By Sobell
There's a lot going on in this episode, so let's break it down subplot by subplot: Bryce bribes the intake guard at the detention center for Keiko's contact information. He then meets up with Nicole, tells her that he looooooves Keiko because "it's meant to be," and runs off to find her at the restaurant. Keiko, who has escaped the clutches of INS thanks to her mom assaulting several federal officials (no, really), runs right into her flashforward.
Nicole, meanwhile, drives right into hers. But she doesn't drown -- she gets rescued by a clean-cut good samaritan who explains that in his flashforward, he saw himself rescuing a drowning woman, and it's a relief that he didn't fail or let down the future. Ed introduces himself and Nicole gives him a look like, "Hello, lover!" Good for her!
Tracy has miraculously come back from the dead. If you're Aaron or Tracy, this is good news. If you're any of the viewers who was perhaps hoping to tie up some of the show's loose ends, not so much.
Wedeck bails out Mark and hands over his badge and his gun. They end up back at the FBI building on account of someone planting bombs in the building (of course! Run toward the danger!). Since Wedeck doesn't trust Mark to stay in the car, he connects him to Aaron and they have a little heart-to-heart where Aaron more or less encourages Mark to commit suicide. Mark hops out of Wedeck's car and heads into the FBI building. The masked men are preparing to sweep in -- as are Wedeck and Vreede, who are honestly more frightening-looking in their steely resolve. Give these men a spinoff!
Janis and Demetri help Simon break into NLAP -- Janis by swooning thanks to her placental abruption -- and Simon and Demetri go looking for the piece of software. There's a nice moment when the two men -- neither of whom had a flashforward -- welcome each other to the future as they know it, when things are unknown. But then Simon discovers someone else accessing the mainframe via the backdoor code, and it kickstarts the particle accelerator. (Oh, BTW: We also find out that Janis is actually carrying a boy, which suggests the future is slightly malleable.)
Dylan and Lloyd end up meeting Charlie and Olivia at the beach -- courtesy of their FBI guards kibbitzing -- and Lloyd gives an impassioned speech about needing to recreate the conditions under which he'll solve the equation that will... prove cold fusion is feasible? Provide an alternative to our petroleum-dependent infrastructure? The power of his words magically teleports everyone back to Stately Benford Manor. As Olivia and Lloyd dicker over keeping their clothing on, Dylan creeps upstairs, grabs one of Olivia's lipsticks and writes the magic formula on the mirror in the bedroom. Turns out the formula is "the greatest mystery in all of quantum physics." And Lloyd has to solve it right now. Naturally, Olivia picks that moment to put the moves on Lloyd. This woman is determined to destroy the universe! I bet if we had Season Two, we'd discover she's got a sleeper personality that controls the flashforward cabal. ANYWAY, the two of them manage to keep their clothing on, and Lloyd solves the equation with a little help from Simon. And guess what? He's just figured out that there will be a flashforward sometime in the two days.
Mark takes this and runs with it, comparing his big Mosaic board against Gabriel's and realizes that the flashforward will be... in ten minutes, as in April 29, at 10:14 p.m. He spends the ten minutes ducking a positive hailstorm of ammo from the masked thugs (they're great with costumes, bad at shooting), then kills some of them. Wedeck gets one in the bathroom. He also gets Mark on the phone; Mark tells Stan to alert everyone to the time of the flashforward, then decides to hang out in the building that's about to blow up. Which it does.
We then get a montage of the world passed out again, including a ring-wearing Lyta wheeling the unconscious Janis out of a hospital. We also see someone's flashforward, in which a teenaged Charlie is saying happily, "They found him!"
And that's it. Decent season finale, terrible series finale.
Watch this episode here, discuss it in our forums, then see what we think the cast should do now that FlashForward has been cancelled. And check back soon for the full recap!
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