Episode Report Card Sobell: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Mystic Chords of Memory, Stretching to Every Grave
By Sobell | Season 1 | Episode 14 | Aired on 04.01.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.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 next 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."
Watch the episode here, discuss it in our forums, then see what other Shows We Think Should Flash Forward!
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.