Episode Report Card Sobell: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Well, Hello, Dollies
By Sobell | Season 1 | Episode 2 | Aired on 10.01.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.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 next 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 next 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