Flashforward, FLASH TO THE FUTURE!

I like this show. It doesnt go off the deep end like Lost,and no one actually travels to the future in the normal sense. It feels to me like "fringe" lite,But since It comes on another day of the week I get to watch both. If you like Sci-fi drama Check this show out BEFORE ABC CANCELLS ANOTHER GOOD ONE!!

Not far enough along to really get a feel for it. Has lots of potential.

The thing that gets me is they have visions of a moment 6 months in the future. A TV season is conveniently about 6 months long, 24 weekly episodes. Do they have another vision of the future at the begining of the next season? Basing a show on a temporal gimmick is dangerous territory.

So far its not dissapointing though.

I'm finding it a little variable. The casting is excellent although the writing doesn't always shine. The gimmick is also quite odd - will it all just turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Only if Cern doesn't find the Higgs boson.

I'm afraid this is going to turn out like Jericho. It seemed REALLY awesome at first when they're doing the whole 'what's going on? ' thing, but once you find out what's going on it starts getting absurd.

The main character's complete lack of interest in asserting free will does grate a little bit - yeah, he burned the friendship bracelet, but would it hurt to put pictures on the wall in a slightly different position? It's not exactly in his interests to have the future come true either...

As is often the case in stories such as this, not just of the TV variety, the typical trope is the possibility of fate's influence on the cast's lives. The problem is that the characterization feels rather hamfisted in that regard, though there's a decent chance in that angle changing, considering that the second episode was in a different tone than the first. I'm certainly not expecting much though.

More than anything else, I hope they cut down some on the largely irrelevant melodrama and ridiculous flashbacks. I'm aware that ABC wants to bring in the average, without generalizing, female viewer, but they don't need to insult my intelligence in the process with groanworthy moments/dialog.

This post has been edited by Link on Oct 7 2009, 10:05 AM

Just caught up with this on the Five website. Great that this is being broadcast at the same time in the UK as in the US. The future of TV, appropriately enough, finally seems to be here.

It's caught my interest, so hopefully it doesn't disappoint.

Eh, I felt like episode two was the early pinnacle of the series and since then they've been descending into 75% trite relationship melodrama and 25% decent plot, with most of every episode have horribly cheesy dialog. That's the exact opposite of what I hoped I'd be seeing and what I disliked of the series. I don't know. I still want to see what happens, so unless Flashforward jumps the shark at some point, I'll keep up with the first season. I really hope this show doesn't turn into Lost after today's "revelation".

This post has been edited by Link on Oct 22 2009, 07:48 PM

Guest starring Amita from Numb3rs as the lesbian girlfriend! I'm still not sure if I just wasn't paying attention to the set up or if those two were suddenly on a lesbian dinner date with no warning to the audience.

Besides, she's pregnant in her flash forward but she doesn't even have a boyfriend. We get it. Unlikely future, just like dead daughter now alive, recovering alcoholic drinking again, and happily married woman with another guy. They didn't really need to make her gay just to drive the point home. Especially if they're just going to immediately kill her to show us that the visions of the future can be changed. (I think the fade out on her bleeding out onto the street was meant to say she's dead, though they could still have her wake up in the hospital next episode I guess.)

I guess girls kissing on television has lost its shock value when they not only do it on primetime major network television, but several times in the same episode. It still feels gratuitous, like they're going more for shock value or having a token gay character around. As much as I like to watch girls kissing, I think I still prefer it when I'm actively seeking porn and not appearing by surprise on shows that kids are probably watching.

Well I liked the episode,but i agree with Ray on the lesbian kissing scene. It was un needed. I was thinking that she was before the episode this week. I think the Pres tried to have the FBI guys Killed. Oh and Ray I do not think shes actually going to die,but its possible of course. If she does mayby the other guy who thinks he has 5 months to live will stop being so pissy.

I thought all the flashes of her remembering her flash forward as she lay bleeding on the street was her, as she thought she was dieing, thinking about how happy she was to have a baby and now sad that she wouldn't have one. So I would imagine next episode she wakes up in a hospital all ready to go out and buy a turkey baster. But still,

Why would he do that if he just made ubercunt (who definitely hates him and most likely he hates) his vice president just so that they could get extra funding? Why not kill them before he had to do that.

In that episode you had the 'Enter the Dragon' guy in the dojo, and in the Nazi war criminal episode you had that spiel about gay women in Eastern Europe wearing rings on their thumbs - like she did.

People kissing = porn? I sure hope you were equally upset by the implied adultery and pregnancy out of wedlock in the flashforwards, not to mention the mega-9/11 it all kicked off with.

I'm assuming she isn't dead, as that would totally break the conceit being built up so far. Also, that was a pretty good episode. I'd been wondering why no one was challenging the self-fulfilling prophecy, so it was good to see that actually addressed.

