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To say that some people are not adjusting well to a post-flash universe would be an understatement. Eighteen agents have resigned from the FBI, the National Guard's come in and begun assisting in the clean-up of Los Angeles, and Charlie's tried to go AWOL at school because she refuses to share her flashforward with anyone.
Olivia meets Lloyd Simcoe, the man of her vision, and both of them lie about never having clapped eyes on one another (his flash is somewhat different than hers, but in both he's shirtless and hanging out in stately Benford Manor). Then Charlie reveals that she saw Dylan in her flashforward, and yet another sign of a pending Simcoe/Benfield merger reveals itself.
Deirdre Gibbons is the D. Gibbons of Benford's flashforward. She comes into the FBI because her flashforward specifically name-checks both Mark and Demetri. Since Demetri is vested in the idea that the flashforwards aren't to be trusted, he's fairly hostile to any and all leads in this investigation, including the cupcake-bearing Didi. His skepticism appears well-founded, as Didi is somehow linked to a person of interest in Pigeon, Utah, via a cloned copy of a credit card. So Noh and Benford head out to Utah to find the person of interest, while away the time debating the merits of predestination, and notice a warehouse which ties in nicely to the burned doll of Benford's flashforward.
While investigating the warehouse, they notice a really creepy staircase decorated with dolls all strung up in nooses, then head into a room where some total nutjob attempts to blow them up. Said nutjob does a respectable job of it, too, deploying all kinds of elaborate homemade explosives and killing the local officer who was tagging along with Demetri and Mark. (She had matter-of-factly told the men that she didn't have any flashforward, so that's just more fuel for the I'm-a-dead-man-walking dread Demetri's trying to ignore.)
The net benefit of this incident: the melted-doll photo is now in existence. And it occurs to Demetri and Mark that maybe other people are investigating the flashforward too. And thanks to the melted cell phone retrieved from the doll factory ruins, Janis is able to determine that their "D. Gibbons" (note: not the cupcake maker) made a call 30 seconds into the flashforward -- and he called the dude who was wandering around Comerica Park.
Later that evening -- or early that morning -- Janis talks Demetri into posting his lack of a flashforward on Mosaic, asking for information pertaining to his death, and within moments, Shoreh Aghdashloo has called and she tells him, "I'm sorry -- there's no delicate way to say this, but on March 15, 2010, you're going to be murdered." (Although since it's Shoreh Aghdashloo delivering the bad news, the blow is softened considerably by dint of being delivered in a velvety purr.)
And finally -- a moment of levity in the show! FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance admits that his flashforward involves him chillaxing in a bathroom stall, then goes on to admit that the flashforward hit when he was also in the bathroom, and when he came to, he had to haul a colleague out of the urinal and give the poor guy mouth-to-mouth. I'm thinking the "B" stands for "-biotics, anti, get on some right away, sir." Also, Vance gets off several great lines over the course of the episode.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Hey, remember how seemingly every human being on the planet blacked out for two minutes and seventeen seconds, most of those people saw the future, then everyone came to and wondered what in tarnation happened? No? Then permit the opening scene to give you a refresher:
There's this planet, see? And somewhere on it -- wait, California! -- children have modified the "Ring around the rosy" playground game so it alludes not to the bubonic plague but to the flashforward. The only child not laying down and pretending to "see" her flashforward is Charlie Benford. When the children crowd around her and induce her to tell -- "That's the rule!" one boy insists, flashing forward to a lifetime spent rolling around naked in printouts of Robert's Rules of Order -- it turns ugly. Charlie throws down with the martinet-in-training when he goes after the stuffed doll she was holding, and when a teacher chides her with "You know we don't hit when we're at school," the agitated little girl rips free from her teacher and sprints out of the playground.
She passes a crossing guard -- who's just sitting there all "If it doesn't inconvenience a driver or pedestrian, I ain't interested" -- and continues tearing down the sidewalk. Then, to evade her teacher, she runs into the street, narrowly avoiding getting hit by two separate cars and is stopped only when she reaches a military blockade. The LAUSD truancy office has an insane budget, y'all.
