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
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.