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Welcome back, everyone! Remember how there was this blackout that swept the entire planet, and nearly everyone saw their futures, and there was mayhem and foolishness? You do? Good. You can then skip the first few minutes of the episode.
Let's start off with the most superfluous narrative arc of the night. Naturally, it stars Bryce and Nicole. Their "no, really, we're friends" relationship is continuing apace, and Nicole becomes enamored of the "Sanctuary" movement -- helmed by a former window-washer who escaped death-by-flashforward only through the most improbable of coincidences -- in an effort to find meaning in her own flashforward. Bryce is skeptical but supportive, and honestly, the two of them just need to stop brooding over their flashforwards, exercise a little free will and get horizontal already.
More relevant: Mark is suspended for his Hong Kong hijinks, and he's under orders to go see an FBI-mandated psychiatrist until she declares him fully functional for duty. So... permanent unemployment, then? ANYWAY, Mark meets up with the doctor, who shrewdly notes that he's missing an awful lot of his flashforward and she's got a shot that can help amplify and clarify the missing details. Mark takes it and we get the extended remix of his flashforward, which I promise to recount in excruciating detail in the recap. What you need to know now is that it ends with a really hostile telephone conversation with his collaborator Lloyd that ends with Mark saying, "Unless we stop this, there's going to be another blackout!" Thus the ties between Mark and Lloyd continue to tighten...
As for Lloyd, he begins the episode being held in the requisite dank basement with David Fincher-style lighting. And because he's not suffering enough, eventually Simon joins him. Ricky Jay comes down and says, quite forthrightly, "I'm a villain." Why, yes -- because he stole all the scenes he was in. (Ba-da-bump!) Ricky Jay tells Simon and Lloyd that they didn't cause the blackout, but their experiment in plasma wake field acceleration amplified it. Then, correctly banking on Simon's craven nature and Lloyd's innate altruism, Ricky Jay cuts off a piece of Simon's finger to convince Lloyd to talk.
Watch this episode here, and discuss it in our forums. Then see what we think the cast should do if the show gets cancelled!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"I want to tell you a story about a man I know," the episode begins. It's the parable of the window-washer. What, you haven't heard this one before? Okay, heathen, let me bring you up to speed: And yea verily, it did come to pass that a window-washer was preparing to get all tied up in his rig and go wash windows on October 6. But then the blackout hit before his safety harness was rigged up, his unconscious body hurtled toward the unforgiving pavement, and it was only through the most contrived of narrative coincidences that the end of the rope happened to catch a hook and thereby keep the window washer suspended like this show from Thanksgiving through St. Patrick's Day. Naturally, the window washer took this as a sign that everything happens for a reason -- not the show hiatus, the happenstance that kept him twirling at the end of a lifesaving rope -- and now he delivers the good news to anyone who wants desperately to believe that there's a reason for the whole I-saw-my-future thing. No, wait, let me amend that: Anyone who wants desperately to believe there's a good reason for the whole I-saw-my-future thing, a sparkly reason with unicorns, as opposed to a shadowy-cabal-of-evildoers-with-no-regard-for-humanity reason.
We cut to Wedeck elegantly carving Mark a new posterior orifice. As he pauses the freeze-framed footage of Mark losing his cool in Hong Kong, Wedeck says with cheery malice, "Take me through something here. You're in a foreign country, against my expressed wishes, and you decide to pull a gun in a public place. Just out of curiosity? What were you thinking?" Mark doesn't have a good answer, so he tries to pull the I-need-to-go-comfort-Olivia card. Wedeck won't have it, though. And this is why he's my favorite character on the show.
Meanwhile, Olivia is telling Janis and Vreede her version of the Lloyd-napping events, only when she gets to the part of the story where Lloyd heroically offers to take a bullet for her, she slips and calls him "Mark." This does not go unnoticed by Janis. Olivia concludes her recollection with "[Lloyd] saved my life."
Back to Mark and Wedeck. Mark self-righteously says, "Some stranger tells me I'm going to put three bullets in my friend, I'm not going to invite her to a tea party." Wedeck is immune to this sort of bull, and reads Mark the riot act for implying that Wedeck is not working diligently enough on the blackout. He orders Mark to therapy three times weekly, and when the doctor says it's OK for Mark to return, then maybe he'll consider it.
