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Simon's out for revenge. Janis agrees to help him break into NLAP after Simon promises to turn himself in, and then Demetri swings by and somehow agrees to go along with the the NLAP caper. He cites his deep affection for Janis as a friend; no doubt, she is playing him like a piano.

Mark has stuck a fork in his marriage and declared it done. This leaves him considerably more free time to talk to Hellinger. Maintaining the fine tradition of those who have endured multiple flashforwards, Hellinger is nuttier than the Harry & David storehouse. He warns, "You will lose control, and you will lose everything... and then, you'll be killed in your office." Mark is not too fazed, and rejects Hellinger's plea to prevent this future by letting Hellinger go.

He then spends the rest of the episode trying to anticipate what Hellinger's organization will do, and does a fairly crap job. He goes to beat the crap out of Hellinger As Has Been Foretold, but Wedeck steps in like the rockstar that he is, then Olivia brings Charlie by for a touching father-daughter scene. After Mark's wrenching goodbye to Charlie, he decides to make a bad day worse by going to talk to Hellinger again (why? Whhhhhhy?), and after Hellinger tells Mark that Charlie will be better off without him, that's when Mark finally loses it and attacks Hellinger. Vogel watches with the same dispassion as a middle-schooler looking at a paramecium in a microscope. Wedeck decides it's time for Mark to take a mental-health day.

Naturally, Mark then wanders into a flashforward-day party, where a strange man accosts him, claims that in his vision, he quit drinking, and hands Mark his stylish flask with, "You look like you could use this." Benford breaks into sobs and falls off the wagon. One bar brawl later, Mark is in jail.

Demetri meets Zoey at the airport with every intention of going to Hawaii. Her happiness at seeing Demetri is short-lived, because Demetri 'fesses up to sleeping with Janis ("I thought I was going to die, and it made sense at the time") and Zoey rightfully points out that while Demetri was being all fatalistically philandering, she was pouring everything she had into the conviction that she and Demetri would have a long life together. That conviction? G-O-N-E. As is Zoey -- she tells Demetri to enjoy hanging out alone in Los Angeles while she goes to Hawaii.

In the subplot we care about: Nicole 'fesses up to Bryce about Keiko having been at the hospital and now in a detention center, and Bryce huffs off to the detention... from which Keiko was sprung by her mother mere hours before. Keiko is being bundled off to LAX.

In the subplot that some of us may care about: Tracy dies, thanks to her brutal treatment at the hand of Jericho. Aaron unleashes the Wrath of Dad and we learn from some random Jericho guys that they weren't massacring people, they were conducting experiments in cahoots with Hellinger's group in advance of the global flashforward.

In the subplot that will have us all scratching our heads: Olivia decides, "Screw fate!" and decides to run far, far away from fate and Lloyd.

Want more? The full recap starts right below!

The episode begins with Charlie waking from a sound sleep and shouting for Olivia. When Olivia comforts her crying child, Charlie tells her, "Today's the day. Today's the day Daddy's gonna die." Olivia has nothing to say to that, so she kisses the top of Charlie's head and wonders how she's going to finesse the timeline when bringing Dad 2.0 around.

7:26 a.m. Simon has evidently kept Janis up all night, which su-u-ucks if she's still in the "so tired I could die" phase of pregnancy. He, however, is fueled by spite and genius. Simon expresses some minor concern over how large the howling mob will be when his name is definitively linked to the Suspect Zero footage, and whether they'll stick with the classic torches and pitchfork, or go with newfangled tasers. Janis wearily asks what Simon wants. He tells her: "I want revenge. I want to destroy the people who are responsible for the global blackout." Janis cites Hellinger as proof that the sinister world cabal behind all this is about to crumble, and Simon promptly calls BS on the argument, slyly alluding to her tenure as a mole for the cabal. He admits he doesn't know who the cabal is, but since they had him install a piece of software on the NLAP mainframe to ensure the accelerator would fire on October 6, he'd like to use that as his first clue toward tracking said cabal down. Janis tries to talk Simon out of a road trip up to Palo Alto and into a road trip to FBI HQ; he bargains, "You get me to NLAP, I'll turn myself in."

