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In Somalia: The Unwelcome Wagon comes out, kills the FBI/CIA translator and takes our intrepid party hostage. Understandably, the Unwelcome Wagon has a grudge against the folks who built up the original towers and subjected the Somalis to the first fatal flashforwards. So they kill some extras. The regulars then unleash a can of kickass on the guards and go after the head Unwelcome Wagon man -- it does not go well initially -- and he sort of encourages them, at gunpoint, to help him out. Janis ends up defusing the situation by coaxing the leader to check out Mosaic, and it turns out that sometimes in the few weeks, this guy is going to become the guy who stops the Somali civil war and becomes a major peacenik. So he helps them break into the tower (remember: built in 1991 despite Simon not designing it until 1992), and once inside, Demetri finds a videotape containing interviews with the missing/dead villagers. These interviews, D. Gibbons explains on the videotape, confirm a "consciousness shift" (i.e. flashforward) of two weeks into the future. So the new question becomes: How did D. Gibbons come to be in Somalia, conducting these experiments, in 1991? Also: What happens when Vogel decides to spike a lot of people's visions by shooting their Unwelcome Wagon man-turned-peacenik? (To be fair, the man was going after Simon in a "You did this to us!" frenzy of revenge, but still... Vogel just messed with many people's visions.) And THEN... oh, the most cringe-y thing ever: Janis hops back on the "Baby BABY BAAAABYYYY!" train and somehow, ends up attempting to conceive one with Demetri the old-fashioned way. I have many complicated feelings about this, which I will subject you all to in the recap. We don't see Demetri and Janis consummating their arrangement. What we do see: a tag end of the videotape, where D. Gibbons from 1991 is saying, "Hello, Demetri." Oh, it's so creepy.
In Los Angeles: Bryce encourages Nicole to pursue her curiosity about pre-med classes, and he eventually comes out and admits he's got cancer.
Also in Los Angeles -- for now: Olivia wants out of the City of Angels, reasoning that their flashforwards are set in Los Angeles, so all they have to do is leave and voila! No more flashforward-coming-true. Mark is like, "But I like living freeway-close to the beach! Also, I need you to talk to Charlie about her flashforward." Olivia, sucker that she is, does so. We get Charlie's flashforward. The "D. Gibbons is a bad man" thing is mostly a shaggy-dog story, but the two men outside the house who say, "Mark Benford is dead"? That is worth worrying about. Olivia keeps beating the "I want to leave" drum, and Mark is all, "La la la la la, I can't hear you."
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Somalia -- hot and dry and deserving of flute music from the soundtrack. As the Red Panda-branded chopper flies over the golden mountains, one half-expects to find a monkey standing atop one, holding a lion cub up for the local fauna's inspection.
Instead, we get a very gentle-seeming Somali trying to teach Janis, Demetri, Vogel and some extras a few Somali phrases. (Well, not Vogel. Vogel is asleep, as he apparently possesses the enviable ability to catnap anywhere.) The translator teaches them the phrase for "What did you see?" then tries to break the conversational ice by asking what everyone saw. Janis says she was baking bread; Demetri says he was water-skiing. It is a little discomfiting how easily they can lie. Demetri asks Janis if she wasn't supposed to be mixing the yeast and flour right about now, and Janis replies that it was impossible to preheat the oven on account of how she's in Somalia right now.
The fake-panda team lands. Janis, by the way, looks very snappy in her cargo pants and aid-worker vest. I mention this because I have been remiss in noting how sharp she looks in all her scenes. Anyway, Simon hits up Vogel for a gun, and Vogel is all, "Ha! Good one." He advises Simon to stick close to a few beefy extras who are holding big, big guns. Vogel then tells everyone, "Let's get to the tower and get out of here."
