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We finally find out why Bryce wanted to kill himself: four weeks before the blackout, he learned that he had treatment-resistant cancer -- the kind that makes you really, ridiculously good-looking right before it finally kills you. But he had the blackout, which put lie to the whole "You'll be both handsome and dead within weeks." The day of the blackout, we also find out that Bryce had met with a counselor and admitted that he never really wanted to be a doctor and he's not very good at it. We also meet his lady-friend from the flashforward: She's a biomedical engineer named Keiko. And, like Bryce, she's managed to nab a job in a high-pressure, highly competitive field, but she's not terribly happy with it.
AND we get to see Bryce and Keiko's flashforward: Bryce is now semi-fluent in Japanese, he and Keiko have been corresponding for some time, and when she meets him, the camera makes a point of lingering on the water-wheel pattern on her t-shirt and the tattoo on her wrist, which has the kanji character "believe."
Over the course of the episode, Bryce gets an opportunity to get into a cancer trial and ditches it, heading to Japan instead to find Keiko at the sushi restaurant in her hometown. (The restaurant has the water-wheel logo we all saw on Keiko's shirt.) He gets as far as Keiko's house but Keiko's mom, still smarting from her daughter quitting the robotics job and refusing a semi-arranged marriage, lies about how she has no idea who the girl in Bryce's drawing is. But we see the end of Keiko's flashback and learn that she and Bryce will meet at a restaurant in Los Angeles. And guess who took the same flight back from Tokyo? So, Bryce and Keiko moving toward each other is pretty much the main story of the episode.
In other storylines: The FBI guys have their hands full with learning about the alpha insignia on the ring and learning that Demetri's been red-flagged by the NSA after they intercepted his call from Shoreh Aghdashloo. Although the NSA bureaucrat originally refuses to turn over their record of the call (and the data associated with it), she soon folds after Mark, Demetri and Wedeck glare at her. (Perhaps during the February sweeps period, they'll team up with Simon to develop that set-people-on-fire-by-staring-at-them technology and deploy it in future intra-agency meetings. I can dream.) The boys all analyze the recording and find out that Shoreh Aghdashloo made the call from Hong Kong. By the end of the episode, Mark and Demetri are on a plane to the island where east meets west.
So, Mark finds out that Olivia got the text about how Mark was drunk in his flashforward, and he reasons that only two people on the planet know, and only because he told them. (It does not occur to genius Mark that maybe someone else's flashforward shows a sozzled Mark.) Mark asks Aaron if he's the one who sent the text to Olivia about how he was drunk in his flashforward, and Aaron dumps him as a sponsor. When Mark asks Wedeck, his badass boss doesn't say yes, but he doesn't say no, either.
And, in "subplots I pay attention to only because it's my job," Tracy appears to be hitting the bottle, which puts a strain on Aaron the recovering alcoholic.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Four weeks before the blackout: a doctor is pointing at bodily scans all, "There, and there, and there, and there." Then the perspective shifts so we see Bryce standing to said doctor, and Bryce confirms that a) his cancer has returned and b) it's metastasized. To make matters even worse, Bryce now has cancer in his liver (odds of surviving more than six months: Not Good), but on the bright side, it's not in his lungs or bones. Yet. And the worst news of all: Bryce's cancer is Stage IV and it's especially resistant to treatment. The doctor levels with Bryce: "We're running out of options."
Bryce numbly stumbles to his car. Behind him, a driver impatient for his spot dogs his steps, first honking the horn, then shouting, "Come on!" The guy skids away. Bryce appears not to notice any of it. He gets behind the wheel of his car, still dazed, which explains why he hits a cherry-red convertible as he backs out. The driver gets out, ready to dispense the (self-)righteous wrath of the aggrieved yuppie, and because this guy is not what we'd call "observant," he misses the fact that Bryce is wearing a shocked, thousand-yard stare. Bryce then shifts from the "denial" portion of his diagnosis to the "anger" portion, and rams the convertible a few more times before taking off. Bryce gets out of his Jeep and begins stumbling off to ... um, call for a ride? Anyway, as he walks off, the other guy yells, "You are so dead, man! Did you hear me? You're dead!" And honestly, that was what pushed me over to Bryce's side, because it takes a doucheknob of uncommon insensitivity to scream that sort of aggrieved threat in a hospital parking lot.