This post has been edited by Kegluneq on Nov 1 2009, 04:35 PM

99% of all same-gender kissing is found in pornography, yes. And I think Hollywood productions (TV and film) are still having trouble moving past homosexuality as shock value, titillation value (because guys like to watch lesbians), or comedy value. At the very least, it tends to be just a token gay person the way you see token black people, or occasionally the token woman depending on the setting. Even if a story isn't using homosexuality that way, it's usually hard to prove it.

Haven't watched all of the most recent episode yet, but yeah, she survives after several hours of surgery. I suppose given rational rules of time travel, they can't change the visions, because the vision of the Mosaic clue board proves the visions are from a future in which the visions occurred. Therefore any changes the visions may make to the timeline are already taken into account. Leaving the question of what happens if somebody intentionally tries to grandfather paradox the conditions of their vision, which should either turn out to be impossible or cause reapers or a time vortex or something to appear.

That's kind of an odd assumption - it's like saying 99% of man-woman copulation is found in pornography, because that's how it appears in media. And whilst people kissing, fucking etc can usually always be found in porn it doesn't follow that all fucking, kissing etc. is pornography.

I don't really see it being used as titillation here - it was foreshadowed appropriately and handled without explicit sex, etc. You could argue that the two lesbians are not representative of all gay female couples in that they're both very femme (like every other lesbian/bi couple in television?) but I don't think it's being done in a fetishistic sense unless you find women kissing that much of a challenge to your social mores.

Derailment ends!

Also I haven't seen the next episode yet

This post has been edited by Kegluneq on Nov 2 2009, 05:08 PM

It suddenly strikes me that there's a total lack of "Oh hey, it's the flashforward moment, hello past me!" in the future visions. If it were me I'd have a set of winning lottery numbers from January written down and sitting in front of me on the evening of April 29.

You're trying pretty hard there to warp what I said into something else entirely.

Well, yes, that's kind of part of it. Compared to 15 or 25 years ago there are suddenly a few more words that are freely spoken in primetime major network programming and a lot more sex and depravity (of the hetero type). I can't help but see this as an erosion of our culture.

But mostly, in regards to this case, at least half of the homosexual moments I see in major network/basic cable/syndicated programming these days is of the "Look at us, we're politically correct, we have gay people in our show!" type. Now I know gay activists make a big stink about underrepresentation of gays in Hollywood, but I think that sort of thing is just patronizing to the issue. With or without kissing.

Fixing on your use of the word 'all' there, which implies you're not just talking about same sex kissing in the media, but same sex kissing period, which is a self evidently dubious claim if you stand by it.

Does that really apply to this show? I can't think of much in it in terms of foul language or scenes of a sexual nature that would have been unprecedented 15 years ago. (Although since by your definition shows such as Mad Men and The Wire would also constitute an 'erosion of our culture' I'll wave a massive 'fuck you' to this argument and carry on.)

I'd agree that some homosexual relationships on TV are pretty jarring, especially when it's a lipstick lesbian romance that occurs years into the show with no prior indication - but then that sort of thing does actually happen to people in real life as well... Part of that unrealness is inherent to television anyway of course, where you often see groups of improbably attractive people engaging in suspiciously witty banter, all of whom have relationships within a very small network of people. Picking out any single relationship from that mix as being arbitrary and audience friendly is like shooting fish in a barrel.

I don't think that political correctness alone is ever a reason for writers to incorporate gay characters though, and in the context of the show there are valid reasons for her character to be as she is.

The Nazi referenced his flashforward, kind of, but that is quite odd. Perhaps everyone suffers some kind of bizarre amnesia leading them to forget what will happen at that time? It sounds like the kind of question that will come up in the show fairly soon though.

So anyway, turns out the future can be violated after all. I guess this a real grandfather paradox moment, he jumped off the roof because of what he saw in his flashforward, if he had got the "blank" flashforward he wouldn't have known to jump.

Although I suppose the friendship bracelet from the daughter in the first episode was supposed to be evidence for this too since it ended up in the fire, though I had just figured she'd make another one.

So the causality of the visions is messy, but then again what else is new with time travel science fiction. So few of them go out of their way to make sure everything is consistent, most of them are entirely about changing the timeline in the first place.

In fairness very few of them have reason to want their futures to come true.

The idea of alternate futures is interesting, and does make the end game a little murkier. Causality went to pot from the word go, really - think of the people celebrating in their flashforwards because they were celebrating in their flashforwards... This does at least mean no character is safe now, just because they were alive in their vision.

Also the lesbian FBI agent (I'm terrible at names), injured in such a way as to make pregnancy extremely difficult. Neither of those were as final as this though.

I liked the idea of the Blue Hands being a widespread club, it sounds like a natural response - and a good place to hire suicidal hitmen, perhaps?