The FBI is not taking advantage of Vogel's absence to kick off Pantsless Mondays. (Our government is so slow on the uptake...) Mark comes into Wedeck's with the illustration of the hydra we've seen before and begins his exposition: D. Gibbons is Dyson Frost, a "brilliant, reclusive particle physicist, trained in engineering at MIT, minored in Victorian lit. Typical story -- domineering father [who] only spoke to them in French, even though they grew up in Wyoming." Hey, for all you know, the Medicine Bow range may house an isolated community of folk descended from Bourbon sympathizers. Wyoming was part of the Louisiana Purchase, you know. Granted, this scenario is unlikely, but on a show dealing with global blackouts and random kangaroos, it is not entirely improbable. ANYWAY, back to "D. Gibbons: The Early Years," per Mark: "Became a chess grand master at 15. Apparently, he still plays, which is weird because he was killed in a boating accident in 1990, on a boat called Le Monste Du Boisteau." We find out that Boisteau is a writer whose book included the illustration of the hydra that Mark was waving around. "On my board on the 29th," he says. "It's all leading back to Frost." Wedeck dispatches him with orders to keep chopping off the hydra's heads until he nails Dyson Frost.
Meanwhile, in Somalia, Janis and Demetri are checking out the tower through some binoculars; someone has spraypainted "66:6" on the side. Simon comes up and mutters, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." Vogel is all, "Shut your liberal-arty mouth and follow us through this seemingly deserted village!"
It is a move everyone will regret, as many beefy and firearm-wielding extras are mowed down by sniper fire, and the living members of the party are intimidated into laying prostrate on the ground. Vogel orders Awaale the translator to tell the lead machine gun-wielding maniac that they are but humble relief workers protected under articles 59-63 of the Geneva Convention. The leader makes his opinion of the Geneva Convention known; unfortunately, I don't speak machine gun, but the perforations now dotting poor Awaale's body may spell out "Up yours." The lead gunner says coolly that he speaks English, so Awaale's services were no longer required.
The party is ushered into an abandoned house, and Fearless Shooty Leader tells Simon, "I know you. I saw you on Al-Jazeera telling the world you caused the blackout." "Always nice to meet a fan," Simon replies drily. Fearless Shooty Leader bitchslaps Simon and spits at his feet; we cut to Vogel looking sort of like," ... heh." Fearless Shooty Leader says, "You did not cause this. God caused this. He merely put your finger on the button." Vogel tries the Red Panda pitch one more time, but Fearless Shooty Leader whips out a confiscated binder, tears out the satellite photo of the tower, and calls their bluff: "You came here on a mission, just like the others." Janis has the presence to ask "What others?" and we go into an expository flashback courtesy of Fearless Shooty Leader:
"When I was a boy, foreigners came to our village and offered to provide electricity. They said five towers would provide power until the end of time, that it was a humanitarian act. But those towers were not for electricity. They were for something else, something not humanitarian. I had gone out to tend the goats. I was not away long, only a few moments. But even a single moment can change everything."
While Fearless Shooty Leader is talking, we see flashback footage of the boy he was coming back to the village and taking in the horrific sight of everyone he knows collapsed in the street and completely dead to the world.
He continues: "What happened, it made no sense. I felt afraid. They were there, but they were gone. But it was all part of God's plan. This I learned from my mother. Everything in this life happens for a purpose. And before the hand of death could take hold of me too, I ran." And the sequence continues to show -- elegantly, poignantly -- the child's growing panic as he struggles to comprehend what in the blue hell just happened. Said panic is not helped by the child seeing a black camel snorting at him.
Back in the present, Fearless Shooty Leader orders an extra killed off-screen. He concludes, "You are here for a reason, and I will kill you, all of you, if you do not tell me what that reason is." Everyone looks dismayed at this prospect.
This week's superfluous plotline can be summed up with the following dialogue:
NICOLE: Working at the hospital, and with you, have inspired me! I'm taking premed classes. Maybe I can be a doctor.
BRYCE: [Radiating encouragement -- and chemotherapy -- from every pore.] Of course you can! Go for it!
NICOLE: And when I finish med school, residency, internship and who-knows-what-else in the 12 years, we can work together?
BRYCE: ...