Mark then heads out and takes a lot of mobile photos of his collage-in-progress. As he's heading out the door, Simon hails him and asks, "I know America was founded by Puritans, but is there really not a single beer in the whole place?" "I think you've got us confused with the ATF," Mark says, in his one funny line of the night. And now I am sort of taken with the idea of assigning broad and completely inaccurate social stereotypes to all the different federal bureaus -- like in the Treasury, they like to loosen their ties after hours, head down to a secret underground vault, and go backstroking through piles of currency like Scrooge McDuck. Or in the ATF, it's basically a Kid Rock video 24/7. The folks at the Bureau of the Census unwind to trance music while holographic projections of fractals play on the office transparency machines ... I could go on, but I'm sure you wits in the forum could come up with far better suggestions for things like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, so hop to it.
Simon and Mark then have a pissy little exchange about nothing in particular, and the point is so Mark can watch the security footage of Olivia getting punched. But when the live Olivia comes on and he hugs her, Simon just happens to be at the point in the footage where Lloyd's hugging Olivia goodbye. Simon does not miss Mark's pop-eyed look of loathing and Olivia's furtive guilt, and he chortles, "I can see helping with the investigation is going to be much more interesting than academia." Simon is beginning to grow on me.
scene: Wedeck helpfully exposits that it's been eight hours since Lloyd's kidnapping, and all the agents do an infodump to bring us up to speed: No ransom demands as of yet, the list of suspects is endless given Lloyd's self-identification as the man who caused the blackout, there are virtually no leads. As the clot of agents heads into a conference room, Demetri looks slightly surprised to find it already occupied by Simon and ... Agent Vogel. Wedeck says, "This is officially an interagency investigation. Embrace it, Demetri." Since Janis wasn't explicitly addressed there, she is perfectly free to roll her eyes. Everyone sits down and Simon shares his genius insights: Anyone who can duplicate -- and deploy at will -- the flashforward technology basically has a license to print money. Simon concludes, "I think we can all agree that the mind of Lloyd Simcoe is a priceless resource."
That priceless resource is currently being held in your typical dank and atmospherically-lit basement lair. Just once, I'd love to see a kidnap victim being held in a clean, well-lighted place. (And forced to listen to entrants from the International Imitation Hemingway Competition all day. The victim is being held under duress, after all.) Anyway, a nattily-dressed gentleman in a suit comes down, tells Lloyd to stop shouting for help because nobody can hear him anyway, hands Lloyd a bottle of water so he can rehydrate. Then he points out that Lloyd would be free to go after answering a few questions. Lloyd ... does not take him up on that offer. It's probably the smart thing to do -- your abductors will keep you alive only so long as they need you alive, after all -- but I would love it if, just once, the captors are all, "You can go once you've talked," the victim's all, "Sounds good to me! You got a pen and some paper? For notes, I mean?" and the captors are all, " ... Let me check. The pens might be under the jumper cables and tooth pliers." That doesn't happen here.
Back to the windowwasher. Let's just call him the Reverend Nutbar -- I'm going with that because it's not like this show's made it easy to figure out his real name -- and as he VO's more on how awesome it is that we saw the future because we can transform the now, a woman in a pleasant single-story house rises, puts on a pair of feathered angel wings, reads Genesis 2:17 aloud, then burns her Bible. The reading, by the way, talks about the mortality we all assumed courtesy of the tree of knowledge, which is basically the exact opposite of the message the Reverend Nutbar is preaching about knowledge giving us a new lease on life.
Anyway, Nicole knows not about this juxtaposition. All she knows is that Mom is busy re-enacting her own private Fahrenheit 451 and it's throwing a wrench in the morning routine. When Nicole's sister comes over to pick up on Mom-minding duties, Nicole's understandably testy. No wonder she's so chill over at the Benfords' house of recrimination and glares; it's a vacation compared to her home life.
