By Sobell
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The episode starts with a flashback to Mark swearing, “Our family will always come first,” and then he leaves it in the present.
The FBI reviews the tape that Dyson Frost left -- he warns that Demetri and his futures are on “a collision course” (he and Demetri share a death date of March 15), then namechecks Mark. How did he know all this? He’s had hundreds of flashforwards. Mark points out that Frost’s tape confirms that the flashforwards are visions of potential futures.
Then, using some serious deduction-fu, Mark figures out that Dyson Frost encoded a phone number in his chess strategy from the late 1980s, and when Mark calls the number, Dyson’s got a recorded message waiting for him. But when Mark flies up to San Francisco to meet Dyson’s former chess partner, he learns that the guy juuuuust took two bullets to the head. After he gets back, Mark and Vogel conclude there’s a mole in the FBI office. Vogel uses this as an excuse to get the CIA to come in and turn the place upside down. He finds a bug in Mark’s keyboard, and the question becomes, “Who has access to Mark’s office?” The answer: Everyone who’s a series regular, plus Agent Seth McFarlane.
The mole is revealed to be alleged series regular (i.e. background scenery) Agent Marcy. There is a shootout, but she is eventually taken down by Janis the badass. Later, Simon coos sweet nothing at Janis, ending in whispery admiration at how she clever she was to direct all the attention to Marcy, because she’s so clearly the second mole. Janis smiles evilly.
Finally, in the plot that is only going to get the one-paragraph treatment in the recap: Keiko wanders around Los Angeles, uses her robotics know-how to get a job at an auto shop which appears to be run by the extras in Stand and Deliver, and gets in trouble with immigration officials because she is taking a job that a gang-banger-friendly American robotics savant could be -- oh, wait. Anyway, she gets in trouble with la migra. She juuuuuuust misses Bryce -- they are like two sushi boats passing in the night. (Also: Bryce kisses Nicole, which freaks her out.)
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Three years before the blackout: Olivia's pelting into a recovery room, where Mark is wincing heroically. It seems he got in the way of a bullet. Olivia frets, "I'm not sure I can handle this any more." Mark's reply: "Livy, I was an FBI agent when you married me." Olivia does not point out, "And you were a single man when you married me. But that changed, and so can this." Instead, she points out that she did not go to all the trouble to bring Charlie into this world only to expose her to the unwelcome childhood experience of daddy dying. "I've got to know that our family comes first. Something's got to change," she says. Mark sighs -- so unreasonable, this woman, with her reminding him of the whole wife-and-kid thing -- and concedes that Wedeck's just offered him a position on a Homeland Security task force. It will probably be safer: "Two guys in a car eating burritos and listening to phone calls in Farsi. I'll be out of the line of fire. My biggest concerns will be boredom and cholesterol." Olivia frets that Mark will hate it. Not if he expands his range to encompass flautas and the occasional quesadilla, he won't. Mmmm, flautas. Mark tells Olivia that yes, he probably will hate the new desk/car job, but he would hate losing her and Charlie more.
And in the present day, because Mark's family comes first, he is leaving them. He's staying at the Wedecks' place. I desperately want to see what kind of home life the Wedecks have. Oh, please, let's get a glimpse of the domestic routine soon! ANYWAY, Olivia gives Mark the reproachful "We could have been on a United flight to Denver instead" look, and they sort of shake hands (?), and then they look at Charlie, who's been hanging out in the car, alone and unattended for 20 minutes. How fortunate that the day is a cool and rainy one, so that Charlie doesn't cook while her parents dither.
Mark slides into the car to talk to Charlie, who's in her PJs, and answers her questions about where he's going and for how long. Then she hands over another friendship bracelet: "It'll keep you safe from the bad guys until you get back. Let me put it back on." We cut to Mark's flashforward, and he looks profoundly uneasy, and I have to ask: Why? He's not going to see Charlie for a few weeks! He can "lose" this bracelet too, then invent a story about it giving its life to save him from the bad guys. Mark hugs his daughter goodbye with "I love you so much, Charlie-bear," and we flash! to the credits.