Two weeks before the blackout: in Tokyo, a charming Japanese woman in business drag is practicing her smile before a mirror. She is very obviously about to go into a big meeting -- something the exposition hurries along by having a guy run into the bathroom and asking Keiko Arahida to hurry up, as everyone's waiting for her. She then walks into a conference room and we see her explaining her qualifications to the waiting crowd of men: "I started by trying to assemble a robotic hand, as a teenager in my parents' house. I barely got the servo part working, but it was a start. I was hooked. I got my undergraduate degree as a mechanical engineer at the University of Tokyo, then a master's degree in biomedical engineering and robotics." Silence in the room. Then someone leans forward to ask Keiko her role models and we find out they're Marie Curie, Jane Goodall and Jimi Hendrix. "I play guitar. It's one of my hobbies, along with salsa dancing. I was first in my class at the university. Nakahara is the best robotics firm in Japan. I think I would be a perfect fit here," Keiko concludes.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific, Bryce narrowly avoids killing someone on the operating table. After the operation is over, Olivia takes Bryce aside and tells him, "I think you need to think seriously about whether or not you're committed to this profession."
Zip! Back across the Pacific. Keiko is heading into her parents' place. It's filled with people and she closes the door for a moment to compose herself and plaster a fake smile on her face. Then it's in to face her congratulations party. We learn that despite Keiko asking her mother not to say anything, Mrs. Arahida has evidently been broadcasting the news up and down the streets of Tokyo. She rationalizes violating her daughter's wishes by pointing out that Keiko landed a plum position with one of Tokyo's top companies during an economic downturn. We are left to infer that Mrs. Arahida is a disciple of the Transitive Properties School of Parenting, i.e. "everything my kid does is a total reflection on me, so clearly, her victories belong to me." Mrs. Arahida has also thoughtfully provided two pre-vetted candidates, should Keiko be itching to get married. That Keiko is not too enamored of either Mr. Ito or Mr. Shinhara is apparently beside the point. Keiko pulls her mother aside to ask what's going on, and in the course of the conversation, her mother basically asks, "Aren't you happy that you'll never have to work in a restaurant? I'm happy for you," and we see that indeed, Keiko's mom is living out her own ideas of what constitutes a good life through her daughter.
Bryce is meeting with a counselor now, and he's admitting something I suspected all along: "I'm not a very good doctor. I never have been, really. I don't know what I want. I just ... did it, and now I'm here." We find out that Bryce has refrained from telling his family about his cancer because he feels like they went through enough with his father's three-year lung cancer ordeal, and he hasn't told his coworkers because "I don't want their pity." The counselor tells him, "You need their support to get through this," but Bryce doesn't really see himself "getting through this" so much as he sees himself "dying of this." He tells the counselor as much, and she tells him, "You don't know what the future holds. None of us do, really. Your job is to take care of yourself, Bryce, to try to have the best life you can for as long as you can. Live each day doing what feels right."
Bryce opts to disregard all that advice. On the morning of the flashforward, he prepares to kill himself out on the Venice pier. For someone who is all, "I walk alone into the valley of death," he sure has no problem making sure there are plenty of bystanders for his lonely trek into mortality. Then we see a sequence only slightly more detailed than the initial series of events in the pilot: Bryce walking out on the pier to go kill himself, looking out over the pier to watch the surfers, preparing to shoot himself, and right as he places the gun to his chin ... passing out. Boy, Bryce is lucky that he didn't squeeze the trigger reflexively.
Then we see his flashforward in some detail: Bryce is sitting at a table in a Japanese restaurant, studying the painted carp on a privacy divider. A kimono-clad waitress comes up to him and he asks her for tea, in Japanese. A girl in a shirt with a waterwheel on it walks over, and when Bryce looks up, it's Keiko -- her hair down, her expression tentative. Bryce says, "You're really here," then, switching to Japanese, invites Keiko to sit down. She does and the two of them stare goonily at each other until the giggles set in. Bryce then takes Keiko's hand and notes the kanji tattoo on her left wrist reading, "Believe." She laughs some more, and then the flashforward ends.
Bryce comes to, looking up at a brilliant blue sky and a bunch of balloons floating heavenward. Keiko comes to on her bathroom floor. She stretches out, then begins laughing in delight at her flashforward.
