By Sobell
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Al's death makes the news, as he's apparently the very first person in the whole wide world to think, Hey, if I off myself, I can throw one or more flashforwards into doubt. Some folks -- Mark among them -- are giddy with the idea that the future is, once again, a blank slate upon which to write their most hopeful projections. So he whisks Olivia off for a celebratory "Hurrah! We won't sink into alcoholism and adultery!" weekend, but it's cut short by a call from Demetri: the star-tattooed guy who is supposed to come after Mark on April 29 has surfaced, so maybe Mark wants to pursue this lead before it pursues him? Mark does. He leaves Olivia with a lovely parting gift -- the lingerie that she'll be wearing in her flashforward. Mark and Olivia later debate whether the visions are "that much more set in stone than [they] thought" or if they can change things. Olivia argues, "We can change things, Mark … we just have to decide how far we're willing to go to make it happen." In her case, she's willing to throw out the lingerie.
Mark, Janis and Lloyd chat with a witness, Ingrid Alvarez, who watched the star-armed guy and a pal kill a guy in the alley. She can't give too many details, and Mark gets the bright idea to use her as bait to grab the star-armed guy. Demetri's for it: "We catch these guys tonight, we can finally put a face on our enemy." So they set their trap in Ingrid's cockatiel emporium (I swear, I am not making this up), but unfortunately, their quarry ends up dead. Even more unfortunately, none of the FBI geniuses think that maybe, more than one person can have this type of tattoo. (We see this in the cliffhanger, where Ricky Jay is blithely dispatching another star-armed guy.)
Meanwhile, Lloyd is suffering pangs of conscience, as he believes his experiment caused the flashforward. Dr. Hobbit's not having that, and he proposes they settle their do-I-tell-or-not dispute via a game of poker. By the way, don't ever play poker with Dr. Hobbit, because he's a total trash-talking douche. It is eminently satisfying when Lloyd wins. (Even if he has to use his new sleight-of-hand skills to do it.)
Tracy, Aaron's daughter, is home, but she's suffering from recurring nightmares, and she's asking Aaron to keep her existence on the down-low. She finally explains what's got her so spooked: her Humvee was attacked by a Blackwater-esque private military contracting organization called Jericho, and the attack happened about a week after Tracy watched Jericho massacre an Afghani village. The Humvee attack left Tracy short one leg, yet she somehow managed to survive this alone in the desert and has been living "on the run," as she's concluded that she is safe from neither Jericho nor the military that insists on employing these thugs accountability-free.
And in plots that were entirely superfluous: Nicole is part of an exciting new cult devoted to the idea that Al Gough sacrificed himself so that free will could return to the land. Too bad that every other plot showed people hurtling toward their flashforwards.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!I need to begin this recap with an apology. In prior weeks, I have been spelling Bad Ass Boss Courtney B. Vance's character name as "Weddick." It was what I saw on IMDB, and it was what appeared in closed-captioning. This week, a nameplate on the desk showed the spelling as "Wedeck." I apologize for misspelling it lo these many episodes; it will be correctly spelled from here out. Or until the fiends at ABC alter the spelling again.
Pearl Jam's "Unthought Known" begins playing as the scene pans down to a leafy suburban street. We see Celia of the last episode getting her letter from Al Gough. The camera swoops across the Pacific bluffs and we see Aaron watching his daughter sleep on a pull-out couch in the living room. He looks a lot less happy than you'd expect from a father whose kid came back from the dead. Eddie Vedder continues to have deep thoughts as Demetri studies Mark's board. Zip! Celia's now holding a press conference where she holds up the letter and tells her story. Cut to the news boxes outside the FBI building in Los Angeles; the Los Angeles Post runs with the story "THE FUTURE CAN BE CHANGED." In some quaint seaside town off highway one, in some quaint and overpriced hotel right on the Pacific, Mark and Olivia enjoy some marital calisthenics. How fortunate that Eddie Vedder's bellowing gets them in the mood! Nicole continues to do her volunteer work, and as she does, she notices a flyer for a group called "Sanctuary." They have a logo that, to be frank, looks like a stylized diagram showing people where the little man in the boat can be found (if you know what I mean), but that doesn't appear to deter Nicole. Bryce continues to obsessively draw his dream girl. Lloyd continues to do card tricks, much to Dylan's delight. The music crescendos as Janis walks back into work -- there's a big welcome-back banner, and flowers, and Wedeck gives her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, which is really sweet.
And then it's quiet again. Lloyd is in Dylan's hospital room -- that child must have gold-plated insurance coverage -- and he's reading about Celia as some blow-dried coif given the power of speech bloviates on the television about what this all means. Answer: a whole lot of nothing; you can make a hairstyle talk, but there's no magic black enough to make it sentient. Lloyd is also looking at an email he's about to send out with the subject line "WE NEED TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY." As he looks at the screen, the hairstyle asks, "Is there going to be another world blackout? But the big question -- possibly the central question of human existence -- do we have free will?" Lloyd sends his email.