We cut to downtown Los Angeles -- some of the buildings are still smoking -- and see more military helicopters, and this is how we learn that the National Guard has rolled in to help keep order. Disappointingly, the shot is not of some talking head on cable news hysterically insisting that this was all part of the president's sinister plan all along, he swears it by his flashforward. (Or of some Newsmax columnist exulting, "Finally! They listened to me! The coup is imminent!")
Instead, FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance throws down some folders on a conference table and announces that six more agents have resigned, bringing the grand total up to 18 in the three days since the flashforward. He rallies the remaining troops by reminding them that while the peasants are allowed to cower in superstitious terror, the FBI "has a responsibility to put all that aside, because we're the ones people look to when their world goes to pieces." A soigne woman enters the room and claps. She's such a gifted communicator, you can feel the contempt radiating from the gesture, but since she clearly thinks her audience is too dim to appreciate such subtle talent, deputy Homeland Security secretary Anastasia Markham also comments, "Wow. It was certainly worth taking military transport from Washington to hear that little speech." FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance introduces her to everyone, but the subtext plainly reads, "Oh. You." Markham is not thrilled that there is apparently an FBI field office "which appointed themselves solely responsible for investigating the blackout." Mark points out, "If there's another office or agency that had a vision of this investigation and has more information than we do, let me know and I'll send 'em our case file." He's saved from being killed by the gorgon's stare when his mobile phone goes off -- trouble down at Charlie's school.
Zip! We're in the school office, where Mark and Olivia are finding out about the kids' hot new roleplaying game and how Charlie won't go along with it. The principal helpfully points out something along the lines of "The fact that Charlie won't talk about her flashforward suggests bigger problems. Like, say. problems at home. How's that marriage? Any flashing forward to visions of deal-killing behavior or enthusiastic infidelity?" Both Benfords lie as they assure her they're solid, solid as a rock, that's what their love is, that's what they've got. The principal's like, "Has she discussed anything she's seen?" and when Mark says, "We're taking the 'She'll tell us when she's ready' approach," the principal's all, "Yeah, and how's that working for you? Oh, wait -- IT'S NOT." Ah, parenthood. It's the gift that keeps on giving -- to fault-finding acquaintances with shaky boundaries, anyway.
Mark and Olivia briefly confer about how to handle this, as Olivia's not keen on sharing her seminaked flashforward and Mark's not about to warn people he's planning a relapse. And oh my God, they get bogged down in Olivia's presumed adultery in the name of trying to hypothesize whether or not Charlie saw Mommy kissing someone else. Talk about being judged guilty before the trial ... Anyway, the scene ends with the two of them joking because those crazy kids are truly nuts about one another, and Mark vows, "It's going to take a lot more than fate if you want to get rid of me. We're going to beat this, Olivia." Awww! It's very sweet.
Back at the office, Markham is narrowing down her list of sacrificial victims (morning edition) by asking, "Let me get this straight. You took it on yourself to use bureau funds to make a website?" What, you'd rather the FBI opened a free account on Blogger? Or took up a collection for a Livejournal Pro account? "Hey, check out these awesome icons I made of the man my wife's going to sleep with!" Anyway, Janis explains the purpose of the Mosaic collective and excitedly shares that the site's been live for 17 hours and is still unbesmirched by spammers and 4channers. And what's more, the 600,000 flashforwards that have been entered so far "confirm the theory that if you put the descriptions of people's visions together, you do start to get a definitive picture -- a mosaic -- of April 29. We're using NSA's echelon network algorithm to intercept any suspicious words and to look for patterns. The hope is those patterns will eventually lead to an explanation of what caused the blackout, so we can at least prevent another one." The "so cram that in your pipe and smoke it" is left to linger, unsaid but not unnoticed, at the end of Janis's rebuttal. Markham merely replies, "You're spending millions of dollars on hope?" She should be more incredulous that the U.S. government managed to get a website up and running in less than three days. Surely this is the point in the episode where government contractors across the land were clutching their sides from incredulous laughter. Anyway, FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance is not playing into that line of questioning so Markham moves on to attack some of the team's underlying assumptions, namely, "What makes you think this was a scheduled event?" Short answer: "The odds of this happening by chance are vanishingly remote." (Thank you, FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance.) But Demetri plays devil's advocate: "I could give you a list as long as my arm of unscheduled events that happened to coincide with the top of an hour." Markham's like, "THANK YOU." And continues her monologue on how she's the designated voice of skepticism because it's convenient for plot progression. So FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance produces the trump card: footage of the wide-awake guy moving through Comerica Park while the rest of Detroit flashes forward. "Have you looked into the possibility that the guy was just Miguel Cabrera, out looking for a drink?" Markham asks. Oh, not really. She's now as riveted by this whole investigation as the rest of the regulars.