And now, we're all caught up to the present. Bryce is spending all his free time on two things: painting different impressions of his flashforward, and learning Japanese. We see him at home, painting away, surrounded by giant canvases of Keiko's face. He better have the good sense to put all those away before she comes over, or else she is going to be seriously creeped out. Bryce's language lesson is interrupted by a run to the loo; he's back on the chemo, and it's not sitting well. As he chunders, the tinny little voice on his language tape asks, "How are you feeling today? I hope you are well." O THE IRONY. As the tape reels on, "I am lost. Who are you? What do you want?" I have to wonder: Is it really possible to buy the Rosetta Stone Language Acquisition series, Foreshadowing Edition? Or is that one of those products that cropped up post-flashforward?
Meanwhile, in my least-favorite subplot of all time: It's Aaron and Tracy, having a morning at home. And by "morning at home," I mean, "Tracy is passed out on the couch and Aaron is talking to Mark on the phone about the aforementioned daughter." Mark shares the results of his informal investigation with Aaron: "Private military contractors like Blackwater (now known as Xe) and Jericho are harder to break into than Ft. Knox. This outfit's headquartered in Santa Monica --"
And excuse me, Mark, but I have to stop you s
o I can ask: Tracy's allegedly been on the run from these cats for several months and it never once occurred to her to Google or Bing! the company site and find out where Jericho was located? And then think, "Gosh, perhaps settling down a scant valley away from the epicenter of evil isn't the safest move"? This show beggars belief in many aspects, so it's silly getting hung up on this particular detail, yet here I am.
Anyway, as Mark continues that -- O THE IRONY -- Jericho is working out of some "think tank's" building, Aaron is finding empties on the floor to Tracy. Mark concludes that this think tank requires higher security clearance than he has. He bails on the conversation to answer Olivia's phone and that's when he notices the text still on her phone: "Mark was drinking in his flashforward."
And now, another fun Benford marital conversation. Mark's insulted that Olivia didn't bother to bring up the text, which sets him on his snit of the day.
Time marches on and Olivia's at the hospital. She notices that Bryce doesn't look good. Although he's not feverish, he's really pale, and Bryce's "I'm fine!" is undercut by his wobbly-legged semiswoon into a doorway. Olivia gets him onto a bed and starts taking his vitals, chatting about how other people have noticed him nearly fainting during rounds and wouldn't he like to talk about what's going on. Bryce keeps on insisting he's fine, but Olivia sits down, whips out her stethoscope and yanks the collar of his scrubs to one side. She sees a medical-looking tube thingy taped to his chest.
Olivia's genuinely concerned. "Why do you have a central line?" Bryce tells her it's for the chemo. Naturally, this comes as a surprise to Olivia. "I have renal cell carcinoma, stage four," Bryce tells her. Olivia is stunned. As she tries to remain professional (i.e. not bursting into tears), we learn that Bryce had one kidney out right before he started at Our Lady of the Mood Lighting Memorial Hospital. Olivia realizes that this is why Bryce tried to kill himself. Bryce explains, "I was terrified. I didn't think I could face the prospect of dying. I didn't want to put my family through that." Yeah, because families are always like, "God, it's so selfish of sick people to linger all, 'Spend time with me! I want to tell you I love you!'" Olivia is aghast that Bryce has been going through all this alone, but Bryce says, "Since the blackout, things are different now. I'm going to be okay. I've got something to live for."
And now, speaking of reasons to contemplate your mortality: a Tracy-and-Aaron scene. She's made him dinner, and on the pretext of getting cheese for the pasta, comes out with a big bottle of wine and pours herself a tumbler full of wine. Tracy sets down the bottle between her and Aaron. After a few minutes of awkward silence, she finally snots, "What?" Aaron says he can't have her drink in the room. Tracy knocks back one glass and refills with, "It doesn't matter. It's just a glass of wine." Aaron points out that so far as he's concerned, wine is booze is hooch is rotgut, and "I can't be in the same room as [the alcohol]. You understand that?" Tracy, who is already a little loaded, pulls the victim card: "After everything I've been through, you're telling me I can't have a glass of wine." No, dimbulb, he's telling you he can't have a glass of wine, so please knock it off with the drinking around him. Aaron says as much, only more politely, but Tracy feels like she'd rather storm off and marinate in a combination of self-pity and Barefoot cabernet. I personally am wondering how she got hold of the booze in the first place. I'm thinking Pink Dot.