"The challenge is to find the gift in what we saw. We may not recognize it at first, but if we pay attention, it will reveal itself," Reverend Nutbar intones as we zoom over to the Benford House of Recriminations. Mark is brooding -- big surprise there -- and he's recreated the collage on a board at home. Olivia finds this and rolls her eyes with a Really? expression, and Mark mutters, "What else am I going to do? Charlie's at school and it's not like I play any golf." No, but you live in the greater Los Angeles area. Learn to surf. Visit the Guggenheim. Become a rollerderby groupie. The city is your oyster! Anyway, there is a brief and heartfelt conversation between the Benfords about how they've both been very touchy since ... oh, October 6 or so. Olivia reasons, "What if we just ran. What if we upped and moved away? Everything bad that we saw was here in L.A. ... Al Gough jumped off a building to save a woman's life, a woman he didn't even know. There's nothing I wouldn't do to save our marriage." This makes Mark feel better. Aww! I love a happy ending.
The FBI's trying to reconstruct the sequence of events leading up to Lloyd's abduction. First, the captors placed a hoax call to 911, and that's how they procured the ambulance. And then ... nothing. The real EMTs are missing (and likely dead) and the ambulance still hasn't been found. Vogel starts giving people orders: Janis is to take Simon to Lloyd's place so Simon can break the encryption software on Lloyd's computer and "look for clues" (I think he's dying for an excuse to poke around Lloyd's files), while Vogel and some of his cronies will head off for an afternoon of talking down to the LAPD. As Vogel leaves, Demetri sits there and glares so hard, the chair on the opposite side of the table bursts into flames.
Mark is going to meet with his shrink Dr. Langer, who has correctly intuited that the only way to get through an hour of listening to Mark whinge about whatever is to load up on sugar and caffeine first. Then it's off to the park so she can suck down her iced latte. Dr. Langer notes that her job as a therapist has changed since the blackout: instead of counseling people on how to deal with events in their past, she's now giving advice on how to deal with what their flashforwards tell them might happen. She then prods Mark for details on his flashforward; Mark is all, "I was drunk and there were gunman after me." Dr. Langer's all, "AND?" but Mark is not so forthcoming. So she calls him out on his God complex -- which seems like it should complement Olivia's savior complex nicely -- and says, "I believe you saw something in your flashforward, something you may not even be aware of, that's making you believe that you're the center of the universe. And I'm not signing anything until we find out what that is."
We see Mark's usual blurry flashforward -- friendship bracelets, mask-wearing thugs wielding guns, etc. and Dr. Langer is all, "By my math, you're missing about half your flashforward." She tells him there's been some success in using a modified calcineurin inhibitor to enhance people's memories of their flashforwards, and Mark should consider giving it a try. Mark points out, "I don't think a [drug-induced] Magical Mystery Tour is the best way for someone in recovery." Dr. Langer's all, "Do you have a better suggestion?" and since Mark does not, she's all, "Call me when you want to remember your flashforward."
Now at the Simcoe place: Simon has sat down to Lloyd's laptop, Janis has dispatched two extras to work as security in the alley behind the house, and now our two series regulars are wrangling over whether or not Janis is Simon's beer-fetching wench. He pulls the argument that his time is better spent on being brilliant, and as a mere FBI agent, Janis should be grateful to be the handmaiden to his mission. She grudgingly goes to get the beer -- her first mistake, really, unless the plan is to get the beer, then cram it in a place where Simon will also require assistance for beer-removal. Janis opens the fridge, and when she turns around again, there are two mask-wearing men standing right behind her. The only proper reaction? AIEEEEE! Seriously -- nightmare fuel.
Cut to Demetri and Vogel running in to discover the unconscious Janis. How? How did they know? Did the extras alert everyone off-screen? I feel like there's a communications gap that needs to be explained. Anyway, Simon's been taken. Janis tells her compadres that the two men were wearing masks "just like the ones on Mark's board."
Simon's been kicked down a set of stairs to join Lloyd. When he sees Lloyd, he groans, "Good. I found you." Again, growing on me. Like a fungus, perhaps, but growing nonetheless.
And now, a boring scene where Olivia battles to keep Dylan in the hospital so she can keep an eye on him. The only relevant thing here is that we learn the words to the Squirrelio theme song, which the producers assure us will be meaningful later: The book hurled and swirled them into squirrelyworld/ to fight Finnegan the supershark and live out Tim Tim's words./ Oh, who knows if the stories will go/ how Tim Tim made them go?/ I guess we'll just have to watch the Tim Tim and Squirrelio Show! I leave the metaphorical interpretation of this ditty up to deeper thinkers than I.