Then we're in Wedeck's office. He, Demetri and Mark are viewing Dyson Frost's message: "If you're watching this in 2010, that means the global blackout was successful. That also means we've had a near-miss in Pigeon, Utah. How do I know all this? Because I myself have had hundreds of flashforwards. In nearly all of my futures, I end up dying on March 15, like you, Demetri. So if you managed to find this tape in Somalia, it would seem our fates are on a collision course, and the possible outcomes of the game are narrowing. As for the endgame, the move is Mark Benford's." Mark glowers at the screen while Demetri confirms that indeed, the tape is authentic to 1991, and the only plausible explanation is that Dyson Frost had a flashforward back in 1991 and was inspired to make the tape he "saw" people finding in 2010. Which... suggests that he can see flashforwards that are not his? Or that he flashed to a conversation he'll have later which suggests the existence of a tape? Whatever -- the intriguing thing here is Dyson Frost admitting he's flashed to multiple version of the future and the outcome of any of them can be altered by actions taken in the present. This has two major implications: 1. Mark and Demetri can stop Hamlet'ing all over the greater L.A. area over their flashforwards and 2. There is a mad genius out there who has been using the one-two punch of foresight and superior intellect to steer the future toward his own, as-yet-unrevealed ends. Mark picks up on the mutability of the flashed futures, then says the tape is a veiled warning that there will be another flashforward. Demetri does not take this well, possibly because he doesn't want to be excluded from this round of blackouts, too.
Then we're in Wedeck's office. He, Demetri and Mark are viewing Dyson Frost's message: "If you're watching this in 2010, that means the global blackout was successful. That also means we've had a near-miss in Pigeon, Utah. How do I know all this? Because I myself have had hundreds of flashforwards. In nearly all of my futures, I end up dying on March 15, like you, Demetri. So if you managed to find this tape in Somalia, it would seem our fates are on a collision course, and the possible outcomes of the game are narrowing. As for the endgame, the move is Mark Benford's." Mark glowers at the screen while Demetri confirms that indeed, the tape is authentic to 1991, and the only plausible explanation is that Dyson Frost had a flashforward back in 1991 and was inspired to make the tape he "saw" people finding in 2010. Which... suggests that he can see flashforwards that are not his? Or that he flashed to a conversation he'll have later which suggests the existence of a tape? Whatever -- the intriguing thing here is Dyson Frost admitting he's flashed to multiple version of the future and the outcome of any of them can be altered by actions taken in the present. This has two major implications: 1. Mark and Demetri can stop Hamlet'ing all over the greater L.A. area over their flashforwards and 2. There is a mad genius out there who has been using the one-two punch of foresight and superior intellect to steer the future toward his own, as-yet-unrevealed ends. Mark picks up on the mutability of the flashed futures, then says the tape is a veiled warning that there will be another flashforward. Demetri does not take this well, possibly because he doesn't want to be excluded from this round of blackouts, too.
In another room, Simon is busy cooing over the technology that his rough teenaged sketches hath wrought. Lloyd rolls his eyes and asks if they can get on with the business of being smartypants physicists, and after some squabbling, they do. Lloyd notes that the documents the team found in Somalia have several references to tachyonic dark matter. "In '91? How is that possible?" Simon asks. Lloyd says, "The theoretical basis existed." "But their experiment failed," Simon said. "Because they needed us," Lloyd replied. Simon's delighted by this news: this means he and Lloyd are off the hook for the blackout. Lloyd smothers his elation in a wet blanket, as Ricky Jay had basically pointed out that their experiment amplified whatever flashforward was already going to be taking place. Lloyd changes the topic to the formula he saw in his flashforward: "It's the exact inverse of some of our early NLAP computations. I don't know -- maybe a process to reverse the blackout?" Simon's incredulous that Lloyd was working on blackout protection in his flashforward. Lloyd gloomily notes that he only remembers half the formula or so, and Simon's all, "Sounds like someone's got to head over to the Benford boudoir to jog his memory. Rowwwwwr!"