8:11 a.m. Mark and Demetri are eating a taco-truck breakfast and congratulating themselves on a night well-spent capturing Hellinger. Which is odd, since I seem to remember that scene taking place during the day in the last episode, but I suppose the paperwork could have taken a while. As might processing a passel of interchangeable henchpeople in black turtlenecks -- you'd keep getting confused, on account of them all looking alike, start double-processing ... ANYWAY. Demetri notes that he's now off to work with the digital forensics guys to try and recover some of the computer files Hellinger managed to erase. Mark is like, "That will be tough, as you're going to be spending the morning on Hawaiian Air, winging your way to the Rainbow State." And then he hands over a thoughtful gift and nice callback to prior episodes: a CD he burned with 15 different covers of "Islands in the Stream." Demetri laughs as he asks when Mark made it, and Mark cracks, "I don't get much sleep." He then gives Demetri a carpe-diem-type speech about seizing the future he used to think he didn't have, and concludes, "Even with the way everything went down, even though I lost her, marrying Olivia was the best thing I did. Don't be afraid, especially on a day like this."

Speaking of how Olivia's moving on, she's busy blowing off a phone call from Lloyd and not telling him why she thinks she needs to give Charlie 100% of her attention today. Lloyd hangs up the phone, wondering why the bitch goddess of fate has set him up with a woman who is neither free nor clear.

Mark heads into the office, covers for Demetri's absence, and runs into Vogel, who confirms that Hellinger has basically acted out the time-traveling fantasies of every market-timing aficionado on the planet: he invested in dot-coms and got out right before that bubble burst in 2000-2001, then he took those gains, sank them into real estate and got out in 2005 at the height of the market. Sadly, the show does not say where Hellinger has sunk his money now, which is too bad because I think those of us who have stuck with Flashforward through the season deserve a little sugar in the form of a buy-low-sell-high tip. Mark is like, "Please do not tell me that this vast global cabal exists solely because someone gets their yayas from market-timing. What is this vast global conspiracy to which you alluded in Hong Kong?" Vogel is like, "Imagine how you could use this technology to manipulate geopolitics." Mark tries, but he's clearly stuck on wondering what use flashforwards would be in disarming North Korea.

Wedeck comes in right then to rescue Mark; apparently the only person Hellinger will talk to is Mark Benford. Mark then heads into the fishbowl where Hellinger is waiting. The other man says crisply, "We need to talk." Mark asks if Hellinger caused the global blackout, and Hellinger says, "We need to talk about something more pressing that has to do with you." Mark repeats himself: "Did you cause the global blackout?" Hellinger says dismissively, "Yes, I caused the global blackout, but that really doesn't matter now." Ace investigator that he is, Mark completely ignores the fact that a time-traveling mastermind is trying to tell him something and dwells on the October 6 event until Hellinger gets to the scene's point: "I've seen today more times than I can remember. And a lot of those days started with me sitting right here. May I?" Mark hands him a notebook and pen. Hellinger manages, quite dextrously considering his handcuffs, to draw a diagram as he monologues: "There are so many possibilities this day could take. I have seen so many different versions of this moment, and the one, and the one. But in every version of the future I saw, I saw this: In this room, you will lose control, and then you'll lose everything. You're going to attack me, Mark. You're going to attack me because you realize you'll never get the answers to your questions." If Hellinger is hoping to avert a crunchy beatdown by warning Mark of what's to come, he is hoping in vain; we have a whole season of Mark blithely ignoring good advice if it might actually benefit him in the long run. Hellinger finishes by adding, "At the end of it all, you'll be killed in your office." He flips around the flow chart he made. At the bottom, it reads: Hellinger in Fri. There are then four possible paths: Prison --> Escape --> Mark Benford Dead; School --> Instruction C --> Mark Benford Dead; T-wipe --> Enact --> Mark Benford Dead; Freeway --> Evacuate --> Mark Benford Dead.

Mark ignores all this, and Hellinger's warning that "if you keep me in custody, you will die. I know it seems so self-serving, but please, you have to believe me. This is your life." Hellinger's appeals to his self-interest do not interest Mark, and so, this conversation is over. But Mark flashes to his magic mural and smugs, "You just told me what your move is." Or, to be precise, the four moves, but let's not get into that right now. Probability is hard!

Speaking of tricky math, Mark then wanders into Lloyd's office to remind him that the FBI's kicking civilians out of the building at noon. Lloyd's aware of this, and also seems quite aware that bitching to Mark about Olivia's lack of communication skills would be poor form. So he settles for answering Mark's questions about the tachyon constant: "It's a number physicists have been trying to crack for centuries, sort of a holy grail thing. It was on these blueprints that Dyson Frost was carrying, it was in the formula in my flashforward ... well, at 10 p.m. tonight, I was supposed to be on the verge of cracking something monumental --" Mark averts his eyes, lest he contemplate what other monumental achievements Lloyd will have made by that time "-- and that would certainly qualify." Mark lays out Hellinger's chart and what do you know, the T-wipe is actually shorthand for "tachyon wipe." Too bad nobody has any idea what it means -- only that Mark is sure Hellinger's group is going to do one today.