Demetri and Vogel are now walking around a railway yard in search of the ambulance. Demetri's very verbal about how ineffective he thinks this is, and Vogel makes fun of Mark's "wave around the gun first, engage in civilized discourse later" method of law enforcement. Demetri refuses to rise to the bait, but Vogel keeps going, telling Demetri to get it together or else his fiancee is "going to be walking down that beach, getting ready to get married to someone else." Demetri looks at him all It's a FUNERAL. Koreans wear white to FUNERALS. Then he tries to throw a punch. Vogel easily subdues Demetri and says, "Don't be stupid. There are people around you who know things you don't. If you want to avoid being killed, you're going to need a better partner." Vogel has a point there. And -- infuriatingly -- he also has a point about running around the railyard because Demetri finds a boxcar containing the bodies of the four paramedics who were driving the purloined ambulance.
Nicole and Brycedswefmvdstgbhdf ... sorry. I dozed off there for a moment. Hospital; she's pining for him. The awkward moment where it looks like she's threatening to break into "Hopelessly Devoted To You" is punctured by some random guy wandering across the ward. Nicole has a flashforward-related freakout because this man may or may not be the dude who's going to drown her, and oh my GOSH, just throw Bryce on a spare gurney and exercise a little free will. Nakedly. And then you two can begin careening down a path that proves both your visions wrong. But, no. Instead Nicole finds a flyer for Sanctuary, and I honestly can't take it seriously because the logo looks like a 1970s-style Our Bodies, Ourselves diagram of where the little man in the boat is, if you get my meaning.
Lloyd and Simon are making small talk -- "So, get abducted here often?" "Not since Adam Platt panned it in New York last year." -- and Lloyd theorizes that whomever took them wants to talk about the NLAP experiment that allegedly caused the great leap flashforward. Simon's all, "We're not responsible" and Lloyd prissily replies, "It would seem our captors beg to differ." A disembodied voice adds, "Yes. We do beg to differ."
The voice comes out of the shadows and resolves itself as ... Ricky Jay. Squeeee! (Imagine Lucielle Bluth's reaction to Gene Parmesan and you've got my general response to any Ricky Jay sighting.) Ricky Jay gives everyone a flat, irritated look and arranges everyone to his liking. He sits in front of Lloyd and Simon and says, "I have emphysema. I contracted it through years of habitual smoking. Disgusting proclivity, isn't it? Only villains smoke. We know this, right?" Simon says cheekily, "I'm sorry. You are ..." The man spitting the glowing cherry of his cigar in your face is who, Simon. Ricky Jay says cheerily, "You may call me Flosso. And I'm a villain."
Ricky Jay puts down his cigar and says, "Imagine a basket ... the size of Montana. Now imagine said basket is filled with money. That is what my employers are paying me to ask you these questions. So. At 11 a.m. on October 6, you conducted a proton-driven plasma wakefield experiment. It is my understanding that you were searching for tachyonic dark matter. In the resulting particle collision, how much collision energy was generated?" Lloyd claims he doesn't know, and Simon cheekily says, "Perhaps I can help with your inquiry?" A thug hits Simon, and Ricky Jay dismissively points out that Simon was burying his father in Toronto on the morning of the experiment and "you're here for a different reason." He turns back to Lloyd to ask how many volts were generated. Lloyd says, "I'd rather die than tell you how to manufacture another blackout." Rcky Jay chortled, "You think you caused it? All the two of you did was amplify it. So, again, how many electron volts?" Cut to Lloyd all, "Who in the what now?"
Dr. Langer's prepping Mark for his memory-recovering treatment. She asks what changed his mind, and Mark grudgingly admits that "I'm driving the people around me -- the people that I care about -- away. Because I can't deal with what my future might be." Dr. Langer soothes him with, "Therapy is a lot like AA. The first step is admitting you have a problem." She injects the drug.