We then zip to the FBI meeting room, where some middle-aged lady bureaucrat straight out of Central Casting is busy showing off the NSA's work on the captured footage of Suspect Zero; they've found the alpha symbol on his ring. The lady dreamily notes that alpha means "the beginning of everything." Mark asks, "If you can enhance the ring so well, why can't we see his face?" The NSA lady says that unfortunately, none of the footage was really useable for that purpose. Wedeck sits through her technowizardry lecture on how they rebuilt the ring image -- honestly, it better belongs in a Bones episode where the tertiary characters take us through some elaborate exposition-via-computer-modeling monologue while Booth and Brennan simmer with unrequited sexual tension -- and demonstrates his displeasure with "I was hoping the NSA could provide us with an analysis of the ring that was a little more substantial." The NSA lady laughs nervously and says, "To tell you the truth, I'm a little uncomfortable talking in this particular group ... I'll be blunt, Mr. Wedeck. One of the members of your Mosaic task force has been red-flagged by the NSA."
This is news to Wedeck, Vreede, Demetri and Mark. NSA Agent Levy goes on to explain that a few months ago, the NSA intercepted a call on an FBI agent's mobile phone, and the origins of said call had been professionally secured. Noh's righteous snit fit about the NSA eavesdropping on FBI calls is sidetracked by Mark musing that this could be the call from the woman about Demetri's pending murder, and if that's the case, the NSA will have a recording of the call. Demetri asks how to get a recording of the call and Levy looks very uncomfortable. She says, "I'm sorry. It's classified signals intelligence."
Demetri says, "I'm running out of time, so if you have any information on who that was or how I'm going to be killed --" "I'm not authorized --" Levy starts, but Demetri interrupts with an impassioned "Come on!" Although this fails to sway Levy, the collective glaring power of Mark, Wedeck and Demetri does the job. We are apparently wasting our time (and moral high ground) with renditions and Gitmo if all it takes for people to fold is the tripartite ogle. Or does this ocular intimidation work only on wimpy Americans?
Back to Japan's answer to Initech, Nakahara. Keiko is in her cube and is super-bored. She's got a little robot arm -- I'd like to think it's the one that she built as a teenager) -- and she's watching it move jellybeans from one bowl to another. She recalls her flashforward: sprinting down a street as fireworks spark in the sky. And then Keiko turns back to her computer. Instead of working, she loads a favorite YouTube clip of a guitar player -- think of this as a cross between Jimi Hendrix and Jesse Camp [it's Bob Dylan doing "Shelter From the Storm" in concert in 1976; you can find this version on his Hard Rain live album -- Ed.] -- and begins mimicking the fingerwork in her cubicle. Then work indignity #1 is visited upon her: Keiko is caught out by a coworker. And then comes work indignity #2: she's summoned to a meeting with the eponymous founder of the firm ... only because the men sitting around the table want her to serve them tea. Her coworker helpfully points out, "You're the only female in the department. They're not going to hire another woman just to serve tea." (Apparently this serve-the-men tea thing is still common in the workplace over there.) Keiko pours the tea and each little cup is like a hot little liquid humiliation.
Back in L.A., Nicole is helping Bryce with his language lessons. She bats her eyes and says dreamily, "It's so cool you're learning a language for someone you haven't even met yet." Bryce is like, "But I will meet her. [pause] I'm hearing myself and I sound crazy." Nicole swoons, "But it's a good kind of crazy. Love crazy." Nicole sounds like she knows of what she speaks.
Zip! It's an AA meeting. Aaron is folding chairs and Mark lingers to help, and to oh, so casually ask if maybe Aaron took it upon himself to send Olivia a text about how Mark was drinking in his flashforward. Aaron seems genuinely baffled by who would do such a thing, and Mark continues to needle him about how freaked out he is. Aaron finally asks, "Are you trying to say something, Mark?" Try, yes. Succeed, no. Aaron finally says, "You know how many hours I've spent listening to your crap, your doubt, your self-pity?" Mark says, "I thought you were my sponsor." Aaron points out that "sponsor" is not synonymous with "punching bag." Mark self-righteously says, "I think I have the right to ask you if you're communicating with my wife behind my back." Aaron fumes, "You son of a bitch. After all the time we've spent together, you think I'd do that?" Mark huffs that he just doesn't know anymore. Aaron storms off, clangs some chairs together to let off steam, then comes over to say, "I tell you what: Why don't you get a sponsor you can really trust?" He then pats Mark's cheek none-too-gently. Since Mark is somewhat frail, he practically falls over from the love taps. Aaron storms off, leaving Mark alone to think about what he's done. Or perhaps to notice that Aaron never directly denied what Mark accused him of.