NICOLE: You didn't just turn pale and clammy at the prospect of us carpooling?
BRYCE: I have cancer. Very telegenic cancer, which permits me to remain moderately attractive, yet makes me a Doomed Hero.
NICOLE: *swoon*
And ... scene.
Moving on, Janis and Demetri are debating Vogel vis a vis an "honesty is the best policy" strategy vs. a "Fearless Shooty Leader has a hate-on for aid workers, so let's keep up the aid worker charade" tactic. Demetri says, "I'm not going to sit around waiting for a bullet to my head," and Vogel says coolly, "Right. 'Cause you're waiting for three to the chest." Demetri is all, "Janis, hold my earrings, 'cause Imma throwin' down now," and he begins brawling with Vogel. Ha-HA! It's a clever ruse for all of the agents to begin throwing punches and they quickly overpower their captors. Vogel's all, "Why did you have to hit the moneymaker?" and Demetri shrugs, "My ball to call." Heh. We find out that Fearless Shooty Leader is named Abdi as Demetri outlines the plan: get guns, get to chopper, neutralize Abdi and his men, get the heck out of Dodge. I am no tactician, but if you've neutralized Abdi's men, wouldn't that give you license to go explore the remaining tower?
So, the plan was great in theory, but Abdi turns out to be frighteningly well-equipped, and he uses his giant, armor-plated killmobile to prove that some things are still immune to multiple machine guns. Abdi kills a few more extras because he can, then shouts, "You will not [fail me]. You will fulfill your part of the plan." All the regulars are like, Far be it from me to argue with superior firepower.
Back in Los Angeles, Mark's gone home for lunch. He discovers that Olivia's been househunting in Denver -- "Big fan of the omelet," he cracks -- because she is still operating on the "If we get the hell out of Los Angeles, we can subvert our Los Angeles-based flashforwards" theory. Denver is ideal, as it allows both Mark and Olivia to continue pursuing their professional passions. Mark muses, "Could join the ski police, be home by 5... you wrapped up in a vegan tiger skin, nothing on underneath." Olivia is all, "Yes, please. Shall I call the movers?" Mark, however, has to change the subject. He needs to know what Charlie saw in her flashforward, and makes the point that D. Gibbons is the center of the investigation, and Charlie's name-check of the man is the only reason he wants to drag her into this. "There are people at the office who know how to talk to kids, and I want to take Charlie down there tomorrow --" "Let me talk to her first," Olivia pleads, reasoning that it's less traumatic for Charlie if her parents to pry open her painful flashforward than it would be for total strangers. Or perhaps it's merely less traumatic to Charlie's parents.
Abdi is busy berating the Americans for the fact that they have the wherewithal to feed the starving children of Somalia, and Janis fact-checks him with "Every year, we send millions of dollars in aid just to have it stolen by people like you." Abdi replies, "People who live in heaven shouldn't judge those who live in hell." But doesn't that go both ways, Abdi? He shoots another extra just because he can, and before he dies, the extra spills the beans in re: the Americans being CIA. Abdi hits Simon one more time because he can -- I swear, that character sort of invites it --and points his gun in Demetri's face. Demetri swats it away all, "I don't have time for this bushwah" and this actually opens a dialogue. Demetri explains that they're there because they think the most recent blackout was merely a bigger version of what happened in Abdi's village back in 1991. Abdi's not having it: "I saw the black camel. Death is a black camel that kneels at every man's gate." He insists that his villagers were dead. Abdi had somehow made his ways to the refugee camps, and we see the boy come back, a rifle slung over his shoulder, and he walks through deserted streets. Four out of the five towers were gone. Abdi says, "Word spread that I had lived where others had died, and for this, I became feared. I used this fear to become what I am now. God's plan." He then shares his flashforward: He was walking onto a stage and making a speech before a cheering throng -- "I spoke of the 'better angels,' I called myself 'the new face of Somalia.' I was telling the world: I spoke as a conquerer, my enemies crushed! God's plan!" In the flashforward, we see Abdi shouting, "I'm not willing to wait one day longer!" In the present, Abdi concludes, "There will be one more war in this land -- my war. I will rule this country. The better angels, the better warriors will win. And you will help because you are CIA. Planes, tanks, boats -- you will get me what I need to win my war."