Demetri and Mark have a little chat. Frost has done the near-impossible: dropped out of our national surveillance system in 1990 and stayed gone. There's not a single visual record of him anywhere. Mark is playing with a chess piece and he pegs Frost as both thorough and a poor sport ("He likes people to know when he's winning"). He then tells Demetri what he's been up to: looking through chess club memberships from the 1980s. Through these, he's determined that one of Frost's old chess foes was a San Franciscan named Ian McKinnon. McKinnon had been the reigning amateur chess champ until Frost beat him. Mark says he traced McKinnon and called him, "but when I mentioned Frost, he hung up." Maybe he doesn't like rehashing old losses? Rather than speculate on whether the precognitive evil genius might have threatened McKinnon, Mark decides to show Demetri the computer simulations from the Frost/McKinnon matches. Frost used a gambit called the "queen's sacrifice" and it is characterized as "a total Hail Mary, but it's one of the most effective plays of the game." Mark theorizes that Frost knew the FBI would see these games, and he was sending them a message from 1991. With a few keystrokes, Mark: 1. calls up the tournament game sheets; 2. shows Demetri that each move takes either two or four seconds; 3. deduced that these values correspond to Morse code dots and dashes; and 4. found a phone number for a prepaid cell. "He really did know the future," Mark says. Unless Frost flashed onto the entire third season of The Wire when the police were trying to get warrants for the burners (prepaid phones)... I'm not buying it. It was a phone number. Anyway, Mark calls and gets Frost's smug voicemail: "Well done. Leave a message." Mark leaves a similarly humility-impaired response: "This is Agent Benford. It's your move." Oh, well done, Mark, taunting the time-traveling evil genius!
Anyway, Mark and Demetri are off to San Francisco.
And now the B-plot commences. It's Keiko! She's hanging out in the restaurant where she expects to meet Bryce someday. She and the waitress have a Japanese/English conversation lightly touching on Keiko's money troubles and the fact that she doesn't have a work visa. The waitress is like, "Our sushi joint is hiring," but Keiko says sweetly that she didn't come to Los Angeles to sling shiro maguro. (Although if she were really feeling rebellious, she should take the job, get a few Polaroids snapped, then anonymously mail them back to her parents.) She's here for a new beginning. "And a new love," the waitress adds knowingly. As the door opens, Keiko's eyes go to it, but the handsome devil striding in isn't the man in her flashforward. Indeed. He won't be showing up until April 29th. So... why sit in the restaurant until then?
Meanwhile, the object of Keiko's yearning is busy getting chemo. Nicole is sitting with him now, and we establish that today, Bryce is feeling okay, but it will be a different story come tomorrow. So tonight, they will eat, drink and make merry, for tomorrow Bryce will see it all over again when he throws it all up. Bryce! Eat soft foods! They'll make the return voyage more easily.
We cut to a hilariously incorrect shot of the Fort Mason area by the Golden Gate Bridge, where I can personally assure you there are no giant, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone-style chessboards and pieces to the Pacific. Yet here they are, and here Mark and Demetri are, having chanced on what appears to be a fresh crime scene. And what, you ask, is the crime being scene-d? Detective John "That's My Real Name" Smith says, "Some guy from the chess club took two in the back of the head." By the way, "that guy" is Ian McKinnon. Mark and Demetri look at each other all, "Crap. All that time in airport security for nothing." I hope for their sakes they flew in and out of Oakland; it's much saner than SFO.
Once he's back in L.A., Mark arranges to have a perambulatory meeting with Vogel where he sketches out the McKinnon development and concludes that it probably would not have happened had a mole inside the office not passed along the breaking news to Dyson Frost somehow. Vogel says, "I've been authorized to give full agency support, a fresh pair of eyes, all that crap. You got a play?" Mark does: it's the HR equivalent of blast fishing. Vogel admires this, but reminds Mark, "Don't forget who your friends are." Mark huffs, "What's unacceptable is that one of them is my enemy."
The morning, the full and awesome might of the CIA descends upon the FBI office -- first the phalanx of Men (and Women) in Black, then a ton of techs. Wedeck inquires, at the top of his lungs, as to what's going on. Vogel smoothly defuses him and tells him he'll be needing his cell phone. Mark watches the agents frogmarching his coworkers to a conference room and divesting them of their phones, and he looks guilty. Even Simon gets the suspect treatment, much to his pique.