OK. So we're at Our Lady of the Mood Lighting, or wherever Olivia happens to work, and we see that it's apparently "Take Your Disturbed Daughter to Work" day. Bryce Varley pops by to add more stress to Olivia's workload. On the plus side: the number of admitted patients is leveling off, which is good because the hospital's running out of hall space. On the minus side, Mr. Simcoe's been asking about Olivia for a while. The name does not ring a bell, and we learn that she's been too swamped in the OR to meet up with any of the people she has already operated on. And right then, Charlie asks about Squirrelio, her toy, as he's hurt. Varley looks at Olivia and deadpans, "Intensive care?"
Cut to Olivia stitching up Squirrelio and proving that indeed, she is a good mother, even if she's about to wreck the family for some shirtless stranger. (Or is she?) And after Olivia dispatches Charlie for milk and cookies, she bends to finishing up Squirrelio and is interrupted by a British-accented voice saying, "Dr. Benford, I presume. I'm Lloyd Simcoe." Olivia straightens up and comes face-to-face with the man in her flashforward. (Which, by the way, we see again, because someone associated with the show evidently believes our memories have fallen prey to time's cruel scythe sometime in the past seven days.) Olivia looks shocked.
She rallies after the commercial with "Oh, this is awkward" and Lloyd says, "It doesn't have to be. A simple apology for avoiding my son's bedside and we can move right along." If he's been planted to his kid's bed for the past few days, wouldn't he have noticed how busy the hospital is? Olivia's gobsmacked, either by Lloyd's cloddishness or by actually seeing confirmation of her flashforward, and Llo
yd continues, "I know you don't know me from Adam, but really, I can be quite forgiving." And quite oblivious. Olivia gasps, "You and I have never met?" and Lloyd coolly replies that yeah, that's his damage, we see his flash forward, which involves him checking his phone, apologizing to a tousled Olivia and leaving the bedroom. It's then that I finally notice she's wearing the top of a pair of pajamas and he's wearing the bottom. How couple-y! Olivia apologizes for the delay, explaining that she's slammed, and Lloyd gives Squirrelio a once-over with "I can tell." And I can tell that this series is setting us up to root against Lloyd. Or maybe I'm just easily manipulated. The takeaways from this scene: Neither Olivia nor Lloyd will cop to recognizing one another in their flashforwards; Lloyd is something of a grouch (perhaps justifiably); young Dylan Simcoe is autistic, now motherless and saddled with a father who has no clue about how to handle him; this will not be the meet-cute story Olivia and Lloyd tell at their wedding.