And now, in subplots I somewhat care about: Nicole rings Bryce's doorbell and greets him with, "Happy flashforward day! I know you love these [cupcakes]. They're for you." Giddy with sugar and infatuation, Bryce leads her inside to view his latest artistic creation: a sketch of Nicole. He says breezily, "So, I haven't planned out everything for tonight, but I thought maybe we could start with some water polo, we could bob for apples, maybe finish with some scuba diving." He finds this hilarious, but Nicole -- who has just stumbled upon Bryce's old drawing of Keiko -- c

an no longer be amused because her conscience pains her too much. Nicole asks if Bryce is okay with "tonight. With us?" Bryce is like, "Let me think: Lady I have never met or cupcake-delivering lady whose throat is currently hosting my tongue? Shyeah."

Speaking of Lady Bryce has never met, she is getting word from someone vaguely official, or legal -- well, Japanese-speaking at any rate -- that she could end up moldering in this detention facility until her hearing, which will then usher in the inevitable Back-to-Nippon denouement. Keiko's none too thrilled to find out that her stay as a guest of US Immigration could be as long as a year. The agent lady tells her, "I know it's hard, but just keep believing." Keiko looks at her tattoo and perks up a bit.

LAX: Demetri's just surprised Zoey in the food court, and she is ecstatic. According to her advance agents (her parents), there's a hot tub in the room. Demetri proceeds to piss all over Zoey's good mood by blurting out that he helped Janis fulfill her flashforward -- "I slept with Janis so she could get pregnant. I know it was wrong, but the future was happening. I-- my life was ending. Another life was beginning. It sounds crazy, but I thought I was going to die, and it made sense at the time." Zoey gives him a classic Are you KIDDING me? look, and lays it out for Demetri: She spent the last few months of her life cashing in all her personal and professional chits to make sure his sorry ass didn't check out on March 15, and the fact that he would schtupp Janis in a fit of fatalism more or less tells her that he had no faith in the two of them sharing a future. Demetri tries to placate her with, "You were right. I want to start over. Please marry me. Please marry me." Zoey is all, "So, I'm still going to Hawaii. But you are uninvited. And I don't know if I'll be calling you when I get back." Good for her! She leaves Demetri sitting in the food court wondering what he's going to do with 15 different covers of "Islands in the Stream."

And now, in subplots that are lucky to be noticed, much less summed up in one paragraph: Aaron is ecstatic that he's brought Tracy to the place he saw in his flashforward! So clearly everything is going to be okay! Except ... he conveniently forgets that his flashforward ends with him meeting up at Tracy's bedside, and there are things that happen after that tiny moment. Most of those things involve Tracy dying from the wounds sustained during her torture. Aaron goes a little berserk and beats up one of the Jericho goons who conveniently admits that Jericho didn't want to kill her, they wanted to know why she didn't pass out when they conducted that little flashforward experiment on a remote Afghani village. OF COURSE Jericho is but one player in the global cabal to profit from market-timing. Anyway: We have one episode left to see how or if Aaron gets back to the states, and one episode left to wonder why or if this is tight writing with the Jericho/cabal connection, or just a hasty way to tie up loose ends.

Back in Los Angeles, Mark is telling Wedeck he's just cross-referenced all of Hellinger's financial records against the word "Tachyon," finds a business intelligence company by that name in nearby Arcadia, and thinks they should all head on over. Vogel is openly skeptical -- thank God someone is, because Mark was looking at a flow chart of possibilities, not a simple linear diagram -- but it's for naught because a) this is Mark Benford, and b) we have reached the point in the episode where Mark has to be wrong about his initial hunch and have it go pear-shaped, so that he can have some heroic flash of insight later that will somehow magically erase his original screw-up. So Mark announces that he's going into the Tachyon data warehouse, and Wedeck joins Vogel's O RLY Chorus with "Hellinger's smart enough to organize a global blackout. You really think he'd be sloppy enough to leave you a clue like this." Mark does. Vogel sighs, rolls his eyes, and decrees that Mark doesn't get to go to the data warehouse; he gets to talk more to Hellinger and a special-ops team will be sacrificed off-screen to prove what a dumb idea Benford's had.

