Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

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1. No More Good Days
2. White To Play
3. 137 Sekunden
4. Black Swan
5. Gimme Some Truth
6. Scary Monsters And Super Creeps
7. The Gift
8. Playing Cards With Coyote
9. Believe
10. A561984

Episode One: No More Good Days

Kate Austen, you are under arrest!

We open the show in the aftermath of a plane crash, surely the boldest opening for a television show since Mork arrived in his egg, lo those many years ago. Dr Jack Shephard, free from Party of Five and blessed with a medical degree, goes to work fixing everybody up. Because– No, wait. That’s the opening to Lost. This is FlashForward and it’s completely different to Lost. For example, the hero’s name isn’t Jack. It’s Mark, which is, like, two whole letters different. Also, it’s not a plane crash on a mysterious deserted island, it’s a freakin’ every-goddamn-thing crash as a result of mysterious worldwide 137-second long blackout-induced glimpses of the future. Also, kangaroos instead of polar bears and Islands In The Stream instead of Y’All Everybody. So, y’see? Very, very different (cute Oceanic Airlines easter egg notwithstanding). Anyways, Jack Mark gets to work with his FBI buddies trying to work out, like, what’s the story with the titular FlashForwards™. They spend the rest of the episode determining that the future flashes to April, 2010 are all internally consistent (suck on that, Godel!). Oh, sure, some people saw futures where they were pregnant, or drunk, or shagging somebody other than their husband, or alive, or dead, or seeing somebody who was dead but is now alive and so on and so forth. But they all weave together in a beautiful tapestry of worldwide precognitive slacking off. Oh, except for one dude, who at the end of the episode is spotted on fuzzy CCTV footage walking around a baseball stadium, awake as all get-out. Hands up who thinks it’s John Locke.

A more detailed, less fib-ridden recap of this episode can be found here

Episode Two: White To Play

Could Dr Manhattan be responsible for the FlashForwards? Or is he still fictional?

With none of those tedious real clues to go by, the FBI team instead turn their attention to Mark’s Crazy Wall o’ Future Index Cards. This time around, the focus is on a mysterious ‘D. Gibbons’. After a fruitless interrogation of the Watchmen artist, they instead turn their cupcake-fuelled attention to a Utah pigeon factory (or some damn thing), which comes over a tad explodey when Mark, his partner Demetri and a doomed random sheriff investigate. Luckily, it’s only the doomed sheriff who explodes, so the other two saunter back to the office where they discover that D. Gibbons spoke via cell phone (while everybody else was a-dozin’) to the mysterious baseball fan from the end of last episode. Ergo, this fan may or may not be a certain ‘A. Moore’. All we know for certain (thanks to FBI techno-wizardry) is that the fan is 5′8″ and weighs 160 lbs and, hence, is ‘almost certainly male’ (presumably this last deduction was aided immeasurably by some enhanced video footage of his penis). Backing up the theory that D. Gibbons is a bad man is Mark’s daughter, Charlie, who, after much worried probing by her parents, declares him to be ‘a bad man’. Once again, as is so often the case with the modern FBI, an eight year old ties the loose ends together. In other news, Mark’s boss, Stan, is declared a ‘genius’. Why? Because he explains away his post-blackout bathroom activities as ‘mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a urinal drownee’. Oh, George Michael, if only you’d had the Mensa-like nous to concoct a similar excuse.

A more detailed, less fib-ridden recap of this episode can be found here

Episode Three: 137 Sekunden

Stunned by initial cost estimates for Project Mosaic, Stan tries to recoup costs by auctioning off random portraits, American flags and redundant FBI middle management

