build a Web site where people can tell what they saw and start trying to create a clearer picture of April 29, 2010, the date when everyone “flashed forward.”
But at the heart of the FBI investigation is a tiny piece of video evidence from a security camera in a Detroit baseball stadium. As everyone sits unconscious in their seats, the grainy footage shows a man in a black cloak walking down an aisle, turning dramatically and exiting the section.
Now the FBI must figure out who this man is, why he didn’t pass out and what his motives could possibly be. Luckily for them, when protagonist Special Agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes, Shakespeare in Love) flashed forward, he saw himself deep into the investigation, and his memory of what he saw on his corkboard provides them with a few nice leads.
Beyond the basic plot points, though, the show’s true strength comes in its pondering of more existential questions. It never comes out and announces, “What these people saw was the future.” Instead, it lets them — and us — wonder if they have the ability to change what they saw. Benford’s daughter, whose vision is only hinted at cryptically, asks him if what they saw was set in stone. He tells her that the good visions are going to happen, but the bad visions are like warnings, and that they can be avoided.
He says this to calm his child down, but it’s an interesting theory, and one that he subscribes to mainly because his wife saw herself with another man. But the more he thinks about his wife’s potential future infidelity, the madder he gets, and the more their previously rock-solid relationship breaks down. This leads us to wonder if the flash-forwards were self-fulfilling prophecies, and that just by knowing they’re supposed to happen people will cause them to happen.
The eeriest flash-forwards, though, are the people who saw nothing. John Cho (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) plays Special Agent Demetri Noh, Benford’s partner at the FBI. When he passed out, he saw nothing, and now he has to live his life knowing that he’ll be dead within six months.
But does he have to die? The show gives us no guarantee that blackness in a flash-forward means death. He could have been sleeping and just not dreaming, for instance. If he thinks he’s going to die, though, will he live more recklessly, eventually bringing it upon himself?
There’s a chance that just by seeing what they think they’re supposed to be doing on April 29, 2010, everyone will inadvertently direct their lives to that point. There’s also the chance that the future they saw is set in stone, and they cannot change it. And of course, there is no reason that the world’s visions of April 29 have to become even remotely true.
What makes FlashForward so great is that it doesn’t immediately offer answers — and it doesn’t feel the need to. The show is action-packed and well-shot, and while the dialog and acting are a bit stiff (especially the insufferably corny dialog written for children) the overarching story arc is so captivating that it’s impossible to turn off.
t’s not often that a network show gives you the chance to question time theories, the concept of predetermined fate and existence itself, and even rarer that they find a way to do it without seeming like they’re talking down to the audience. Luckily, FlashForward does all that, and it seems like it’s going to have a pretty bright future.
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