Back at Janis's place, Simon's jibbering excitedly about picking up the necessary tools for breaking into NLAP. Janis -- who is wearing the same purple top we've seen in her flashforwards -- is all, "What, at Ace Hardware?" Simon rolls his eyes all, "Not that kind of hardware." As he and Janis prepare to leave, who should be waiting at the door but Demetri? He pulls a gun and shouts, "What's he doing here, Janis?" Janis sort-of lies that Simon's turning himself in. She leaves out the NLAP part.

However, in the scene, Demetri's all up to speed, and he's sort of incredulous that Janis is going along with Simon's plan, as "he used that machine to put the world to sleep last time." Simon angrily refutes this. This standoff -- everyone pointing guns at everyone else -- is sort of tedious, which is disappointing, as it's got Janis trying to trade on her friendship with Demetri, Demetri all strung out from exhaustion and being dumped because he did Janis a hell of a favor, and Simon edgy because he thirsts for the opportunity to effect a global TOLD YOU SO. So Janis disarms Simon -- who punches her right in the uterus, thereby setting up her tense emergency doctor's appointment late in the day -- and she and Demetri exchange looks, which suggests that they've come to some sort of agreement. But Simon doesn't get this, so he hisses to Janis, "You're going to regret this for the rest of your life."

Hey, remember how I talked about the sacrificial special-ops team? Guess who just got sacrificed as Mark and Vogel listened hopelessly over the radio? We cut to Hellinger looking completely unsurprised by what's going on, and Mark catches sight of him, then charges in to deliver an ass-kicking. Wedeck stops him this time, while Vogel elaborately rolls his eyes in the background. And before Mark can protest too much, Olivia swings by with Charlie. Vogel gives the little girl a sick look before disappearing; Mark hugs his daughter. Olivia explains that Charlie's a bit of a basket case right now: "She just needed her dad. I really didn't know what else to do."

Mark goes into his office, where Charlie's waiting, and she tells him, "I don't want you to die." Mark isn't sure how to answer that without lying, so he cuddles her and says, "I need to ask you to do something for me. Something really, really hard. Don't be afraid. I mean, it's okay to be afraid. It is. But that's just what happens at first. After that, you have to tell yourself something: 'My daddy loves me, and everything will be okay, no matter what.' It's not easy, 'cause things can be scary, bigger than us. But we can fight it. That's what I do. I tell myself, 'Charlie loves me, and everything will be okay, no matter what.' I tell myself that, and it makes me strong. It makes me brave, 'cause when I say that you're always with me. [And when you say it], I'm always with you. I love you so much. I love you with everything I've got." And by the end of that, Charlie is crying, Olivia is crying, Mark is crying, and I am getting a little verklempt. I'm not made of stone here, people. I was conditioned by Disney movies at an early age -- the parent always goes away and it's very sad.

So let's move to something cheerier! It's 3:37 p.m. and Demetri's loading a handcuffed Simon into an SUV. He makes a last-ditch plea to Janis, and asks how on Earth she can trust Simon. She dully replies, "After all the lying, I've realized, you get to a point where you just can't do it anymore." There's a brief exchange where Janis declines Demetri's offer to head into the office together, then he drives off. And THEN, Demetri throws the car into reverse, rolls down the window and says, "This NLAP thing is totally insane ... get in." Oh boy! We have a wacky road trip comedy now!

Cut to Lloyd and Dylan discussing Lloyd's work, which is spread out all over the living room floor. Dylan begins re-sorting the pages, insisting, "All the ones with numbers have t

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o be together. It all has to be in the right place." Lloyd has a Eureka! moment, recalling Gabriel's jabbering that you "do the numbers together, and then you're both part of the equation." He stands up and tells Dylan to grab his coat. Because they're in Los Angeles, in April, and Dylan runs a risk of frostburn in the typical 68-degree weather.

Back at the FBI, Hellinger is calmly, if apologetically, telling Mark that in most futures, the special agent team sent into the BI warehouse survives. Mark is not consoled by this. He hammers on the "When is the blackout?" line of inquiry, and Hellinger replies, "You're going to die, Mark. I take no pleasure in that. I really don't. We've had many conversations in this room. You're a decent man. This is just all over your head." Mark asks again, "When is the blackout?" Hellinger replies, "Mark, you work hard. You're passionate about what you do. But don't you see? All of this is just so futile. Your faith -- it's admirable. That board in your office. How much time have you spent looking at it, all on faith. But deep down, you've gotta know what that board really is -- it's nothing but a scrapbook of your failures." Well, that explains the cunning lace borders and stickers reading "#1 AGENT LOL" all over it. Mark persists, "Tell me when the blackout is." Hellinger finally loses a bit of his composure; voice rising in incredulity, he reels off things on the board -- including the freed Nazi, who hasn't had jack to do with anything, as of yet, and the botched Somalia trip -- and concludes, "You and that board, you're Mr. Stick-To-It. That's why you're going to die! You just don't give up! You just --" Hellinger breaks off with a rueful laugh, then concludes, "I am going to miss you. Charlie's going to miss you too. But there is an upside -- and deep down, you know what I mean. You're going to die, but your daughter's going to be better off when you're gone."