As most of us predicted, the third episode of this series has all come down to Nazis and dead crows. The Nazi in question is a lying troublemaker – as those blasted Nazis so often are – but he does allegedly have crucial information about why everybody fell asleep for precisely 137 seconds. Excited by the prospect of such chronoknowledge and whipped into a frenzy by the fact that the Nazi’s photo is on his Crazy Wall o’ Future Index Cards (and, in turn, not at all deterred by the fact that the photo is seemingly only on there because Mark just put it on there because that’s where his freakin’ FlashForward™ told him it’d be), Mark and sexy code monkey Janis fly to Munich to make ludicrously generous deals with the Nazi. (At one point, Mark offered him total freedom, a complimentary Blu-Ray player and a lifetime pass to Dollywood in exchange for a more convenient parking spot, before Janis ordered Mark to ‘man up’ on the negotiations.) In the end, the Nazi’s freedom is won with the near-useless information that crows die during FlashForwards™. Whether or not this includes pop sensation Sheryl Crow, the Nazi’s not telling. That wily mass-murderer! In other news, Demetri may not be as doomed as previously advertised, given that his fiancee saw him alive and kicking (presumably not literally) on his wedding day. This is wildly inconsistent with Demetri’s FlashForward™, but the aforementioned fiancee is a smokin’ hot, whip-smart lawyer who is horny as all get-out, so he cuts her some sensible slack. Elsewhere, Mark’s AA sponsor Aaron is digging up his dead daughter’s grave, which I’m almost certain isn’t one of the twelve steps. Lift your game, Aaron! Those first two letters of your name will only get you so far in the AA biz!

A more detailed, less fib-ridden recap of this episode can be found here

Episode Four: Black Swan

While Demetri chases the inept drug dealer, Mark spots a penny!

Y’know what Mark’s wife, Olivia, is sick of? Doctors who’ve seen too many episodes of House. Oh, sure, it’s fine for Hugh Laurie to hobble around, irritable and blue-eyed and surly to all and sundry, making mind-bending, Emmy-worthy deductive leaps that, out of nowhere, correctly diagnose the patient and save them from an untimely demise at the hands of less erratically awesome physicians. It’s much less fun when your co-workers start doing it to you. And, it’s the least kind of fun when your co-worker (Bryce) turns out to be, like, totally right. You end up in the operating theatre, all scrubbed up, ready to operate the bejeezus out of some uber-calm Bjork fan, then having to abandon it when you realise he’s merely got some kind of melanin disorder that makes one a fan of Icelandic pop. Or some damn thing. “Hey, Bryce,” she says, scrubbing down. “Weren’t you committing suicide in the pilot? Whatever happened to that?” Y’know what she’d also be sick of if she only knew about it? That her predestined future suitor Lloyd is working for a hobbit. ‘Cause that’s just demeaning, even if the hobbit is claiming to be responsible for all the FlashForwards™. Oh that Middle Earth braggart! Elsewhere, Mark and Demetri, with nothing better to do this episode, visit a diner and arrest a fleeing drug dealer. This proves so absurdly beneath their chasing and arresting abilities that they then start punching one another to finish out the scene, before deciding that a kick-ass thing for the FBI to get involved in is, uh, hacking into CIA computers. It’s kinda like punching your partner, only more hi-tech and borderline treasonous. So, points for consistency, I guess.

A more detailed, less fib-ridden recap of this episode can be found here

Episode Five: Gimme Some Truth

President Obama begins to show the stress of dealing with the FlashForward™ blackouts

It’s tough work being a lesbian in the modern FBI. For one thing, there’s that business with Nazis trying to out you a couple of episodes ago. But, more timelier and relevant to this particular episode, there’s also all this modern hassle of trying to pick up karate-trained lesbian chefs with trash-talk to heterosexual men and first date lies about your availability to answer Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? questions when you’re, in fact, far more concerned with trying to work out where in blazes you picked up a wandering impregnating sperm. And, yet, somehow, Janis manages to successfully traverse these Sapphic, culinary and martially artistic arenas. She wins an annoying alarm clock for her efforts and also gets to avoid a trip to Washington DC, where all the boys get to a) face Senate hearings, b) blackmail the President of the United States, c) perform terrible karaoke renditions and d) get into a rocket launcher fight with random Chinese thugs. Mark tries to call Janis to find out which of these four options is the most unbearably awful, but Janis can’t take the call, thus re-emphasising what a poor choice she would be under the Millionaire hot seat pressure. Oh, sure, she’ll claim that it’s because she’s been shot in the stomach by her own set of thugs. But, c’mon, Janis, when you’re somebody’s Lifeline, you make yourself available, goddammit!