Vogel drawls, "That's not going to happen," and Abdi gives him a blow to the solar plexus. Demetri is caught between a sympathetic wince and a smirk. Abdi continues to shout about planes, tanks and boats and shoots another extra for emphasis. We cut to Vogel, Janis and Demetri all looking concerned, because they've done the math and they're almost out of extras to shoot.
And then, Janis opens up a can of awesomesauce, as she remembers that the phrase "better angels" is from Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address, and he said, "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." So she shouts to Abdi, "Your prophecy is wrong! I can prove it to you. I know about the better angels."
So she and Abdi repair to his office. After talking about how Lincoln's inaugural speech promoted unity in a divided nation, Janis gets onto Abdi's computer -- which has really zippy broadband service -- and she shows him the Mosaic project. As it turns out, several people saw Abdi speak at the assembly of the African Union. He was wearing "a wire necklace with an amber bead surrounded by two red ones," and Abdi says softly that his mother had a necklace like that. A second account has Abdi quoting the Lincoln quote I cited above. Janis says softly, "You don't need tanks or guns. Your destiny is to stop the war, not start one." Abdi looks profoundly moved by this insight.
Back in Los Angeles, Olivia's attempting to pry Charlie-bear's flashforward out of her recalcitrant little skull. She starts with, "Do you remember when Tim-Tim talked to Squirrelio about heroes?" Charlie says happily, "When Finnegan the supershark trapped them in the snowglobe of Snow Doom?" Olivia's all, "Exactly." The upshot is, being a hero often requires doing things you are afraid to do, or don't want to do. And Charlie can be a hero by saying what was in her flashforward.
Charlie eventually spills: She gave Dylan cookies, and the children overhear Lloyd say, "The man you call D. Gibbons lied to you." Since lying is bad, Dylan spells out on the fridge, "D. Gibbons is a bad man." Happily, D. Gibbons is nowhere near the house. Unhappily, however, two men are talking outside -- one of whom sporting the kind of earbud that usually marks a secret service type -- and Charlie overhears, "Mark Benford is dead." She collapses into sobs. I have to give the show a Really? REALLY hairy eyeball for their "D. Gibbons is a bad man" red herring. And you're telling me poor Charlie's been sitting on this foreknowledge of her dad's death for six months and hasn't turned into a basket case? But the poor kid -- imagine knowing that one of your worst kid fears was going to come true. The only thing worse would be finding out in your flashforward that the monster under the bed was real.
Cut to Mark and Olivia having a hasty bedroom conference. Mark is all, "Funny, but I'm alive in my flashforward" and Olivia's like, "Our daughter heard otherwise." This does raise interesting speculative forays -- is Mark too drunk to register being killed? Is it possible the "Mark Benford is dead" statement is meant to draw away security so someone as yet unseen can get to Lloyd? -- but neither Mark nor Olivia are thinking strategically about this. Olivia points out, "We could escape this." There's the Colorado Rocky Mountain high option -- Mark would indeed be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle fly -- but Mark has no interest in talking to God and listening to the casual reply, seeing it rain fire in the sky, or having friends around the campfire and everybody's high. He wants to stay in Los Angeles and prevent the blackout, dagnabit. And this points to the major fault lines in their marriage: Olivia is a fixer, and Mark is a crusader, and both of them are convinced they've got the moral high ground.
Back in Somalia, Abdi has stopped with the gratuitous shooting and started listening to the regulars. Demetri explains how Somalia was a test run for the October 2009 mayhem, and Janis floats the notion that Abdi's people had all had their own flashforwards. But where are Abdi's people now? That is the ten-million shilling question.