Back at the FBI, Mark returns and asks Demetri, "That Homeland Security hag still lurking around?" That's gorgon, son, and I mean that as a compliment. The gorgon's off turning someone else's insides to stone, so Demetri and Mark can launch into a debate on free will versus predestination once Demetri notices Mark's fabulous new friendship bracelet. "You putting on that bracelet is like saying you want the future to happen," Demetri says. "Believe me, I don't," Mark replies. They head into Mark's office so Mark can remind Demetri he'll probably be dead soon, and once Demetri's reminded of that -- as are we, with a flashback to last week's episode -- Mark pushes his case by arguing, "If these flashforwards are a window into the future, we've got to use that to our advantage." Aaaand then we flash to Mark's flashforwards. I'm having a flashforward of my own: This series is going to operate on the every-episode-flashes-to-the-prior-ones model, the season one finale is going to contain approximately 98 flashbacks and 30 seconds of original footage. And that will probably be a cliffhanger. Now that we've all seen the horrible future, how can we prevent it?
We soon find out that Demetri's been working on cracking the D. Gibbons thing, and he's narrowed it down to the approximately 1000 D. Gibbonses in the U.S. who have criminal records. The FBI will be working with local police departments to visit with these folks, but Mark freaks over how slow this is and stresses the importance of D. Gibbons with "that name is on my office wall six months from now." Cue Janis walking in to tell the boys that a "D. Gibbons" just strolled into the office asking for Agent Demetri Noh.
Didi Gibbons is a nice, pink shellsuit-wearing, cupcake baker. She is now sitting in Mark's office, trying not to expire from nervousness as Demetri, Janis, Mark and FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance all give her their undivided attention. She's all, "Um, I brought cupcakes? Peanut butter chip, carrot cake and red velvet." I will go on the record right now as saying I don't get the appeal of cupcakes, with the exception of the salted caramel cupcake that Cupcake Royale makes. That frosting is my own dessert-y version of a flashforward and it's a damn good thing I live several hundred miles to the south of Seattle or my pancreas would be flashing forward to the onset of Type 2 diabetes.
Hey, is it annoying when the narrative is interrupted by flashbacks? Take a note, showrunners. ANYWAY. We get to the point of Didi's visit. She recounts her flashforward: "I was in my store, and I was arguing on the phone with someone." We see her shouting, "I told you, I don't know anything about any cockadoody pigeons! You need to talk to Agents Benford and Noh!" and then Didi continues, "I was angry. I was so snippy." She's busy spelling "Noh" to her caller shouting that it's "Chinese or Mongolese or one of the --ese. Asian!" Oh, thank goodness for that clarification -- otherwise her caller might have thought Demetri was Senegalese or Portuguese. Anyway, Didi recounts how her pastor urged her to act on her vision, so she called FBI offices until she found the one with Agent Noh. "It's Korean, by the way," Demetri says. John Cho does some of the best miffy deliveries in the business; nobody does put-upon pique like he. Didi awkwardly whispers, "I'm a good person."
Cut to Demetri saying flatly, "She could be lying." HA! He continues, "We can't just take people at their word when they talk about what they saw." Mark's pretty sure we can with Didi, but Demetri does raise an interesting narrative question: Will the show employ false flashforwards as people lie about what they saw? Or are we supposed to assume everyone's flashforward that we see is exactly as they saw it? Demetri wonders if they're all supposed to believe Didi, and Mark says, "It could be nothing. It could mean everything." "Oh, according to your years of investigating global blackouts, right?" Demetri shoots back. (Hee!) FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance -- still holding the box of cupcakes -- points out that at this early stage in the investigation, "Every detail could be significant." Then he takes the box all, "I will be checking these into evidence, and by 'evidence,' I mean 'my belly.'"
Demetri's point about people-could-be-lying sinks in with Mark right about then, and he badgers FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance all the way back to his office about the contents of his flashforward, reasoning, "In my flashforward, gunmen were coming into the office. "If you had a meeting, you were here. That means you might have seen something." FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance -- who, let us remember, had a vision of enjoying some quality time in the throne room -- quickly disclaims seeing anything, and Mark pushes with, "How can you be sure?"
FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance closes the door and grits out, "I wasn't having a meeting. I was having a bowel movement." Mark is really sorry he asked, but FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance won't let him off the hook that easily, saying, "You asked for it. Now you're gonna get the blow-by-blow." And now, let me paint you a word picture: When FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance had his flashforward, he was also having a bowel movement, so when he came to in the toilet stall, he was a bit disoriented and headachy from banging his head on the stall. However, it wasn't until he exited the stall that FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance realized he had indeed passed out mid-movement, then awakened later, as one of his colleagues -- Rafalski -- had blacked out in mid-micturition and was now passed out, face-down, in the urinal. So the woozy, disoriented FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance has to pull the man out of the urinal, then give him the Kiss of Life. Clearly, the "B" stands for "Bactine, gargle some." FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance ends the recounting of his tale with the threat "You speak about this, email, text, fax, Twitter, whatever to anyone, I will transfer you to the ass-end of the cornfield so fast, your head will spin." And going by his delivery, I'm pretty sure FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance could do it Anthony Fremont-style. As Mark leaves, he asks quietly, "Mouth to mouth?" "Get out!" FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance growls. I love FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance more with each passing scene.
Back at Our Lady of the Mood Lighting Memorial Hospital, you will all be relieved to know that Squirrelio is expected to make a full recovery. We suffer through Olivia's flashback again, then she discreetly determines that Charlie doesn't recognize Lloyd. However, when Charlie catches sight of Dylan's bandage-wrapped noggin, she gets very distraught. So now we know that Dylan's in Charlie's flashforward -- we just don't know how.
Aaaand, we're back to the FBI office. Janis has found nothing on Didi Gibbons except "A couple of credit card charges last week. It was two purchases on the same account at nearly the same time, one for a manicure in Newport Beach, the other at a gas station in Utah like, two minutes later." Demetri instantly calls it as a cloned card, but Mark tells us that Didi was arguing with her credit card company in her flashforward -- not that that specific tidbit was included in the flashforward she recalled for us, but whatever, it moves the plot along -- so this points to a stolen card. A few brainstorming sentences later and Janis has produced a place name of Pigeon, Utah. Lo and behold, the cloned card just got run for the purchase of a bus ticket. Raise your hand if you're going to Utah this afternoon! FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance, Janis, not so fast.
But before Mark can board a chopper for his visit to the Beehive state, Olivia swings by with Charlie so she can share the news about Charlie melting down over Dylan per her vision. And so she can be all, you know how Charlie saw Dylan? Well, I saw his dad. Heh, small world! But, she assures Mark, "I'm positive he didn't recognize me. I've thought about it and realized that I saw him, but before he turned around, the flashforward ended. So I don't think he saw me." Oh, good -- she and Mark only have to worry about an infestation of shirtless strangers in the living room; that'll be harder to shake than a case of bedbugs. Olivia reiterates that Lloyd means nothing to her, and Mark says, "For now." She correctly points out, "That's not fair. You can't punish me for something I haven't done." Yeah! Especially when you've been less than forthcoming about your own flashforward, Mark. He frets, "The future's happening, Livvy." She asks, "What if we just saw a possible future, a warning?" Alas, Mark is determined to embrace the idea of an immutable future. Off he goes to Utah.
Within seconds, there we are. The no-nonsense Sheriff Keegan introduces herself as the agents deplane (or dehelicopter) and they make some small talk about the stakeout now set at the bus station. But the real point to this scene is to establish that Keegan didn't flash forward to anything and she's just fine with that: "I'd rather not be any other way. The people I know, the ones who say they saw their futures? They're torturing themselves over it." We cut to Demetri and Mark looking fake-nonchalant. "Oh, rrrrrrreally?"
Back in L.A., Markham is demanding an update on what the FBI's doing to identify the wide-awake man in Comerica park. FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance says coolly, "What would be the point? I thought you didn't believe this was a -- what was the term? A 'scheduled event'?" Markham asks, "Are you going to brief me or crow about this some more?" FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance replies, "Honestly, I don't see why I can't do both for a little while." Indeed. This is why he's the boss dude. And then we get to the meat of the scene: "Suspect Zero" is a man (so determined via video forensics), and since he's not at all surprised by the blackout, he must have been involved. Continuing in her role as viewer stand-in/critical debunker Markham cautions against the poisonous allure of a conspiracy theory. But she wants this guy nabbed before he pulls off Blackout II.