After Keiko's bad day at work, she's blowing off steam by wandering around Tokyo's tattoo district. She walks into a shop and asks for a tattoo. The artist rebuffs her, but Keiko insists that she's serious. The artist dismissively says, "You look like an office girl. If you get that, what will they think of you at work?" Keiko says, "I don't care." The tattoo artist continues, "The nail that stands out gets hammered down." Keiko says, "I'm not doing it for them."
At the FBI office, Mark apprises Wedeck of the progress on Demetri's call (they've got it) and then awkwardly segues into, "Did you send Olivia a text?" Wedeck asks, "Why would I send your wife a text?" Mark's all, "You're one of only two people I've told ... and I recall you were pretty pissed that I was drinking, and the implications it had for our investigation." Without even looking away from his computer screen, Wedeck says, "I see. You were thinking I was so angry and so petty that I'd run out and text your wife about it." When he puts it that way, Mark does sound kind of silly. Wedeck kicks Mark out of his office. Again, not a direct answer to the question, but again, I'm loving how each man has verbally bitch-slapped Mark. That needs to be a regular feature on this show.
Meanwhile, Bryce is finding out from a patient that the t-shirt Keiko is wearing in his flashforward comes from Sushi Arahida, a restaurant near the university district in Tsukuba. And -- o happy contrivance! -- there's only one restaurant like this, so the odds of finding the mystery lady (i.e. Keiko) have just narrowed.
Olivia waylays him in the hall. She's so moved by Bryce's plight that she's done some research and made some calls, and she's managed to get him enrolled in a medical trial for treatment by trifectumab in Houston. Bryce is all, "Thanks, but I believe that I'm not supposed to do a damn thing for my health between now and April because, after all, I'm alive in my flashfoward and surely there's no point in preparing for anything between now and then! Other than learning Japanese, I mean." Olivia says, "You're only going to hear me say this once: Maybe the reason you're alive in your flashforward is because you're going to take this drug and get better." She must really care about Bryce to resort to this line of reasoning. He should be touched. A more jerky boss would have said, "Maybe you're going to meet this girl in a restaurant to tell her that you're riddled with cancer and going to die the minute the check arrives." Olivia begs him, "Go to Houston. If you need a couple of days, take a couple of days."
Bryce does take a couple of days -- to go to Japan. Oh my God, it is so good that none of his patients are aware of what a numbskull he is. Let's hope they're not surfing Mosaic, anyway.
Bryce shows up at Sushi Arahida and manages to stammer his way through a rudimentary conversation -- albeit one that ends up with him awkwardly asking about Keiko. A few of the sushi chefs recognize the picture as Bryce exclaims, "I love you," instead of "I love her." Bryce gets the name "Keiko," and the restaurant staff actually directs him toward the Arahida household.
Which, by the way, is in serious discord. Keiko's just quit her job, explaining, "It's becoming a cemetery for my soul." Her mother heatedly says, "We worked our entire lives in that restaurant for you, so you could become somebody. You can't quit!" Keiko replies, "I'm not a child anymore. Maybe it's not the life you wanted for me. I have my own dreams, my own life. I'm not going to live it for you. And that means I can pick my own husband." Her baffled mother insists, "You would be lucky to have Mr. Ito for your husband." Keiko and her mom then debate the merits of imagination in a spouse (guess who's on the pro side?) and Keiko finally says, "There's somebody else out there for me." We then get a second picture of Keiko's flashforward: s
he's running through a rain-slicked street while fireworks spark. Back in the present, Keiko's mom says, "If you can't respect your family and our wishes, maybe you shouldn't live here." Keiko's like, "I'll go pack."
Back in Los Angeles, the FBI squad, dude division -- hey, where is Janis? Is she off shopping for sperm? I miss her. ANYWAY, the FBI squad, dude division is listening to Shoreh Aghdashloo tell Demetri he'll be murdered on March 15, 2010, and Vreede tells Demetri, "We've analyzed the ambient noise and we've come up with a potential lead. I stripped away everything but the background noise. We found --" "You found cheese electronic music. Come on, Vreede," Demetri says. Vreede leans back and grins with, "No, not just any cheese electronic music, my friend. It's the 'Symphony of Lights,' the world's largest outdoor light and music show. Plays every night in Hong Kong Harbour." Mark grins, "Want to take a trip?"