Everyone's at the tower, and Abdi explains that he spray painted the 66:6 there because it refers to the Quaran's verse, "Save yourself and your families from a fire whose fuel is men and stones." It was meant to be a warning. Vogel looks thoughtful. "In all my time, I have not been in there. Devil or no, it is an evil place. But there is one thing that can push a man more than fear -- destiny." And off he goes. As Vogel and Demetri follow Abdi, Janis stays behind with a gobsmacked Simon. He marvels, "What I designed was theoretical. It could only be done in the future. And yet, it's been standing here for 18 years." Janis wryly says, "Welcome to the future."
The future is dark, dusty, and yet, miraculously, the air is breathable. As everyone heads inside, they ponder the seeming paradox of the tower existing before Simon thought of it. Demetri wonders why the fifth tower was allowed to remain, and Vogel elaborates, "They were hauling these things away. Then the war came. Why didn't they ever come back to finish?" A better question might be: Why was one tower left deliberately? Oh, look -- Demetri found a chess board and a videotape. And hey, there's portable power. AND the videotape is still perfectly preserved! How convenient.
Abdi translates his childhood friend's flashforwards as depicted on the tape. Then he translates his mother's flashforward -- "She was looking for me. She couldn't find me, but she had hope. She knew I would survive, that I had hope." And then -- because this is 1991 -- Dyson Frost and his awesome McGyver 'do pop onto the screen. Frost explains that these interviews prove the subjects had a "consciousness shift two weeks into the future." The tape gets all distorted. Everyone is reeling over realizing that Dyson Frost/D. Gibbons was in Somalia in 1991 conducting an experiment. I'm sure Mark and Wedeck are going to love adding this to their puzzle. Vogel quietly tells Abdi, "You see? God didn't have anything to do with this. This was man." Abdi has had many challenges to his belief system in the past day, Vogel. You might want to go easy on told-you-sos.
Simon's found a hatch to the nest of tunnels and chambers underground and, with the confidence of someone who knows these plans inside and out, he trots around, explaining that here lies the remnants of five interconnected, smaller linear accelerators. "Somehow, they unleashed a tachyon burst, creating a beta test for the global blackout in this village. You [Abdi] weren't in the village at the time the experiment was conducted, which explains why you didn't lose consciousness." Demetri muses, "It took five accelerators to create this blackout, there's no way one knocked out the entire world." Ah, but never underestimate the pace of technological innovation.
Bored with the science talk, Vogel's moved on and found a secret chamber strewn with skeletons. Demetri looks sickened as he tells Abdi, "I don't think your people were driven off by the war." Everyone descends. Vogel leans forward and notes that everyone was shot. Demetri adds that the civil war provided a handy cover for making an entire village disappear. Over by the wall, Janis angrily says, "They showed them tomorrow, and ripped it away."
Abdi finds his mother's necklace, the one he will be wearing in the flashforward. He concludes that, if man did this and not God, there were specific men who did this. And one very specific man is Simon, architect of the tower. Abdi forces Simon to his knees, shouting, "God delivered you to me so I could avenge my people! So I could mark a new beginning!" But before anyone can try to talk Abdi out of turning Simon into a flesh doily, Vogel's already shot the man in the back. So much for becoming a crusader for peace -- and so much for those people's related flashforwards. Also, given that Abdi had already shown a willingness to listen to Janis, and a willingness to examine his beliefs in light of new evidence, Vogel's decision to shoot seems a tad boneheaded. Janis says numbly, "Better angels. His vision. This wasn't supposed to happen."
Back in Los Angeles, Olivia makes one final pitch for fleeing the Los Angeles area, but Mark can't bring himself to go along with it. "This is what we signed on for. You save lives, and I save lives, and this is how we do it," he says. Olivia's all, "Going by our flashforward, we're not really doing it well under your scheme," but Mark is driven by the need to have things play out in a way that will underline his investigation. And this is how the schism between Mark and Olivia begins ...