Inside the fishbowl, Wedeck speculates that the "interagency task force" is looking for a leak. Agent Seth McFarlane (welcome back, O agent we haven't seen since the pilot) asks why the FBI can't take care of this in-house and Janis echoes, "Yeah." Because they are all ace investigators, it does not take them long to figure out that Mark is somehow instigating this. His flouncing around the halls and glowering in their general direction every few moments might have tipped off the more observant.
Mark and Vogel go into Mark's office, which is being scoured for surveillance devices. Mark pissily notes this, and Vogel gives him a Shut up, Mark look before launching into a surprisingly melodious version of Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life." Mark is like, I work with lunatics, but it turns out that Vogel was singing because he suspected a voice-activated bug in Mark's office -- and sure enough, there was one tucked under the "M" key on Mark's keyboard. It's clever, Vogel explains, because "the office is swept for bugs at 4 a.m. No sound. No sound, no transmission." The question now is: Who has access to Mark's office and could have planted the bug? Why, everyone in the conference room. Let the interrogations begin!
Vogel heads into the room and shares: "Ladies and gentlemen, you may have deduced that we're closing in on a leak in the FBI that is hampering the Mosaic investigation. Anyone want to confess?" He gets no takers. So Demetri is the first up in the hot seat. He's hurt that Mark is seemingly okay with this.
Demetri starts off his talk with, "Vogel, you're a son of a bitch. You know that?" Vogel throws Mark under the bus with, "True as that may be, I'm working with Agent Benford today." Demetri gives Mark a death glare and Mark crumbles, as would anyone faced with John Cho's seething stares. He says feebly that he doesn't think Demetri's the mole, but he's got to send the message to the rest of the office that they're all suspect.
Inside the conference room, the we're-on-screen-but-rarely-speak agents are all fretting about how long this investigation could take. Marcie says, "It could take days. They're going to want to vet all of our personal files." Agent Seth McFarlane doctors his coffee as he snorts, "Not if they don't have passwords." Wedeck asks pointedly, "Is there something on your computer you don't want people to see?" And now everyone is interested in the discussion. Agent Seth McFarlane stammers his way around the question before admitting, "It's a role-playing game. I play 'Warlocks of Avalon' online. I'm a seventh-level druid, my name is Argothic --" Vreede breaks into snickers while Wedeck just looks disdainfully incredulous. The merriment is cut off as Mark comes in for Vreede. He takes off for the torture chamber while Mark pissily informs everyone of the transmitter in his keyboard, and leans in to Marcie to say, "You want to be useful? Tell me who put that in my office." Marcie -- who is now on her fourth line of the episode, or three more than she's had in the prior 14 put together -- asks incredulously if Mark thinks it was one of them. "That's the working theory," he replies drily. Simon picks up the key and says, "'M' for Mark. Nice touch. Unless it was you with 'M' for Marcie." She pettishly tells him to shut up. Simon tries to make nice by offering some sugar for her coffee, but Marcie eschews the white poison, thankyouverymuch. As Mark leaves, Marcie calls out, "We're with you. You know that." Mark's all, "Ech, say it in an e-card." After he goes, Simon remarks, "It's a good thing the fate of the planet doesn't depend on Mark Benford finding the mole." Okay, Simon, we get it: You have figured out who it is and are twitting everyone else for not being so smart as you.
Back in the B-plot, Keiko has stumbled into a scene that looks like a hybrid between Pimp My Ride and Stand and Deliver. However, because she is so freakin' winsome and a robotics genius to boot, this scene does not end with a Channel 5 News Team reporter standing in front of a crime tape-cordoned scene intoning, "A Japanese tourist was robbed by what appears to be the Decepticon Starscream..." Instead, Keiko ends up impressing the admirably open-minded owner of the car with her hydraulics know-how.