Simon tells the story of his flashforward one more time: he's strangling a stranger and looking pretty happy about it. If you've seen Simon's introductory episode, you've seen it already. Lloyd says, "I can't believe you'd be capable of something like that." Further compounding his confusion: In his flashforward, he had been roused from Olivia's bed because of a text message from Simon. "Obviously, I couldn't have sent you a text in the middle of what I was doing," Simon replies. He adds, "I don't understand -- why don't our futures match?" Lloyd whips out the multiverse theory again: "Because it's a possible future. Anything's possible, vision or no vision." While he's talking, he's written a help message on a flier, walked over to a window, clambered up, opened the window and pushed the flyer outside. It's a magnificent effort, but the wind quickly picks up the flyer and whisks it down the street. We see that the building Lloyd and Simon are being held in is on an abandoned city block; the odds of anyone walking by to hear them shouting for help are tiny.
Mark relaxes into his refreshed flashforward. The mural is much more detailed. It includes the flyer Lloyd just lost, a sticker for something called Red Panda, the picture of a multiheaded serpent (Scylla? Oh, please, not another Scylla). The phone rings and Mark says, "I just wish you were standing behind the eight-ball when I came crashing through. Go to hell, Lloyd." And then he wakes up. Mark's shaken by his phone conversation more than anything else -- why would he be talking to Lloyd Simcoe?
Especially since Ricky Jay's not done talking to Lloyd yet. Second verse, same as the first. Because Lloyd won't talk, Ricky Jay gestures a few of his goons to rough up Simon. As Simon shouts, "Tell them what they want to know, Lloyd!" Ricky Jay says, "Let the wild rumpus begin."
On the bright side, Lloyd, Olivia is taking very good care of Dylan at the hospital. Meanwhile, Mark's parked outside a cocktail lounge and calling Aaron with "I could use some help." As Olivia sings "When you wish upon a star," we see Mark sitting in the car, endlessly replaying his flashforward. Fortunately, Aaron swings by and Mark tells him about how he took the drug treatment. We see that the following conversation took place:
Lloyd: We need to talk about the Q.E.D. I'm not sure. It's highly theoretical, but I'm close to cracking it.
Mark: Close is not good enough. D. Gibbons told me about --
Lloyd: The man you call D. Gibbons lied to you.
Mark: Unless we stop this, there's going to be another blackout.
So Aaron can see why Mark's pretty freaked about his new-and-improved flashforward. And no doubt, Dr. Langer has her work cut out with the God complex, because it really does sound like Mark is in the center of this whole thing.
The day, Mark is telling Wedeck about the missing pieces in his blackout. Wedeck reasonably asks, "If Simcoe saw the same thing you did, why has he been sitting on this information the whole time?" Mark pleads to be reinstated so he can find Lloyd and answer that question, but Wedeck's all ixnay on the einstatement-ray, telling Mark to quietly work the new clues in his vision. As Mark gets ready to leave, Wedeck says, "This business about another blackout -- keep it to yourself. If we can't tell the world when it's going to happen, that's beyond irresponsible."
Meanwhile, Demetri and Vogel are using the phone number from one of the missing EMT's phones to track down the ambulance.
Also meanwhile: Nicole attends a meeting with the Reverend Nutbar. Afterward, she has a brief exchange wherein we find out that she's got a view of God that owes a lot to Jonathan Edwards and this rap about the massive, millions-dead flashforward being an awesome gift from a mellow God doesn't square with her perception of God as a cross between Dirty Harry and Montgomery Burns. Reverend Nutbar finally introduces himself as Timothy (named after one of the early Christian martyrs, stoned to death by a crowd?) and offers to chat with Nicole further to iron out these thorny issues.
Mark's working the clues. We find out that Red Panda's a humanitarian organization. Mark's all, "Maybe ... Somalia?" Yes! They are. But they won't let Mark join any mission there, on account of he's in law enforcement and many of their members/volunteers/workers have thick police records.
Lloyd is still holding strong against Ricky Jay's questioning, insisting, "I can't sacrifice any more lives." Ricky Jay hopes that Simon sacrificing a pinky finger might change Lloyd's mind, but even in his current distraught state, Lloyd's still able to measure "pinky finger" against "millions of deaths" and keep his mouth shut. But how long can he hold out? Simon has but nine fingers left. And we have another episode to go.
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Watch this episode here, and discuss it in our forums. Then see what we think the cast should do if the show gets cancelled!