Over at Our Lady of the Mood Lighting Memorial Hospital, Lloyd interrupts Dr. Bryce's sketch (of a long-haired lady) to ask if getting his son a Happy Meal is against the rules. However, because Lloyd is meant to be a) British, b) cloddish and c) an intellectual and therefore unfamiliar with the trappings of good, honest Åmerican life, he refers to it as "a nonhospital hamburger wrapped in paper with a toy." Bryce pegs the junk-food urge as a sign of recovery, then beatifically reassures Lloyd with, "Everything is going to be okay ... I've seen the future. I do believe that there's a gift in the knowing. The test of who we are now is what we choose to do with what we've seen. That's an amazing thing." Lloyd is like, "Right. Well, I'm off to find a hamburger wrapped in paper and a spare key to the pharma closet where you apparently store the really good drugs."
Pigeon, Utah. The FBI outnumbers the residents approximately three to one, and Keegan's just radioed the blockade to tell Mark that D. Gibbons never picked up his ticket. Demetri's ready to throw in the towel and tells Mark perhaps his vision is bogus, and Mark rebuts with Didi's visits and the friendship bracelet. Demetri argues for coincidence, concluding, "People see patterns in tea leaves and clouds." He stops short of spouting the definition of "pareidolia," and goes to shut down the stakeout.
As Mark and Demetri are busy apologizing to Keegan for the circus, Mark notices the empty "Divine Doll" factory they happen to have been hanging out near for the last few hours. Recalling the burnt-doll photo from his flashforward, Mark's intent on touring the place to see if it will produce more of the clues he foresaw. Reminding Demetri of the photo to a card labeled "D. Gibbons," he asks, "Are you telling me that's a coincidence too?" They head toward the abandoned warehouse.
As Mark looks at the lock securing the door, he asks, "Think this will qualify as probable cause?" Keegan assures him, "The county judge will. He's my father-in-law." The wheels of justice thus greased with the rancid oil of nepotism, Demetri smashes the lock open.
The inside is every bit as creepy as you'd expect an abandoned dollhouse to be, but the "abandoned" part of the equation is soon called into question when we see a shadowy male silhouette pass by a window on the upper level. However, Mark, Demetri and Keegan have to case the lower floor to see if there are any items of interest. There aren't, unless you count "carts full of plastic body parts" as particularly interesting, and if you do, please keep that creepy proclivity to yourself, okay? As Mark, Demetri and Keegan head toward the stairs, we see a strip of small, horizontal lights at the base of the staircase. It's not clear whether they do. Their seeming inattentiveness is understandable, as the top of the stairs is festooned as what one can only describe as a "wetsy doll lynching party." Whatever sick stuff you and your friends ever did to Barbie dolls has nothing on this. When Mark heads up the stairs, we find that no, none of the law enforcement types had noticed the little blinking lights, because Mark just stepped on a jury-rigged sensor and set off the hanged dolls, which all now begin to jostle and sing "Ring around the rosy." The light goes off in the upstairs room, and Demetri's up there in a flash. Mark shouts, "FBI! Open the door!"
Demetri opens it for him with a kick -- if nothing else, not having any visions has been excellent for producing aggression that he can channel in productive ways on the job -- and when the three law-enforcing people burst inside, they behold a tall, lean, pea-coat-wearing man who's holding his arms out laterally. There are clear fish tanks on either side of him, and it's clear that they're not filled with guppies, but unclear as to what's actually in them. Oh, wait -- we get some crazy shots of a bomb set to go off, and computers in the tanks, and the guy intones, "He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over." Mark is all, What the FUN? and he asks, "What did you say?" but the mysterious figure only drops two Zippo lighters into the fluid-filled tanks and oh, look, everything's going up in flames. The only consolation is that those creepy dolls will burn and -- oh. And then the creep shoots and kills that nice Sheriff Keegan. Demetri and Mark try to take him down, but since they're surrounded by fire in an unfamiliar place and this guy has the advantage of knowing what he's doing, they are none too successful. Shortly before everything blows to Kingdom Come, the camera rests on a computer monitor displaying a chess game. Oh, good, we're dealing with Gary Kasparov. That'll be a romp through the bunny fields.