A more detailed, less fib-ridden recap of this episode can be found here

Episode Six: Scary Monsters And Super Creeps

Mark: "I love you as long as you're not cheating on me in the future." Olivia: "And I love you, provided you're not drunk in the future." Both: "Hey, let's live in the now!"

Like I’ve been saying since the very first episode, what this show really needs is a sex-crazed, train-travelling, quantum physicist genius hobbit with a penchant for strangling people, singing Karen Carpenter medleys and hiding in people’s cars. And (at last!) the writers (mostly) deliver. Oh, sure, he doesn’t get much screen time, which is instead spent primarily on the evolving affair between Olivia and Lloyd that hasn’t happened yet but almost certainly will if Mark continues to behave like a dick, which he seems certain to do, given that he can no longer trust Olivia because she’s going to have an affair with this dude Lloyd, possibly because, in the future, he (Mark) is going to be a drunk and untrusting husband, which will no doubt only transpire because his wife is having this affair everybody’s been trying so hard to avoid because it’s so gosh-darn inevitable. Hot damn, if I don’t love me some time-travel nonsense. It’s even gets me hooked on what would otherwise be a middling rom-com drearfest subplot. As Huey Lewis would have said, had he been a more interesting lyricist – “That’s the power of self-fulfilling consciousness-shifting prophecy!”. In other news, Demetri and his backup FBI partner, Al, try to track down a rave party and instead find only a dead body. Which certainly matches my experience. Also, Janis? Feeling much less bullety than she was at the end of last episode, thanks for asking. Although she’d probably recover a lot quicker if Stan would quit hovering at the end of her bed, droning on and on with his numerous hospital gown anecdotes. Doesn’t he have, like, Boss of the FBI work to do?

A more detailed, less fib-ridden recap of this episode can be found here

Episode Seven: The Gift

No, I'm not the Nazi from Episode Three. But I sure made you look twice, didn't I, FBI vollgeschissenerstrumpfs?

We learn a lot about Al (Demetri’s backup partner when Mark has a busy ’squabbling with this wife’ schedule) this episode. For one thing, Al’s a kickass Russian Roulette player. For another, he cares about bird safety and cooking Native American dishes that nobody else wants to eat. But the thing we learn most about Al is that he’s a fan of the scientific method. Oh, sure, one could continue to speculate wildly about whether or not the FlashForwards™ represented an inescapable future, like the rest of his nitwit FBI buddies. Or one could go ahead and conduct an experiment to find the freak out. So, good ol’ Al, in fine Galileo-emulatin’ form, decides to throw an object (ie himself) off a building and see what happens. Given that he was alive in the future, if the future is truly predestined, he should be intercepted by a passing helicopter or land on a perfectly parked mattress delivery truck or grow wings and fly or something. But if the future can be altered, Al will plummet to his death below. And, hey, guess what? Turns out the future can be altered. But Al’s untimely death does mean he cleverly avoids the mind-numbing hassle of submitting the results of his paradigm-busting experiment to the scientific journals. Oh, Al. Splattered like a fox.

A more detailed, less fib-ridden recap of this episode can be found here

Episode Eight: Playing Cards With Coyote

Can't help himself. Bad hobbit!

The death of Plummeting Al last week has excited everybody no end, in terms of how the future may not, in fact, be predestined. To celebrate, Simon (the finest quantum physicist in all of Middle Earth) plays poker with Lloyd (merely a Nobel Prize nominee, if you can imagine anybody so stupid). The stakes? Whether or not they tell the world they’re responsible for the whole FlashForward™ thing. The game? Poker. I said that already. Simon is by far the superior poker player, having spent many a youthful night at the Ivy Bush Inn, fleecing lesser Boffins and Brandybucks, in no limit games of Hobbiton Hi-Lo. And yet, he ultimately loses as a result of a combination of overconfidence and an inability to detect basic sleight of hand. Oh, Simon, did you learn nothing from Gandalf’s incessant charlatanry? Other people celebrate the new open-ended future in different ways. Mark and Demetri, for example, start shooting people who have tattoos they don’t like the look of. Hey, they’re FBI. Who’s going to stop them? Aaron, meanwhile, hides his runaway undead daughter from roaming evil military contractors. And Janis? Why, she spends an exciting night working late, downloading a slightly enhanced copy of that fuzzy CCTV footage of the guy who was awake in Episode One and trying to determine whether or not he’s wearing a Green Lantern power ring. Oh, Agent Janis, shine on you crazy diamond.