TWANG! Benford snaps like a misdirected rubber band, and proceeds to fulfill Hellinger's earlier prophecy that he'll lose his cool. Vogel comes in after a few minutes, with a few agents, and they drag Mark off while Vogel looks at Hellinger and spits, "Clean yourself up, playboy."

Out in the hall, Wedeck is giving Mark his best "I am very disappointed in you" look, and boots Mark out of the office, since he's become a liability on the job. It's not an easy decision for him, obviously, but Mark screaming like a lunatic as he's dragged off sort of underlines the necessity of the eviction.

4:17 p.m. Bryce and Nicole are finally heading out the door, en route to a picnic and fireworks. Nicole whinges about not wanting to picnic with a few thousand other strangers who are also excited about flashforward night, but Bryce thinks it'll be awesome to share the experience with teeming masses of humanity. Nicole decides to bring down the conversation: She's worried her vision's already coming true because she's set it in motion. Remember that she said she was drowning, but she felt she deserved it for doing something wrong? Nicole thinks what she did to deserve being drowned is keeping the Keiko information from Bryce. She spills the details and Bryce is none too thrilled to discover that Keiko's in an INS detention facility in Lancaster.

Actually, hold that thought: Keiko's mom has come to bail her wayward child out of American prison. Keiko is slightly stunned at this turn of events, even more so when she learns that her flight leaves before 10 p.m., thereby making it impossible for her to run to the sushi restaurant and meet Bryce. Or will it be? We do have one episode left, after all.

6:38 p.m. And yet, it is already dark in Los Angeles. In April. There's a huge flashforward party taking place in the streets of downtown L.A. -- a phenom only slightly less implausible than it being pitch-black in the daylight savings-enacted springtime -- and some stranger stumbles into Mark, telling him sincerely that his flashforward has him giving up drinking tonight, and giving his flask to Mark on his way to sobriety. Mark, who has been tormented by everyone telling him how the future is inevitable and he's toast, takes the flask. He recognizes it from his vision, then bursts into tears. Overwhelmed by the grinding gears of a future he can't change, Mark begins to drink. My hat off to the writers -- Mark is one of my least-favorite characters, and I've had nothing but pity for him this episode.

6:46 p.m. Janis and Demetri talk as they drive north on a remarkably deserted freeway. He tells her tearily, "I feel like I lost my best friend. It's like I didn't know who you were." Janis tears up a bit too. But, Demetri concludes, he does know her so he's going to drive on because he has faith in that. Janis closes her eyes, either overcome with self-loathing or overcome with the feeling that she doesn't deserve such a good friend.

A minute later, we're in a crowded bar, where Mark is making up for lost time per his years of sobriety. A fellow barfly makes the mistake of commenting on Mark's friendship bracelet, and Mark decides now would be a fine time to brawl. He does a pretty impressive job of holding his own, too.

Cut to Olivia driving away from her house. She fields a call from Lloyd on her headset and sighs about how she just needs to get away from it all. Oh, where is Gabriel when you need him? She's had how many episodes of people telling her the universe is out of whack because she's not with Lloyd, and what does she do? Persist in pushing it off-balance because she needs spaaaaaaaace. Lloyd tries to explain this with, "Certain conditions have to be met if --" but Olivia snaps, "Don't make this about free will. I have Charlie to think about! I'm not going to be in that house with you tonight." She clicks off, and Lloyd's all, "Great -- my life's screwed up on both a personal level and a multiverse level."

And now Mark's in a holding cell. I wonder who will bail his poor, sorry ass out.

The episode ends with a montage of people all bummed about their flashforwards -- Aaron, Keiko, Bryce (who is at the detention center), Nicole, Mark, Olivia and Charlie.

Lisa Schmeiser would not take a swig from a flask a mystery man proffered, no matter how much he insisted that it was fate. But she would tweet at lschmeiser.

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