Fiery mayhem ensues, but our series regulars escape it with nary a singed eyebrow.
When we get back from the commercial break, Mark notices an FBI tech snapping photos of something and, sure enough, when he checks the digital readout screen, it displays the burned-doll photo from his flashforward. Demetri comes over and Mark awkwardly says, "I'm sorry about Keegan. I know what you must be thinking." Demetri's all, "Can we talk about that later? [pause] What we've got now is a cell phone and a white queen." The chess piece, not a sunscreen-wearing monarch. Mark wonders, "Who's our Bobby Fischer playing chess with? Chess pieces, dolls -- what the hell was he doing here?" Nice, normal activities, no doubt. Don't men like to eschew the company of other adults for a life in a doll-filled warehouse? Demetri exposits, "According to data forensics, our guy's been super-busy since the blackout. He's been hacking into nets all over the world ... he even tried to hack into Mosaic through the NSA." "Why?" Mark wonders, and Demetri responds, "I think he was ruling out possible causes. I don't think we're the only ones investigating why the blackout happened." Really, this possibility is only occurring to you ace intelligence professionals now? Going by the look on Mark's face, I'd say so.
Back at Our Lady of the Mood Lighting Memorial Hospital, Olivia is carrying a sleeping Charlie and her loyal companion Squirrelio out of the hospital when Lloyd comments wryly from the picnic table where he's sitting, "I see the patient survived." Olivia apologizes for not seeing Dylan that day, adding that it was crazy, what with the running back and forth and parenting on top of work and all. But as she heads home, Lloyd says, "I've been sitting here, thinking of a way to tell my son that his mother is dead." Olivia's all, "Well, that is a toughie." She eventually advises Lloyd, "However you tell him, just be sure you tell him you love him." Lloyd asks, "Is it that simple?" Olivia replies, "It's the only part that's simple." Aww! This will be their meet-cute!
Then Nick Drake's "Place to Be" starts playing and we get the night's montage: Mark adding more pieces to his bulletin board so that it more closely resembles the board he flashed to -- and seeing his flashforward again -- and then Lloyd steeling himself to tell Dylan that his mother is dead. We then get the tender bedside scene, and Dylan takes the news of his mother's death with remarkable equanimity. In fact, Lloyd seems more broken up as he tells Dylan, "It's just you and me, kiddo. But we're going to be okay. I love you." Dylan's sporting an expression that seems to imply Interesting concept, father, and he requests, "I want to see Olivia." Lloyd seems troubled that his son knows who Olivia is.
At the FBI HQ, Demetri's doing the 3 a.m. tour of the office to see who else is suffering at this house. Short answer: Janis, Markham and FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance. Markham admits, "What's going on is, I'm eating crow." And her delicious avian diet was delivered to her by Janis, who excitedly explains, "I managed to pull the I.M.E.I. number off the cell you and Mark recovered from Utah. And, as it turns out, D. Gibbons made a series of six calls, five right before the blackout, to another disposable cell ... but the sixth call was placed 30 seconds into the blackout<
/I>. I traced it to another cell ... the second call was placed to someone within range of three cellphone towers, allowing me to triangulate a position. Let me ask you this: What kind of a place has multiple towers to handle increased cell traffic?" Demetri realizes, "A baseball stadium." In other words: D. Gibbons was talking to Suspect Zero. FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance sums it up with, "And then there were two."