It's Janis's turn in the hot seat, and she leads off with, "This is really screwing with my trust issues. You know that" I like her sense of humor. She huffily points out that she took a bullet, ergo she ought not be a suspect. Vogel says, "You have to admit that getting shot and living makes for a perfect cover." Janis cordially invites Vogel to enjoy a rich and healthy sex life with himself. Mark is the one who presses Janis: she's had 13 unaccounted personal breaks since the blackout, which is a noticeable deviation from her usual pattern of having -to-none. Janis admits that she's been trying to get knocked up, but Vogel notes that only accounts for eight of the breaks. He wants to know where she was for the other five. Janis says, "Ever since the shooting, I've been looking at everyone differently. Suspicious. Just checking up." "And you found something," Vogel prods. Janis says, "Marcie has a half-brother. He's very sick, in Missouri. He's dying in a care facility. It's expensive. Marcie didn't name him in any of her applications. Those absences? I went off-site to look into some things." Vogel's all, "And we are finding out about this now because...?" Janis heatedly says she was waiting to see if Marcie "did something." Also, Marcie has an extra $50K in her bank account that didn't used to be there. Janis grumps off and Vogel asks, "You trust her?" Mark pissily replies, "Being around you makes me not trust anyone anymore." Vogel makes an exaggerated "Oooh, my feelings" face and bops out the door. I can't be sure, but I bet he gets together with his CIA drinking buddies and he's like, "The highlight of my day is pissing off someone in the FBI, and these simpletons just keep making my days great!"
And now, a completely superfluous scene wherein Olivia and Charlie attempt to have fun on the Santa Monica boardwalk, but Olivia gets freaked out by FBI tail Danforth Crowley, whom Mark's put on her to keep the girls safe. Zzzzzzzzz.
Back at the FBI, Demetri's just arrived at Mark's office to shoot some holes in Janis's case. Marcie did name her invalid half-brother in her original application, but somehow it's been lost in a great bureaucratic shuffle until this very moment. That Demetri can so easily find what Janis overlooked is a tad fishy. However, rather than bottom this development out, Mark decides to talk to Demetri about the state of his marriage, then distractedly orders, "Marcie's still a suspect, so keep digging." Marcie, and not Janis with the unexplained absences and bad intel? Whatever, whiz-bang investigator.
In the B-plot: Keiko had so impressed her new automotive friend Emil, he's hired her to work in his auto body shop. He also slaps down his mechanics with "She works here. She is part of the family, and that means you treat her with respect." Keiko, ditch Bryce and go for this grease-stained gallant. (He's more likely to be alive by the end of the season, too.) She happily gets to work.
In the I'm-not-sure-what-letter-this-plot-rates: Lloyd visits Olivia at the hospital and apologetically explains that he wouldn't be bothering her, except there's the slim chance that she might remember some of the formula that he -- and presumably she -- saw in their flashforwards. Olivia misses the chance to say, "Dammit, Lloyd, I'm a doctor, not a physicist" and instead rattles off her memory: She recalls getting up from the bed after Lloyd excused himself to make a phone call, and staring at the equation. None of it made sense except the chemical formula for halothane, which is an anaesthesia. She scribbles it out for him (C2HBrClF3) and Lloyd muses, "Quantum mechanics and anaesthesics... that's what Mark and I were working on in our flashforward. I thought 'QED' meant quantum electrodynamics, but we were building a quantum entanglement device." Olivia gives him the Dammit, Lloyd, I'm a doctor, not a physicist look, then takes off for rounds.
In the B-plot: Keiko's taken Emil to her sushi joint of destiny and filled him in on why she goes there. Emil, who truly is a thoughtful cat, says, "I can respect that. You saw your fate and now you're doing your thing." Keiko tells him, "When I saw my future, it was the best day of my life. It was the first time I let myself want what was in my heart. So like you say, I am doing my thing." Emil is smitten. Keiko asks what he saw, but he says only, "Something different than you. Let's leave it at that." Keiko tells him he's kind to have given her a job, and he replies softly that they're lucky to have her. I pause the DVR so I can take out a notebook and write "KEIKO + EMIL = TLA" and "TEAM KEMIL" all over it, then resume right in time to see my other star-crossed pair, Bryce and Nicole (BRICOLE? NYCE?) heading toward the sushi joint. Oh noes! Destiny will not be denied! Except it will because at the last minute, Bryce decides he's not in the mood for sea urchin. What he wants is to kiss Nicole. Which is awesome and I am cheering because Bryce so obviously digs her and vice-versa, but Nicole is really freaked out. Because of this little drama, they miss seeing Keiko pouring Emil another cup of sake.
