By Sobell
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The first interesting thing the episode does: point out that the people who didn't have flashforwards have their own website, too -- one that acknowledges that they're already ghosts (www.alreadyghosts.com). Since these folks are linked to Janis's assault, the FBI Squad, Dude Division, decides it's time to infiltrate the local L.A. chapter. They're aided by MI6 agent Fiona Banks, as her flashforward showed her investigating this. So she's sort of like the British version of Mark, with the whole "I'm working on this now, because the future said I will be."
So, Mark, Demetri and Gough go to a Blue Hand meeting, where the first thing they have to do is play Russian Roulette. Gough totally pwns the game and gets handed the spare bullet for his troubles – "Your ticket in." (The bullet reads, "Not today," which is a nice cosmic up-yours to whatever force will wipe out the Blue Hand-ers before April 29.) So then they walk into a really pretentious party and bust it up, and their interrogation gets them pretty much nowhere, as their lead suspect learned from the Alda School of Interrogation Answering. The only point to that whole scene was to have someone talk about how the flashforwards are proof of an immutable future. Mark and Demetri accept this; Gough does not.
Bryce and Nicole re-meet cute, as Nicole is now volunteering at the hospital and Bryce is the lucky so-and-so designated to show her the ropes. We learn that Nicole is fluent in Japanese, on account of living in Okinawa as a child. She is therefore able to help Bryce decipher a missing part of his flashforward -- the kanji character behind the girl he's been sketching, which translates to "Believe."
While that's going on, Lloyd and Olivia have an awkward little talk, wherein Lloyd thanks Olivia for her work with Dylan and assures her that he has no intention of putting the moves on her.
Demetri finally comes clean with Zoey after she calls him on being "checked out ever since I got back from Seattle." It's not clear whether he's doing it because he really loves her, or because he really loves living in their sweet, sweet loft (honestly, this place combines the eye-rollingly-removed-from-reality comfort levels of a typical Nora Ephron set with DWR's inventory and somehow ends up tasteful), but whatever. Zoey hears him out, and is all, "You're not ruining my wedding by showing up dead."
Aaron gets Tracy's old pocketknife from a military pal of hers, and he's ecstatic, because he had seen the knife in his flashforward, and now this is proof that his vision is going to come true. But Mike (the military pal) says that the vision isn't possible, on account of him having watched Tracy getting blown out of a Humvee when they were under attack. Except Aaron walks into his house and… Tracy's there?
It would be the episode's big cliffhanger, except this time, it's not. Mystery women popping up in people's houses is really not that significant compared to the real point of the episode: Gough decides to blow the blue-handers' theory that this is all pre-ordained. His flashforward alluded to him doing something that somehow resulted in another person's death, so in his effort to keep the woman alive and to demonstrate that the flashforwards are not carved in stone … Gough kills himself. I am not ashamed to admit that I cried like a baby during that scene. This is going to be a soggy recap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!The episode starts with a slender, dark-haired woman crouching at the edge of a huge, gorgeous fountain. She's got two boys, and they're preparing to pull two toy sailboats from the fountain's pool. Then, they're walking to her car. As this is going on, we hear Agent Gough's voice: "Dear Celia -- I don't know your last name, and I don't know where you live, but I know you have two young boys -- twins, I believe. And I know you didn't have a flashforward. I understand how terrifying that is, and how powerless you must be feeling. But I want you to know, you are not alone." Celia's put her kids in the car and found a note under the driver's-side windshield wiper: One side has a picture of a blue hand and an URL: www.ALREADYGHOSTS.com, while the other has the scribbled message "We know you are one of us."
As is Demetri, who quickly closes his laptop when Zoey comes into the room. "Emailing your other girlfriend?" she asks. He replies, "No, we broke up. This is just porn." Demetri, I am going to miss you and your sense of humor if Agent Shoreh Aghdashloo is correct about her flashforward. And I will miss these fleeting glimpses of your loft, because it is pretty much Exhibit A for the message that indeed, crime can pay when you are the attorney trying to get the criminal off the hook. Anyway, Zoey's got wedding-invitation proofs on the brain, and she natters on about these for a while, but I'm distracted from the Zoey-Demetri banter by the thought that with all the money these two clearly have laying around, neither one of them thought to hire a wedding planner and have him or her sweat all those details? What is the point to being a DINK couple (dual-income, no kids) if you can't fling money at someone who will either handle the invites for you or give you the tough love necessary to hammer home the message that nobody will give a crap about what your invitation looks like, so long as they're invited. Anyway, the minute Zoey leaves, Demetri opens up his laptop and we see that he's hanging out on alreadyghosts.com.
Then we zip to Mark and Olivia's House of Recriminations, where she is telling Mark about how she'll be home late from work that night, so please don't go concluding that she's really off humping Lloyd instead. Mark repeatedly insists that Olivia doesn't have to explain, but given how pissily he's brushing his teeth -- and truly, someone is irritated when it comes through in the ol' Colgate routine -- it looks like Olivia certainly has to. Mark passive-aggressively adds, "I trust you." Olivia snaps back, "Good! I trust you too!" then leaves the bathroom before Mark can see that her pajama bottoms have spontaneously combusted. Mark continues flossing petulantly.