Cut to Wedeck explaining to his chucklehead subordinates that owing to Sino-American relations (Global Facebook status update: China is ... incredulous that the CIA accused it of causing a blackout. Grrr!), there's no way two members of the U.S. Government are going to Hong Kong. Wedeck placates them by promising to put his finest minds in Asia on it, then adding that he needs his finest minds in Los Angeles to stay in Los Angeles, but Mark and Demetri are not placated. After that meeting, Mark grabs Demetri in the general office bullpen and says, "We're going. Hong Kong." Demetri grins a little as he says, "Wedeck's going to be pissed." Mark says, "He'll get over it."
Speaking of the Pacific Rim, we're back to Bryce in Tsukuba. He's found the Arahida residence, and when he knocks on the door, Keiko's little sister answers it with, "Mom, there's a white guy at the door!" I wonder if that was on Bryce's language tapes, or if there were no pizza-delivery incidents which would have met the Rosetta Stone Language Acquisition series, Foreshadowing Edition requirements for inclusion. Anyway, Mrs. Arahida is not so thrilled at the surprise gaijin, but when Bryce asks about Keiko, she's even less delighted. Bryce whips out his notebook and asks if his picture of Keiko in the Sushi Arahida shirt is actually Keiko. Mrs. Arahida remembers the argument with her daughter -- specifically the part where Keiko asserted there was someone else out there -- thinks about life with a gaijin son-in-law, then lies, "I don't know that girl." Ah, madam, you can fight destiny but you will not win. However, Bryce is left thinking he's reached a dead end.
Bryce calls to Nicole to moan about what an idiot he is, what with flying 5000 miles to find a total stranger. Nicole consoles him by pointing out that he did it to find a woman that he loved, and at least he now knows Keiko's name. Bryce sighs that he doesn't even know if it's the woman's real name, and nobody can tell him anything. Nicole counsels him, "Maybe you're trying to rush something that can't be rushed. You should be patient. Isn't that how love works?" Well, her twitterpation for him seems to be moving along those lines. Poor Bryce is still sad: maybe he misinterpreted this as a way to construct an escapist fantasy. Nicole urges him to come home; she appears to have an agenda that involves cheering him up in person. (But heaven help me, if this turns into "Nicole and Bryce fall into a fling and she feels guilty for distracting him from his KeikoQuest, so she embraces her death as sweet repentance," well ... there will be a lot of caps lock ranting.)
Back in the subplot I wish would check itself into rehab or get rubbed out by Jericho: Tracy has passed out on the couch. Aaron looks at the empty wine bottle on the coffee table, and is fortunately distracted by a knock on the door. He deposits the bottle in the trash and sees Mark at the door. Mark asks to come in, but Aaron pointedly steps outside. Mark semi-non-apologizes for being out-of-line, and Aaron unloads about Tracy: "She's back, but she's not the person she used to be. That person is dead. She's broken, angry, scared. She drinks herself to sleep every night. She's a messed-up alcoholic, Mark. And I'm to blame for all of it." She enlisted because she wanted to be just like me. And now she drinks just like me. There's not a damn thing I can do about it." Aaron is genuinely pained by saying all this aloud; Mark looks bored and irritated. He's a giver, that Benford. The two men conclude that they really can't resume a sponsor/sponsor-ee relationship, but, Aaron chokes out, "I could really use a friend." Mark makes no move to hug said friend, but at least he says, "You've got a friend."
And then ... Bryce's flight has landed at LAX and he's debarking, looking all dispirited and disgruntled. As some intricate guitar playing starts up, we see that not far behind him, toting a guitar and letting her hair flow free, is Keiko. We finally see her whole flashforward: she's running down a wet street (or off a set -- there's scaffolding) as fireworks spark, her guitar slung over her shoulder. Keiko is grinning and she looks simply radiant. She pulls open a door and we see a notice reading "Best of Los Angeles restaurants," then heads into the Japanese place. She finds Bryce and grins to see him. In the passenger area, Keiko puts down her guitar for a moment and pulls up her sleeve. We see that she' got her tattoo -- "Believe." The episode ends with her remembering the rest of her flashforward, then grinning as she heads into a new life.