In Somalia, Demetri and Janis are having a few drinks to unwind after a long day of near-death and actual-death experiences. She hoists her cup with "To yet another flashforward never coming true." Demetri twigs to this being about Janis's flashforward not coming true, and says, "You can still have a baby, right?" "Yeah, but I can't have Willa," Janis says ruefully, "It was supposed to happen this weekend. And now her window's closed and she's never gonna get here." She has a brief moment of perspective -- "I just saw a mass grave and all I can think about is a mythical baby" -- and Demetri embroiders it with, "Grave, baby, you're having a circle-of-life moment." It always comes back to The Lion King, doesn't it? Demetri knocks back his drink and says, "You know, the weekend's not over." He gives Janis a look suggesting that he's willing to rise to the unusual occasion, in the name of friendship. Janis bursts out laughing. Demetri says good-naturedly, "If it's baby-making you need, I will take one for the team." Janis chuckles, "First of all, no offense, but that's kind of gross --" Demetri feigns hurt feelings, but he's also laughing, and she continues, "Second of all, that's like 1000% wrong." Demetri says facetiously, "Desperate times." Janis reminds him, "I'm gay." "I will make you gayer!" Demetri replies cheerily. He's a very good friend for sticking with the conversation, and I like how it underscores their friendship. Demetri says more seriously, "Chances are, I won't be around in a couple of months, and it would be nice if Willa was." And then, mercifully, the scene ends. Hooray for ambiguity! And while it's nice to think back on Janis's flashforward and say, "Awww! She's all verklempt because she's carrying a piece of her good friend into the world," there is also the whole "Why doesn't Demetri just knock up Zoey if they're both so concerned about keeping him around?" question, to say nothing of whether or not Janis is actually capable of going through with intercourse given how very not turned on by men she is. I sort of hope the two of them decide not to go through with it; I am sure I will be proven wrong.
Outside, Simon is showing Vogel the bigass gun he's scored in exchange for hooking up Abdi's men with DirecTV. He tells Vogel, "I know you think I can't handle weapons, but in my vision, I was killing a man, and I didn't even need a gun." Vogel gives Simon a look as if to suggest that he knows Simon's lying like a little area rug, and asks, "How many fingers did you have? Simon shoots back, "Enough to do the job. And what did you see?" We find out that Vogel was outside, fireworks whistling overhead, and he hangs up the phone to tell a security agent, "Mark Benford is dead." Then he sees Charlie staring, horror-stricken. Back in the present, Vogel replies, "I was doing my job." Eh, I can't bring myself to get worked up over his flashforward. We only saw a tiny slice of it, there's not much context, and for all we know, Vogel is lying about Mark being dead. As he's pointed out before, he is CIA and that is sort of what he does. After this "D. Gibbons is a bad man" nonsense, I am not really ascribing ominous meaning to anyone's flashforward.
Finally: Demetri, by himself, back in the tower. No sign of whether or not he's successfully impregnated anyone, nor is there any sign that he's shaking off some sort of excruciatingly awkward sexual mishap. ("If it helps, think of Melissa Etheridge!" "It doesn't! Get off me!") As Demetri packs up, he's watching the videotape again. Simon pops by. There's a moment of mutually-drawn weapons, and then they resume watching the movie-of-the-week, which has just run through the post-interview static footage and revealed a new Dyson Frost message. He stares at the camera and says, "Hello, Demetri. My name is Dyson Frost, and I'm recording this message in 1991. Got your attention, didn't I?"
Dun-dun-DUN! So I'm going to go out on a limb here: Dyson Frost has figured out how to flash forward with impunity, he's used his foreknowledge to mess with the world just because, and he's setting up a global, time-traveling chess game. The sole standing tower in Somalia is probably meant to signify some sort of bishop on the board, and eventually, someone in the FBI Brain Trust will realize this, figure out that Nhadra's also a piece on the board, and start counterplaying. Or perhaps Vogel -- conveniently in China -- is already a piece on the board. Oooh, the possibilities are endless. I look forward to seeing how right or how wrong I am.
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Lisa Schmeiser is a San Francisco-based reporter and writer. She tweets and blogs all over the dang place, but never about chess.