Episode Report Card Sobell: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Don't Be Stupid, Be a Smarty …
By Sobell | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.08.2009
I studied at Julliard! My Lear made people weep with its finely-calibrated balance of hubris and pathos! [thud of pants hitting floor] Okay, this'll get the vultures at Sallie Mae off my back for the month. Shall I shake my booty in a clockwise motion, or can I improvise?"Demetri introduces himself to Jerome, whose embarrassment over being caught carrying on like a toddler on a YouTube video is quickly overcome by his jubilation in learning that his application apparently goes through and he get to be a customs official. Demetri then tells Jerome to focus, whips out a photo of Geyer and asks, "I need you to tell me if you saw the same thing in your flashforward as this guy claims he saw in his." Jerome proceeds to corroborate the story even though -- bless his heart -- he doesn't know what that word means: "I know that dude! I was working in an airport. It felt good, you know? Badge, uniform ... it gave me purpose, you know?" We see him having the interaction with a sinister-looking Geyer. Jerome concludes that he woke up from the blackout and applied the very next day. As Demetri leaves, he kicks over Jerome's bong. Jerome stammers that he can explain it. "That's okay. I know what a bong is," Demetri says. (Oh, John Cho has the best "I am seething inside from the indignities that have been visited upon me" demeanor.) Jerome pleads, "Look, um, home slice? If I get tagged for this, that's it for me. They won't hire me with a drug bust on my record." "It does seem unlikely, yeah," Demetri says. Jerome implores, "I was doing it! I saw myself doing that job, I saw myself wearing that uniform, and it wouldn't have happened if you bust me. I mean, it won't happen if you bust me. What I'm saying here is, it's up to you whether or not my future happens." O, HOW RELEVANT TO THE MAN WHO BEGAN THIS EPISODE WITH A PHONE CALL PRODDING HIM TO PROACTIVELY CHANGE HIS FUTURE. Gosh, can you see a theme emerging? Or is it too subtle?
Back in Germany, Mark and Janis repair to a restaurant. She is admirably restraining herself from eating all the breadsticks, preferring to take her carbs in what looks like highball form. She asks Mark, "Buy you a drink?" He demurs. Janis toasts him with "To moral relativism." Mark non-apologizes with, "I'm sorry this is bothering you so much," and Janis sees his non-apology and raises him an unvoiced "Fuck you!" with "Oh, I'm sorry this isn't bothering you at all." She tells him to own his actions and not hide behind the badge, concluding, "There have to be limits, Mark. There have to be people that we won't deal or flip, and I'm sorry, but if we can't even draw that line at a Nazi, I just don't even know what we're doing any more." It looks like you're making a deal with a Nazi is what you're doing. There are no lines -- at least, not if they get in the way of an episode where we find out how cuckoo for flashforwardpuffs Mark truly is. Mark argues, "Have you ever taken a leap of faith? I'm pushing this because I have faith that seeing Geyer's picture in my flashforward means his information will be important to us." Janis puts no stock in flashforwards and asks how she can be sure of something that may not even be real. Mark sums up the issue with "You've got a problem, because that's what faith is." Whether or not faith can be called unambiguously good is not addressed.
And right then the phone rings. After one terse conversation with FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance -- who is not too pleased about liberating the Nazis from prison -- Mark asks, "You sure?" FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance sums up the episode theme with, "Hell, no. But something tells me I better get used to that particular feeling. We all better. World's changed. Some of us -- all of us -- are making decisions now based on what will happen, not what could happen. It makes us do things we wouldn't ordinarily do. You'd thinking knowing the future would make us less concerned about it, but just the opposite has happened. The future's what all of us are living for now. It's what we're living by." (So there's a high-fiber diet in the FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance household now? Just asking.)
As FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance is imparting these thematic sentiments, we see Demetri handing over the paperwork necessary for exhuming Tracy's body.
Another late night at the office, another late night where Demetri isn't home. I could see it before when Zoey was stranded in Seattle, but now? Telecommute, my man. Anyway, it provides us with a scene where Al comes over and says that the tech department couldn't do much to trace the signal; whomever placed the call was canny enough to bounce the signal in a way where it seemed to be bouncing through two different sites as once.
Back in Munich, Stefan is fuh-reaking out, as he can't believe both his government and the U.S. government could be so feckless as to let a Nazi walk free on the strength of one shared flashforward and a promise of more information. Benford fixes Geyer with a look and commands, "Start talking." Geyer does: "I blacked out, as we all did. The flashforward happened as I described it. And I woke up. I went to my window, and I saw the city burning in the distance. And on the ground, in the courtyard outside, I saw crows. They were dead. The ground was littered with them." Mark realizes he's been outfoxed by an octogenerian and grinds out, "A murder of crows?" Janis asks, "What the hell does this have to do with the Kaballah and 137 seconds?" Geyer merrily replies, "Nothing, fraulein. I have no idea why the blackout lasted as long as it did." He laughs as Mark basically sums up, "It was all crap? The Kaballah? The birds?" Well, not so much with the crows -- those are real. "In my vision, I knew I'd be freed because of what I told you about the crows dying. It could be helpful in your investigation. How helpful it will be, we'll just have to see," Geyer says. Honestly, the U.S. standards for letting people out of jail are insanely lax. The courts are going to be flooded with detainee petitions and Gitmo's going to get turned into a SuperTarget if this sort of thing gets out.
As the Smashing Pumpkin's "To Sheila" plays, Mark comes home and catches his wife asleep in bed with the lights still on. He kisses her hello and good night, and she pops awake with, "Hey, you look horrendous." "Glad I accomplished something with this trip," he replies wryly. (I like Mark's sense of humor.) After briefly discussing the idea of how tough it is to "live in the now," Olivia decides they could maybe try living in the now with some marital calisthenics. Good for them!
The next day, Aaron's back in Kate's bar. The bartender who's there tells the just-arrived Kate that Aaron hasn't had anything to drink, but he's been "thinkin' about it hard." Kate heads over and sits next to him with "I can't be too sure since I had a few yesterday, but I thought I was pretty particular about not wanting to see you again." Aaron brokenly tells her he figured she'd make an exception for good news: she was right, as DNA testing proved the remains in Tracy's grave are apparently Tracy's. Aaron apologizes: "I'm sorry I went behind your back. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you." As Jeff Buckley's "Lover, You Should Have Come Over" starts up, Kate folds Aaron in her arms, and he cries into her shoulder.
Then we go to the FBI memorial that FBI Boss Dude Courtney B. Vance has been working on. The all-nighters apparently worked, because he gives the following speech: "There are no words for this -- none that mean half a damn, anyway. The people we love are gone, and they're not coming back. And we'll miss them. But things are going to get better. The sun's going to rise on a new day. I know it doesn't feel like it will, but that dawn is coming. There's hope. One of the agents here repeated something that a friend had mentioned to him. And he said, 'We're all prophets now.' You know, I can't think of a prophet worth a damn that didn't suffer. And I also can't think of a prophet that God didn't love."
While this montage is going on, we see Felicia clapping eyes on the boy she'll eventually claim as her new son; the child is sitting in the front with a woman in a headscarf (suggesting she's Muslim). Demetri and Mark are both looking thoughtful. Janis looks like she's still really pissed about what happened in Germany. Who can blame her?
Later, everyone's in a bar and M