The day: Emil's morning -- which is already off to a bad start because of his hangover -- gets worse when the INS comes in and arrests him for employing undocumented workers. The agents bust the place and Keiko is cuffed and loaded into the van with the other presumably-not-here-with-full-permits workforce. Naturally, her detaining van goes rumbling by right as Bryce is sitting at an intersection and leaving Nicole a really sweet message. O, star-crossed lovers! Whom I am rooting against anyways!
Back to the A-plot. Those poor FBI punks have had to wait in the conference room for 36 hours now. Demetri is going through all the footage they have of Marcie taking a coffee break in the plaza. Mark notices that there are times when Marcie's dropping sugar into her coffee. Since the episode made a point of showing us earlier that she doesn't take it like that, Mark quickly figures out that the sugar in the coffee is a signal to her handler in the Dyson Frost cabal; each time she put sugar in her coffee, one of the series regulars nearly got blown up.
Then, proving what ace agents they are, Mark and Demetri look up at Marcie with "YOU! You traitor!" looks, thereby tipping her off that they're on to her. So she overpowers a man twice her size, seizes his firearm, shoots Agent Seth McFarlane in the neck (sadly, not while screaming, "That's for thinking The Cleveland Show was a good idea!") and makes a bullet-assisted escape. She manages to get outside and a mysterious, black-clad motorcyclist zooms by to pick her up, but before she can escape forever and ever, Janis walks toward the motorcycle, shoots out its tires, then runs into a fountain so she can have a wrestling match with Marcie before subduing her. As Janis clambers out of the fountain, Mark says, "It looks like you were right." "I wish I wasn't," she replies. The scene ends on the shaking, submerged body of the mystery cyclist. I suppose we'll have to conclude Janis got her BADDEST ASS IN THE OFFICE plaque off-screen.
Wedeck corners Mark all, "Why didn't you let me know?" then shoots holes in Mark's explanation by calling it the queen's gambit. It's a nice, subtle reminder that there is not a damn thing that goes on in that office that Wedeck will not find out about. Except for Marcie being a trigger-happy stooge of Dyson Frost. But, nobody bats .1000, amirite?
Except Dyson Frost, maybe. He's just called Mark, and he says, "I haven't come forward since all your leads end up dead, but now that your mole problem has been fixed, I look forward to meeting you. I'll be in touch." Mark looks troubled. Which, come to think of it, is one of his three regular expressions ("petulant" and "glowering" being the other two in heavy rotation.)
And Simon's walking Janis out to her car. He says casually, "You're quite the hero today. I like a woman who knows how to handle a firearm. Fancy a drink?" Janis demurs with, "I'm not really your type," and Simon tells her, "You'd be surprised to know what my type is." A platonic female friend who is likely to scope out the same women you do? Janis says lightly, "I reviewed your uncle Teddy's autopsy x-rays. The CPR you gave him was quite aggressive. It could have even been the cause of his death." Simon feints, "I can be quite a tiger." Janis gives him the Don't-mess-with-the-firearm-proficient-lady look and says, "You murdered him to send a message. Message received." Simon replies, "I should have known -- a double plant. Two moles, in case one is caught. Brilliant -- and not one person in the office would suspect it's you. Not one." Janis smirks, and says, "Well, that would be the point now, wouldn't it?"
And on that note -- that note being "Oh, come on" -- the episode ends. But seriously: come on. This "She's a mole?" expository "twist" had better pay off in a big way -- and I mean a "Simon was Suspect Zero wandering around the stadium" way, not the "Charlie thinks D. Gibbons is a bad man based on secondhand hearsay" BS. Otherwise, it's just being deliberately obfuscatory, and on a show where we already have several characters with murky motives (Simon, Vogel, that nutjob preacher), do we really need another one? Especially with a scant handful of episodes left to resolve the season, and likely the series?
Oh, come on.
Watch this episode here, discuss it in our forums, then see what we think the cast should do if FlashForward gets cancelled.
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