A more detailed, less fib-ridden recap of this episode can be found here

Episode Nine: Believe

Sorry to hear about your tedious plotline. How awful for you! Oh, and the terminal cancer. That sucks, too.

Hands up who wants to hear more about Bryce? Oh, come on. You know who I’m talking about. Bryce! Big Bad Bryce! The guy who tried to commit suicide in the pilot but was hampered by a bout of FlashForward™ing. Old Bryce. The Bryce-meister. Bryce, Bryce Baby. Yeah, we all want to know more about his story. Don’t we? Shhh. Of course we do. Be nice to Bryce. He has cancer, don’t you know. Yep, that’s right. Cancer. Exactly. And not just any old cancer. Terminal cancer. And he hasn’t told anybody about it because he’s brave. Brave Bryce. According to his FlashForward™, Brave Bryce’s girlfriend of the future is Keiko. She’s a Japanese, guitar-playing roboticist who disapproves of tea. Multi-faceted! Alas, the pair of them are as dull as dishwashers, which make an episode of following them around as they utterly fail to meet up with one another a little bit of a snoozefest. On the marginally less tedious side, Mark’s summoned all his FBI training in a bid to unravel his most puzzling mystery so far – ie, who texted Olivia with details about his future drunkenness. He narrows it down to two candidates – Aaron, who reacts to the accusation by throwing folding chairs around and Stan who, with no folding chairs handy,  instead refuses to allow Mark and Demetri to go traipsing off to Hong Kong on a whim.  Of course, they go anyway. Because who listens to Stan, anyway? Man doesn’t even have folding chairs in his office.

A more detailed, less fib-ridden recap of this episode can be found here

Episode Ten: A561984

I'm in the FBI. I can do whatever I want

So, snickering all the way over the Pacific, Mark and Demetri eventually arrive in Hong Kong, where they take a phone call from Stan who orders them to get, like, totally back home before he, uh, orders them back home some more. “No way,” says Mark. “I’m from the FBI. I can do whatever I want, even if that means wandering the streets of a foreign country, accosting innocent shopkeeps, upturning restaurant tables as part of a temper tantrum and kidnapping and threatening to shoot Eartha Kitt voice impersonators simply because they claim I’m the person who is going to shoot Demetri in the future.” “Wait a second,” says Demetri. “What was that last bit again?” Meanwhile, back in the States, Simon and Lloyd admit responsibility for the FlashForwards™ and, like, the accompanying mass deaths. Simon is therefore immediately recruited into Project Mosaic by a rather lonely Stan, where he (Simon) explains that the tower thingummy in Somalia is one he awesomely designed but for which the technology doesn’t exist to build just yet. When Janis points out that the tower not only has been built, but was built before Simon even thought of it, he predictably sulks like a petulant genius hobbit-child. Lloyd, on the other hand, doesn’t get recruited by Mosaic. He is instead sneered at by everybody he bumps into (for, like, all the deaths and stuff he caused – also, the incessant bumping – look where you’re going Lloyd!), then flirts outrageously with Olivia, talking saucy ‘many worlds hypothesis’ talk before he is kidnapped and driven off into the closing credits by evil ambulance drivers (as if there are any other kind!).

A more detailed, less fib-ridden recap of this episode can be found here

Related Pages

If you hated this, you'll probably also hate:

1. FlashForward Season One, Episode Ten
2. FlashForward Season One, Episode Nine
3. FlashForward Season One, Episode Seven
4. FlashForward Season One, Episode Two
5. FlashForward Season One, Episode Eight