Some time later, Demetri's stretched out on an office chair in Janis's cube, asking how many postings there are on Mosaic thus far. The answer: 900,000 and counting. "This site's taken on a life of its own. Everyone's got a story," Janis says. Then things get uncomfortably personal. Janis continues, "It's funny: I've never had that ticking-clock feeling. You know, I've never even had the urge to have a baby." Then don't. It's still legal in this country for women to have a say in whether or not to have kids; the decision is still in their hands. Demetri points out that maybe, the sonographer's waiting for Janis to post her experience, so Janis goes ahead and types out her flashforward (teary sonogram, learning it's a girl), then tells Demetri, "Your turn." He reminds her he didn't see anything, and expands, "I met a woman today who didn't have a vision. Five minutes after she told me, she was shot and killed." Well, then you've already outlived that statistical sample, Demetri. Buck up!
Janis asks if Demetri's talked to his fiancée Zoey about this, and Demetri wryly points out, "In my experience, fiancées aren't really big on their grooms dying before the wedding." Yeah, but if she's a control-freak bride, she'll be even more upset if she doesn't have advance notice. After all, a lot of those deposits are non-refundable. Demetri keeps going, "It ruins the first dance -- heavy corpse. It's bad wedding etiquette or something." Well, it makes pre-cana challenging, at the very least. Janis reasons, "If you're going to be dead -- and that's a big if -- don't you kind of wanna know how it happens?" Demetri is not a big fan of spoilers, but Janis talks him into posting on Mosaic with "If you know how it's going to happen, maybe you can prevent it. And maybe there's someone out there who has information that can help you."
Meanwhile, out at stately Benfield manor, we see Mark brooding before a roaring fire. Olivia comes down, protesting that it's 3 a.m., and Mark mutters about not wanting to wake Olivia. He toasts her with "ginger ale?" She declines and Mark knocks back his Canada Dry. They make some small talk about his workday, and Mark finally reveals why he's so damn broody: "At work, I'm making moves [by] betting the future's going to happen as I saw it. But here at home, with you, I'm praying it doesn't." He takes another drink, and we see that Mark's not wearing Charlie's bracelet anymore.
Olivia asks if she did the right thing telling Mark about Lloyd in her flashforward, and he assures her that she did. "We shouldn't keep secrets from each other," says the man who is busy flashing back to his flashforward of his drinking. "Why'd you make a fire?" Olivia asks. "No reason," Mark replies, as we see the friendship bracelet merrily burning away. Good to know Mark's on board with that total transparency thing!
As Demetri's walking to his car, his phone rings. A female voice which is the aural equivalent of velvet, or dark chocolate, or a really good single-malt after a perfectly-prepared rare prime rib ... anyway, the woman says she's calling in response to Demetri's Mosaic posting. Demetri asks, "Who is this? How'd you get this number?"
The camera switches to a view of a chic, slender woman gazing at a gorgeous skyline on a foggy evening. It all makes sense now, as the woman is Shoreh Aghdashloo, who possesses a voice so beguiling, Comcast or United Air or AT&T should pay her grabillions to pre-record bad news messages because their angry customers would hang up, soothed and satisfied and totally beguiled into forgetting that these companies didn't do a damn thing to fix their problems. Truly, she's a siren. And here, she is playing a mysterious lady saying that she's not at liberty to divulge how she got Demetri's number, "But I can tell you my vision involved you. In my flashforward, I was reading an intelligence briefing, and I am sorry there is no delicate way to say this, but on March 15, 2010, you're going to be murdered."
Poor Demetri is left to absorb that information all alone in an empty parking garage. At least it was delivered by a rich and soothing voice.
More brooding at stately Benfield Manor, which is about two scenes away from being called Sulky Benfield Manor. Mark and Charlie are having a heart-to-heart, and Charlie darkly alludes to "bad flashforwards," which makes for a really awkward explanation about how these "bad" flashforwards are warnings, and then Charlie says, "I don't understand my warning. D. Gibbons is a bad man."
Well, you can just rock Mark Benford to sleep after that talk. And who knows, perhaps week, someone will.
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